The Good News is. . .

. . .Bishop Brom of San Diego has refused a Catholic funeral to a San Diego pornographer and owner of homosexualist night clubs.

The bad news is he's now issued an apology. And he's going to preside at a special Mass for the guy. Seems there was this protest. Preach the Gospel in season and out of season. . .unless there's a protest.

The San Diego Union has more details here, including comments from those who were not quite so pleased with the episcopal waffle:

Some conservatives expressed grave disappointment at the bishop's about-face. Ernie Grimm, who edits the monthly Catholic newspaper San Diego News Notes, said he felt "betrayed."

"He had showed a lot of courage in making his original decision and encouraged a lot of us lay Catholics who had been looking for stronger leadership from our bishops," Grimm said. "He caved in the face of opposition."

James Hartline, a Christian conservative activist from Hillcrest, said he alerted the bishop to McCusker's gay business interests.

Hartline said he spoke with Brom at least four times about the McCusker case, including a meeting yesterday that lasted an hour. At no time did the bishop indicate he would reverse his position, Hartline said last night.

"He emphatically stated to me he would not budge one bit," Hartline said. "It's very, very strange. He was preparing a document that was going to include the fact that he was not going to reverse course at all

One wonders what the "leverage" was that caused him to change his mind.

The final comment in the article is from a " a professor of religious studies at San Diego State University" with which, to my great surprise, I actually agree, at least in part:

Rebecca Moore, a professor of religious studies at San Diego State University, said Brom acted with grace and compassion in owning up to what she and many others said was a mistake.

"A funeral does not make a statement about the morality of the deceased, but rather it makes a statement about the mercy of God," Moore said. "Bishop Brom had second thoughts about his original decision and had the guts to publicly change his mind. That takes courage."

This bit is good: "A funeral does not make a statement about the morality of the deceased, but rather it makes a statement about the mercy of God." Absolutely right. A funeral Mass is not a proclamation of sanctity. (Or it shouldn't be, anyway. Pass the word to your parish "liturgist".) It is a plea for mercy for all of us sinners. But there are distinctions that need to be made.

There is a difference between a private Mass (in the sense of an unpublicized Mass with restricted attendance) and a public Mass. Public perceptions should be taken into account. A public Mass for a public sinner gives great scandal. This is especially true in the Pauline rite of Mass, and even more especially in the liturgical options which are usually chosen. These tend never to mention purgatory or hell or any sort of judgement but go to great lengths to proclaim the deceased's current state of beatitude.

On the other hand the traditional Roman Rite was filled with pleas for mercy and assumed that the deceased, like the rest of us, was a sinner and in need of mercy:

"Lord Jesus Christ, king of glory, deliver the souls of all the faithful departed from the pains of hell and from the bottomless pit. Save them from the lion's jaws; let them not be engulfed in hell nor swallowed up in darkness." - from the Offertorium of the traditional Roman Rite.

And yet when the traditional Rite was the norm in the liturgical west, there was still great concern over giving scandal. Every time some mafia don met his end there was great debate about whether he should be given a Catholic funeral. Sometimes he got one; sometimes he didn't. But when he did, it never turned into a celebration of his mafianess.

In my occasionally humble opinion, Bishop Brom was quite right under current circumstances to prohibit the sort of jamboree that the "gay community" appears to have wanted and was utterly wrong in his "apology".

In fact, I am perilously close to giving in to incipient paranoia and wondering if this whole thing wasn't a set up from the beginning to embarass the Catholic church.

Next month's San Diego News Notes should be interesting, being less circumscribed by the canons of political correctness than the San Diego Union.