Much Better than We Know....

The two Bishops of the Greater Kansas City Area are Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann and Bishop Robert W. Finn, who are moving firmly forward to restore the Church. They will likely be judged in history as outstanding Catholic Bishops--much better than we now know or deserve.

I was particularly impressed by Bishop Finn's remarks given at the Acton Conference on Catholic Education on February 4, 2008. He starts out with:

I believe that our schools have to be so undeniably and unabashedly Catholic that they risk being thought of as almost fanatical. Lukewarm will not be enough.... It is not enough for Catholic schools to offer an occasional all school Mass, two penance services a year, Religion three times a week, and a requirement for Confirmation students to do a service project. It is not enough.

Bishop Finn's presentations can be found here and here.

The weekly letters of Archbishop Naumann also are very good and are published in The Leaven newspaper (which still leaves some things to be desired, although it has gotten better). For example, Archbishop Naumann's letter of March 21, 2007 asks and answers the critical question on suffering "Why do bad things happen to good people?"

All human suffering is in some way the fruit of man's rebellion against God. Sometimes we can see a direct correlation between sin and the suffering it creates in one's own life... My own father was the victim of murder almost 60 years ago. He was in no way responsible for the evil inflicted upon him by his attacker. Nor did my mother have any responsibility for this crime that made her a young widow with the responsibility of raising two young children by herself.

Archbishop Naumann's podcasts of selected talks are found here.