Stupak and the bishops, the bishops and me

Taking orders from the priests is exactly what JFK had to promise he wouldn’t do when he ran for President.

Several Democrats, including Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pennsylvania, said they are in touch with their Catholic bishops back home. Altmire said he must have the approval of his bishop in Pittsburgh before he can vote yes.

That’s from CNN by way of Ed Brayton by way of Mike the Mad Biologist.  And Altmire was talking about a health care reform bill that hadn’t been amended by Stupak-Pitts yet.  He was planning to ask his bishop for permission to vote to expand health care to the poor and protect the sick from losing it.

Any one from Altmire’s district, PA-4, want to call his office and find out which other of his votes he’s asked his bishop to give him permission for?

You would think such a grovelingly good Catholic like Altmire would already know the Church’s views on leaving the poor and the unfortunate to go suff.

But it turns out Altmire simply knows what truly matters to the bishops.

Long time readers know I have a longstanding grudge against the church.  I don’t think I’ve ever written a post explaining why in detail.  I’m not going to do that now.  Don’t have the time or the heart this morning.  But here’s the gist.

I was raised Catholic but my parents didn’t have to work that hard to do it.  I was devout all on my own initiative.  I used to use my allowance money to buy statues of saints.  I had a shrine to Mary on my dresser that I decorated with flowers every May.  I was an altar boy and proud of it.  I was prouder still when I earned my Parvuli Dei medal in Cub Scouts.  I still have it.  I’m still proud of it.  Over time I drifted away from the Church.  But when I married a good Catholic girl I came back, not with any of the old enthusiasm or even faith, but with the best intentions.  I promised that we would raise our kids Catholic and to that end we sent them off to start school at our parish’s elementary school.

Then our oldest began to have his troubles.

We needed help and didn’t know where to turn.

Our pastor came to our aid.

He threw our kid out of the school.

We called the bishop’s office to complain and ask for the bishop’s help.

The priest we talked to lied to us.

Repeatedly.

When I finally called him on his lies, he told me my wife and I were bad parents.

I told him to go to hell.

And those are the last sincere words I’ve said to a priest since.

Actually, those are practically the last words I’ve said to a priest at all.  I avoid they’re company as much as I can.

Shortly after this, though, the news began to come out about the abuse.

And the cover-up of the abuse.

And the justifications and excuses for it!

It wasn’t the fault of the pederasts themselves.  It was the fault of seductive pubescent boys who lured the priests into sin with their charms.  And if any priests were at fault, well, that’s because they were homosexuals.  It was all the gays’ doing, so let’s bounce them from the church, because if we ban open homosexuals from the priesthood then no lying closet cases are going to sneak in in their place, are they?

Now, just about every priest I served mass when I was an altar boy had turned in his collar and chalice by the time I graduated from high school, and they all got married very shortly after they left the priesthood.  I always thought that they’d left because they’d decided they wanted families and the changing times allowed them to make that decision without the old stigmas, guilts, and fears.

But, knowing how far back the scandal goes and how widespread it was, I wonder how many of them were fleeing in disgust.

I wish a few of them had stayed around for a while to call the cops, although I expect that if Father C had stayed he’d have been arrested himself, for “inexplicably” beating some other priests bloody.

But they gave up their vocations, and so who was left?  Old men, saints, and those who found a life of celibacy and secrecy congenial.  The old men died off.  There are never enough saints on hand when you need them.  Which means it was from the third group that the current crop of bishops has been recruited.

In other words, Congressman Altmire and his good Catholic like are taking their orders from men who either covered up for the molesters---actively or by turning a blind eye---or who were part of the gang themselves.

This is why I can’t sit in a Catholic church without having to fight the urge to hurl a missal at the first grown man in a dress who dares put a foot on the altar.  And I don’t understand how anyone else is able to sit there without  wanting to rush the pulpit with a horsewhip, let alone stay put quietly in their pews, paying attention and saying their prayers as if that’s still Bing Crosby or Pat O’Brien up there.

No still practicing Catholic I’ve talked to about it has been able to make me understand.  They tell me they don’t go to mass for the priest.  They’re there for Jesus and God.   I have trouble with this because one of the things I discovered when the Church and I parted ways was that I didn’t believe in God anymore.  I only thought I did.  Turned out my faith was a part of the habit of being a Catholic and once I broke the habit I was through with all of went with it.  I figured I was like an ex-smoker who’d only thought he liked the taste of tobacco and realizes now that he’s quit that he doesn’t miss it in the least.

But besides that, there’s this.  Even if you go to mass for Jesus’ sake, to hear His words and to talk to Him, you’re expected to do it by going through the priest.  He’s Jesus’ representative on the altar.  It’s why he can work the transubstantiation magic.  It’s why he can forgive you your sins…or not forgive them, if he sees fit not to.  It also happens to be part of the justification for not allowing women into the priesthood.  Jesus was a man so no woman can stand in for him.  We can accept that a piece of stale bread is God’s flesh, but we can’t be expected to believe a woman can be Jesus’ stand-in.  This is an idea it took the Church over 400 years to come up with, by the way.  The early Church let women be priests and allowed all its priests to marry.

Everybody knows the Church’s stands on abortion and gay marriage and women in the priesthood.  What’s easy to forget is that on a slew of other issues, the Church is supposedly on the side of the Progressive angels---the death penalty, immigration, the environment, health care!

The reason it’s easy to forget is that the bishops seem to forget it themselves.  How many Catholic Congressmen who voted for Stupak but against the final bill are going to hear more than a mild tsk tsk between holes on the golf course?

If they hear that much?

In 2004, a number of bishops and priests announced they would deny Communion to the good church-going Catholic, John Kerry, because of his pro-choice positions.  This is in an election in which he was running against a man who lied us into an unnecessary war, a war Pope John Paul II spoke out against, and whose administration turned the US into a torture state, and whose economic policies were not just a disaster for the poor but an active assault upon the poor and the middle class.  And although President Bush himself was somewhat actually compassionately conservative on immigration reform, his party was rabidly xenophobic and racist on the matter.  Top this off with the fact that as governor of Texas Bush presided over a record number of executions and made fun of a woman on death row who was asking for clemency.

Of course, the bishops couldn’t deny Bush Communion because he wasn’t Catholic and he didn’t go to church anyway.  But they could have spoken out, and they could have left Kerry alone instead of setting out to show him up as a candidate for excommunication in the minds of Catholic voters.

They could have, if those other issues mattered to them as much as abortion.

The bishops might defend themselves on the grounds that when it comes to articles of faith the catechism is not a Chinese menu.  There’s no choosing from Column A and Column B.  There’s one column and you have to eat everything the Church puts on your plate.

By the way, as far as I know, Kerry was able to take communion whenever he wanted, so it wasn’t all the bishops and all the priests.  But when have you ever heard that a prominent pro-death penalty, pro-torture, anti-immigrant, screw the poor to enrich the already rich Catholic Republican or conservative Democrat was threatened with being denied communion?

For that matter, have you heard of a prominent Pro-Choice Republican getting threatened like that?

Liberal-minded bishops and priests are probably more inclined to keep criticisms of specific politicians and partisan positions to themselves, partly because, I suspect, they have good philosophical and practical objections to blurring the lines between church and state, but partly because they know that if they don’t watch it Rome will come down on them, hard.

Here in New York State, back in the late 1980s and early 90s, our archbishop, Cardinal John J. O’Connor, hated our governor, Mario Cuomo.  It was probably more personal than political, but if you went by what O’Connor said the issue between them was abortion.  Cuomo was decidedly pro-choice.  But worse from Churchman’s point of view, Cuomo had articulated a pro-choice position that was both Catholic and American, which was that Catholics themselves should not choose to have abortions, they had no business trying to impose on non-Catholics what was purely an article of current Church teaching.  Want to make an anti-abortion Catholic’s head spin?  Remind them that the Church used to permit abortions until “quickening,” which is to say the Church’s position used to be the same as current US law. 

At any rate, O’Connor openly despised Cuomo and wanted to see him gone from the governor’s mansion and not to move onto the White House, as it was expected Cuomo would do.  O’Connor got his wish finally in 1994 when Cuomo was defeated for re-election by George Pataki.

But Mario Cuomo had been all that stood in the way of New York’s reinstitution of the death penalty.  The state legislature would pass it just about every session and Cuomo would veto it.  Which should have earned him lots of points with the Church.

George Pataki was pro-death penalty and he’d hardly settled into the governor’s chair when the legislature passed the death penalty again and he happily signed it into law.

George Pataki’s Catholic.

He was also pro-choice.

Which means that here in New York women still had access to abortions while we started putting people on Death Row.

I never got the sense O’Connor was bothered by the irony.  But then I never got the sense he was bothered by the death penalty.

At the time I thought this was just O’Connor being O’Connor.  There were still some relatively liberal bishops who took the Church’s whole catechism seriously.  But John Paul II went to work taking care of that with the aid and advice of the cardinal who is now Pope Benedict XVI.

The catechism isn’t a Chinese menu, but under John Paul and Benedict it’s become a two-item menu with a salad bar.  You take the anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage without complaint, but you’re free to help yourself to the other stuff, have as much as you like and if that’s none, then that’s fine with Rome.

But apparently this only applies to the United States.  In Central and South America, in Asia and Africa, eradicating poverty and taking care of the poor and the sick are still among the, ahem, cardinal virtues.  But I’d guess this is because in those places the priests and the politicians toe the line on abortion and gay rights and the proper role and place for women in the Church hierarchy. 

Andrew Sullivan thinks Stupak-Pitts proves that for the Church it’s all about abortion.  Other people might point to what’s going in on Washington DC and say that proves that it’s abortion and gay rights.

I would add that the Pope’s recent invitation to Anglican and Episcopalian clerics who can’t tolerate the idea of women and gay colleagues to trade in their Book of Common Prayer for rosaries, shake the dust of Canterbury from their sandals and join up with Rome shows that it’s gays and uppity women.

It’s probably all three, but all three have this in common, and it’s not just fear of sex.  It’s obedience.

This is what it’s intended behind the talk of a smaller, purer church.  A church full of the unquestioningly obedient.  An American church full of the unquestioningly obedient.  Rome doesn’t need there to be a US Congress full of Jason Altmires.  It just wants the pews full of them. 

It wants no more parishoners who’ll tell a priest go to hell, literally or figuratively by rejecting the Church’s teachings, the ones the church really cares about, that is.

It wants none who are inclined to distrust the priests and the bishops and ask what’s going on behind the closed doors of the rectories.

It wants Catholics who will go down on their knees, not only to pray but to kiss the bishops’ rings.

Then maybe we can talk about doing for the least of our brethren.

________________

From the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, the text of JFK’s Address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association.  You can also listen to the speech here.

And here’s the text of a great speech Mario Cuomo delivered at the University of Notre Dame in 1984, Religious Belief and Public Morality: A Catholic Governor’s Perspective.

Comments

[PurpleGirl]

Wow... I think I need to reread it to fully digest it but I appreciate your effort here and wanted you to know that.

(I'm a lapsed RC too, although my reasons are somewhat different. Starting to not believe came from seeing contradictions in what they were teaching me and what I was learning from science and literature.)

[Linkmeister]

I was raised Catholic and left the Church when I was eighteen, not from high-minded ideals but because when I was in college I felt I had better things to do on Sunday morning. I didn't hold any particular animosity toward the Church at the time; in fact, I thought it was moving the right way after Vatican II.

I have now reached the stage of active loathing toward the institution. Its absolutism in the face of common sense disturbs me. Its hiding of criminal behavior disgusts me. Its disdain for women and their health offends me. And finally, its insistence on inserting itself into governmental affairs in a country which has as one of its founding principles a separation between church and state appalls me.

Then there's this. In Poland the Church wants to criminalize in-vitro fertilization. Why? Abortion, of course.

[Susie from Philly]

Bravo. There were a lot of good things about my Catholic education, but as an adult, there are too many things I just can't swallow - and I think you listed them all.

[Kathleen Maher]

It's gotta be awful when you turn to authorities for guidance and they lie to you. Worse, if those same authorities must oversee your ritual act of devotion, no matter what you believe. Everyone's entitled to his or her belief or disbelief. Free to practice a religion or not practice it.
But if a religious institution has repeatedly hurt, lied, and dismissed you; if it's utterly destroyed countless lives, finding a way to respect someone who chooses not to worry about such matters, can present you with a huge spiritual challenge--just to let someone else belong to a faith that's fomented hatred and violence requires great patience and tolerance.
So if you are patient and tolerant and respectful of others' choices, congratulate yourself. And tell the obedient believers to be grateful for your big heart. Or else try asking nicely. Where's the gratitude?
(It's always backfired terribly when I've asked. But, you know, people don't really like me much.)

[Ken Muldrew]

A very nice piece of writing, Lance. If I might make a small nitpick, when you write, "But they gave up their vocations, and so who was left? Old men, saints, and those who found a life of celibacy and secrecy congenial.", you are being awfully naive (willfully so?). Bureaucracy just doesn't work that way (and if the Catholic Church is catholic about anything, it is bureaucracy). Plenty of the miscreants were left; they just had the leverage and asskissing ability to skate through.

And it goes without saying that the American problems were neither new nor were they even remotely as corrupt as, for example, the renaissance Popes and their minions. But you know all that. The personal is always more painful, and the Church's betrayal toward your son is about as personal as it can get.

The Church derives its power because people need to have hope when observation and rational analysis provide nothing but despair. When it turns its back on people who are in such a dire situation, it lays waste to the roots that give it life. When reminded that the tree will die if the roots are trampled, the Priests call out, "Who cares, so long as there are acorns for us to feed upon".

But the Fates of human society - bureaucratic inertia - make it nearly impossible to change. Impossible to imitate, too, because the history - the tradition - is what allows people to find comfort in the Church when they should be without hope, by any reasonable measure. So, no Chinese menu, at least not for the rank and file. It's different for those with power, which is why some individuals seek power with such unbridled ambition. And that's really the point of a bureaucracy, to trap people in the squirrel-cage of career advancement. "All in the game", as Omar Little would have said (despite being outside of the game himself).

The least of our Brethren just aren't trying hard enough.

[sfmike]

I find myself wanting to go to my local San Francisco cathedral every Sunday, after reading yet one more horrifying example of the perfidy of the Catholic Church, carryig a sign stating, "Keep your noses out of my sex life and your dicks out out of our children, you fucking monsters," but I haven't done so yet. I think it may soon be necessary, however. The institution at this late moment in its history has become seriously evil and watching it in silence has become impossible.

[JoeC]

Hi Lance,

Thanks for this post and more generally, this blog. I've been reading it regularly for a while now, and always enjoy it. As for this post, my feelings exactly, and sorry for what you went through with your son.

It occurs to me that maybe the Church harps on abortion so much is because it's one of the only tools they have left with which they can exert leverage (also gay marriage, but who knows how much longer that will last). Other areas that the Church used to weigh in on, people simply don't listen to them anymore.

[Ed McGaa, Eagle Man]

(Lance - I wrote a personal E-Mail earlier and did not see that we could have replied directly to a commentary).
How revealing, very insightful with Truth. The poor, ignorant, remaining 'Devouts'. I avoid my CC college reunions mainly because of those 'Devouts' who must always -'out-Catholic' one another. "Father said mass at our house"- types. Pro-Life stickers, bigotry & Republican Hate. I am a minority (enrolled tribal Sioux) and our Spiritual stance on Gays is; 'that's how Creator 'made em!'. All Creation you do not ridicule- you respect. Fairly simple, uncomplicated (by Man) philosophy. J. Falwell is now learning that in the Beyond (Gay folks up there are probably not giving him a friendly reception). The Jesuits 'owned' our Sioux reservations but now-nevermore. Our Mother Earth respecting Spirituality (not a man contolled, man-spawned Religion/Spirituality) is sweeping our reservations. We have had it with the white man's dishonest, disrespectful, scheming, manipulating, hypocritical organized, and controlling Religions. So refreshing that a White Man (you) can expose the major culprit so accurately.

[Tim McGovern]

Thanks Lance, much love for the post.

I was raised Lutheran, and have nothing but love for them, atheist though I may be, so I don't have quite the same personal loathing for organized religion. But I have read Susan Jacoby's Freethinkers, on the advice of one Kurt Vonnegut Jr., so I totally agree with all of your post. My father, who was raised Catholic, and had me baptised that way, still shuts out at least part of what you say, but I will show him this and hope something clicks.

On a more personal level when it comes to actual dealings with the Catholic Church, I come from a very Catholic Irish-Italian neighborhood in a suburb of Philadelphia, and I know exactly what you said about the priest being one of the power hungry types. I'm part of the election board in my ward (6-2), and, until 2008, our polling place was at the local Catholic church/school.

That is, until the new priest came in, and yelled so much about us having the gall to put a few more signs for Obama up in front than McCain that we had to move the spot (after the elections, for the 09 primaries) to a BAPTIST church.

Yes. And their pastor has been nothing but wonderful to us. With much better lighting and cleaner bathrooms, as well. Our candidate for council was also a baptist minister, and, though he lost, is still a kind, caring guy.

Did I mention that this same new priest has a few dozen crosses up on the church's front lawn, signifying, as the sign says, "each cross represents 1 million dead babies - err, abortions since Roe v Wade"? Well, there ya go.

I dunno if you're a fan of standup comedy Lance, but this post reminded me of Eddie Izzard's (the transvestite British dude, he was on that show with Minnie Driver on FX) bit about the Church of England, and how he couldn't get any good material out of it on account that there was no real oppression. I know it's somewhere in this 30 min special, so here's the youtube link for the 1st bit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79UpF_PoIqE

[Charles]

Substitute "Iran" for "Catholic Church" and people would be calling for Obama's head. Why is this acceptable to so many people?

[Susie from Philly]

Tim, sounds like you live in Havertown. :>

I do have some compassion for the older nuns and priests because so many of them were "given" to the Church by their parents. It was very common in those days that the oldest boy and girl were expected to enter religious orders, and I expect the repressed rage had something to do with some of the really crazy behavior.

[Zencomix]

Sinead O'Connor was vilified for ripping up a photo of the Pope on Saturday Night Live, and the priests' abuse continued. When the shit finally hit the fan in Boston, Cardinal Law was ousted, only to be promoted to Rome. Heckuva job, Bernie!

[katie]

I'll totally get flamed for this, but if you substitute the word "Catholic" with "Muslim" or "Jewish" this article would be considered politically incorrect. Somehow it's ok to assume all Catholics' motives and judge them for it, but other religions are hands off.

Don't get me wrong, I completely disagree with the hierarchy of the Catholic Church on their recent attempts at blurring the line between Church and State. I think the leaders of the Church and politicians that wait for their permission are in the wrong. But spreading this kind of hatred for people of a particular religion isn't very liberal or progressive.

Religious intolerance is just as detrimental to our society as religious interference in government. You're not doing any favors to the world by telling Catholics what they believe.

[twitter.com/Chazbet]

I had a similar experience as yours of intense childhood piety. It reminds me of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as well, telling the story about taking your faith more seriously than your parents even realize, before growing aware of the hypocrisy. Your anger is truly just, and if you no longer believe, you don't believe.

However, I keep practicing, despite doubt, anger, and frequent disgust, because I don't want those who

"...talk of a smaller, purer church. A church full of the unquestioningly obedient."

to win. The Church founded by Jesus is better than the men who currently misrule it.

[hamletta]

katie, I'm late to the party, but I don't see anything here against rank-and-file Catholics, only the hierarchy, which has been proven in various courts of law to be corrupt.

Your argument is specious.

Carrying on, I, too, grew up Lutheran, because my maternal granfather ran screaming from the Catholic church as soon as he left home at 16, when he lied about his age to fight in WWI.

My dad's childhood tenure in Catholic schools made him such a virulent atheist that I wasn't baptized till I was 7.

As far as I know, his aversion was formed more by ruler-wielding nuns than pervy priests.

Whatever, I'm grateful that I was able to go back to my church after 30 years, and we're still family.

The conservatives in my church are pissed off, but the decision to accept partnered gay clergy wasn't handed down from on high, it was voted on by clergy and trusted laymen.

The main Krazy Kristian steeplejacking organization mostly leaves us alone, for some reason.