Should liberals leave
Catholic Church?
By Joan Vennochi,
boston.com from the Web, March 5, 2006
THE RED CARDINAL'S hat on its way to
Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley sends a clear message to liberal Catholics who still
hope the Catholic Church will shift their way: It isn't shifting.
Company men always reap their rewards. Cardinal Bernard Law got a basilica
in Rome when the clergy sexual abuse scandal made Boston too inhospitable.
O'Malley, another company man, gets elevated to cardinal for doing what the
company ordered. O'Malley closed down parishes and is shutting down the
vestiges of a liberal agenda in the Boston archdiocese.
Last week, seven members of the board of Catholic Charities of Boston announced
their resignations. They were protesting the effort by Massachusetts
bishops to prohibit gays from adopting children from their Catholic social
service agencies. The seven who quit said the prohibition ''threatens the
very essence of our Christian mission."
But the Roman Catholic Church, the institution seeking the prohibition, holds a
drastically different view.
Church doctrine states that allowing children to be adopted by same-sex couples
''would actually mean doing violence to these children." Gay adoptions are
''gravely immoral."
If you agree with those principles, you are, according to the Vatican, a
Catholic in good standing.
If you don't, you're not.
Liberals raised as Catholics refuse to accept this reality. We think we
can be prochoice, pro-gay marriage , pro-gay adoption, and in favor of married
and female priests and still call ourselves Catholic. The people who make
the rules say we don't meet the criteria.
Every pronouncement from Pope Benedict XVI draws another line between official
church doctrine and liberal ideology. When do liberals choose one side or
the other?
Sue O'Connell, the copublisher of Bay Windows, New England's largest publication
for lesbian and gay readers, believes it's time for liberal Catholics to take a
stand -- just like board members did regarding their affiliation with Catholic
Charities.
''I know a lot of Catholics, gay and straight," said O'Connell, a lesbian mother
of a 5-year-old daughter. ''Everyone continues to go to church and act
like their parish is not part of all of this -- the sexual scandal, the
association to the Vatican and its stand on gay adoption. Everyone who
believes that is in a state of denial."
''It's time to find a new path," she said.
O'Connell said the church is doing the expected -- enforcing its rules.
Catholics who don't agree with church doctrine are doing the unexpected --
sticking around where they are unwelcome, rather than moving on.
The stubborness is rooted in nostalgia, inertia, and arrogance. We cherish
some memories, like the lacy white communion dress and the innocence of
childhood confessions. Despite spotty attendance, we enjoy the ritual of
Sunday Mass. We also believe our views are the enlightened ones and Rome's
represent the neanderthal; eventually we will get a pope who understands that.
Liberals view the Catholic Charities controversy in Boston as a watershed
moment, signaling a church hierarchy out of touch with ordinary Catholics.
But the resignations in Boston, while laudable to fellow liberals, do not ruffle
Rome nor Catholics who accept the rules. They are welcome. Just read
the online posts to Catholic World News.
The local fervor to prevent gays from adopting children also shows that the
sexual abuse scandal did not distract the church from the rules it cares most
about. This week, the state attorney general's office scolded the
archdiocese for failing to devise a system to keep track of abusive priests.
Conservative Catholics hold the power, not just in Rome but in the United
States. When mobilized against abortion and gay marriage, they are a
potent political force.
Catholics helped reelect George W. Bush. Survey results released last year
by DemocracyCorps, the consulting group headed by James Carville, Stanley
Greenberg, and Bob Shrum, showed that Bill Clinton carried the white Catholic
vote by 7 points; Al Gore lost the white Catholic vote by 7 points; and John
Kerry, a Catholic, lost the Catholic vote by 13 points. That is a 20 point
swing, to the advantage of the GOP. It explains why Governor Mitt Romney,
a probable Republican presidential candidate, would sympathize with Catholic
bishops on the issue of gay adoption.
The church in Rome thinks in centuries, not in news cycles. It isn't
budging.
Will liberals in America ever get the message?
Joan Vennochi's e-mail address is
vennochi@globe.com.
|
