Commentary on Evangelical Leader Mike Pence and His Role in Trump's Administration: "Bobblehead," "Willingness to Lie for Trump Knows No Bounds"

Rolando has pointed us in a rcent comment to some valuable analysis of the role being played by vice-president Mike Pence — a noted "Catholic evangelical" leader infamous for promoting "religious liberty" attacks on LGBTQ citizens of Indiana when he was governor there — in carrying water for Donald Trump as Trump seeks to stonewall investigations of his administration's Russian ties. Here's Richard Cohen's take on this noted "Catholic evangelical" leader:

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: "Devout Catholic for Donald Trump!" "I Don't Care What the Tradition Says or Does Not Say"

Meet Patsy, a self-described devout Catholic for Donald Trump! Patsy is also a self-described "frightened person" who supports Mr. Trump because, as she (or is it he?) admits, Mr. Trump plays to Patsy's fears. As Patsy repeatedly explains when she comments at discussion threads of National Catholic Reporter, she loves Mr. Trump because he will "destroy our enemies" (and here).

More on New Evangelization: José Antonio Pagola on Evangelization and Renunciation of Control and Domination

Fr. José Antonio Pagola

On Wednesday, I drew readers' attention to Bill Tammeus's recent article at National Catholic Reporter  asking whether the Catholic church will still be standing in a few generations.  I highlighted Tammeus's assertion (which draws on Richard Giannone's book Hidden) that 

[t]he church -- if it's to adapt and not disappear with the blacksmiths, manual typewriters and Kodachrome film -- will have to return to its center, Christ Jesus, and to its mission.

Young Catholics at Freiburg Vote on Benedict's Message: Reflections on Media Coverage of Papal Visit to Germany

Steve Schewe offers a fascinating tidbit of information in the thread following Michael O'Loughlin's recent posting at America's "In All Things" blog about media coverage of papal events such as Benedict's recent trip to Germany.  Steve notes that this Spiegel article reports on the reaction of "tens of thousands" of young people who came to Freiburg for the papal Mass in that beautiful devoutly Catholic south-German city.

World Youth Day: Listening to Alternative Voices

For those who want a corrective to the official party-line "evangelical Catholic" meme that National Catholic Reporter Vaticanologist John Allen has been seeding for some years now, Ken Briggs and Nicole Sotelo offer interesting alternative perspectives on World Youth Day in the same publication.  These contributions open the conversation to more voices than the authority-centered one Allen represents, though, of course, his views regarding Catholic this and that have always been given a prominence by NCR's editors not accorded to the views of their other columnists.

Another Take on Evangelical Catholicism: Fur-Licity Blog on How WYD Revolves Around Papal Monarchy

Here's Daisy's formulation at the wonderful Fur-licity blog of a point I tried to make yesterday, in my critique of what journalist John Allen mistakenly labels "evangelical" Catholicism:

John Allen on Evangelical Catholicism and World Youth Day: Tradition, Devotion, Authority

It's fascinating to try to follow the mental gymnastics, when Vatican cheerleader John Allen writes about "evangelical Catholicism."  He's on that topic again as World Youth Day occurs in Madrid.

Reflections on Rick Perry's Response Rally: Attack on the Love Ethic and Corporatist Puppet-Masters

I didn't watch Rick Perry's Response rally this weekend.  I took last week as a kind of retreat-discernment week, and as I did so, I deliberately weaned myself of all but the most essential news coverage.  

John Allen on Vatican Critics as Sharks Out for Blood: That's One Way of Looking at It

Followers of Vaticanologist (and, increasingly, Vatican head cheerleader) John Allen at National Catholic Reporter will find his latest screed at that site interesting, I think.  It compares critics of the Vatican to--get this--sharks.  Sharks circling in the water, who are now revved up by the blood they sense leaking out of the poor old Vatican as it encounters one hard knock after another in recent weeks.  

A Response to John Allen re: "Evangelical Catholicism" among Catholic Youth

 

One of the privileges (or is the proper word “temptations”?) of having a blog of one’s own is that one can make a statement even when another blog chooses not to permit that statement to be heard.  Or when, perhaps, some glitch in the transmission of a response to a blog posting causes that response not to appear on the thread discussing that posting.

I don’t know which of the preceding two options explains the fact that a response I made to a recent article of John Allen’s at the National Catholic Reporter website failed to appear on the thread discussing the article.  For charity’s sake, I’ll assume that, even though the website confirmed that my comment did go through and would be considered for posting, something happened to prevent its transmission to NCR.

Rock-Star Priests and Bogus Arguments about Gender Complementarity: The Post-Election State of the Churches

As a follow-up to my Saturday posting about the Republican captivity of American Catholicism, I want to notice a story that’s getting a lot of play in the media. It seems another ardent Republican priest has instructed his parishioners to go to confession before receiving communion, if they voted for Obama (www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-te.catholic30nov30,0,6113406.story).

The priest in question is Father Joseph Illo of St. Joseph church in Modesto, CA. In a 21 Nov. letter, he instructs parishioners who were among the “54 percent of Catholics who voted for a pro-abortion candidate” to go to confession before receiving communion, lest they commit sacrilege and lose their state of grace. Though Illo’s own bishop, Stephen Blaire of the Stockton diocese, disagrees with Illo’s one-issue approach to Catholic voting, Illo is adamant about his position.

As I think about this story and others similar to it, including that of Father Jay Scott Newman of Greenville, South Carolina (http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/11/weeping-in-gethsemane-american-catholic.html), I am convinced that we are witnessing the beginnings of a new resistance movement in American Catholicism. This will be a movement that will resist not only the new federal administration, but also the authority of bishops who do not toe the Republican-Catholic line.

And it will be led by rock-star priests who are self-conscious about cultivating an image as exemplary and uniquely qualified defenders of the faith in the 21st century. Look at the website of Father Illo’s parish and tell me that this is not what you see (www.stjmod.com/index2.html). Glitzy, smooth, image-driven and image-laden (and insubstantial in direct proportion to its reliance on airbrushed images): Father Illo is among a new breed of John Paul II priests who have worked hard to craft superstar media images for themselves, to position themselves as exemplars of a new evangelical Catholicism that stands stalwartly against the mainstream.

Look for clerical men of this ilk to become rising stars of a new movement of Catholic resistance to Obama’s administration—as well as of resistance to the growing number of American Catholics who want to break the alliance of the American Catholic church with the Republican party. Look too for fireworks if any bishops anywhere try to check the media-driven power of such clerics, as they work to return American Catholicism to the Republican fold.

Ironically, the movement of evangelical Catholicism that priests like Illo represent has stressed obedience as the central, the indispensable virtue of “serious” Catholics. Up to now, that is: up to now, as long as the tiller seemed permanently turned to the right, evangelical Catholics allied to the Republican party have for decades now used snippets of catechetical texts and papal documents to browbeat dissenting or questioning Catholics. They have demanded obedience from such Catholics. Or else. Or else leave the church. Or else stop receiving communion.

Now, they face a new situation, one in which this obedience game cuts against their own attempt to claim unilateral ownership of Catholicism, and as many bishops refuse to toe their right-wing political and ecclesial line, while a majority of American Catholics are clearly repudiating that political and ecclesial line. Look for a muting of that rhetoric of absolute, unquestioning obedience, now that the minority (and cultic) status of evangelical Catholicism has been made apparent in the last election.

In the final analysis, this is a rigid, purist movement that believes itself to be more Catholic than the pope, much like the Donatist heresy of the early church—more Catholic than a pope who has given communion to Protestants in a number of highly public ceremonies; more Catholic than a pope who refused (to the chagrin of Republican evangelical Catholics) to force the American bishops to issue instructions denying communion to Democratic politicians in the last two elections. This is a self-righteous Catholicism driven by anger at what it is against, as much by pastoral zeal.

And by money and power: as this opposition movement gathers strength in American Catholicism, look for bishops to handle it gingerly, and for Rome to treat it with kid gloves, even when it engages in blatant disobedience and dissent. Don’t look for the kind of rapid-fire response we’ve seen when Catholic leaders like Jeannine Gramick and Bob Nugent reached out to the gay community, or when Louise Lears attended a women’s ordination ceremony. Gramick and Nugent were silenced. Lears was excommunicated.*

Many bishops and the Vatican will endure a great deal of assault from Republican evangelical Catholics in the months ahead, for one reason and one reason alone: this group has money; it has wealthy and highly placed friends. It has power. It is well-funded by right-wing political donors who are not even Catholic, but who can call the shots in American Catholicism because of the influence and economic clout they carry.

Look for those glitzy, smooth images of rock-star priests of the Republican Catholic cult to be plastered everywhere in the media in coming days. There’s money behind those images, and money is what smiles out at you when you ponder the image.

Jesus? For me, not so much.

+ + + + +

And in the resistance and disobedience vein, notice what happens when the Vatican issues a mild statement to pastors to refrain from alienating gay and lesbian parishioners
(www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/11/29/Priests_told_how_to_be_welcoming_to_gays/UPI-47351227984704). "Remember that homophobic jokes and asides can be cruel and hurtful," the document reminds priests—an astonishing reminder to give anyone who has trained to do pastoral ministry and has been cleared for ordination.

And yet even that bland appeal for civility enrages Republican evangelical Catholics who want, one can only assume, to drive gay and lesbian Catholics out of the fold. The article to which I link in the preceding paragraph is on the United Press International (UPI) website. It is accompanied by comments from the faithful—vile, hateful, self-righteous comments for the most part.

In response to the appeal to priests not to tell fag-bashing jokes, one poster states,

Guess it is time for another Catholic Dogma lesson. Those who die unrepentant in mortal sin go to Hell. Last time I checked, homosexual activity is a mortal sin. Reaching out to homosexuals is laudatory if it is done in conformity with the mind of the Catholic Church. But to encourage the homosexual, to give tacit approval of his or her behavior places in peril his or her soul, as well as the soul of the ennabler [sic].

Pshaw. You don’t say. Time for another Catholic Dogma lesson: from an American Republican evangelical Catholic to the Vatican.

The posting elicits images of official sin-hounds posted at the door of every Catholic church to sniff out sin and keep sinners out. One wonders if the poster has thought about the price the church will pay when it starts that activity, targeting a select group of the faithful. Besides assuring that the church will quickly empty itself out, the activity sets a precedent in which justice demands that we warn all sinners, and not just a targeted minority, to repent and avoid hell.

And surely if the checklist used by the official hounders of sin at the church door is in line with traditional Catholic teaching about measuring sin, it will keep in mind that sins of the spirit are always graver sins than those of the flesh. And it will remember that, very high on the list of sins of the spirit is the sin of self-righteousness, which blinds us to our own need for conversion.

I wonder if the minority of true believers within the Republican evangelical Catholic fold have given much thought to what they are bringing on themselves as they mount their purge of gay sinners from the fold. Every purge of this sort ends up purging the purgers. If sinners are to be barred from churches, we may as well turn out the lights now, may we not?

+ + + + +

And for more in the vein of totally unconvincing and self-serving “logic,” I recommend the synopsis of a recent press conference of Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin on today’s Clerical Whispers blog (http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2008/11/marriage-is-linked-to-complimentarity.html). Archbishop Martin addresses the question of same-sex marriage.

According to Clerical Whispers, Archbishop hinges all teaching about marriage on the complementarity of the sexes. And on the “consistency” of teaching about marriage in all Christian churches. And on the “order” of creation that cannot be changed.

Archbishop Martin meets the obvious objection to his teaching that marriage is about a gender complementarity for the sake of procreation—namely, that not all marriages of persons of opposite genders end in biological procreation. At least, he meets it halfway and inconsistently, noting that, even when the marriage of persons of the opposite sex does not issue in children, these marriages are valid—unlike same-sex marriages. In such marriages, there is still “the intention of having children.”

Obviously, Archbishop Martin hasn’t thought very long or hard about these assertions. If he had done so, he would have had to recognize that the Catholic church marries opposite-sex couples, even when those couples can never have children—because of the physical condition of one or both spouses, because of the age of the wife, and so on.

Until the Catholic church begins refusing to marry a couple in which one or both partners is known to be infertile, or in which the woman is beyond child-bearing years, or in which there are other clear impediments to procreation, then this argument that marriage is all about a gender complementarity hinged on “the intention” to have children is . . . well, plain silly. And plainly deceitful.

One has to conclude that defending “traditional” marriage—marriage as it has always been, marriage as “all” churches believe it to be, marriage as creation instructs us to marry—is not really about defending traditional marriage at all. It’s about assuring that the church remains totally invested in the symbolism of a gender complementarity that privileges men and demeans women.

At the heart of this debate—and fueling the resistance of churches to same-sex marriage—is a belief that the entire order of creation and the social order cannot stand, if men are not on top of women. If the couple atop the wedding cake shift, if they are no longer little man and little woman but also comprise two women or two men, all will fall apart.

The homophobia institutionalized in the churches and in our cultures is all about male domination and resistance to women’s rights. The fight is not against gay marriage. It is for male domination. That is the universal created order that male churchmen (of both genders) are fighting to maintain, when they fight gay marriage.

Were it otherwise, would Catholics really be locking arms with Latter Day Saints to defend “traditional” marriage, marriage as it has “always” been? Vis-à-vis the theology of marriage and the history of marriage, it would be difficult to find two religious communions that are further apart, worlds apart. Marriage as it has always been, when the founders of Mormonism had multiple wives?

Catholic churchmen surely know this history. What binds them together with Mormon churchmen is a vested interest in preserving male control of the Word and of the world. Pure and simple. And of women’s bodies. I'm convinced that in the minds of churchmen, the need to control women trumps even concern for fetuses. Until church and society confront the ravenous need of men to control and dominate those they deem their inferiors, we will not make headway in the battle to respect the human rights of gay persons.

* Please see correction in the comments section below this posting. Louise Lears was "interdicted" rather than excommunicated. In the judgment of Archbishop Raymond Burke, who imposed that penalty on her, she was guilty of "grave and external violations against the Catholic faith or moral teaching." This resulted in her removal from her job and ministry, as well as her being barred from receiving the sacraments (which is what most Catholics commonly understand the term "excommunication" to mean). Her grave and external crime? She attended a women's ordination ceremony.

Evangelical Catholicism: Who's at the Table?

Today’s my nephew Patrick’s name day, so a celebration is in order. Steve and I cooked an enormous pot of stew yesterday—enough to feed armies. I would have written "Irish stew," but it’s not precisely that. Though it does contain lamb, onion, and potatoes (as well as carrots and celery, a bit of thyme and parsley), I’ve added whispers that would be out of place on a traditional Irish table: tomatoes and paprika, for instance, to enrich the sauce and give it deeper color.

We’ll enjoy the stew with my Southern-American Irish (and English, Scottish, Welsh) family’s version of soda bread, aka cornbread, along with cole slaw and a cake and pie my aunt Billie has baked for the occasion. My brother Philip, his wife Penny, and sons Luke, Colin, and Pat will be with us. Beautiful, brilliant Kate is, alas, pursuing her fortune in the big cities in which she’s interviewing for jobs—and may she be offered all of them!

The Internet brought me an unexpected St. Patrick’s gift early today: a clip on the Towleroad blog of Rosie O’Donnell talking to young Danny Noriega on the cruise to which she invited him after “American Idol” dumped him. People have strong feelings about Rosie, pro and con. Mine are decidedly pro

Seeing her talking to Danny Noriega today, no make-up on, face plain as an ungarnished potato, made me warm to her all the more. That, to me, is the face of the Irish at their best: free-handed, open-hearted, lacking in pretense, capable of subtle cutting irony or the grandly embellished verbal wallop that will knock the offending party off his feet. Even when Rosie says what is clearly outrageous, I admire her for the honesty that sears through every word she utters. I’ll take such honesty any day, over the mealy-mouthed liberalism that calculates every word to assure that the speaker ends up always on the winning side—about which more in a moment.

As I listen to James Galway’s heart-rending ballad of the perpetual exile that attracts the Irish imagination so powerfully—“Steal Away”—I’m thinking through an account I read this weekend of a recent session at which three luminaries of American Catholicism discussed evangelical Catholicism. Evangelical Catholicism is a phrase coined by reporter John Allen to describe the restorationist tendency of the last two popes: the assertive, in-your-face retrieval of a supposedly waning Catholic identity, which imagines the modern world as antithetical to Catholic identity, because its secularism and pluralism erode the distinctives of said identity.

I’m not buying: either the restorationism (which is not restoring a beleaguered Catholic identity, at all, not seeking to restore the tradition, but trying to revitalize the sectarian, highly clericalized ecclesiology of Trent and Vatican I), or the various justifications of it provided by people such as the Catholic gentlemen who recently discussed the rise of evangelical Catholicism at an American Catholic university.

Reading the discussion makes me itch: with unanswered questions; with discomfort about the unvarnished shilling for restorationism under the guise of objectivity that runs through not a few reportorial and theological presentations of evangelical Catholicism today. I’m itchy with thought about where really innovative and promising currents of new theology come from: the centers of power, or the margins?

The three distinguished Catholic gentlemen discussing evangelical Catholicism at an American Catholic university recently are, well, all gentlemen, all men. All married men. All heterosexual males. All white men.

Yet, in their comments about the rationale for evangelical Catholicism, several of these men apparently focused on the wild, free-wheeling pluralism that is threatening Catholic identity in American culture today! Three white, heterosexual, married (middle-class) American men talking about the unfettered pluralism that fritters away Catholic identity?

What pluralism, dare I ask? Where is that pluralism, when the official (officious) voices for Catholicism continue to be men—ostensibly straight men, white men?

Would the discussion of evangelical Catholicism have been any different if the wives of the gentlemen discoursing ponderously about Catholic identity had been on stage? What would women say about Catholic evangelicalism—if asked!—I wonder? What might they say about their lives of stirring pots and cleaning bathrooms, while their husbands pen weighty articles? What might women throughout history have said about Catholic identity and its retrieval—if asked?

And what might people of color say, if they were invited to the table? Or some of the people Catholic Worker houses feed each week? Or gay and lesbian Catholics?

It is really difficult to convince me that pluralism is eroding Catholic identity today—such that we need an assertive movement to retrieve that supposedly fragmenting identity—when the official spokespersons for Catholicism continue to be, overwhelmingly and without a whisper of apology, men, straight men, men who come from the power centers of world cultures.

Is the pluralism of which the clerical centers of the church and its spokesmen are so afraid primarily the pluralism that would result from inclusion of the voices of women—or males imagined as feminized, which is to say openly gay men? One surely has to wonder . . . .

I’m also impatient with the pretense to objectivity running through these analyses of evangelical Catholicism. I’m impatient because I have strong reason to suspect that the Catholic gentlemen who are supposedly describing what is merely happening—the triumph of the restored clericalized church—have something vested themselves in that triumph. They have their own male power vested in the clerical system of the church.

I question the objectivity of presentations of evangelical Catholicism such as the one that recently took place at a roundtable discussion at an American Catholic university. While the Pew Foundation’s report on the state of religion in America recently reported that a vast number of American Catholics—including many younger Catholics—are walking away from the church, some of the advocates of evangelical Catholicism who expounded on that theme at this recent workshop speak as if a majority of young American Catholics are buying into restorationist Catholicism today.

Really. Where? Who are those young American Catholics? And why do they not show up as a significant trend in the Pew report’s statistics? Is what is being objectively described really a fantasy of those describing it—the church they would like to see restored, in which male (straight male) power is never questioned in any way that threatens the dominance of that power?

In the interest of full disclosure, I do have to say that I am writing here out of my own experience—as a gay, and thus marginal, Catholic. In fact, I know one of the gentlemen who expounded at the workshop. When I came out of the closet in a public way as a gay theologian, I became curiously invisible to this gentleman. Where before we would greet each other at academic conferences, after my coming out, I found that when I walked past him, his eyes would suddenly glaze. I was no longer there.

To those in the center, I no doubt write and think as I do because I am bent on destroying.

From where I stand, I write and think as I do because I am intent on listening to voices that promise hope—hope for the truly new, for the novum, for tendencies in history that move toward the reign of God. I care deeply about the church. I want to see it thrive in the future. I want to see it capable of speaking a truly evangelical word to the world—a convincing, transformative, affirming, redemptive word.

The voices for which I am listening come not from the center, though, but from the margins. They are not the voices that continue to define (and represent) the center of American Catholicism in such roundtable discussions. They are not yet at the table. They have not been invited.