More on Father Williams and Damage to Legionaries of Christ Credibility, and Bishops and Contraception

Two articles today that continue stories about which I've blogged of late:

Nicole Winfield writes for AP about the revelation that the superiors of the Legionaries of Christ have known since 2005 that a prominent member of their community, Father Thomas "Rome Expert" Williams (and Vatican consultant for CBS News and MSNBC), has fathered a child as a Legionary priest.  And was still permitted to "keep teaching and preaching about morality" for seven years after the superiors knew the score.

As Winfield observes, the revelation that the LC superiors have known about Williams while they continued him as a prominent teacher of moral theology and commentator on everything papal under the sun might be a tad bit damaging to the already damaged credibility of the Legionaries of Christ.  Winfield writes:

On Tuesday, [Father Alvaro] Corcuera [Legionary superior] wrote a letter to all Legion members admitting that he had heard rumors of the child before he became superior in 2005, but took Williams' word that they were false. Williams is a well-known U.S. television personality, author and moral theologian. 

Corcuera said that after becoming superior in 2005, he confirmed Williams' paternity and asked him to withdraw from public ministry. Yet he did nothing to prevent him from teaching morality to seminarians or preaching about ethics on television, in his many speaking engagements or in his 14 books, including "Knowing Right from Wrong: A Christian Guide to Conscience."

This is, of course, the point I had intended to make in my posting yesterday about this story.  To which one reader has already responded to set me straight: it's the gays, of course, who are the real poseurs within the churches.

Not the likes of Father Williams and the Legionaries of Christ.  Since they repent, confess, do penance, and return to communion with the church.  The gays: they're the bad guys in this story, and please don't forget it!

(Merriam-Webster dictionary, "poseur": "a person who pretends to be what he or she is not.")

And then there's the inimitable Maureen Dowd (I was just saying something about uppityness a moment ago, wasn't I?): rather than be daunted by the likes of Michael Sean Winters at NCR with his charge that she's stupid, Dowd continues to call it as she sees it, loudly and proudly.  Her column in today's New York Times entitled "Father Doesn't Know Best" is sure to have quite a few coffee cups rattling in not a few rectories and episcopal palaces this morning--after the (female) help has set said cups on the table and filled them with coffee, bien entendu.

Dowd notes that, precisely as the U.S. bishops unveil the next stage of their freedom-summer shock-and-awe GOP political demonstrations--now comes a wave of carefully orchestrated lawsuits against the Obama administration's HHS guidelines, which continues the shameless lying about contraception being tantamount to abortion--a Gallup Poll shows 82% of U.S. Catholics thinking contraception is morally acceptable.  And she adds, 

The poll appeared on the same day as headlines about Catholic Church leaders fighting President Obama’s attempt to get insurance coverage for contraception for women who work or go to college at Catholic institutions. The church insists it’s an argument about religious freedom, not birth control. But, really, it’s about birth control, and women’s lower caste in the church. It’s about conservative bishops targeting Democratic candidates who support contraception and abortion rights as a matter of public policy. And it’s about a church that is obsessed with sex in ways it shouldn’t be, and not obsessed with sex in ways it should be. 

The bishops and the Vatican care passionately about putting women in chastity belts. Yet they let unchaste priests run wild for decades, unconcerned about the generations of children who were violated and raped and passed around like communion wine.

And she's absolutely correct with this analysis, though the clerical old boys' club and its lay hangers-on in the centrist Catholic media commentariat aren't going to like the analysis one little bit.

Not when it comes out of the mouth of an uppity woman they want to convince us is too stupid to know any better, and who won't keep her mouth shut as she puts the coffee on the table for the men who claim exclusive right to teach, preach, and have voices.