According to the N.Y. Times, Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan has made a pronouncement that he would gladly help mediate between the proponents and critics of the Young Men’s Islamic Association proposed at the site of The Holy Mother Coat Factory.
Dolan said it was his “major prayer” that a compromise could be reached, and that while he had no strong feelings about the project, he might support finding a new location for the center.
Archbishop Dolan invoked the example of Pope John Paul II, who in 1993 ordered Carmelite nuns to move from their convent at the former Auschwitz death camp after protests from Jewish leaders. “He’s the one who said, ‘Let’s keep the idea, and maybe move the address…It worked there; might work here.”
The article goes on to note that Dolan defended the religious freedom of Muslims, but said the project’s leaders should heed the views of those who have criticized it as an affront to the memory of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. He added, “those who wonder about the wisdom of the situation of the mosque, near such a wounded site, ask what I think are some legitimate questions that I think deserve attention.”
The Hendrik Hertzberg article I linked the other day details the ways in which the convent comparison is either untruthful or positively repugnant (e.g., in their fundraising appeal, the convent’s sponsors described the convent as “a spiritual fortress and a guarantee…as proof of our desire to erase outrages so often done to the Vicar of Christ,” which would seem to allude to the irrefutable documentation of Pope Pius XII’s inactivity in the area of trying to prevent the Holocaust), so I won't dwell upon that point.
In fact, for the purpose of this article, I’ll stipulate that Dolan is correct in his analogy, and in his point that it is only the location that is objectionable, and not the mosque itself.
But, I feel compelled to ask if Dolan really believes this.
In July, Archbishop Dolan's Archdiocese backed away from a plan to sell a vacant convent on Staten Island to an Islamic group that planned to turn it into a mosque. After the local Catholic parish there had agreed to sell the building, the community response was loud, ugly and obnoxious local protests.
Was Midland Beach too close to Ground Zero as well?
The Islamic group responded to by going the extra mile and engaging the community and addressing its concerns at public forums which it was under no legal obligation to hold or participate in.
In response to the local protests, the parish board, which includes Archbishop Dolan, agreed to pull out of the deal, leaving the Islamic group cash drained and SOL.
According to the Staten Island Advance (the Daily Diary of the Italian-American dream), the Muslim American Society is seeking to replace financial losses before searching for a new location. Before the controversy broke out, the group had the $750,000 needed to purchase the Midland Beach property, but much of the money ended up being spent on legal advice and other expenses after the Midland Beach community rallied against the proposed Mosque.
A spokeswoman (Spokeswoman? Hard to believe these folks could be extremists) for the Muslim Society told the Advance “It comes down to money …and we don’t exactly have unlimited finances.”
Why did not the Archbishop offer his good offices to mediate in Midland Beach, instead of helping to kill that proposal?
Archbishop Dolan's behavior here is vaguely reminiscent of the role played by Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust (except that Dolan's role in the evil appears to be somewhat more hands-on, while the consequences of Dolan's inaction are clearly far less serious)
Perhaps it is time for a bit of repentance on Dolan's part.
According to The Catholic Encyclopedia, “This interior repentance has been called by theologians "contrition". It is defined explicitly by the Council of Trent (Sess. XIV, ch. iv de Contritione): "a sorrow of soul and a hatred of sin committed, with a firm purpose of not sinning in the future". The word contrition itself in a moral sense is not of frequent occurrence in Scripture (cf. Psalm 50:19). Etymologically it implies a breaking of something that has become hardened. St. Thomas Aquinas in his Commentary on the Master of the Sentences thus explains its peculiar use: "Since it is requisite for the remission of sin that a man cast away entirely the liking for sin which implies a sort of continuity and solidity in his mind, the act which obtains forgiveness is termed by a figure of speech 'contrition'" (In Lib. Sent. IV, dist. xvii; cf. Supplem. III, Q. i, a. 1). This sorrow of soul is not merely speculative sorrow for wrong done, remorse of conscience, or a resolve to amend; it is a real pain and bitterness of soul together with a hatred and horror for sin committed; and this hatred for sin leads to the resolve to sin no more. The early Christian writers in speaking of the nature of contrition sometimes insist on the feeling of sorrow, sometimes on the detestation of the wrong committed (Augustine in P.L., XXXVII, 1901, 1902; Chrysostom, P.G., XLVII, 409, 410). Augustine includes both when writing: "Compunctus corde non solet dici nisi stimulus peccatorum in dolore pœnitendi" (P.L., Vol. VI of Augustine, col. 1440). Nearly all the medieval theologians hold that contrition is based principally on the detestation of sin. This detestation presupposes a knowledge of the heinousness of sin, and this knowledge begets sorrow and pain of soul. "A sin is committed by the consent, so it is blotted out by the dissent of the rational will; hence contrition is essentially sorrow. But it should be noted that sorrow has a twofold signification–dissent of the will and the consequent feeling; the former is of the essence of contrition, the latter is its effect" (Bonaventure, In Lib. Sent. IV, dist. xvi, Pt. I, art. 1). [See also St. Thomas Aquinas, Comment. in Lib. Sent. IV; Billuart (De Sac. Pœnit., Diss. iv, art. 1) seems to hold the opposite opinion.]”
Your Eminence, before you act as a roving do-gooder, why not instead remember that good works begin at home?
It is all well and good for you to try to resolve controversies and heals the wounds of others, but is it not better to heal the wound one has inflicted personally?
I would suggest that, in this instance, the higher moral purpose would be served by tending instead to the injuries of those upon whom you personally inflicted a grievous wrong.
Go help the Muslim Society find a new location, and once you find them a location, either reduce the price (if it is church property) or make up the difference out of church funds (if it is property belonging to others) to what the Muslim society has left of their original $750,000.
If the church is short of funds, it can make up the money by closing a parish or school in the Midland Beach area, thus allowing all the others who have sinned to also share in the contrition, and thereby free themselves from the time in purgatory they have surely earned.