Catholic Ping - let me know if you want on/off this list
Posted on 05/18/2004 8:13:47 AM PDT by Polycarp IV
Bishops ignore their burning house
12:01 AM CDT on Tuesday, May 18, 2004
By ROD DREHER / The Dallas Morning News
On the road this weekend, I went to Sunday Mass at a Catholic parish outside the Dallas diocese. The priest did something I've only seen happen once before in the 11 years I've been a Catholic: He spoke from the pulpit against abortion and the politicians who support it.
This is going to shock non-Catholics, who seem to think that we faithful papists hear nothing but lectures on abortion and sexual morality from our priests. It's not true. Except for illness, I've not missed a single Sunday Mass since I entered the church in 1993. Though I've lived in major East Coast sees, as well as Dallas, I have yet to hear a sermon explaining, or even proclaiming, church teaching on any aspect of human sexuality – save for abortion, which I'd last heard preached on in, no kidding, 1995.
After this Sunday's Mass, I thanked the priest for his words, and told him I wanted to praise him in print. He kindly asked me not to, explaining that it could only get him in trouble with his bishop. I understood. I've known good priests to be punished by their bishops for teaching the Catholic faith, but no priests punished for failing to do so.
This is the context in which the move by some Catholic bishops to deny communion to pro-choice politicians – and now, according to the bishop of Colorado Springs, to Catholics who vote for them – should be understood.
Look, I believe that lawmakers who vote for legalized abortion have directly participated in a form of murder, and should be denied communion, which the church teaches is literally the Body of Christ. But I also believe it's folly, and even grandstanding for a Vatican audience, for the American bishops to get on their high horse about this issue right now.
The child sex abuse scandal and the evacuation of moral authority it caused is part of it, but there's a more fundamental problem here: For an entire generation, Catholics in this country have not been taught the basics of the faith.
In a powerful essay published in The Wanderer, a conservative Catholic newspaper, Father Joseph F. Wilson writes that this communion controversy is taking place as if the church in America has clearly and forcefully taught its people what the Eucharist is, and why abortion is so morally repugnant. Nonsense, says the Brooklyn priest, who argues that parishes have fed their people a steady diet of noncontroversial, content-free "mommy religion" for so long that nobody should be surprised that Catholics don't understand what the church teaches, and why.
"They may come to Mass, but they are, sadly, never really fed, never really formed in the Catholic faith," the priest says. "And their attitudes and values morph into what we would expect of amiable pagans."
"And as a church," he concludes, "we have done this to ourselves."
This is exactly correct. The episcopal crusade for electoral pro-life purity brings to mind a principal overseeing a failing high school, who marches into a classroom demanding that illiterate children who have been taught by incompetents suddenly read a passage from Shakespeare.
That's something 10th-graders should be able to do. But if the students come from a system where making them feel good about themselves was the only point of school, and in which the principals have, for 40 years, done little or nothing to ensure that the teachers were properly educated, and were held accountable for their performance in the classroom – well, that principal is going to look foolish and out of touch. As do these Catholic bishops, who have presided over a 40-year collapse of sacramental and catechetical discipline.
I suppose I should be grateful that at least some bishops, at long last, have found their spines. You have to start somewhere. But rather than plucking the speck from John Kerry's eye, it would be better for the bishops to examine critically their own records as pastors and teachers. How is it that only one in three American Catholics accept church teaching on abortion? How is it that only the same miserable percentage has the foggiest idea what the Eucharist really is? John Kerry, whatever his sins, didn't cause this to happen.
It's fine for some bishops to get serious about the church discipline now, but as Father Wilson puts it, this is like someone standing on the front lawn watching his house burn to the ground, wondering what kind of table would go best in the dining room.
Editorial board member Rod Dreher is an occasional Viewpoints columnist. His e-mail address is rdreher@dallasnews.com.
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Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/columnists/rdreher/stories/051804dnedidreher.9caa5.html
Ping. (As usual, if you would like to be added to or removed from my "conservative Catholics" ping list, just send me a FReepmail. Please realize that some of my "ping" posts are long.)
I remember 20 years ago telling someone that priests never gave homilies about abortion. In the 20 years since I still haven't heard a homily about abortion. Remarkable, given the belief among liberal non-Catholics that the church is so focused on lecturing parishioners about the issue.
I'm a lapsed Catholic, but in my entire life I think the only political issue I ever heard mentioned in the pulpit was public school levies, which we were always urged to support. (That might come as a shock to many non-Catholics.) Abortion was rarely mentioned, and never - to my knowledge - in the context of any specific legislation or politician. But the author has a valid point that in recent decades the Church has failed - deliberately or otherwise - to inculcate traditional views on morality, the sacraments, and basic theology.
How very sad.
I have several times heard abortion condemned, and support offered for pregnant women. But not a whole sermon (maybe once).
Not enough about chastity. If you are unchaste, you put your children at risk. The born ones, the conceived ones, and the potential ones.
Mrs VS
Shortly before the last presidential election our priest
gave a homily about voting. He spent a great deal of time
explaining the Churches position on welfare, trade unions
and many other economic issues (in which Jesus always takes the liberal position). He gave abotion 1/2 of a sentence
"and of course there's abortion to be considered".
I asked a very nice woman at the church office if a text of
the Priest's remarks were available. She told me they weren't
and asked me if I liked them so much I wanted a copy. I told her "I'm sure some people like what he said." She gave me a knowing smile.
Great article!
Did anyone else hear this?
I've heard prayers for the unborn included in the Prayers of the Faithful many times, but only one homily on abortion.
McCarrick and Mahoney are determined to prevent abortion from becoming a political issue. It seems that they have more loyalty to the Democratic Party than to Rome.
Catholic Ping - let me know if you want on/off this list
"It seems that they have more loyalty to the Democratic Party than to Rome."
As do many other Irish and various others of the ethnic "Catholics" who were, or whose parents were, raised in the ethnic Catholic Democrat ghettos which existed in our metropolitan areas until after WWII.
In the years since Roe v. Wade I've heard three or four sermons on abortion. In recent years the Church has had a respect life Sunday, but likely as not there will be a turgid letter from the bishop along seamless garment lines.
To give him credit, our pastor in Montpelier preached an excellent sermon this year, with reference both to abortion and euthanasia, and with comments on the Terri Schiavo case. I didn't see any liberals run screaming out of the doors of the church. The problem, of course, is that many priests have left it too long and now they are afraid of offending people, losing contributions, closing down the school if it hasn't been shut down already, and so forth.
Money is important. It pays the heating bills, repairs the roof, buys flowers for the altar, and so forth. What they don't seem to understand is that if they had preached faithfully all along they would have stronger congregations who wouldn't be driven off by a whiff of controversy. Because there's nothing controversial about preaching the truth.
Good tag line..
But rather than plucking the speck from John Kerry's eye, it would be better for the bishops to examine critically their own records as pastors and teachers.
I don't think this is an either/or thing. They need to do both, and to do them immediately.
The bishops have a duty to instruct their flock. They aren't allowed some sort of ramp-up time to improve their image first. The fact that so many have been negligent of their duty is a scandal. But it doesn't make them any less obligated to strongly assert the faith and to properly discipline those under their care who deny it, and to do so right now. Anything less would compound their sins of omission which lead to the current situation.
I'm a convert of 12 years' standing, and I have heard several homilies on abortion, maybe about five, but with regard to teachings on sexual morality, my experience has been similar to Rod's.
"I don't think this is an either/or thing. They need to do both, and to do them immediately."
I agree. If the Church defers correcting this problem any longer, until it has a complete record of purity, then it will never make its positions known, thereby allowing the errors to continue.
Anyway, let's face it; The priests and bishops reflect the community of which they are a part. The American people have been ignorantly mesmerized by the Democrat party for over seventy years, giving the Democrats a ruling majority in every state in this country since FDR. The Catholic Church had a major role to play in this, but not the primary role. Far too many Americans, for far too long, have allowed the Democrats to undermine and degrade American society. We now live with the degeneracy and social pathology foisted on us by a Democrat party that the majority of Americans elected and re-elected time and again for almost a hundred years.
Why should any of us be surprised? Even today, in the midst of a shooting war, with gay marriage and euthanasia firmly ensconced in American society, we see that JohnEffinKerry is ahead in the polls!
The Church lost it a long time ago by being remiss from the puppit, ignoring the lack of informing consciences all the way from grade school level to college, even awarding honors to pro-abortion figures at College commencements under the same Bishop's noses. It the Church had delivered the message to the public, the politicans would listen to the public.
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