Frank Cocozzelli, writing at Talk to Action about the choice of Catholic bishop Richard Malone to put every resource possible in Maine's Catholic church at the disposal of fighting civil marriage between two people of the same sex, dividing and demoralizing the church he leads, while he says next to nothing about the erosion of social safety-net programs to assist the least among us:
Jesus didn't have anything to say about homosexuality. He did, however, say quite a bit about helping the poor and economic justice. That being the case, why do Bishop Malone and other culture war bishops seem to have it backwards?
Back in November, Commonweal's former editor Margaret O'Brien Steinfels wrote a scathing posting at the Commonweal blog warning the Democrats that they were shooting "theirself" in the foot by pushing for acceptance of the HHS guidelines assuring that health care plans cover contraceptives for women. Now that the Commonweal folks (well, some of them) can finally see the writing on the wall that was apparent to many of us when the bishops' bogus crusade to defend "religious liberty" was announced, Commonweal is eating a small dish of crow with its latest editorial, which finally admits something that anyone with eyes to see saw all along about the bishops' phony war: that it's political.
And partisan. Designed to serve the political interests of one political party while attacking the other.
Designed to serve the political interests of a single political party not conspicuously known, to say the least, for its commitment to Catholic social teaching, to the common good, to assisting the least among us. And therefore not pro-life in any credible sense at all. But, to the contrary, anti-life.
Commonweal's editorial finally sees what the Catholic bishops have been about all along with their "religious liberty" crusade:
Now the USCCB is threatening a concerted political and public-relations campaign—during an election year—that casts the president as a determined enemy of religious freedom (my emphasis).
And there's more: the Commonweal set also finally appear to be seeing something else that has been as plain as the nose on our faces to many of us for a long time--namely, that the bishops' betrayal of core Catholic values in their overtly partisan political activities for some years now is wounding the church itself in very gross ways, as Frank Cocozzelli notes vis-a-vis the diocese of Maine. Commonweal's editors write:
In their 2010 book American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, Robert Putnam and David Campbell showed what the likely consequences of this fight will be. By the 1990s, after decades of the culture wars waged by Protestant and Catholic groups, many younger people came to think of “religion” as politically divisive and overly judgmental, especially on questions of sexual morality. As a result, the number of Americans who have abandoned institutional religion has risen dramatically. One-third of adult Catholics have already left the church. Isn’t that sobering fact more deserving of a national campaign than this self-defeating battle over contraception coverage?
And if this is true (and it is), then here's another another thing that's true: all the "liberal" Catholic co-belligerents at Commonweal and all the other centrist Catholic journals who immediately signed onto the bishops' phony "religious freedom" war, and who have only belatedly seen the writing on the wall plain to many of their Catholic brothers and sisters for a long, long time, have been part of the problem.
They've been part of the problem when it comes to wounding the church. To fracturing its unity. To driving brother and sister Catholics away from the church. To pretending that all those walking wounded aren't in the room as the "liberals" talk about authentic Catholicity and human rights and the church's mission to make God's universal salvific love known in the world.
And none of this is going to change--the walking away in droves is going to increase, and to do so even more dramatically after the entirely bogus and utterly partisan "religious freedom" war in which "liberal" Catholics at Commonweal and elsewhere have been eager partisans on behalf of the bishops--until these powerful centrist spokespersons for "the" Catholic perspective begin examining their role in driving fellow Catholics away.
And until they begin to admit that they've been wrong. Deceived. Blind. Morally obtuse.
Part of the problem and not part of the solution, when it comes to making the Catholic tradition alive in a meaningful sacramental way (healing, loving, including, reaching out, listening to those on the margins, bringing them in) in contemporary culture.
(If the Commonweal group, and the America group, and the National Catholic Reporter group, all of whom were more than ready to assist the bishops in their war for "religious freedom," really want to face the fragmentation of the church due to the bishops' behavior, which they have now started to say they begin to see, a good starting point might be to ask the following question: How has it happened that some Catholics have been able to see the destructive effects of the bishops' behavior on the church they lead for some time now?
And how has it happened that those in the power centers have been so blind to these effects and to what's causing them? Is it possible that the centrist powerbrokers of the American Catholic church have been listening to the wrong folks, as they try to determine what's authentically Catholic?
And that they're not anywhere nearly so educated as they imagine they are?
Or anywhere nearly so catholic?)
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