Monday, May 14, 2012

The Blindness of "Liberal" Catholics

I often comment on the many huge failings of the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church and urge Catholics disgusted with the moral cesspool in the leadership to vote with their feet.  Throughout history the ONLY way the Church has experienced major lasting change is when membership plummets and the flow of money to the Vatican is diminished.  Catholics who refuse to accept this harsh reality and who continue to support their local parishes are in fact enablers of the hierarchy.  Yes, it's hard for many to see this reality, but a portion of every single dollar received at the parish level goes to support the local diocese and still another portion goes to Rome.  E.J. Dionne who writes for the Washington Post is one such Catholic who refuses to see his own culpability.  In a column where he tries to justify his continued membership in the Church he cites the Church's social ministry and he cites Pope John XXIII.  My response is that (i) if the Church cleaned house within the hierarchy and cleaned up the sex abuse disaster, there's be more funds for social ministry.  As for Pope John XXIII, yes in ways he was a breath of fresh air.  But Dionne misses one huge blight on his papacy:  John XXIII authorized a 1962 Vatican directive that validated the Church's covering up for and enabling predator priests.  Here's a sampling of Dionne's effort to deny his own culpability:

Recently, a group called the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) ran a full-page ad in The Washington Post cast as an “open letter to ‘liberal’ and ‘nominal’ Catholics.” Its headline commanded: “It’s Time to Quit the Catholic Church.”

The ad included the usual criticism of Catholicism, but I was most struck by this paragraph: “If you think you can change the church from within — get it to lighten up on birth control, gay rights, marriage equality, embryonic stem-cell research — you’re deluding yourself. By remaining a ‘good Catholic,’ you are doing ‘bad’ to women’s rights. You are an enabler. And it’s got to stop.”

Catholic liberals get used to these kinds of things. Secularists, who never liked Catholicism in the first place, want us to leave the church, but so do Catholic conservatives who want the church all to themselves.
I’m sorry to inform the FFRF that I am declining its invitation to quit. It may not see the Gospel as a liberating document, but I do, and I can’t ignore the good done in the name of Christ by the sisters, priests, brothers and lay people who have devoted their lives to the poor and the marginalized.

I’d like the FFRF to learn more about the good Pope John, but I wish our current bishops would think more about him, too. I wonder if the bishops realize how some in their ranks have strengthened the hands of the church’s adversaries (and disheartened many of the faithful) with public statements — including that odious comparison of President Obama to Hitler by a Peoria prelate last month — that threaten to shrink the church into a narrow, conservative sect.

Do the bishops notice how often those of us who regularly defend the church turn to the work of nuns on behalf of charity and justice to prove Catholicism’s detractors wrong? Why in the world would the Vatican, apparently pushed by right-wing American bishops, think it was a good idea to condemn the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the main organization of nuns in the United States?

Too many bishops seem in the grip of dark suspicions that our culture is moving at breakneck speed toward a demonic end. Pope John XXIII, by contrast, was more optimistic about the signs of the times.  .   .   .   .   The church best answers its critics when it remembers that its mission is to preach hope, not fear.

Dionne misses the point that the bishops and Vatican will not change voluntarily.  And as long as "liberal" Catholics like Dionne keep putting their checks in the collection plate and donating to Catholic institutions, there's no reason to change.  They money flow is continuing proving that the bishops and Nazi Pope can continue doing whatever they want with impunity.  Dionne needs to get his head out of the sand - or somewhere else.

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