Fr. Z's Blog

From WaPo:

I’m not quitting the church

By E.J. Dionne Jr.

Published: May 13 [Mother’s Day]

Recently, a group called the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) [Coincidentally based in ultra-liberal Madison, WI, where the great Bp. Morlino has been placed by God to work out his salvation and try to keep a few people out of hell.] 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. [In other words, he is staying in the Church with the desire to change the Church’s teachings…. which, as a liberal, he surely thinks are “policies”.] 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. [Dionne is mean-spirited.  I am sure you readers agree that conservative Catholics, orthodox Catholics, faithful Catholics, want everyone to have the joy of being in the Church, to be a true and faithful Catholic who actually thinks with the Church.  We don’t agree with liberals that the Catholic Faith is just one path to God, equal among many.   We think Catholic identity is important.  If a person is little more than a discontent who thinks he knows better than the Church, who gives public scandal, who is obviously unhappy, we would prefer that he give up his outward pretense of being Catholic and go find something else to gripe about.  But we would rather have everyone in the Church Christ Himself gave us for the sake of our salvation.]

I’m sorry to inform the FFRF that I am declining its invitation to quit. It [the FFRF] 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.  [QUAERITUR: Does Dionne see the Church mainly as an institution useful for social projects?]

And on women’s rights, I take as my guide that early feminist Pope John XXIII.  [John XXIII was a what?] 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.” [This may be one of the dumbest moral equivalents I have yet seen attempted by any journalist anywhere.]

“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.” [That’s from Pacem in terris, not The Feminine Mystique, a book that did untold damage to our society and twisted the lives of millions thereafter.]

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. [The writer will now instruct bishops.  Attend:] 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. [Liberals don’t like analogies that hit too close to home, do they.]

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?  [Hang on, Dionne sees the Church’s value, and the value of belonging to the Church, in purely earthly terms.  No?  Am I wrong? The Church is great because of soup kitchens?  Also, it strikes me as entirely possible that anyone who might attempt to draw a moral equivalence between Pacem in terris and The Feminine Mystic (a patchwork of lies and illusions), may till have a vision of the Church from those halcyon days of hippies and love beads, when everything was spinning out of control and Catholic identity was being shredded into incomprehensible bits.] 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? [I think this claim is wrong in point of fact.  The LCWR was approved, and can exist as a legitimate ‘entity recognized by the Church, only with the approval of the Holy See.  The CDF doesn’t need to be pushed to carry out its work by American bishops.  They are full capable of seeing on their own what is going on with the leadership of the LCWR.  Furthermore, the CDF did not “condemn” the LCWR.  The CDF did not shut it down, or take away its status, or say that it was worthless.  On the contrary, the CDF is working to reform the LCWR os that it can be a more clearly Catholic institution.  That doesn’t sound like a condemnation to me.  Dionne is confused.]

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. [But Dionne would be wrong.  To suggest that that was the reason for the CDF’s moves is either ignorant (which I can’t rule out) or malicious (which I can’t rule out).  The CDF explained what the reforming moves are about.  He should take a moment to do some homework before writing his twaddle.] The nuns insisted, correctly, that the health-care law did not fund abortion. [False: it does.] This didn’t sit well with men unaccustomed to being contradicted, [Piffle.  He is simply flapping his arms, now.  What happened has nothing to do with misogyny.] 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). [Dionne has so thoroughly become the sort of man Betty Friedan would prefer to surround herself with that he doesn’t any longer realize that abortion is NOT a “women’s rights” issue (and that is what this dopey piece is really about, by the way).  Abortion is THE social justice issue, over and above any and every other issue.  If someone or some Catholic group palters on and on about this or that social issue and then oscillates between silence about abortion or even actively supporting it, or supporting those who do, there is a serious fracture in Catholic identity that merits the attention of the American bishops and even the CDF if the problem is big enough. ] But has it occurred to the bishops that less stridency might change more hearts and minds on this very difficult question?  [Ah… this is the old, “Can’t we just tone down the rhetoric?” ploy. Liberals trot this out when they are losing the argument. In fact, nothing is so mean or so shrill as a dedicated liberal, as this piece reveals.  Liberals have controlled the conversation for so long that they can’t stand that there should be any other message in the public square.  The bishops are reclaiming their right to speak in the public square.  They are finding their voices again.  They are refusing to be oppressed any longer by the dominators of the liberal media, refusing to be silenced.]

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? [Get that? “potential” mothers?  That is because Dionne doesn’t think the unborn child is a child, is human.] They might usefully embrace a similar attitude toward gay men and lesbians.  [Wow.  First, Dionne suggests that the unborn child has no right to be where she is and that a choice of the mother is all that matters.  Carried to the next level, Dionne would say that the elderly or the sick are allowed to live because we oh-so-almighty people, are generous, as if we keep them in life and existence.  This sounds rather like the fruits of the lie of the Enemy of our souls to our first parents: “your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” Genesis 3:5.  And thus, Dionne implies that the Church ought to suck up to – well – pretty much everyone and conform doctrine and discipline to the shifting mores of the times, rather than risk that anyone leave the Church.  Dionne, a creature of public opinion, for whom the Church may be mainly source of good examples for social work, thinks that, in the final analysis, only the numbers count.]

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. [I wonder just how much Dionne knows about John XXIII.]

“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.” [Although the Savior didn’t not abandon us who live in this world, the Savior’s supreme act of sacrificial love was mainly about repairing the gulf that opened up because of our sins and opening the way to heaven.  His was not a utopian mission.] The church best answers its critics when it remembers that its mission is to preach hope, not fear.  [Finally, the quote of John XXIII said “only darkness”.  We have to be able to see both the darkness and the light in order to have a clear view of the signs of the times.]

Rubbish.

As far as toning down the rhetoric is concerned, you might look at this piece I posted back in 2009 after the Notre Shame event.

The Problem With Toning Down the Rhetoric – And Why We Probably Won’t Do It