The Toledo Catholic Diocese continues to stumble through the situation involving Father David Nuss and St. Rose Parish in Perrysburg.
Here is the latest story I wrote last week, which generated lots of emails, letters and phone calls.
There are several hot-button issues wrapped into this one scenario.
First of all, the diocese said Fr. Nuss reported his "inappropriate" and "consensual" relationship with a woman to the bishop in January.
Many people say that a priest having sex with someone his are counseling or supervising is not only immoral and unethical, and a violation of his celibacy vows, but also illegal in 9 states. It's an abuse of a position of trust and authority, much as a teacher-student, lawyer-client, or psychologist-patient relationship.
Second, many readers wonder why Bishop Blair announced in April that he was naming Fr. Nuss to the pastorate of St. Rose, three months after the priest told the bishop about his sexual affair.
Third, when St. Rose parishioners met with Bishop Blair in July and asked the bishop about allegations involving their new pastor, Fr. Nuss, the bishop "played dumb," as one woman told me.
Later, when I called for clarification, the diocese's spokesman said the bishop could not reveal that he knew of the allegations because he treated it as under the seal of confession.
That has triggered a landslide of comments ranging from questions about whether the seal of confession can be applied retroactively, to whether canon law bars a bishop from hearing confessions of a priest because of the employer-employee relationship, to why, if it was confidential, did the diocese ultimately send out a press release announcing the priest's indiscretions?
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I interviewed author Dick Staub and wrote an article that was published yesterday -- I just noticed it's been left off the Blade's web site inadvertently. I'll see if we can fix that.
At any rate, Staub is a brilliant analyst of religion and pop culture, and I've interviewed him before about his book on the spiritual wisdom of jedi masters. The new book is called "The Cultural Savvy Christian: A Manifesto for Deepening Faith and Enriching Popular Culture in an Age of Christianity Lite" (Jossey-Bass).
Staub's book carefully delineates the fall of Christianity's influence on art, entertainment, literature, etc., and then suggests ways that Christians can regain some their leadership in pop culture. Rather than run in small, parallel universes of "Christian music" and "Christian literature," we ought to be running with the big dogs and creating art and music and film that aligns with Christian values but which is geared for mainstream audiences.
I agree 100% with Staub's analysis and highly recommend his book. We need not retreat from the arts, we should be leading the way just as C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, and others have done in the past.
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I went to The Simpsons Movie on opening night, Fri. 7/27, with my daughter, Cara, and her friend, Dan Newman, and it was a pretty good film although it really was just a longer version of the TV show... That's another story in itself, about translating something as iconic and as clever as The Simpsons cartoon to the big screen.
One thing that caught my attention was the way the movie treated Ned Flanders, the nerdy religious neighbor. Ned was treated reverently, so to speak, as a genuinely honest and caring and compassionate person with a good heart and good intentions. He sees Bart in distress and makes him a cup of cocoa ... with whipped cream, chocolate shavings, a cookie, and more... Bart acts like he doesn't want it then when Flanders leaves, he grabs it and wolfs it down. At one point, Bart says he wishes Flanders was his dad. The movie was never snide or condescending in depicting Flanders' faith.
Funniest scene in the film: we see the church and the bar side by side. An announcement is made that Springfield is going to be blown up. Everyone in the bar runs, screaming, into the church, and everyone in the church runs into the bar.