Recently, a group called the Freedom from Religion Foundation 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."
My, my. Putting aside the group's love for unnecessary quotation marks, it was shocking to learn that I'm an "enabler" doing "bad" to women's rights. But 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.
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I'm sorry to inform the FFRF that I am declining its invitation to quit. They 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 laypeople who have devoted their lives to the poor and the marginalized.
And on women's rights, I take as my guide that early feminist, Pope John XXIII. In Pacem in Terris, his encyclical issued in 1963, the same year Betty Friedan published "The Feminine Mystique," Pope John spoke of women's "natural dignity."
"Far from being content with a purely passive role or allowing themselves to be regarded as a kind of instrument," he wrote, "they are demanding both in domestic and in public life the rights and duties which belong to them as human persons."
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 Barack 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 the 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?
The Vatican's statement, issued last month, seemed to be the revenge of conservative bishops against the many nuns who broke with the hierarchy and supported health care reform in 2010. The nuns insisted, correctly, that the health-care law did not fund abortion. This didn't sit well with men unaccustomed to being contradicted, and the Vatican took the LCWR to task for statements that "disagree with or challenge positions taken by the bishops."
Oh yes, and the nuns are also scolded for talking a great deal about social justice and not enough about abortion (as if the church doesn't talk enough about abortion already). But has it occurred to the bishops that less stridency might change more hearts and minds on this very difficult question?
A thoughtful friend recently noted that carrying a child to term is an act of overwhelming generosity. For nine months, a woman gives her body to another life, not to mention the rest of her years. Might the bishops consider that their preaching on abortion would have more credibility if they treated women in the church, including nuns, with the kind of generosity they are asking of potential mothers? They might usefully embrace a similar attitude toward gays and lesbians.
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.
"Distrustful souls see only darkness burdening the face of the earth," he once said. "We prefer instead to reaffirm all our confidence in our Savior who has not abandoned the world which he redeemed." The church best answers its critics when it remembers that its mission is to preach hope, not fear.
(c) 2012, Washington Post Writers Group
My sense is that progressives who choose to stay have high hopes that eventually they'll win out, having outlasted the opposition. They believe, simply, that they're right and the rest are wrong, and that the future will, surely, vindicate them. They have great faith in themselves, in their intellects, in the truth of their beliefs, and in the inevitability of brighter futures. If they didn't feel this way, most would leave. You don't go down with a sinking ship if there's a lifeboat waiting for you unless you want to die. They don't want to die - they want to live to see the Church remade in their image - or, failing that, in the image of their great-grandchildren.
I guess that's admirable, but it will also make for a pretty grim spectacle. Until that day when all is made right again, the Church will not be a pleasant place in which to pray.
I stick with the Church even though its leaders betrayed the vision of the Vatican Council. Why? Because of the local parish, even though it is run by a really conservative priest. But there are the sacraments and above all the Eucharist, and the community of faith. And, occasionally, a glimpse of the dream the Council started. In part this is because of the priest shortage. Suddenly, lay people are playing a major role out of pure necessity.
But in this particular parish, the young families and the youth are mostly missing. If our stubbornly conservative Church were on the right path, or even had the humility to seek the right path, they would be there.
The Vatican Council lasted only four years. Seven years later, the good Pope John Paul the Great had already declared it a failure and was doing his best to sidetrack its efforts. This desperate effort to beach the boat was called leadership. Generations have gone by. The Church we live in was not made by the Vatican Council, but by two authoritarian popes. The Church we live in today was created by them and their minions.
"...the Church will not be a pleasant place in which to pray."
If a Catholic's "pleasantness" in the Eucharistic Prayer, say, is dependent upon the progressiveness of his/her parish, diocese, etc., hasn't such a Catholic already saluted his/her own loss of faith, his/her spiritual tepidity? Isn't the person's expression of unpleasantness simply a way out of a "pleasant" liturgical encounter already canceled (because the church isn't progressive enough)?
This suggests a kind of Donatism, holding that the church must be a church of saints (for some, progressives), not sinners (i.e., non-progressives). The Catholic position, however, has always been that the validity of the sacraments (pleasantness, I might add) depends upon the holiness of God, his graciousness, not the progressiveness of the priest or bishop (the latter being merely instruments of God's work).
For believing Catholics of whatever persuasion, the Eucharistic Prayer takes upon itself half the weight of the Cross they carry. It is vital to their spiritual and social lives, whether liberal, conservative or progressive. Such a prayer (and site) should always be pleasant, even before and after the celebration.
There is something to be said for the idea of quitting the church. Ultimately a person's religion should provide a sense of solace, of affirmation of basic values and beliefs, of direction of the human soul. The current version of the Catholic church is not doing that -- for many of us it feels like fight club. We have to ask ourselves --- is this what Jesus really wanted us to experience when he founded the church? His yoke is not supposed to be unbearable because it's not supposed to be sexist, homophobic, and sexually predatory of children. But let's face it --- it is all of those things. And much as we like to hearken to the great humanitarian works of the church as a reason to stay, those works often happened despite the efforts of the church --- which later took the credit. It is possible to do great humanitarian works outside the church --- and again one doesn't have to deal with fight club. After many years in fight club, I've recently started calling myself a "Christian" --- not a Catholic. Sometimes I attend a relatively progressive parish --- or at least one that is not actively regressive. At other times, I attend a local Lutheran church (ELCA). I certainly get more out of the latter than I do out of the former. I'm sure I'll end up there. If enough of us left, what would happen? The church would just be what it is now --- a misogynistic, patriarchal heirarchy of old men who want to tell women how to behave and control them -- and who want to continue to abuse and cover up the abuse of children. The only difference is they'd be poorer because the progressives would no longer be helping to pay for it. Maybe once they're poor they'll get the message --- and in that we will have accomplished what we hoped for: a change in their hard hearts. The only difference is we won't be there --- but if we choose wisely there are many excellent faith groups where we can live out the rest of our earthly days without feeling like we're in fight club.
Elizabeth: thanks for the well thought out comments that mirror what so many of us (more than the tighty-righty "smaller, purer" crowd will ever know) have been thinking and upon which we have acted.
If there ever has been a "church" founded by Christ, what the RCC has become is not it.
There is no reason to quit the Church. The Nicene Creed, the Sacraments, the fellowship with the saints, etc. all draw us in.
On the other hand, I have gone from being a tithing Catholic to one who simply rejoices in taking full advantage of all the Church has to offer without paying a penny for it. My tithe now goes to non-Catholic organizations that refrain from comparing the President to Hilter or calling for violent opposition to contraception, as bishops have recently done.
I am at peace.
So reassuring in some ways to see that so many of us share the same views and long for Vatican II to come to fruition, yet so sad. As a convert and a very independent professional woman, my family think I am mad to stay - maybe I am, yet the idea of leaving is devastating. I love my friends in the Church and have seen, as mentioned by others, wonderful work being done by religious and lay people. I like to think of myself as a Catholic, without the Roman prefix. Hopefully there will be another groundswell of reform, dragging the church into the 21st century.
I was born a Catholic, have lived as a Catholic, and will die as one, though I intend to be buried in an eplscopal church where my friend is the rector because they have a columbarium. If you look at the history of the Church, it is a pretty dreary business in almost every century. Persecuting a woman philosoher (Cyril of Alexandria), burning witches, burning hereticsm, persecuting Jews (e.g. Paul IV),etc. But even in the worst of times, it tended to be a big tent, and if you were half-way lucky, there were enclaves where enlightenment flourished. But then out of the blue you would get a Leo XIII or a John XXIII, Vatican II, and even in some respects John Paul II who, although he put in place many of these reactionary toadies who populate the current episcopate, was himself relatively liberal in theology. Genuine religion like genuine morality has its foundation in autonomy. That is the implication of the Vatican Council's teaching on conscience. Some day that doctrine will explode into the institutional consciousness of the church, and you will have a better situation, where you have bishops who do provide guidance but do not imagine themselves as the bulwark against all but the most sectarian version of our faith. I doubt it will happen in my life-time (I am 72), but it will happen. I applaud the writer who points out the positive side of the current situation.
To David Smith: Yours is a straw man post. The editorial in question did not demand that the Church be remade in the image of liberals. Rather the post was simply bemoaning the fact that the Church appears to have ceased being a big tent, welcoming and nurturing of Catholics with different political points of view, and allowing dedicated Catholics (in particular, the Women Religious) a modicum of freedom to devote their lives to social justice issues, fully compatible with Church teachings, and to put relatively less emphasis on issues which appear to be of greater interest to American bishops.
I used to attend mass at a parish where a senior priest also pointedly compared "this President" (the priest's words) to Adolf Hitler. I've switched to a predominately Vietnamese parish where the priest's English homilies rarely rise to the level of intelligible, but the spiritually nuturing aspects remain intact, and I am now receiving that which I sought out of Catholicism.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
My take on this attack on Women Religioius is much more sanguine: Some of us seem to have forgotten that the Grand Inquisitor of the CDF left behind him in this country a diocese (Oregon) which went bankrupt from the pedophilia which occurred on his watch. This was a thinly veiled ploy to take the heat off the Princes of the Church, and our Nuns deserve our standing up for them. It's the old story of the pot calling the kettle black, isn't it? N.B.: I'm not leaving either.