Who Would Jesus Bully?

Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." This message has apparently been lost on some Catholic schools, because they're sending children away if they have two mommies. Most recently, a school in Hingham, Massachusetts has been at the center of the controversy, as was a school in Boulder, Colorado in March. The Massachusetts story has a slightly happier ending than Colorado's, but neither is cause for celebration. The Boston Archdiocese is trying to find another Catholic school that the rejected child can attend; presumably there is one in the archdiocese that doesn't believe its mission is to be the sanctimonious antithesis of Christian charity and compassion. In the Boulder case, the Archbishop of Denver supported the decision to ban the preschooler, asserting that the parents chose to disqualify the child from enrollment because they live "in open discord with Catholic teaching in areas of faith and morals."

This is where the church both loses and disgusts me. The implication that students are disqualified if their parents openly flout Catholic teaching on faith or morals is a patent fraud and anyone who would make such a claim is lying through his or her bigoted teeth, because they don't ban children of divorced parents. Jesus was very clear that marriage could only be ended by death. Remarriage is considered adultery, a sin surely more egregious than homosexuality. Adultery hit the big time in terms of no-nos going back to the time of Moses, and homosexuality is the biblical equivalent of eating a ham sandwich, like the ones I used to buy in the cafeteria of my Catholic school. Now in fairness, according to Catholic doctrine, there is nothing wrong with eating ham and homosexuality is condemned, but by no reckoning can it be painted as a greater moral failing than adultery or divorce.

The church has decided to pick its battles not based on moral principle, but rather on expediency. It's easy for them to pick on gays but not on divorcees, so just as any other morally bankrupt bully would do, they fight only the fights they can easily win, not the fights that are worth fighting. The church opposes abortion as though it were the greatest evil in our time. Thou shalt not kill! Well, that sounds simple enough, but what about war, particularly in instances that are not clearly matters of self-preservation? Opposing war isn't as easily sold in the pews, so rather than condemning war with the same zeal as abortion, the Catholic Church puts priests in uniform to bless the weapons that will kill men women and children whenever a government decides that it doesn't want its power eroded. Sure, killing is wrong, but we don't want to jeopardize having our own way, and if killing is what it takes to keep people in line, then church sanctioned killing we shall have. Please understand I'm neither condoning abortion, which with the rarest of exceptions is troubling even to ardent supporters of a woman's right to choose, nor am I condemning war, which I'm sad to say is often a necessary last resort. I'm simply advocating integrity and moral courage while condemning in the strongest possible terms the craven bullying of the weak by the powerful.

If I wanted advice on the decent, moral thing to do, I would never consult Archbishop Chaput of Denver or anyone else who values hypocritical self-righteousness over kindness.