In a speech delivered Wednesday (Oct. 19) at the University of Notre Dame, Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput also suggested that many prominent Catholics are so weak in their faith that they ought to leave the church.
Chaput singled out Democrats such as Vice President Joe Biden and vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine for special criticism, linking them to the concept of a "silent apostasy" coined by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and saying Catholics who do not champion the truth of church teaching are cowards.
Then Gibson goes on to report that Chaput stated he'd like to see people who do not accept church teaching purged from his holier, purer, smaller church. Letting them be included, carried on the Catholic roster as bona fide Catholics, is a "form of lying," Chaput maintained.
Here's an important thing for people to think about as these glib, mendacious arguments are put forth by people like "culture-warrior" bishops of the ilk of Chaput, who are essentially hacks for a single political party: over 90% of heterosexually married Catholics use contraceptives. They have done so for a long time. We've known this for decades now.
But those Catholics are never purged from the holy and pure church. They are never driven from the church, never fired in Catholic institutions for disobeying magisterial teaching, never told that they are impure, sinful Catholics living a lie. The Catholic bishops do not target the vast majority of their flock (heterosexual Catholics) who repudiate magisterial teaching about sexual ethics. They cannot do so. They'd drive away almost the entire church, along with its precious donor base, if they did so.
Instead, they focus their sermons about sin and evil and making the church more pure on a tiny, embattled minority of human beings — gay* people. They say that gay marriage threatens the very foundations of marriage, and they throw millions of dollars into campaigns to attack gay people and their rights, while divorce is the number one threat to the institution of marriage, and they do nothing at all to campaign to have divorce outlawed (or to attack and fire employees of Catholic institutions who are divorced and remarried).
In the end, it's all about prejudice and discrimation against a targeted minority group. And it's about getting into bed with the political party that assists in that unholy crusade. In the case of Chaput and many of his brother bishops, it's about shilling for the Republican party as the party of morality and "family values" — even when that party puts forth as its presidential candidate Donald Trump.
It is not about Jesus and his gospel.
*Gay = LGBTQI.
The headscratcher illustration is from The Evening Ledger (Philadelphia, May 4, 1916), and was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Johnny Automatic of Open Clip Art Library.
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