Agony in Albany - The Roman Catholic Faithful

Roman Catholic Faithful, Inc. / AMDG May 2004 Albany newsletter552.Students in Catholic schools declined from 51,131 to12,261.Public school students attending Catholic religiouseducation have declined from 39,200 to 38,398.Retreat houses and houses of prayer have increasedfrom 4 to 7.Seminaries and novitiates for priests and Brothers hasdropped from 12 to zero.Baptisms (infants and adult converts) have droppedfrom 12,950 to 6,227.Catholic marriages have dropped from 4,208 to 2,659.The deaths of Catholics have dropped from 4,602 to4,596.“I think we have a very vibrant Diocese,”Bishop Hubbard told Times Union reporter Tim Beidel,“and I think that we’re a Diocese that’s kept pacewith the needs of the times and the needs of the people.”While the Bishop is facing the reality that heis going to have to close some churches because ofthe declining numbers of Catholics and clergy availableto staff parishes, and because churches drain financialresources that should be going to service projects,he is confident, according to Beidel, that “theChurch of the 1990s may see even more rapid implementationof the Second Vatican Council reforms thatallow a greater role for lay people.”Hubbard also told Beidel that “maybe it hasbeen the work of the Holy Spirit that there has been ashortage (of priests) at this point in history.“Perhaps the renewed opportunities for ministryon the part of the laity of the Church that theSecond Vatican Council permitted would not havebeen actualized if we had the abundance of clericaland vowed ministries that we had in the 1940s and1950s.”Concerning the impact dissent has made inthe Albany Diocese, and the fact that many AlbanyCatholics do not accept Pope Paul VI's teaching onthe transmission of life, Bishop Hubbard told reporterBeidel: “There is no question that the reality of pickand-chooseCatholics is part and parcel of the life ofthe Church today,”The Bishop said that there is so much confusionon the Church’s moral teaching because mostadults have only “an eighth-grade knowledge of theirFaith.”The Times Union series, “while not sheddingany constructive light on diocesan organizations,”according to Paul Kerin, “does show how the wholeChurch here is falling apart, and how the Bishop continuesto hasten the process.”Part IIThe Problem of Dissent“Bishop Hubbard has always had a problemwith Humanae Vitae” - Tom Coffey, Catholic LaymanThe year Bishop Howard Hubbard was installedas Bishop of Albany was a pivotal year for theChurch in the United States. In 1977, the attacks onPope Paul VI escalated during what would be the lastfull year of his embattled Pontificate, and the CatholicTheological Society of America released the notoriousHuman Sexuality. Msgr. George Kelly has describedthat work as “the climax of an orchestratedvolley of shots against the Church’s sexual ethics.”The book, eventually condemned by theAmerican Bishops, sanctioned not only contraception,but sterilization, artificial insemination, mateswapping,adultery, premarital intercourse, homosexuality,masturbation, patient-therapist sex, andeven left the door open for bestiality.Human Sexuality, said Msgr. Kelly, is “anexplicit effort to overturn the 2,000-year tradition ofthe Church in the name of Christianity.”The chairman of the CTSA committee thatwrote the book was Fr. Anthony Kosnick, a professorat Sts. Cyril and Methodius Seminary in the DetroitArchdiocese. One of Bishop Howard Hubbard’s firstrevealing acts as Bishop was to sanction Kosnick'sAlbany appearance.There, Kosnick spoke in a public forum,granted an interview to The Evangelist (the diocesannewspaper), and addressed an assembly of priests.According to one report, Bishop Hubbard told theassembled priests that Human Sexuality would be“the source” for their pastoral counseling.At The Head Of The ListThat was also the year many Albany Catholicsbegan to take notice of the revolution taking placein Catholicism. Many of those who are now activemembers of the Coalition of Concerned Catholics inthe Albany Diocese became alarmed when they saw29