Anger, anger, anger....get over it and start living...it is so convenient that we apologize when we want to but in the end we find that we lose track of so many other important things and we hold on to the past. There is too much show going on and the reality is that people can see that while anger is there for any number reasons, forgiveness and moving on clearly is not. This will bog down the church for the next 50 years making her unable to address what needs to be. Why would anyone attack the church and then want a pension from it?

I thought Catholic meant universal. I thought the metaphor that best describes a bishop was "shepherd." " Real shepherds have to climb over the rocks, down into swamps and get their hands dirty helping their flock. Putting your fingers together and pointing them toward the sky does not leave the hands free to work. But then the clergy do not want to work. They want the sheep to struggle to come to them from their small chilly houses to their nice comfortable well lit and well heated churches. They don't want to pilot their big shiny cars into the run down neighborhoods. Better to build a nice shiny megachurch with a big parking lot so that the people with the big cars can enjoy God way out in the suburbs where no buses run. Who needs poeple without cars to come to Mass? They won't put much in the box. They might even need help--they might have real-life problems, not just some crisis of faith like whether or not priests should be single or married. So instead of talking to Fr. Hausen or to all those people without cars or money, for that matter, "Bishop" Zubik says he prefers to talk to God, to "pray' for Fr. Hausen. Maybe that should be the good Catholic stock answer to all life problems. Your daughter shows up pregnant - you tell her you'll pray for her. That's what "Bishop" Zubik does, after all. Or maybe a mother is sick and there is no one to watch the kids. A Zubik-catholic tells her he'll pray for her and for the kids too. Praying can be done in church, after all, and isn't that the real agenda - not to have parishoners running around babysitting or helping a pregnant girl - but to get them to come to church where none of life's problems are solved, but we can at least ask God to take care of them --in a nice place, of course, with music and heat and light? Fr. Hausen wanted to put the church and the people back together. He is an alcoholic, but instead of wallowing in it, he is trying to help others with the same kind of problems. He fails, but his failures are public and transparent. His parishoners help him- sharing the burdens of life, instead of only listening to uplifting discourse about it. "Bishop" Zubik cannot help Fr. Hausen because, well, he says that he's not a Steeler anymore. Apparently being a Catholic priest is like being a professional athlete. Priestly life is more like football than sheep herding. "Bishops" are not shepherds anymore. Now they are quarterbacks or maybe referees or linesmen. Only the priests are the "Steelers," since they are all men in uniforms and only they can say Mass. All the rest of the people are the fans. They sing and cheer, but the only "players" are the priests. One day Fr. Hausen wore a different colored jersey to the game. He stepped on a white line here and there. That's why they blew the whistle on him and finally threw him off the field. It's all so much clearer now. The megachurches are the new stadiums. And the priests that object to the way things are going, especially if they are old are cut from the team. It's all so much clearer now.