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.

Something Is Rotten in the State of Vatican City

After Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Pope by the College of Cardinals, he chose as his papal name Pope Benedict XVI. It would have been more fitting if he chose to be called Pope Chapter VII, because his elevation to pope coincides with the church's bankruptcy with respect to moral authority. We can no longer ignore the mountain of evidence that the Catholic hierarchy deliberately chose to protect the church from embarrassment and whatever retribution justice would demand, rather than protecting the most vulnerable and innocent victims of heinous abuse. I'm also satisfied that when we seek to identify all the guilty parties in this despicable web of callous inhumanity, we find a metaphorical smoking gun in the hand that now wears the Ring of the Fisherman.

My indictment of the church is not based on the deplorable actions of some disturbed priests but rather on the deliberate cover up, done in the cool dispassionate light of day, by more senior church officials. When some bishops and cardinals learned of the abuse, they were forced to confront a choice. They could either do the decent thing and protect innocent children from being raped and scarred for life, or they could circle the wagons, essentially aiding and abetting the continued unspeakable abuse. The church opted for the latter. It's not hard to understand the calculus underlying this decision, but it is hard to imagine how anyone can be so cold hearted and indifferent to the suffering of children. Taking steps to defrock the offending priests, or even suddenly reassigning their duties so they are kept away from children (i.e. additional victims) would certainly raise questions and could ultimately cause trouble for the church. If the truth were brought to light the church could face damaging lawsuits, lose members and face diminished power even among the faithful who remained. Also, while this is admittedly nothing but my own conjecture, I suspect the biggest fear for the church hierarchy was that this could be, for some Catholics, the thread that when pulled unravels the entire garment.

As blind faith is extremely important to a religious organization, the church has an understandable interest in taking a page from the Wizard of Oz and presenting their clergy as something more magnificent than the mere men behind the curtain that they are. Since the horrific moral failings of some priests can hamper the church's ability to perpetuate that illusion, the church has an incentive to conceal the abuse and allow more children to be violated. If those on the altar were exposed as being every bit as flawed, or in the case of the offending priests far more flawed, than those in the pews, bishops and cardinals could have nightmares of Catholics saying things like, "Yeah right, this guy is telling me what my penance is for having impure thoughts about another adult? Maybe you should get Tiger Woods in here to tell me how to be a good and faithful husband!" or "Sure, it's easy for the church to condemn birth control - 10 year old boys don't get pregnant." While such sentiments would be unfair, they're also predictable, and from the church's perspective, they are apparently to be avoided at any cost.

To make matters worse, the Vatican continues to act shamefully, marginalizing or dismissing the agony suffered by the victims by characterizing the scandal as "petty gossip" or saying the outrage is contrived, and those pursuing this matter are only doing so because they differ with the church on its teachings. There is a perverse irony that something called the Holy See could be so blind. If a superintendent of schools who learned that a teacher had been accused of raping students had acted the same way as senior church officials, he or she would have no chance of remaining employed. Even hardened prisoners know that those who abuse children are the worst of the worst and no agenda or parochial interest (pun intended) should trump protecting such innocent victims. Until the church takes full responsibility for its actions, it will remain putrefied, rotting from the mitred head down.

Bishop Tobin's Fatwa Against Patrick Kennedy

Yesterday marked the 46th anniversary of the tragic assassination of John F. Kennedy, the first and so far only Roman Catholic president of the United States. Today President Kennedy's nephew, Congressman Patrick Kennedy (son of the late Senator Edward Kennedy) is embroiled in an ugly battle with the Bishop of Providence who has pronounced Rep. Kennedy ineligible to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion because of his politics. There are a number of ironic elements to this story that I'll discuss in no particular order. First, this is happening as we remember President Kennedy and how he made the American public abandon the fear that a Catholic president would be loyal to the Catholic hierarchy instead of the Constitution. Secondly, the controversy involves JFK's blood relative, and finally, this is happening in Rhode Island, which was founded by Roger Williams as a haven for religious tolerance. Roger Williams is, if you will, the patron saint of church state separation. He was a preacher who only settled what is now Rhode Island because he was forced to flee Massachusetts for daring to differ with the Puritans. He was among the first to call for a wall of separation between church and state.

I was raised and educated in the Catholic faith and I am well versed in its teachings and terminology. I know, for instance, that the Immaculate Conception does not refer to a virgin bearing a child, but rather to Mary being born without original sin. The former is a widely held erroneous belief that I call the immaculate misconception. I also know that Transubstantiation is the process through which bread and wine are transformed into the Body and Blood of Jesus. I would like to make my own contribution to the Catholic lexicon by coining "Translineation", which means to cross the line. This is the process by which bishops transform the already consecrated Body and Blood of our Lord into a weapon with which to bully Catholic politicians who choose not to impose their personal beliefs on a pluralistic society.

While I no longer practice Catholicism, I'm saddened to see this happening. I once heard the writer Anna Quindlen say that being Catholic is the reason she's liberal. Some may find that surprising or even contradictory, but I instantly knew exactly what she meant. My childhood coincided with things like urban rioting, the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. I marched for peace and justice from the time I was in kindergarten at Our Lady of Mercy, and I participated in urban renewal from the time I was old enough to wield a paintbrush. In every instance, my participation began on a bus leaving the church parking lot, full of clergy and laity alike singing "We Shall Overcome" and believing that being Catholic meant to be like Jesus and make the world a better place through love and service to one another. The Church had its problems as any large institution will, but it emphasized the charity and compassion of Jesus rather than the sanctimonious self-righteousness of the Pharisees whose holier that thou ways Jesus despised. I wonder what Jesus would think of the Church now.