Abandoned_Altars

Fawker Day - When?

Another year gone to hell.

Here it is once again November 5, Guy Fawkes Day, or Bonfire Night, celebrating the foiling of the infamous Gunpowder Plot in 1605. In the wee hours on that day, Fawkes was caught red-handed, lurking with a pile of barrels of black powder beneath the Houses of Parliament. He and his companions planned to blow the Protestant British monarchy and most of the nobility to kingdom come in what would have been the most spectacular act of terrorism — Catholic or otherwise — ever.

It is the day that I once proposed Roman Catholic clergy abuse survivors claim for ourselves. I called it World Catholic Abuse Survivors Day, but it quickly became known as “Fawker Day”. It would be held according to a bold general plan — which I still think could be effective — calling for a coordinated series of demonstrations at chanceries around the world of a totally different kind. They would be positive celebrations of survivalship, and growing beyond victimhood. No doubt such a global event would scare the bejesus out of the hierarchy, showing them to be irrelevant and out of control, and give a powerful shot in the arm to reformers everywhere.

A lovely vision; alas, like other proposals — such as the somewhat-similar September 1 festival — it died quietly on the vine. And now, concern for these issues seems at the lowest ebb in decades. Why? Could it be that the Survivors Movement itself has finally perished?

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During the clergy sexual abuse crisis, the Roman Catholic Church was confronted with the one thing it dreads the most: scandals. Jesus himself had warned his followers that scandals involving children would inevitably come. It’s just really too bad the disciples only picked up on the part about how awful scandal was and not his sayings about honoring, protecting, and saving children. A little humility would also have been good.

When the Church finally realized that victims could no longer be intimidated by the prestige of the priesthood, threatened with hell, or placated by soothing but meaningless promises of the bishops, it became desperate. For in the Catechism of the Council of Trent, they had taught the faithful that:

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Courageous survivor and journalist Kay Ebeling, in her latest blog post at the excellent City of Angels blog, writes about how the priest mangled Matthew’s version of the Parable of the Sower when she went to her old parish recently. If you’ve ever seen a Catholic lectionary, you might notice that almost all the readings skip around. Very rare is it to find a reading without serious editing.

But there’s another version of the same parable that’s a little different, in Luke, chapter 8. It is much the same except there is no mention at all of the harvest, just that the seed sown on the good ground produced a crop “a hundred times more than was sown.”

The interesting thing is that it’s followed by one of the most enigmatic passages in the entire Bible. One that I’m sure is never quoted in church:

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