May 21, 2004
TOO CATHOLIC?:
Public Domain (Andrew Sullivan, 05.04.04, New Republic)
The yawning divide between the Roman Catholic hierarchy and most Catholics is not usually an election story. But this year, it may become so. John Kerry is running as the first Catholic to campaign for president since John F. Kennedy. While Kennedy had to counter concerns that he was too Catholic for America, Kerry has to defend himself from accusations that he is too American for Rome. The hard-right of the American Catholic establishment, which is closely allied with the Opus Dei-influenced hierarchy now effectively running the global Church, is particularly incensed. Kerry's positions on a whole variety of issues--from stem-cell research to civil marriage rights for gays to abortion rights--offend parts of Catholic doctrine. But the Catholic wing of the religious right wants not simply for the Church to defend its positions and criticize Kerry's; it wants the Church to deny communion to Kerry, effectively excommunicating him for his political views, principally on abortion. They want a declaration that the Church will no longer countenance public figures calling themselves Catholics who do not conform in fundamental respects with religious orthodoxy.One adherent of this view is Robert Novak, a man whose public appearances do not exactly reflect spiritual detachment from the world. Novak sneers, smears, lambastes, and heckles with the best of them, and there's nothing wrong with that in the hurly-burly of democratic politics. But Novak is also a convert to Catholicism and under the personal influence of John McCloskey, the Opus Dei cleric who has envisaged a future civil war in America in which the faithful secede from the faithless, and who regards any Catholic who questions the hierarchy's views on matters of faith and morals as a de facto Protestant.
Mr. Sullivan's typically disingenuous column fails to reckon with the difference between questioning Catholic orthodoxy, on the one hand, and acting upon one's own views, on the other. Institutions are strengthened by the former, undermined by the latter. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 21, 2004 6:22 PM
Sullivan is arguing like the person who rejects religion and the Church in all ways, but then is enraged when he/she is denied a full religious wedding. His argument is simply that the Catholic Church is a public institution.
Posted by: Peter B at May 21, 2004 7:54 PM"They want a declaration that the Church will no longer countenance public figures calling themselves Catholics who do not conform in fundamental respects with religious orthodoxy."
To use a business analogy, the Church is defending its brand. Would McDonalds allow a franchisee to use the McDonalds brand while it made its own decisions on menus and quality of service? Any successful organization must defend its raison d'etre. Sullivan wants to freeload on the Catholic franchise.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at May 22, 2004 12:51 AMI think Andrew Sullivan is a perfect example of a believer in the 20th century religion of tolerance, where there is no orthodoxy except that everyone's personal views and choices are to be respected and held as equal to anyone else's. Of course, the fact that this overthrows all sense of what religion is for is completely lost on him.
Posted by: brian at May 22, 2004 1:03 AMSullivan's premise is dubious: that the American hierarchy is traditionalist or orthodox; rather, the present pontiff has been critized on exactly this score by the American Catholic Right. Too many Mahoneys and Bernardins and not enough orthodox princes of the church.
This is what J-P II first exclaimed upon becoming Pope--to judge him on his choices for bishops. And it is precisely on this score that his record has been mixed, to put it mildly.
This might be the silliest thing Sullivan has written in the fourteen years I've been following him. More reflective of the own disturbances in his own breast, I think, than of anything objective.
It's perhaps a safe contention to say that the overwhelming number of church-going Catholic faithful don't want to see gay marriages being conducted under the auspices of the church. On that score, Sullivan needs to realize that the prelates may be more democratic (which is possible in a hierarchical institution) than conservative.
I'm afraid he'd like his church to do what his part-time state has done: making gay marriage licit by judicial fiat.
Posted by: Brent at May 22, 2004 5:02 AMQuestion for Catholics:
I know a guy on another message board who says he has a friend who is a Catholic priest.
Said priest is gay but since he is celibate feels it is OK to be part of the Catholic establishment and since his private life is no one's business his congregation have no need to know about his sexual orientation.
So is this something that normally goes on in Catholic parishes?
Posted by: M Ali Choudhury at May 22, 2004 9:48 AMI have no idea whether it goes on in Catholic parishes, but they key here is that the priest says he is celibate. If he means that he's abstaining from sex, then in terms of sin, I don't see any difference between him and a priest who has heterosexual urges, but is also abstaining from sex.
On the other hand, if he uses celibate to mean he isn't married, all bets are off.
Posted by: Roy Jacobsen at May 22, 2004 1:00 PMAli: I am without doubt that this happens; to my mind, it's not one shred my business, so long as he doesn't act on his urges; Roy's right, insofar as the relevant question is not his urges, but the act of his will to give in or not to those urges; Roy's wrong, though, in that "celibate" means not engaging in sexual intercourse of any variety -- unless the priest means the word in a way it was never intended, then sounds like he's doing just fine for himself.
Can I just say, by the way, that Sullivan's consistent, paranoid ranting about Opus Dei helps what has to be one of the greatest inadvertant recruiting drives of all time? I mean, seriously: But for the Opus-Dei-is-the-Devil crowd, most Catholics wouldn't have even heard of these guys.
Posted by: Chris at May 23, 2004 1:41 AM