Robert McClory on the Embarrassment the Catholic Bishops Have Become (and How They've Gotten There)

Robert McClory at National Catholic Reporter writing about the U.S. Catholic bishops and what an embarrassment their campaign for "religious freedom" is for many American Catholics: 

There is, of course, a reason why this sort of thing happens. An institution that is closed at the top makes decisions entirely through the deliberation of a carefully selected, all-male elite and feels no obligation to consult the voice of the church body is almost guaranteed to engage in foolhardy campaigns and come up with misguided strategies. Generally when this does occur, only Catholics are aware because the subject doesn't affect non-Catholics, much less get into the middle of a national political campaign. But this one does. Everyone can enter the debate while puzzling over the fractured church we have. 

For most Catholics, I think, it is indeed an embarrassment.

And he's right.  What he also says--closed at the top, male elite, no felt obligation to consult the voice of the church as a whole--applies mutatis mutandis to the powerbrokering elite at the center of the American Catholic media and academic establishments, who predictably find it all too easy to make common cause with the top leaders of the church when they go on their embarrassing rants and continue fracturing the church by targeting selected members of the body of Christ and humiliating and marginalizing them.

And so the problem is and always has been--if we really want a catholic church and want to fix what's wrong and causing such damage to so many inside and outside the church--to address not only the problem at the top of the church, but to address as well the problem of the powerbrokering elite that mirrors, in its composition and attitudes, the elite controlling the church.

The powerbrokering media and academic elite that mirrors in its composition and attitudes the elite controlling the church even when the former elite professes to be "liberal."  While assisting the bishops at every turn in their war against gays and women, and while assisting them even in their war against survivors of clerical sexual abuse by refusing to push back against the bishops in solidarity with survivors of abuse . . . .

(And kudos, by the way, to R. Fortin for asking Tom Roberts, in response to the embarrassing fluff piece Roberts published two days ago at NCR lauding E.J. Dionne's role in defending the bishops, whether NCR has any women on its governing board.  And, of course, if women are on the governing board, what kind of power they yield, and whether they're represented at the very top levels of leadership in the organization and featured as spotlighted journalistic voices in the journal's publications . . . . )

The graphic is a photo from Alex E. Proimos's Flickr photostream, and was taken in December 2009 in Montorgueil Saint Denis in Paris.  I'm using it with the understanding that its Creative Commons license permits duplication of the image if one attributes it to its original owner.