DISQUS

terenceweldon · 1 month ago

Three things I like here, Bill:

One is the reference to the "business" of saint making. The NCR post on saints this week observed that is is a very costly business, which is why so many of those reaching the finishing line in the canonization states are from religious orders - they are the only ones who can afford the vast costs.

I also like the listing of so many saints who were supposedly not good enough to be accepted, who persevered in their insistence that they too were part of the church, just as too (as queer Catholics ) must persevere and will ultimately be accepted.

And I laughed at the claim that the most important prerequisite is a penis - an indispensable piece of equipment which (in theory) must not be used.

Thanks.

WDL · 1 month ago

Terry, thanks. As you'll see if you've read my posting today, I did more with the penis nonsense today. To a degree many non-Catholics (or Catholics without strong backgrounds in Catholic theology) can't possibly imagine, Catholic sexual ethics is absolutely and totally--and ludicrously--obsessed with penises.

With what penises do, with where they've been, with how they fit. It's all about the penis and sperm, and women and women's sexuality are simply not on the radar screen, except insofar as we assume that women are passive, obedient receptacles for the penis and its sperm.

This ancient worldview lives on in the world today nowhere so completely as in Catholic moral theology re: sexuality.

khughes1963 · 1 month ago

Bill-From your mouth to God's ear! The bishops had an insert in this week's bulletin on health care reform encouraging people to write about the "sanctity of life" and "protection of conscience." The health care reform we are about to get is hardly any reform. I don't think we can get a single payer system overnight, but I think we could do a lot more than we are doing without the dishonesty and hysteria. There will still be many uninsured and underinsured people out there. I am also getting tired of seeing bishops act as GOP ward heelers.

Terence-great comments-they are good food for thought. The more change comes, the more likely people are to resist it. Witness the backlash to the civil rights, gay rights and feminist movements. It brings to mind my recent reading of Karen Armstrong's "The Case for God," in which she notes that fundamentalisms of any religion are based in a reaction to modernity.

WDL · 1 month ago

Kathy, great phrase: the bishops as GOP ward heelers.

And leading the list are Burke, the unofficial pope of the Republican Catholic church, and Chaput, along with Nickless in South Dakota, some of the Texas bishops, Jugis in Charlotte, and those Kansas City folks.

What a generation of bishops. I remember a day, sadly, when many bishops were men of intellect and sound theological education with pastoral hearts. That day is gone with the wind now.

khughes1963 · 1 month ago

I think the current crop of bishops want to believe we Catholics are going to return to the externalist piety and pray, pay and obey mentality of the pre-Vatican II era (I myself am a product of the post-Vatican II era) in which lay folk deferred to their bishops, and weren't well educated in theological or secular subjects. I know fellow Catholics who fall into this sort of thinking, but in the last 20 years, I've had to do a lot of thinking and reevaluation of how I've felt with the sex abuse issues, the return to pre-Vatican II mindsets, and ignoring the learned wisdom of the laity. Burke and others of his mindset want to cause a schism and force progressive-minded Catholics from the Church. I don't want that to happen. The interesting thing is what's happened to some Catholics like my parents-who are cradle Catholics. They don't have any real respect for the Church leadership, especially in the United States, and don't want to return to the old ways. I also don't think they will like the literalist translation of the new GIRM either.

WDL · 1 month ago

I think my question now, Kathy, is how folks can continue hanging on, with Burke and his allies seemingly in the ascendancy. Things seem very dismal these days for those of us who thinks the church has something to say to culture other than no.

DoubtingThomas · 1 month ago

Honestly, I think most of the bishops are in your corner on this one. The only reason they are even saying anything about "conscience" and "sanctity of life" in my opinion is because they are getting so much from us for saying nothing. The attempts to get the faithful to speak out against abortion funding in the healthcare bill seem half-hearted at best.

DoubtingThomas · 1 month ago

How can the Republican party be the party of white men when the chairman of the national committee is a black man?

WDL · 1 month ago

From Clarence Thomas forward, there's been a strategy in the Republican party of co-opting some people of color, to make it appear that the Republican party is not what it is since Nixon's Southern campaign and the nasty Willie Horton ads--the party of reactionary white men.

Reactionary groups can always find loose-cannon figures in the groups they oppress, who will toe the party line of the oppressor and do his bidding.