Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: Whole Lot of Pretending (Still) Going On

Once again, as with my last scoop of droppings from the Catholic birdcage, so many droppings and so little time.  And once again, one dropping that goes into the pure-ordure-to-be-flushed-quickly category, and another in the dropping-as-valuable-fertilizer category:

The pure ordure, of course, is the recent observation of His Eminence Timothy M. Cardinal Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, that 

[w]hile priests and bishops "stick to principles" . . . "we leave a lot of the messiness of politics up to you [i.e., the apparently unprincipled laity]."

And following that little delivery of ordure, His Eminence delivered himself of the following: 

At a news conference after Saturday’s speech, Cardinal Dolan said, "We kind of got our Irish up when leaders in government seemed to be assigning an authoritative voice to Catholic groups that are not the bishops." 

He added: "If you want an authoritative voice, go to the bishops. They’re the ones that speak for the truths of the faith."

Okay, so where to begin with exegesis that tries to explain all that's absolutely wrongheaded about these observations of His Eminence the leader of the U.S. Catholic bishops?  There's, first of all, the bishops = principles and laity = something else equation.

And about that equation, my question (and, I suspect, the question of many Catholics and many plain ordinary American citizens) is, Really?I  You really want to go there?

You and your brother bishops have been standing for principles as you deal with the sexual abuse mess in our church?  Somehow not seeing that point . . . .

And if you have so grossly belied any principles that make any sense at all to the majority of us in your handling of the abuse crisis, on what basis do you imagine you can lay credible claim to that latter assertion--that you alone represent the "authoritative voice" of the Catholic church?

If authority is entirely divorced from meaningful moral practice, lived principle, and credible witness, then perhaps you're right.  But if authority is rooted in meaningful moral practice, lived principle, and credible witness, I suspect you've long since forfeited authority to the lay Catholics you're implicitly defining as unprincipled in contrast to you principled bishops, in the first part of your analysis.

And on to the second, more fertilizing Catholic birdcage dropping I've scooped up in the past several days: in response to the statements of Notre Dame professor Cathleen Kaveny recently on Jon Stewart's show, a National Catholic Reporter reader Tom C. writes the following: 

For a professor from Notre Dame - my alma mater - to speak on Humanae Vitae without even mentioning the fact that the Sensus Fidelium has also spoken on the matter is shocking. I am led to believe that she has joined the Hierarchy in communio by conveniently not mentioning it. Any academic study of such a polarizing matter should be meticulous in covering all the bases. I have noted that ND has taken a severe rightward turn since the seventies. How I wish they had continued to have an outstanding Theological Faculty as they had in the late sixties and early seventies. The Alumni magazine has paralleled the same decline. Its rather rubbishy right now. I do understand that this is a biased opinion. However, I would proudly stand for the ND of my time which was characterized by openness and hope for our catholic future. Intellectual honesty is a requirement of any professional and lopsided half-truths are hardly the stuff of excellence. The exchange her on the video was trite to say the best. The MC was clueless and the good professor did not in any way enlighten either the MC or the audience. So it goes. Veni Creaator Spiritus, mentes tuorum visita!

Bless all,

TomC.

Tom C. is absolutely right.  In her remarks about the HHS contraceptive coverage controversy, Kaveny (who teaches law and theology) said absolutely nothing about the Catholic laity's almost unanimous rejection of magisterial teaching about birth control.  And she acted as if--I'll go further: she pretended as if--Catholic magisterial teaching about birth control is a given, authoritative, compelling.  What we have to work with, for weal or woe, as "we Catholics" interact with the public square.

In behaving this way, Kaveny was doing nothing at all that the vast majority of the centrists who dominate the Catholic academy and media don't also do today.  For a variety of reasons--because this is how it has long been done; because it's safer this way; because we all (wink-nudge) know that we're paying lip-service to verities we don't believe in the least--this is how Catholic centrists behave, vis-a-vis the bishops and their abdication of credible moral authority.

Kaveny was immediately lionized by influential Catholic centrists after she appeared on Jon Stewart's show.  One commentator after another noted how clear, sharp, measured she was, how well she represented us Catholic intellectuals in the public square in this important media venue.

No one, however, noted how she continued to play that game of Let's Pretend that Catholic centrists in the academy and the media have been playing for a long time now, to their discredit and to the damage of the church in which they are called to be a transformative moral and intellectual voice: Let's Pretend that we all abstain from contraception.  Let's Pretend that Catholic magisterial teaching on this point is compelling. 

Let's Pretend that the bishops are the authoritative voice of Catholicism.  Let's Pretend that there are no winners and losers in the bishops' culture-war battles.

Let's Pretend that the church has not been very significantly wounded by those battles and by the bishops' abdication of moral authority (and by the defense of erroneous teachings that are actively harmful to many of the faithful).  Let's Pretend that all those victims of clerical sexual abuse whom the bishops have cruelly revictimized have nothing to do with our insulated lives in the academy, which are lived at a lofty, objective, intellectual remove from the lowly, non-objective, intellectually inferior mess of those other folks' messy real lives.

Let's Pretend that we also have nothing to do with the mess of the lives of gay and lesbian folks.

Let's Pretend.  

If this is the best the Catholic academy and media, in its very best centrist representations, has to offer us today, then God help us.  God help the church which needs credible moral teachers and credible moral voices--ones that speak the costly truth--to move us beyond the morass that we've made of our church in recent years.

God help the public square that needs to hear authentic Catholic moral teaching and credible Catholic moral voices, as we discuss significant moral issues like healthcare coverage (or contraception).  And God help the many walking wounded who have been treated by the bishops and the centrists who run interference for them as if their humanity and their human lives don't count.  Not at all.

Have no place in the world and in the church.

God help us.