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A great little treatise on why I no longer align MYself with the Catholic Church in any way shape or form, nor have for many years. Although as a lifelong Catholic this sometimes hurts, it is clearly the right choice.
It's not just liberal Catholics, but liberals of every flavor and kind, who have largely been silent and ineffective since Newt Gingrich and the redneck wing of the GOP made its surge in the early 90's.
We are all so civilized and polite -- offended by the indecency and flagrantly dishonest rhetoric of the right, our typical response is to make fun of them, call them racists, and then sit back and wait for them to slide into a ditch of permanent political impotence.
It is time, long past that time really, that we become a lot less passive and polite about the issues that really matter to us. The only way we will move our agenda forward is if our voices are heard.
All summer we heard from the tea party patsies of the GOP minority, the radical right-to-lifers, and Glenn Beck's 9/12 birther loonies.
When will American liberals step up and push these morons back into the dark places where they belong?
The struggle between liberal/moderate Catholics and Catholic fundamentalists is a long-running one, really going back to the origins of fundamentalism as we know it in the 19th century.
Here's an interview in which Cathlic writer Mary Gordon offering a more humane but also more challenging way that people attracted to fundamentalism can look at the Christian Gospels. http://bit.ly/3dPYgn
American Catholics are a restraining force on the Vatican's conservative tendencies because a huge portion of the Church's income comes from the US. I know in the Oakland CA diocese the more liberal and pragmatic priests and lay people have worked in various ways to keep a more humane version of Catholic Christianity vital.
Our current Pope is a real barrier to progress. Ironically, Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) started his career as a liberal theologian and was originally a supporter of the liberalizing direction of the Second Vatican Council. Go figure.
The US Catholic bishops definitely need to add a dose of Christian humility to their position on abortion. They can start with laying off the essentially anti-Semitic statements equating abortion with the Holocaust. They could proceed by reflecting on the fact that even though the Romans practiced a form of abortion, none of the authors of the canonical Scriptures bother to mention it as a pressing moral concern.
Mary Gordon's interview is more about theology and psychology than politics. But one of her points is that fundamentalists often seem to understand their faith in a framework of hatred and fear. In terms of mobilizing and advocating for fundi positions, anger, hatred and fear have their advantages. It's part of the general problem of dealing with the Radical Right.
It's almost 20 years old now. But in the first volume of the Fundamentalism Project studies, Fundamentalisms Observed (1991), there's a good essay giving the historical background of Cathlolic fundamentalism in the US.
This piece by Frances Kissling, former president of Catholics for a Free Choice (http://bit.ly/3DyLFm), is a reminder of how much the US Catholic bishops are out of step with the US Church itself on abortion rights:
Every news article describes meetings between the bishops’ lobbyists and Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman. Yet, national polls tell us that only about 15% of Catholics agree with the bishops that abortion should be illegal, and Catholics, according to a CFC poll, are split on funding, 50% for and 50% against broad coverage for abortion based on the woman’s decision.She explains how that 50-50 split in the national polls translates in individual electoral districts to a margin that can make opposition by a local bishop intimidating to candidates in tightly contestested races. And she reminds us that the Democratic Party made a conscious decision to have a "big tent" with opponents of women's right to choose that empowered conservative bishops to throw their weight around on abortion:
... when the Democratic party decided in 2004 to court anti-abortion, but otherwise progressive, candidates like Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, they set the stage for a Democratic majority that would be held hostage by a minority of anti-abortion Catholics, like Stupak and Blue Dog Democrat Travis Childers, who, if united, could determine the outcome of any vote and extract anti-abortion provisions to their heart’s content. The message the Party sent was that it is just as moral to be pro-choice as anti-abortion and we not only had to tolerate each other, we had to welcome those who were opposed to abortion with more than open arms. And the Party did. Howard Dean and Chuck Schumer then head of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee set about recruiting anti-choice Democrats like Bob Casey to run in tough districts. They got what they wanted—a majority.Like one of Bruce Sprinsteen's songs says, "With every wish, there comes a curse." And she reminds us of the leadership deficit on women's rights at the top of the Party, which gives retroactive credence to worries of Democratic voters during the primaries last year that Obama wouldn't be as effective a defender of women's rights as Hillary Clinton would likely have been:
The President added his two cents pontificating in papal tones, strangely prideful, assuring us that “no federal dollars will be used for abortion.” He made it sound like this was a good thing instead of the moral deficit that it is.It's worth noting that Howard Dean, Chuck Schumer, Obama and Henry Waxman are all considered liberals, not Blue Dogs.
If the bishops are out of step, it's hard to tell. When the bishops speak, the sound of dissent is muffled at best.
Interesting article in Time, about how the Vatican pulled one extremist bishop out of his Diocese. Seems the Vatican under Ratzinger is actually less reactionary than the American church.
Bruce, thank you for the Mary Gordon piece, she has long been one of my favorite authors and this, Reading Jesus, looks like a book I have to read, along with Karen Armstrong's new one,The Case for God. And this website, Religion Dispatches, is a new one to me, looking like one I have to bookmark and return to often. The bit on Alternet this morning about Fred Phelps and his monstrous gang picketing the Obama children's school, and planning to travel next to Texas to picket the funerals of the soldiers slain in last week's shooting, brings the extreme wing of Christian Fundamentalism back into sharp and terrifying focus for me. When Gordon states that "The Bible registers for them (the Fundies) on an emotional level, mainly as fear and rage," she is so hitting the nail on the head.
What a very strange world we are living in. It is clear in her interview that Gordon's being half-Jewish contributes greatly to her sanity, and I even hear echoes of Buddhism in what she says about human suffering. Anyway, thank you for this. I tend to simply shove the whole issue of "religion" out of my consciousness as I go through my daily life, when in fact it is always there simmering somewhere in my SUBconscious. Nothing that was so much a part of my life for so long can be so easily dispensed with, I guess.
Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey is asking the IRS to look at the tax-exempt status of the Catholic bishops over this issue. http://bit.ly/kYgap I'm not at all sure this is a good approach. But maybe it is time to see how closely they are following the tax laws on these things. That goes for financial institutions who get direct federal subsidies, too.
Bruce,
I think the IRS should give the Church a close look. When a major story like Saturday's passing of the House bill on health care reform cannot be told without discussion of the role played by the Church in forcing an amendment to the bill, that is a clear signal that the political activities of the Church have gone too far. If the bishops want to play political hardball, let them give up their tax exemption. At the very least, we can use the taxes to help fund health benefits for the poor.
I do not believe that Rome wants to be seen as a political entity in America, but that is what it has become.
Neil
I saw an article in the Spanish "El Mundo" Wednesday about the Spanish bishops threatening to excommunicate any public official who defended abortion as morally legitimate. Now, this is the national Church that is the main home of Opus Dei, the reactionary order that is one of the current Pope's favorites. So they don't need outside help to be reactionary. But I have to wonder if the Vatican might be encouraging that after it worked last week in the US.
Looking at the Church's tax exemption over their lobbying on this issue isn't something that I would object to on the face of it. Pat Robertson was forced to clean up his act on using tax-deductible donations in his political operations several years ago by IRS pressure. But I actually don't know enough about how the Church is structured in its business operations to know how successful going after their tax exemption may be.
What Robertson got in trouble for was obviously partisan actions. But churches and other non-profit organizations are allowed to take positions on public-policy issues. And I'm guessing the Catholic bishops are a lot more careful about the legal technicalities than Robertson was.
I used to follow the publications of the Catholic Conference of Bishops. They often put forward a viewpoint on major social issues that I found helpful and even inspiring, generally reflecting values I shared. But the bishops have split into two camps -- an outspoken right-wing group who have much in common with the Spanish bishops, and a relatively silent group of moderates. Ratzinger's predecessor appointed a lot of these people and his agenda was clearly about dogmatic discipline -- so we ended up with a lot of hardliners and reactionaries (no surprise at all).
So the question is, will anyone stand up to these people? So long as the voice of the Church is dominated by the right-wingers, and Saturday's House deliberations clearly reflect the power of that voice, people like me will be complaining about the regressive politics of the Church, and questioning the propriety of its tax status.
I keep hearing from people that the bishops are out of touch and do not really represent the views of the Catholic voters in the pews. In that case, let me ask why it is that American taxpayers should extend tax benefits to these bishops, appointed by Rome, who ignore the views of the majority of their congregation and press Congress to pass laws that meet with the approval of the Pope?
Surely we should not use tax laws to attack religion, but in this case, aren't we using tax law to attack democracy?
The Church has shifted hard right in my lifetime, and it has become much more aggressive in the political arena. The bishops are playing hardball, and it's about time they learned how the game is played. Both teams get to swing the bat.
Neil
The Church does seem to be getting more aggressive about imposing its standards on government policy. But very selectively so. Today Catholic Charities (which is organized as a distinct business entity from the Church) is threatening to cut off aid to the homeless in Washington DC if the same-sex marriage law is enforced.
But as critics of the Stupak Coathanger Amendment have been pointing out, the official Church is awfully selective about where they take such stands. I don't recall hearing such threats over the Iraq War (which the previous Pope opposed) or over the death penalty, which the Catholic "culture of life" concept that opposes abortion also opposes.
And that would be where the Church's political activities may overstep the technical legal bounds of tax exemption.
Katha Pollitt wrote yesterday at The Nation http://bit.ly/1K3QHT that maybe rightwing Catholics in Congress should sacrifice something, too:
President Obama, too, worries about the deficit. Maybe you could help him out by sacrificing your denomination's tax exemption. The Catholic Church would be a good place to start, and it wouldn't even be unfair, since the blatant politicking of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops on abortion violates the spirit of the ban on electoral meddling by tax-exempt religious institutions. Why should antichoicers be the only people who get to refuse to let their taxes support something they dislike? You don't want your tax dollars to pay, even in the most notional way, for women's abortion care, a legal medical procedure that one in three American women will have in her lifetime? I don't want to pay for your misogynist fairy tales and sour-old-man hierarchies.I'll be surprised if it comes to the tax exemption being serious in jeopardy. But it might.
I agree that the tax exemption is probably safe. But it is a gesture that Rome, and American Catholics, will notice. Maybe one or two Catholics will decide to pass on this year's Diocesan Appeal. Maybe a bunch of Catholics will take their weekly offering envelope and send it to Planned Parenthood. Maybe the IRS won't pull the Church's tax exemption, but I absolutely love the idea.
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