The Catholic Church's betrayal of Vatican II

"When I give food to the poor, I'm called a saint. When I ask why they are poor, I'm called a communist." -Archbishop Dom Helder Camara.  

Alternet has an interesting article on the election of Argentina's Cardinal Bergoglio as the Pope Francis. The piece contends that the recent papacies of Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI have represented a betrayal of, a 'counterrevolution' against, the promised reforms of the Vatican II council called by Pope John XXIII in the early 1960s. The piece opines that given Cardinal Bergoglio's personal history and the reactionary nature of the college of cardinals (all appointed by the last two hyperconservative popes), there is little prospect that Francis' papacy will produce any substantive change in a decaying, sclerotic institution.

Fetuses aren't people, says Catholic group

In order to beat a malpractice suit, a Catholic hospital in Colorado made the astonishing (for them) contention that a fetus is not a person.

Raw Story reports: According to the Colorado Independent, in the death of a 31-year-old woman carrying twin fetuses, Catholic Health Initiatives’ attorneys argued that in cases of wrongful death, the term “person” only applies to individuals born alive, and not to those who die in utero.

Oops!

'Radical feminist' nuns

It's no secret that the Catholic Church is hemorrhaging members in much of the western world and it being an out of touch organization run exclusively by theoretically celibate old men, it's little wonder why.

A good example of this came recently when the Vatican slammed a group for promoting 'radical feminism.' The organization slammed was not Planned Parenthood or NOW but... a group of nuns.

The nuns' grave sin is related to social issues. It's not that they are promoting women's or gay rights, but  it seems that they are complicit in promoting decent treatment for such pariahs. The nuns argue such 'radical' positions as in favor of the ordination of women and ministering to gay people.

In an NPR interview, Sister Simone Campbell chastised the priorities men running the institution, pointing out that those things "are big issues, but they aren't at the heart of the faith." In other words (my words), Church leaders are obsessed with sex and keeping women submissive.

And Sister Campbell offered wise counsel to her judgmental co-religioners: "When you don't work every day with people who live on the margins of our society, it's much easier to make easy statements about who's right and who's wrong."

Update: As Garry Wills opines in The New York Review of Books, the nuns are interested in the powerless. The bishops are just interested in power. 

Further update: A reader pointed out this story where a Catholic school teacher was fired for receiving fertility treatments. So it's not enough to pro-create within the bounds of a faithful heterosexual marriage. Apparently there is a 'right' and 'wrong' way to do it... just like everything else the Church tries to micromanage.

Why Catholics are losing faith in their Church

If you want to know why the Catholic Church in America is hemorrhaging members, check out this heartbreaking story. A Maryland priest recently denied a grieving woman communion at her own mother’s funeral because she lives with another woman.

While relentlessly protecting child rapist priests to preserve the Church’s reputation, it draws the moral line at giving communion to a lesbian at her mother’s funeral. It certainly has the right to do so but these kinds of priorities are exactly why the Church’s moral credibility has largely evaporated in this country and most of the western world.

The Catholic Church's evaporating moral credibility

A friend of mine posted this sad and outrageous story about his godfather. It's a great example of why the Catholic Church in America is hemorrhaging members.

My friend's godfather was the music director for a Catholic parish in North Carolina. The parish knew the man was gay and that he lived with his partner and, surprisingly, were okay with that. The fact that he was apparently a good music director trumped those things. But then the man and his partner got married and immediately, the parish fired him.

Of course, this is legal. It's legal because the Catholic Church has fought very hard for its special right to be able to ignore anti-discrimination and employment laws (and tax-exempt status but that's an issue for another day). The fact that the Church has fought so aggressively to protect those special rights (while acting equally aggressively against gays having equal rights) was an indicator that it fully expected to use them.

Many people of faith act contend that religious institutions should be immune from any public criticism, that we must mindlessly respect them as they relentlessly disrespect others, that we can not call such actions by their real name, that we must not apply the Church's own standards of morality to its own actions and inactions. To put it far more mildly than this issue deserves, this is wrong.

Perhaps if the Catholic Church had acted as vigorously against priests abusing boys as it does against loving, married (and CONSENSUAL) same-sex couples, the Church's credibility wouldn't be in tatters in the eyes of so many former members, such as myself.

Update -- another friend commented on the same article: "I know someone who is the victim of domestic violence and teaches at a catholic school. She can't get a divorce or she'll be fired. She has to find a new job first. Social justice, my foot!"

A third friend remarked more succinctly: "Jim Crow is alive and well."