When I did a column in April on how donors had quietly contributed to the building of Gonzaga Prep's new chapel, even as the Spokane Diocese bankruptcy slugged along, I included this prediction about the $10 million parishioners were expected to raise for the bankruptcy settlement.

I may well be proved wrong, but I have a hunch that the $10 million will be pledged and raised quickly, even if, as expected, more than half of Catholics here don’t participate.

At St. Al's, my parish, the fund-raising is going rather slowly (they print the tally in each week's bulletin) so I was surprised to read this John Stucke story this morning:

Eastern Washington Catholics have donated $7 million of the $10 million parish pledge settling the Roman Catholic Diocese of Spokane bankruptcy.
The money will fund payouts to people sexually abused decades ago by priests and other diocese agents.
"The people in the pews have been incredibly generous – and they have made real financial sacrifice – often using personal savings, even portions of Social Security or retirements payments" to fulfill the parish obligation, said Robert Hailey of the Association of Parishes, a group of priests and laity representing the diocese's 82 parishes.
The AOP is procuring a loan for the $3 million balance, due Dec. 31, according to a press release.
The parish collections are part of a $48 million settlement reached last spring. Other funds have been collected from insurance carriers, a separate campaign by Bishop William Skylstad, and the sale of diocese land, investments, and buildings including the Chancery in downtown Spokane.

Each parish had a collection target based on a pro rata share of their collective $10 million promise.

– John Stucke

If you haven't checked out the blog On Faith, give yourself a treat. Hosted by Newsweek's Jon Meacham and Washington Post's Sally Quinn, On Faith is described as an "online interfaith discussion about faith and its impact on the world."

Just got an e-mail alert that from Sept. 26 to Oct. 2:

On Faith will feature an conversation about atheism that is sure to be lively, thought-provoking and controversial.
Christopher Hitchens (God is Not Great) is leading the panel; Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), Sam Harris (Letter to a Christian Nation) and other atheists, secularists, humanists and religious scholars of all denominations from On Faith's panel will also weigh in.

In Commonweal, writer John T. McGreevy answers accusations that Notre Dame doesn't hire enough Catholic faculty.

Read it all or just this excerpt:

More than any other Catholic university during the past thirty years, Notre Dame has made a serious and concerted effort to recruit Catholic faculty. The percentage of Catholic faculty at Notre Dame is indeed decreasing, but primarily because most faculty members who retire are Catholic. This past year more than 50 percent of the faculty hired were Catholic.

We can’t guarantee faith. But we can help students learn. And a test of a serious Catholic university is whether we can cultivate the intellectual abilities of our Catholic students so that they become thoughtful, reflective Catholic adults. Most of this is the ordinary hard work of teaching students to write, paint, measure, build, experiment, and think. Some of it is more specific: some students at Notre Dame enter the university unable to locate a Bible passage, much less identify Augustine. They don’t know that Thomas Aquinas immersed himself in Islamic texts, or that the work of Japanese novelist Shusaku Endo is inseparable from his Catholicism. They are unaware that American Catholics are not a majority in American society, or that American Catholics are a tiny percentage of Catholics in a global church.

Throughout Spokane's sex-abuse crisis and subsequent bankruptcy, I often asked Catholics who stayed in the church what kept them there. Many mentioned the commitment to their parishes. They found reward, solace and community belonging to a parish, even if they weren't all that active.

The more active parishioners often mentioned their parish work as the thing that kept them going month after month as the news and revelations about past abuse grew worse and worse.

This week's National Catholic Reporter editorial explains the phenomenon better than I can.

Here's an excerpt. Or read it all.

Parishes are important. In any larger discussion about the role and direction of the church, we can’t forget that the structure and mystery of the church are actually experienced in the local faith community. The parish is the place where church happens, not as an abstract ideal or as an administrative structure but as an expression of real human lives, a rich but frustrating work in progress, diverse lives united by common hungers and hopes...
Here are some challenges. Parishes need such pilgrims. The most important evangelization effort needed in the church is to welcome home her own. But this will happen only if we also welcome the de facto diversity of the church as a mystery that defies homogenization, head-counting, personalized envelopes or even regular attendance. Because change will happen only from within, self-exiled Catholics of all stripes ought to belong to a parish -- a challenging one, not a comfort zone. It is a good way to stay in the game, at the family table where all the arguments about the future, good and bad, are taking place. But this will be possible only if we accept the mess, the imperfect, painful process of being human together.

Last week, Col. Darel Maxfield, an Army Reserve officer and Ferris High School teacher who was on leave from Iraq, came in to talk with Jamie Tobias Neely and the rest of us on the editorial board. See Jamie's column.

We asked Maxfield if the war was testing his religious faith (he had made some references to God and faith in previous answers, so it seemed an OK question.) As Jamie wrote:

The 51-year-old father of three nearly grown sons, was baptized right before he left for Iraq last January. He calls himself a man of the Christian faith.

But it has been deeply tested at Besmaya. "It's very difficult to find God in headless torsos that you pull out of the river," he said. "It's difficult to reconcile a world that is apparently quite inhuman at times with the nature of a loving and personal God."

If you are watching the Ken Burns' World War II documentary The War, the death and destruction and cruelty is overwhelming.

Maxfield mentioned the seminal book on the testing of faith in the midst of unbelievable suffering and cruelty. The book Man's Search for Meaning was written by concentration camp survivor Viktor E. Frankl.If you haven't read it, pick it up, especially in times of despair.

Another seminal book is Elie Wiesel's "Night" in which a child is hanged while concentration camp prisoners are forced to look the child in the face. The book's famous lines:

Where is God now? And I heard a voice within me answer him: 'Where is He?' Here He is. He is hanging here on this gallows.

Where is God in wartime? Comments welcome at A Matter of Opinion blog where this link is being simulblogged.

(Rebecca Nappi photo of Col. Maxfield and wife Lesley.)

Still haven't added back comments to this post, because I'm still not sure of the time commitment I can make to monitoring those comments. But there are days I wish I had that feature again.

Today was such a day. I got an e-mail from Bill Perry, an editor from Lansing, MI., who read a response by conservative Catholic Steve Montemurro (which I've reposted below).

Here's Perry's response to Steve:

I enjoy your Web site and felt the need to respond to Mr. Steve Montemurro’s assessment of progressive Catholics. In my humble opinion the man needs a crash course in world history and church history in particular.

The historic use of the Latin language in the Mass came about because the faithful of the early church wanted the liturgical celebration in the vernacular of their locality; since the early Masses were celebrated in Greek. The bishops of the fourth century in moving to Latin, accomplished what Vatican II did 40 years ago.

Please let’s get away from this romantic nostalgia that traditionalist Catholics are trying to ram down the faithful that the Latin mass represents some kind of return to the way it always was. I am tired of their well organized intimidation and ecclesiastical political pressure to make the old Mass the norm when there is no historical basis for it.

The fact is the mass as revised by Vatican II challenges us to participate not be passive observers. Conservative Catholic in my opinion just refuse to see the value of what Vatican II provides all of us in our faith journey. That's sad.

He also has several things he would love to ask liberal Catholics as a whole, like do we progressive Catholics honestly believe that the Church has been made stronger, more faithful and above all holy since Vatican II? Yes, the church is much richer in its message, because it comes in a language we can understand. The days of the PPO (Pray Pay and Obey) are over.

Do you think that the current state of the Church will produce men like the Cur of Ars or women like St. Catherine of Sienna or St. Therese of Liseux, who were explementary examples of holiness? And what about Mother Teresa?

What scandal is he talking about? Child abuse of priests hidden by conservative and traditionalist bishops and Cardinals like Bernard Law of Boston? Then Law is taken to Rome and receives a plumb pastoral assignment. Yes that's a scandal that the Vatican bureaucrats allowed to happen. It has nothing to do with Vatican II.

Thank God for Pope John XXIII. The Progressive movement is stronger than ever.

The pope's decree to sanction Latin Mass in a wider way is called "motu proprio." Last week I heard from a blog reader who applauded the pope's decree. Steve Montemurro gave me permission to post his e-mail here. And he welcomes any answers to his questions from "progressive" Catholics. Send them to me and I'll post those, too.

Dear Ms. Nappi:
As a Catholic of the traditional stripe I viewed your website with some interest and questions. I can make a guess that you are more of the liberal stripe Catholic, (the kind the NY Times adores) What is your opinion of the recent Motu Propio??? I for one am ecstatic, and love Out Holy Father for it.

I have several things I would love to ask liberal Catholics as a whole, like do you honestly believe that the Church has been made stronger, more faithful and above all holy since Vatican II? Do you think that the current state of the Church will produce men like the Cur of Ars or women like St. Catherine of Sienna or St. Therese of Liseux, who were explementary examples of holiness.

No Ms. Nappi Vatican II has given sexual scandal, destruction of the liturgy, weak effeminate priests rather than real men, record low vocations (except in the traditionalist seminaries where the vocations are filling up) and loss of the faithful to evangelical sects.

As someone who was born in 1967, I saw my former local parish remove the statues, strip the altar and white wash the frescoes, and I asked to what end??

Luckily Christ sent a good young priest who has undone this destruction and realizes that the Parish is not a Quaker meeting hall, it the is place where Christ in the Blessed Sacrament resides.

I too wish for a Vatican III Council, but it would be to undo every scandal and correct every error that Vatican II caused. My motto is "undo Vatican II."
I am tried of clown masses, guitars and tambourines, and I wonder how many souls have been lost do to Vatican II. To the progressive Catholics I say the Episcopalians and Methodists await you with open arms.

The 40 years of folly and nonsense are coming to an end and the future belongs to us Traditionalist.

In the marriage preparation book I co-authored with Father Dan Kendall, S.J., we wrote briefly about the importance of weaving in a couple's cultural traditions with the Catholic marriage ceremony.

Last Friday, my nephew, Marine Capt. Nicholas Nappi married Serena Grippo at the Marine Memorial Chapel on Camp Pendleton.

They added into the ceremony a moving and uniquely military tradition. As the newlyweds exited the church, they walked underneath the "arch of swords" which according to one Web site "is an old English and American custom, which gives a symbolic pledge of loyalty to the newly married couple from their Marine family. Only the newly married couple is allowed to pass under the arch."

My nephew has been to Iraq twice now and will likely go again and because of this, at least for me, the ceremony and the very nice reception at the San Luis Rey Officer's Club had a special poignancy. Best wishes, Nicholas and Serena. Godspeed.

(Robert Nappi photo)

From our Sunday editorial:

The Spokane Diocese bankruptcy was wrenching for the region's 90,000 Catholics. Parishioners are raising their $10 million contribution toward the settlement. One of the final items in the bankruptcy proceeding is the paying of the lawyers. Their fees – which total more than $10 million – are part of the public record.

But the attorneys involved in the bankruptcy wish to hash out the distribution of the fees behind closed doors. They wish to argue the finer points of their bills in private mediation.

The attorneys are worried that arguing over fees in a public courtroom would expose the baser side of legal work, and air some more dirty laundry in a bankruptcy case filled with it. Doing this in secret, however, is the wrong way to end a bankruptcy case that never would have happened if the church hadn't kept so many secrets in the first place. Open it up. The victims, and the public, deserve no less.

The recent revelation that Mother Teresa lingered in a dark night of the soul for 50 years is still being discussed in the mainstream press.

Today on our editorial pages, we ran an excellent column by Kevin Horrigan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He pointd out that Mother Teresa's dark night resonated with folks, regardless of religious beliefs.

Most people wrestle with dark nights, but it's very hard to admit in our think-positive culture. Maybe it's a wavering commitment to a marriage, a child, a job, a workplace, a church, a community.

The column ended this way:

I bring my own biases, but I find myself even more moved by her courage than I was before, and that was profoundly. It's one thing to write a check to the United Way; it's quite another to scoop lepers off the streets of Calcutta and wash their sores.
I find myself, speaking of secular saints, remembering a quote that's been ascribed to John Wayne: "Courage is being scared to death, and saddling up anyway."

Blog lines are open at A Matter of Opinion where this post is being simulblogged.

Words do not seem the best way to remember today. Instead, I post here the photo that then Spokesman-Review photographer Torsten Kjellstrand took on Sept. 11 at St. Aloysius Church.

The caption read: "A hastily called noon Mass at St. Aloysius Tuesday filled the pews with people trying to find a way to react to the news of this mornings events. The joined hands for the Lord's Prayer."

Amen.

An Associated Press story today announced that the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego has agreed to pay $198.1 million to settle 144 claims of sexual abuse by clergy.

The AP story did the tally to date for all the settlements throughout the United States. Unbelievable.

If the crisis had been caught -- or acknowledged -- much earlier, lives would have been saved. And this money used for good works throughout the country. Such as? You fill in the blank at Matter of Opinion where this will be simulblogged.

Sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests has cost the U.S. church at least $2.3 billion since 1950. Some of the largest known payouts to victims since the crisis erupted in 2002 include:

_ Archdiocese of Los Angeles, 2007, agrees to pay $660 million to about 500 people.

_ Diocese of San Diego, 2007, agrees to pay $198 million to 144 people.

_ Diocese of Orange, Calif., 2004, $100 million for 90 abuse claims.

_ Diocese of Covington, Ky., 2006, up to $84 million for more than 350 people.

_ Archdiocese of Boston, 2003, $84 million for 552 claims.

_ Diocese of Oakland, Calif., 2005, $56 million to 56 people.

_ Archdiocese of Portland, Ore., 2007, agrees to pay about $52 million to 175 victims to emerge from bankruptcy protection; sets aside another $20 million for any future claims.

_ Diocese of Spokane, Wash., 2007, agrees to pay $48 million for about 150 claims to emerge from bankruptcy protection.

_ Diocese of Sacramento, Calif., 2005, pays $35 million to 33 people.

_ Archdiocese of Louisville, Ky., 2003, $25.7 million to 243 victims.

_ Diocese of Tucson, Ariz., 2005, agrees to fund a settlement trust worth about $22 million for more than 50 victims to emerge from bankruptcy protection.

National Catholic Reporter's John Allen will be on the road with him. Here's an excerpt from his blog:

Benedict XVI's Sept. 7-9 trip to Austria, his first as pope, ought to be a warm homecoming for a pontiff who is virtually a native son. Yet in some ways, enthusiasm here does not exactly seem infectious. In a recent poll asking Austrians to name their most trusted international figure, Benedict XVI actually trailed both the Dali Lama and the Austrian-born governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Another survey found that only 3 percent of Austrians had any interest in seeing the pope live, and 40 percent planned to "completely ignore" his presence.

When Superman Returns came out in 2006, I don't remember reading much about the Jesus imagery in the movie. I finally saw it the other night on HBO and the imagery was overpowering, starting with his "wandering in the cosmos" five years to parallel Jesus' time in the desert.

There are numerous others, including a Father (Marlon Brando's voice) sending his only son to Earth to help save it from itself. And a scene that recalls the crucifixion. Anyway, found a great interview with the director at HollywoodJesus.com in which he talks more about the symbolism, including Lex Luther as a Lucifer figure. Read here.

And if you get a chance, watch the movie. It's great in other ways, too. For a journalist, for instance, the newsroom is fascinating, because it's both ultra modern and ultra old-fashioned --in decor and in philosophy.

It's eerie how quickly a news story can disappear. Larry Craig announced his resignation from the Senate Saturday, amid a sex scandal.

My colleague Gary Crooks took an interesting look at the "friend" who didn't stand by in his Saturday column Smart Bombs.

One friend and politician showed support, Idaho Gov. Butch Otter. Jim Camden And Betsy Z. Russell of the S-R reported:

"I have known Larry and Suzanne Craig for almost 40 years," Otter said, noting he’d worked with Craig in Boise and Washington, D.C.
"As a public servant who has made mistakes in my private life, I am mindful that you don’t really know who your friends are until you stumble," Otter said.
"I want Larry and Suzanne to know that Lori and I stand by them."
Otter’s career was blemished by a 1992 DUI and a win in a bar’s "tight-fittin’ jeans" contest when he was the state’s lieutenant governor. He came back from that low to later serve in Congress and be elected governor.

Catholic and Christian teachings are big on compassion, forgiveness and throwing the first stone only if you are blameless.

So the question here: What determines whether you'll stick by a friend in really tough times? Have you done it in the past? If so, was it easier to do because you had once "stumbled" and people stood by you? And what happened in your own life because you stuck with a friend through tough times?

This post has been simulblogged at Matter of Opinion. So feel free to weigh in there.

(S-R file photo from 1991 movie Thelma and Louise.)