Robert P. Jones's Commentary on the "Historical Record of Lived Christianity in America," White Supremacy, and the Recent Sojourners Débacle

An important contribution (and subtext) of Robert P. Jones's new book White Too Long is its focus on how white Christianity is lived in the US — as opposed to what churches say about themselves or profess in their official statements. As Jones states,

The historical record of lived Christianity in America reveals that Christian theology and institutions have been the central cultural tent pole holding up the very idea of white supremacy (p. 6).

Footnote to Catholic Charities Story in Illinois: Peoria Group Continues Mission, Drops Catholic Designation

A quick footnote to a story I've discussed several times on this blog: as I've noted in a number of postings, the Catholic Charities organization in Illinois has been pressing for the "right" to receive lavish state funding for its programs, while refusing to adhere to state non-discrimination laws.  In particular, the organization wants to continue enjoying the "right" to discriminate against same-sex couples as it places adoptive children in homes.  

Still Going On: Catholic Charities in Houston under Federal Investigation for Failure to Report Sexual Abuse of Minor

And just when I think I can't read anything more stomach-churning about the cover-up of sexual abuse of minors in Catholic institutions, this story comes along:  the Houston Chronicle reported this past week that Catholic Charities of Houston-Galveston is under investigation by the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) for filing false reports about a case in which a boy at St. Michael's Home for Children was allegedly sexually assaulted repeatedly while under the home's care.  The assaults are said to have involved the sexual abuse of this resident by other minors in the home's care.

Tom Roberts on Illinois Catholic Charities Decision as Setback for Church: Critical Questions

Something I've been mulling over: I wonder if anyone besides me finds the headline that National Catholic Reporter editor Tom Roberts chose to give to this story more than a little troubling.  The story is about the recent ruling of Illinois judge John Schmidt that Catholic Charities has no right to a contract from the state of Illinois, when the organization wants to accept state funds while refusing to adhere to state non-discrimination laws.

Also in the News: Government Funding of Faith-Based Groups, Polarization of American Catholics

And in specifically religious news in the past week, here's what drew my attention:

Illinois Bishop Says State Is at War with Catholics

Bishop Daniel Jenky

 

And talk about ratcheting things up (I'm piggy-backing on a remark I just made in my post about Wayne Besen): this HuffPo article, which may be from AP feed (I don't see a source attribution) reports that Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria has just opined that the state of Illinois is "basically at war with the Catholic community."

Quote for Day: Wanda Sykes on Defense of Tracy Morgan's Homophobic Rant--"Break Me Off an Evolved Country"

Quote for the day: Wanda Sykes responding to Chris Rock's (initial: he's now changed his mind) defense of Tracy Morgan's recent homophobic rant in Nashville, after Rock tweeted, "I dont know about you, but I dont want to live in world where Tracy Morgan cant say foul inappropriate s--t":

Catholic Charities of Rockford Ends Foster Care Services, Claims Right to Discriminate in Name of Faith

Now that the state of Illinois recognizes the civil unions of same-sex couples--granting those couples rights enjoyed by heterosexual citizens, from which gay folks are otherwise excluded--Catholic officials in one Illinois diocese have chosen, as Catholic officials have done elsewhere when similar laws are enacted, to retaliate.  Yesterday, Catholic Charities of the diocese of Rockford announced it will end foster care services rather than be required to place children in homes headed by same-sex couples.

U.S. Catholic Bishops' Response to DOMA Decision: Continued Demands for the "Right" to Discriminate

Yesterday, I noted that the immediate response of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to the Obama administration's announcement that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and the administration cannot defend DOMA was this: the bishops argued that their religious freedom is curtailed by this decision.  Though the USCCB statement (which was made by the USCCB general counsel Anthony R. Picarello, Jr.) professes to decry discrimination, it precisely and explicitly rejects the definition of gay citizens as a group of citizens subject to systemic and unjust discrimination, who are therefore covered by the equal protection clause of the U.S. constitution.  

More Double Standards: D.C. Catholic Charities Implements New Hiring Standards

The double standard in how the Catholic church treats its heterosexual sinners and its gay ones grows ever grosser and more evident--even as right-wing Catholics try to deny that any discrimination exists.

A week or so ago, it was Archbishop Chaput of Denver excluding a child from a Catholic pre-school in his diocese, on the ground that the child's lesbian parents were contravening Catholic teaching.

Exclusionary Politics or Care for the Poor?: Reflections on the Eroding Moral Authority of the U.S. Catholic Bishops

I appreciate the discussion that followed my posting two days ago about the latest Catholic hall of shame—the list of Catholic dioceses across the U.S. (and in the Caribbean) that sent donations to the diocese of Portland, Maine, to attack gay human beings in Maine recently. Some readers have noted that if you look carefully at the list of donors to the Portland diocese which the diocese provided the Maine Ethics Commission on 23 October, you’ll see more bishops than those I listed contributing to this attack.

That’s correct, and I’m glad to have it pointed out. I’ve revised the list to try to include the names of any bishops I missed with my initial compilation.

Another issue that has surfaced in the discussion is the question of whether these dioceses took up special collections to support the Maine initiative. I don’t have any way of knowing for certain, but I suspect that the vast majority of the dioceses, if not all of them, contributing to the assault on their gay brothers and sisters in Maine used funds donated by parishioners in ordinary Sunday collections each week.

That’s to say that I suspect that most Catholics from all over the country whose donations to the church were used in this mean-spirited political initiative had no idea at all that when they were dropping their dollars into church collection baskets, they were funding a political attack on their gay sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. I suspect that most Catholics around the country imagined that these dollars were going to be used to support schools and church buildings, clothe and shelter the homeless, feed the hungry, tend to the sick, and so forth.

Faithful Catholics need to be critically aware that bishops have used and will continue to use money they donate to the church for purposes other than those for which they believe they’re giving. One of the ongoing revelations of the crisis of clerical sexual abuse in the Catholic church is that bishops have used—and continue to use—millions on millions of dollars donated by good Catholics who believe they are giving for all the reasons outlined in the previous paragraph but who find, instead, that their donations have been used to beat up survivors of clerical abuse who seek a hearing from the church, to hire aggressive lawyers to threaten survivors with hardball court battles, to pay off families and buy their silence, and to influence the media and criminal justice system to back off from investigation of the abuse crisis and its cover-up.

As many Catholics have become aware that their donations are being used for such purposes, they have been rightly outraged. As they ought to be. And they ought to be equally outraged, it seems to me, to discover that they are now contributing to a national Catholic political cause many of them do not support—to put gay folks in our place as second-class citizens and defective human beings, to show gay people that we do not count and ought never to expect to count, and to remove rights from us.

The American Catholic church needs to have a national conversation about its bishops’ continued use of church funds to pursue ends of which lay Catholics, the funding base of the church, do not approve. And about which they do not even know, since no laws require that the church provide comprehensive, accurate accounting of the monies it takes in and how it expends those monies.

Meanwhile, as the Catholic bishops find money to fund attacks on a vulnerable group of brothers and sisters, they continue to close churches and curb charitable programs in many of the dioceses that sent money to Maine in recent months. As Timothy Kincaid notes at Box Turtle Bulletin yesterday, on 16 July, the archdiocese of St. Louis ponied up $10,000 for the attack on gay citizens in Maine.

But on 22 June, less than a month before, the St. Louis archdiocese eliminated four positions at Catholic Charities, Missouri’s largest provider of social services. As it did so, the archdiocese announced that it had to cut jobs to downsize.

As Timothy Kincaid notes, “Choosing exclusionary politics over care for the poor does not yield itself to many PR successes.” Indeed. Nor should it, because it’s a lamentable betrayal of gospel values, one that radically undermines the attempt of the church to proclaim God’s love to the world. This kind of behavior makes the church’s proclamation of the gospel message sound exceedingly hollow.

Some defensive Catholics leading the charge in these aggressive political battles are trying to raise the tired old ghost of anti-Catholicism (see here, here, and here), with claims that the secular media and progressive organizations are piling on as the bishops make their voice heard in the public square—in a way that the media and progressive groups would never do if any religious group other than Catholics were under consideration. What’s baffling about that charge—beside its tiredness, and the expectation that it will find legs even now, as new revelations of the bishops’ complicity in covering up sexual abuse of children by priests continue to roll forth—is how oblivious it is to the primary reason that many Americans, including large numbers of Catholics, are disgusted with the behavior of the U.S. Catholic bishops, and unwilling to listen to them as moral teachers.

The bishops have, on their own and with no help from anyone else, done a very effective job of stirring up critical scrutiny of their activities and resistance to their role as moral standard-bearers. And it seems very unlikely to me that the willingness many bishops have just exhibited in the Maine case to place exclusionary politics over care of the poor is going to help their case.

It need not be anti-Catholic to note this. In fact, Catholics concerned about the future of their church ought to be intently concerned about the huge gap that has opened between what the church wants to teach, and how many of its leaders are now behaving—particularly in the political arena and with their handling of the abuse crisis, and particularly re: their gay brothers and sisters. It is very difficult to talk about respect for human rights and concern for a culture of respect for life, when those spouting such rhetoric target hurting people, to make their lives even more miserable.

It is exceedingly difficult to talk about love, salvation, being a sacramental sign of God in the world, and communion when everything one does in the case of a group of vulnerable human beings belies the core meaning of each of those terms. The bishops are doing a splendid job of undermining their authority as moral teachers. They need not turn to the old canard of the anti-Catholic media in an anti-Catholic culture to explain why they find their role as moral authorities questioned and contested.

And what the archdiocese of Washington, D.C., announced yesterday is not going to help the bishops regain the moral high road one little bit. The Catholic archdiocese of D.C. announced yesterday that if D.C. does not suspend its non-discrimination laws as it entertains a same-sex marriage bill, the archdiocese will be forced to shut down Catholic Charities.

Though the bill states that religious groups will not be required to perform or provide space for same-sex weddings, the archdiocese is concerned that it will be expected to offer same-sex partner benefits to Catholic employees if the bill passes. The Catholic archdiocese of Washington, D.C., is demanding that it have the right to discriminate, and it’s willing to play hardball politics with the lives of tens of thousands of D.C. citizens living on the economic edge to obtain that right.

Not a pretty picture. But one consistent with the bishops’ behavior in the case of Maine recently, and throughout the health care debate, in which the bishops have used abortion as a make-or-break issue to hold health care reform hostage, regardless of what a majority of Americans think or want in this matter.

It seems that the more the bishops erode their authority as moral teachers, the more intent they are about using vulnerable groups as political pawns in ugly games designed to bolster their faltering authority. And to issue threats and to try coercive tricks rather than to engage in respectful dialogue with those whom they seek to convince that Catholic principles deserve a hearing.

There is little wisdom and a shocking dearth of charity in this behavior. And the only way I can see it changing anytime soon is if ordinary Catholics everywhere demand better of church leaders by withholding donations and other support from the church until the bishops begin to act like something approaching good and faithful shepherds for a change.

Update, 11:35 A.M.: Interesting to read now what Andrew Sullivan posted on his Daily Dish blog around the time I was posting my piece above:

The hierarchy's growing fusion with fundamentalist Republican politics is becoming harder and harder to ignore. They can turn a blind eye to state-sanctioned torture, and to the suffering of those without healthcare, but when it comes to ensuring that gay couples are kept stigmatized or that non-Catholic women can't have access to abortion in a secular society, they come alive.

Andrew Sullivan notes that he's struck by the emphases of the American hierarchy in recent months. In the discussion of health care reform, there seems to be far more preoccupation with preventing those who obtain health coverage through a government plan from getting an abortion, even if they pay for it themselves, than on the core principles of Catholic teaching about health care as a human right.

Andrew's correct, I think. And in the process, the bishops are eroding their authority as moral teachers even more decisively than they've already eroded it, through their handling of the clerical sexual abuse crisis.

Concerned Women of America Are Concerned!

I've just listened to an audio clip of an interview with Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America. Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) interviewed her on 17 June (www.cbn.com).

Of course, she's on about gay marriage. To shore up her argument that legal acceptance of gay marriage may force people of faith to violate their religious beliefs, she cites the case of Catholic Charities in Boston.

As Ms. Wright notes, in March 2006, Catholic Charities of Boston closed its doors, rather than accede to legal requirements that it place adopted children with gay couples. Ms. Wright uses this case as an example of how churches and people of faith may increasingly be required to do what their faith forbids, if we permit gay marriage.

What Ms. Wright does not say--and what her organization must know, due to its high-profile position and its constant monitoring of the news--is significant. She does not note that in December 2005, the 42-member board of Catholic Charities in Boston voted unanimously to continue adoptive services to gay parents--services already being provided by Catholic Charities of Boston. Nor does she note that when the Massachusetts bishops drew a line in the sand in 2006 and forced Catholic Charities to stop providing adoption to gay parents, eight board members resigned in protest.

This is the worm in the apple of the argument of the religious right, when it comes to these purported clashes of religious freedom and legal requirements in a democratic society: some people of faith do not favor discrimination. Some people of faith are moved by their faith to build participatory democracies in which everyone has a place at the table.

It is not self-apparent to many people of faith that being a Christian requires demonization of gay human beings, discrimination against gay human beings, second-class citizenship for gay human beings. Or, for that matter, lying and cheating and employing banal legal tricks to foster hatred of gay human beings and to silence free, honest discourse about the lives of gay human beings.

On the day Ms. Wright appeared on CBN, Concerned Women announced a day of fasting and prayer to ask God to stop gay marriage . . . implying, of course, that they own God and that all believers stand solidly with them in their crusade to deny fundamental rights to gay persons (see www.protectmarriage.com/newsdetail.php?newsId=322). A California-based group calling itself Protect Marriage (which is endorsed by Concerned Women) has just announced a similar 40-day fast--see http://www.protectmarriage.com/newsdetail.php?newsId=322.

When I read about these fasts, I ask myself if these biblically-based groups that are so intent on following God's word literally have read Isaiah 58:6. Are they aware of the kind of fast their Lord approves, according to Isaiah?

Are they aware that the Jewish prophets lambasted those who thought they could turn God into a puppet--their puppet--through religious chicanery like fasts and rituals? Fasts and rituals disconnected from religious observance. Religious observance focused on living lives of mercy connected to justice.

The Isaiah text states, "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?"

When I hear of the concerns of Concerned Women of America, curiously enough, loosing the chains of injustice, setting the oppressed free, and breaking every yoke are not the first things that leap to my mind.

More's the pity. These Christians groups might convince us of the legitimacy of their crusade against gay human beings if they more transparently demonstrate a concern to be faithful to God's word and to fast in the way God chooses . . . . Somehow, when I hear the phrase "Concerned Women of America," I tend to think of laying yokes on folks' shoulders, rather than vice versa.

Compendium of Recent Catholic Anti-Gay Initiatives

The following chronicle captures significant events in what commentators are seeing as an unprecedented attempt of the Catholic church to influence government policies regarding LGBT persons as 2008 begins. The Vatican’s direct intervention in many of these instances represents a new development in how the Catholic church relates to the political sphere (at least from a 20^th-century perspective)—an attempt to control, rather than dialogue. At the very center of this renewed political activism on the part of the Catholic church is a persistent attempt to undermine initiatives to afford equal rights to gay and lesbian citizens of various nations.

I am offering this chronicle to assist anyone tracking these developments to see them as a single narrative, rather than disparate strands. This is a selective list. I am not even touching on some similar controversies or initiatives in the Catholic nations of the former Eastern bloc, where the church has recently become similarly belligerent.

This is a narrative that should concern LGBT persons and their allies everywhere, as well as anyone interested in safeguarding human rights and preventing violence.

30 Dec. 2007: The tenor for Vatican involvement in politics affecting the lives of LGBT people was set as 2007 ended. On 30 December, when Pope Benedict addressed the faithful in St. Peter’s Square for the noon Angelus on the feast of the Holy Family, he was simultaneously beamed to a large “pro-family” demonstration in Madrid organized by the Spanish bishops.

The demonstration, spearheaded by Cardinal Antonio María Rouco Varela of Madrid, was well-organized and carefully orchestrated. The European media reported that busloads were brought from all over Spain and Portugal. Reports on European websites noted that demonstrators also came from France, Germany, and Austria. Though the Madrid police reported the numbers of demonstrators at 150,000 to 200,000, several right-wing Catholic websites had the figure as high as 2 million.

Huge television screens were set up on which Benedict addressed the crowd in Spanish. Benedict told the crowd that Catholics must resolutely hold to the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman for life. At this comment, news reports say, the crowd roared approval. Rouco Varela informed the faithful gathered for this political rally that Spain's ordinance permitting gay marriage violates the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. Another speaker at the mass demonstration, Archbishop Agustin García-Gasco of Valencia, said that the current Spanish government’s policies re: family "effect the dissolution of democracy."

The Secretary of Spain's governing party, José Blanco, responded by describing the Madrid rally as an overt political action on the part of some Spanish Cardinals, designed to challenge the Socialist party in Spain's upcoming elections by signaling how "authentic" Catholics will cast their vote.

Blanco noted that the comments of the two Archbishops appealed to "false realities and data" (that is, they distorted the truth). He noted that, in addition to legalizing gay marriage, the current Spanish government has implemented a system of financial support for all couples who have babies. The facts, in other words, support the conclusion that this government which has accorded civil rights to gays is pro- rather than anti-family.

Blanco also zeroed in on Rouco Varela's astonishing claim that acceptance of gay marriage contradicts the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. Blanco asked Rouco Varela to corroborate the claim. To my knowledge, the Cardinal has not yet done so.

Another commentator, Gaspar Llamazares, Coordinator General of Spain's Izquierda Unida party, argued that the mass demonstration harmed the church, since it allowed the extreme conservative wing of the Spanish church to represent itself as the voice of Spanish Catholicism. Polls indicate that the large majority of Catholics in Spain favor gay marriage.

Following the rally, the Spanish prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, reiterated that gay marriage is supported by the "immense majority" of the Spanish people, adding that in Spain, everyone has rights. Following the Madrid demonstration, 150 grass-roots Catholic communities in Spain issued a statement accusing the bishops who orchestrated the event of ignoring the will of the vast majority of Spanish Catholics, who are strongly committed to human rights for all.

Both in the past year and recently, several Spanish bishops have sought to portray homosexuality as either pedophilia or mental illness. In 2007, Bishop Bernardo Álvarez of Tenerife equated homosexuality with pedophilia, a statement for which the Spanish Federation of Lesbians, Gays Transsexuals, and Bisexuals (FELGTB) has filed suit against Álvarez.

In January, 2008, Bishop Rafael Palmero of Orihuela-Alicante stated to the Valencia newspaper Levante, "Biology says that normally it's an illness. What happens is that in some case there might be a concrete situation that has another explanation and such, but normally no one wants to be a homosexual." Palermo added that "same sex marriage" is unnatural and wrong.

More information on these events is in postings I made on 3 Jan. and 10 Jan. to the National Catholic Reporter’s thread, “The Intrinsic Disorder Question Revisited (Again)” at http://ncrcafe.org/node/1337.

As the preceding account indicates, the Vatican and other senior Catholic officials appear to have made a deliberate decision, as the new year begins, to mount a strong attack on gay marriage (and gay rights in general). At its level of highest official leadership, the Catholic church seems intent on making the gay issue a central political-religious issue for this year.

1 Jan. 2008: On new year's day, Pope Benedict fulfilled a promise he made in mid-December, when he first issued the text of his new year's address, to make the so-called attack on the Christian model of the family the centerpiece of his new year's statement. In it, Benedict declares that "everything that serves to weaken the family based on the marriage of a man and woman ... constitutes an objective obstacle on the road to peace." Gay unions threaten world peace…. (again, for my take on this statement, see my 3 Jan. posting at NCR http://ncrcafe.org/node/1337).

7 Jan. 2008: As the Jesuits gathered in Rome to elect a new Father General, Cardinal Franc Rodé, head of the Vatican congregation that oversees religious communities, gave a homily at their opening Mass of the General Congregation. In the homily, he gave the Jesuits a dressing down that some commentators have found rather harsh: he spoke of his “sadness and anxiety” about aspects of Jesuit life today, and said, “I see a growing distancing from the hierarchy.” That these remarks had, in part, an anti-gay subtext became apparent in a letter Pope Benedict sent the Jesuits on 10 Jan.

10 Jan. 2008: Pope Benedict sent a message to the Jesuit General Congregation. The letter was made public on January 18. It calls on the Jesuits to renew their fidelity to the papacy. In particular, it addresses the Jesuits' position regarding certain "neuralgic points" in the dialogue between the church and contemporary culture. These include "the pastoral care of homosexual persons." (For my take, see a posting I made on 25 Jan. at NCR’s intrinsic disorder thread, http://ncrcafe.org/node/1337).

17 Jan. 2008: Italian Justice Minister Clemente Mastella resigned after he and his wife were implicated in a cash-for-favors scheme. According to the Italian newspaper La Stampa, before doing so, Mastella consulted with Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, head of the Italian bishops' conference. It was foreseen that Mastella’s resignation would bring down the center-left coalition government of Romano Prodi. Previously, Mastella had stated that his party would continue to support the Prodi government. However, at the time of his resignation, Mastella reneged on this promise and denounced Prodi. La Stampa reported that the Vatican had leaned on Mastella to change his mind in order to bring down Prodi, stating, “Prodi’s government dared to challenge the ecclesiastical hierarchy for the second time and this time it has had its hands burned.” Among the most neuralgic issues in the dealings of the Italian government with the Vatican is gay marriage. Last year the publication The Trumpet noted that the Vatican had been seeking to force Prodi to toe its line when it came to same-sex unions.

20 Jan. 2008: another mass demonstration was organized at a Sunday Angelus gathering in Rome, this time to show solidarity with the Pope, who has been portrayed as embattled following protests preceding a lecture he was scheduled to give at Rome’s La Sapienza Univeristy. Following the 20 Jan. demonostration, on 23 Jan., Christoph Prantner wrote in the Standard (Vienna) that European politics were being “retheologized” through Vatican intervention. Prantner interpreted papal involvement in the political life of Spain and Italy as an attempt to stage "a politicized Reconquista."

In a 21 Jan. article, the German paper Die Welt characterized the 10 Jan. Angelus demonstration as the "largest demonstration of solidarity with the Papacy since the Middle Ages." The following day, John Hooper of the English paper The Guardian recounted how the “long arm of the Vatican” had been reaching into current Italian politics. (For more on these stories, see my postings at a thread of the National Catholic Reporter café, http://ncrcafe.org/node/1542, 17 Jan. and 25 Jan.)

22 Jan. 2008: Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, whom Clement Mastella had consulted before he resigned, bringing down the Prodi government, gave an interview to Osservatore Romano. In it, he mounted a head-on attack against the Prodi government and called for Catholics to enter the public square courageously and promote "non-negotiable values" there. The phrase “non-negotiable values” echoes a statement made by Pope Benedict on 13 March 2007, in which he says that Catholics must not vote for laws that contradict the Catholic position issues where “non-negotiable values” are at stake. The statement specifically draws attention to gay marriage as such an issue.

23 Jan. 2008: Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver published an article in the diocesan newspaper the Register. In it, he attacks a bill before the Colorado General Assembly which, as he described it, would restrict the ability of charities sponsored by religious groups to hire and fire personnel on the basis of religious beliefs. Specifically, if passed, the bill will bar charitable agencies that receive state funding from discriminating on the basis of religion in personnel policies.

Though media treatment of this story (other than articles by National Catholic Reporter’s John Allen) has ignored the fact, Chaput’s resistance to the bill is fueled by resistance to gay rights. In April 2006, the Boston diocese shut down the adoption services of its Catholic Charities program after it failed to win an exemption from a state law that required adoption agencies receiving public funding to provide services to same-sex couples. A majority of board members of this chapter of Catholic Charities resigned in protest against the church’s refusal to accord equal rights to gay couples.

Around the same time, the Archdiocese of San Francisco announced that it was re-thinking its involvement in a similar adoption program. In February 2007, the English government announced that adoption agencies refusing to serve gay couples would not receive government support, resulting in the loss of over $9 million annually to Catholic charities in England.

24 Jan. 2008: Archbishop Paul-Josef Cordes, President of the Vatican’s main charitable office “Cor Unum,” called for clearer provisions in the Code of Canon Law to underscore the duty and authority of bishops to defend the Catholic identity of church-run charitable agencies. This clearly reflects the Catholic Charities controversy discussed above.

On the same day, Romano Prodi resigned. As he did so, Cardinal José Saraiva Martins stated, “What has happened is a result of a lack of dialogue with Catholics, which has penalized Catholic values in particular. Without this dialogue, the country cannot go forward.”

28 Jan 2008: The homophobic subtext of the Vatican attack on the Italian government became explicit when the news media noted that Senator Stefano Cusumano of the Christian Democratic Udeur Party, to which Clemente Mastella belongs, had been spat upon in the Italian Parliament and called a “faggot,” “a dirty queen,” and a “traitor” after he broke ranks with his small Catholic-oriented party and announced he would vote to defend Italian Premier Romano Prodi against a resolution aimed at bringing down his center-left government. (For more on the story, see my 1 Feb. comments on NCR’s thread at http://ncrcafe.org/node/1337).

Jan. 30: the Spanish Bishops’ Conference announced that Spanish voters should not back parties that support gay marriage or other social reforms on which the church frowns. Spain will go to the polls in March—an upcoming event that clearly has motivated much of the church’s attempt to put pressure on the existing government, which has permitted gay marriage.

2 Feb. 2008: Cardinal Franc Rodé published his 7 Jan. remarks critical of the Jesuits in L’Avvenire, reiterating his concerns that the Jesuits display fidelity to the Vatican.

On the same day, the Spanish ambassador to the Holy See, Francisco Vazquez, met with a Vatican official to express "perplexity and surprise" over the 1 Feb. Spanish bishops’ statement. In announcing this in Cordoba, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said that the church hierarchy in Spain is reverting to a "fundamentalist and neo-conservative" position, and that the church does not represent a majority of Spanish Catholics. Moratinos accused the bishops of "using terrorism politically to divide all Spaniards."