Gehring, Weigel and Cardinal George write about conscience compromise

It would be amazing if President Obama has such insight into Catholicism that he could divide and conquer the Catholic Church. I would have to speculate that he was God's instrument in God's effort to fix the Church in that case.

The more likely situation is that President Obama see hospitals as hospitals first and agents of Catholicism a distant second. Likewise with universities. It appears that he prefers to give more weight to the opinions of people with actual medical, educational, and management qualifications than to the opinions of spiritual leaders.

Well, I suppose Cardinal George is correct: with 90-some percent of American Catholics practicing birth control (without a guilty conscience) the U.S. bishops certainly don't speak for all-or even most--Catholics on the issue of contraception. The bishops DO speak for the "Catholic and apostolic faith," but that's not what's at issue here. The faithful DO gather around them on matters of faith, but they apparently "disperse" on matters of sex.

I am intrigued that Cardinal George of Chicago assumnes that there is some kind of "unity between the bishops and the faithful" on the issue of contraception. This may be more a matter is wishful thinking rather than fact. Leave the chancery building and visit the real world, your eminence.

Open letter to bishops:
Well boys, it's time to go home. You've tried politics, but, again, you're not very good at that either. You're supposed to be pastoral and spiritual leaders. But the pews are emptying; the young are turning away; you are closing parishes and schools, then turning around and buying glass monstrosities. There are few priests under 60 years old. Plus, the presence of child molesters hasn't gone away. All summed up, you're not very good at much of anything. However, all is not lost You're still very good at secrecy silence, and conspiring
So, maybe it's time to go away. Go find some contemplative monasteries, take a year or so to silently examine your weaknesses, determine the meaning of service to the faithful while asking for guidance in humility. Lent is coming. That seems like a very good time to begin your contemplations. Really, you won't be missed at all.

If anyone can find it, they should read “The Politics of Sex and Religion” by Robert Blair Kaiser, published in 1985. It recounts the history of “Humanae Vitae”.
Pope Paul VI took the issue away from the Second Vatican Council and gave it to a committee. The bishops, realizing they didn’t have the – ah - knowledge to understand the issue called on experts, namely married couples. The committee approved artificial contraception, but two minority members of the committee couldn’t accept it and prevailed on the Pope not to change the teaching. That created the current standoff between the bishops and the faithful.

It is interesting that Cardinal George does not feel he must represent the faithful. I guess we know why the USCCB is one of the few organizations with a lower approval rating than Congress. It is okay to ask us to write to our Congressman and Senator but don't expect that he will listen to our concerns. With the compromise offered by the President, it is clear that this is now strictly politics. Perhaps the bishops can fire up all those Washington lobbiest we are paying for and waste more of our money on a cause Catholics long ago abandoned. The religious freedom argument rings hollow and the political division in the church grows. A great bunch of shepherds we have running the church.

The real problem, in any religion:

Fundamentalism: The real problem, in any religion
By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

Too many people --- politicians and ordinary citizens alike --- continue to refer to the "war on terror" as if terrorism were the enemy. As a number of more careful commentators have pointed out, terrorism is simply the deadly means employed by the enemy; it is not itself the enemy.

The real and immediate enemy is Islamic fundamentalism. Not Islam as such, but Islamic fundamentalism. To be sure, the all-encompassing problem is fundamentalism of every kind, in whatever religious tradition it is found.

Religious fundamentalism flourishes, for example, within Shi'ite and Wahabist Islam, within ultra-orthodox and orthodox Judaism (the Haredim and Hasidim), within so-called Bible-belt Protestantism, and increasingly, in recent decades, within Roman Catholic traditionalist circles as well.

Of course, fundamentalism is a complex phenomenon, having been the subject of serious and sustained study by Martin Marty, emeritus professor of church history at the University of Chicago, and his former student and current Notre Dame professor, R. Scott Appleby, who co-edited a highly regarded five-volume series on the topic.

Given the general focus and audience of this column, however, its attention will be directed mainly to Catholic fundamentalism, with the hope that its broader ecumenical and inter-faith implications will be evident.

One of the best articles ever written on the subject of Catholic fundamentalism appeared over 17 years ago in the Jesuit weekly, America (April 11, 1987). It was entitled, "The Rise of Catholic Fundamentalism." Its author, Jesuit Father Patrick M. Arnold, has since died.

So impressive was his piece that I devoted an entire column to it. I think it worthwhile now, if only as a memorial to Father Arnold, to reproduce the main points of his article. It stands up very well indeed to the passage of years.

Like all careful and insightful observers of the fundamentalist scene, Father Arnold took care to distinguish between fundamentalism and conservatism, with which it is often confused, to the detriment of conservatism.

Conservatism, he insisted, fulfills a necessary and constructive role in the church and in society alike. It is concerned with preserving a community's historical heritage, especially in times of cultural change. It urges a cautious approach, as captured, for example, in the familiar saying: "Look before you leap."

Fundamentalism, on the other hand, is neither necessary nor constructive. Working out of an absolutist perspective, it sees the world as filled with evil forces conspiring against everything that it regards --- with unquestioned certitude --- as true and good.

Father Arnold identified five unhealthy characteristics of religious fundamentalism in general and of Catholic fundamentalism in particular.

First, it is marked by paranoia and self-righteousness. There is always some terrible enemy out there that has to be fought and ultimately destroyed.

Fundamentalism is marked, secondly, by fear and rage directed not only against the enemy outside the ranks but even more intensely against the enemy within, including bishops, priests, sisters and theologians.

Father Arnold called this "the most revealing and dangerous characteristic" of fundamentalists because it leads them to engage in divisive activities. They spend an inordinate amount of time and energy trying to purge people, to get them fired, to destroy their reputations and, therefore, their influence.

Fundamentalists are captivated, thirdly, by the "myth of the Golden Age." They imagine that Catholicism in the decades just before Vatican II was in its pristine and ideal state, exactly as God intended it to be, without problems or deficiencies of any kind.

For the fundamentalist, fourthly, all truth is to be found in a single source. For the Muslim, it is the Koran. For the Jew, the Torah. For Protestants, the Bible. And for Catholics, the pronouncements of the pope and the Roman Curia.

Fifthly, religious fundamentalists tend to link themselves with right-wing political regimes and movements in the hope of advancing their own theocratic policies. Accordingly, Catholic fundamentalists are unenthusiastic about Catholic social teaching. They tend instead to emphasize a limited range of other issues as if they were primary.

Less than two years later, another Jesuit scholar, Father John Coleman, addressed the same topic in Commonweal magazine, linking today's Catholic fundamentalists with the Integralist movement of the early-20th century. The Integralists also claimed that the most dangerous enemies of the church are within, and that the way to deal with them is through censorship, repression and even excommunication.

Father Coleman offered some examples: Comunione e Liberazione in Italy, Opus Dei in Spain and around the world, and Catholics United for the Faith and the Wanderer Forum in the United States.

Not since the pontificate of Pius X (1903-14), when the Integralists flourished, have groups of this type enjoyed such favor at the highest levels of the Vatican.

Wasn't it Cardinal George who uttered THESE paranoid words when civil unions were approved in Illinois in 2011:
"I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr." And then he wonders why people are protesting and calling for his resignation outside his cathedral this past week:
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/02/12/activists-rally-for-same-sex-marr...
http://www.facebook.com/events/222265764531615/

I wonder how he would have handled these two priests?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-17032567

Cardinal George's comments are more evidence that it is time for local clergy and the people to elect bishops rather than having them appointed by the Holy See. Sister Carol's comments have everything to do with representing the views of her members on both health care reform and paying for contraception by their employees, since they are in the trenches on these issues. The bishops need to listen to her rather than Richard Doerflinger, whose links to the NRLC compromise his objectivity. Sister Carol needs to lend him an embryology book from the library of one of her members.

The President may have already compromised too much, since the EEOC has previously ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act already gaurantees contraceptive coverage to all women getting preventative care and the policies of any Church organization already reflect this, probably already including parish staff. He would have been better off citing this fact in August in a notice saying that comments were not required on this issue. Giving the Church the chance to get lathered up over this issue was a mistake, although likely a cynically deliberate one, desiged to tempt the bishops to go to far - which is what some reporting indicates Axelrod had in mind, assuming he was involved in this issue (which should have been considered below Obama's pay grade). While the bishops could be upset by being played in this way by Axe, they still walked into the trap and are still badly advised for doing so. Doerflinger and Carr should have known better than to take the bait.

"The Bishops speak for the Catholic and apostolic faith, and those who hold that faith gather around them." George Weigel

Really? Did Bernard Law speak for the faith when he said victims of child sex abuse by priests were guilty of soliciting their own abuse? Does Timothy Dolan speak for the faith when he says most people who claim to be victims are frauds? Did Francis George speak for the Catholic faith when he said the gay pride movement could become the new KKK?

What Weigel assumes is that the bishops have a particular prudential judgement that Catholics must look to to know what to do. Apparently Weigel hasn't noticed is that their prudential judgement is often MIA.

Speaking of prudential judgement, it should be remembered that Weigel said, right before George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, "only an idiot believes that Iraq does not have weapons of mass destruction."

The Bishops aren't very intelligent. One thing that's become painfully clear over the past two weeks is that John Paul II's and Benedict XVI's appointees as Bishops are simply not very intelligent men. To wit, first they argued that it wasn't about contraception, then they admitted that it was about contraception. They've resorted to phrasings such as "violent opposition." And now we're treated to the sad spectacle of petulance and paranoia that mark Francis George. The stammering statements, hyperemotionalism, and paranoia we've observed over the past two weeks are the tell-tale signs of men who are used to, and are aware of, being outwitted.

What a surprise; Weigel continues to write and think in the ratio of 10,000,000:1.

I simply cannot envision Jesus standing up and demanding Rome bend to His will, evidently the Bishops can. I believe it's up to the individual to accept or not what the insurance covers, not what the Bishops demand it covers or does not cover. In other words give to Rome what belongs to Rome. The Bishops are out to defeat Obama if at all possible because the next President will determine the makeup of the Supreme Court for the foreseeable future.

The attack on the Church is being made by the Bishops not the White House. More specifically, we have the Bishops beating up on the Sensus Fidelium and blaming the White House. The Bishops have been anti-Obama from the get-go. Yes, the Bishops have moved the goal-post. They continue to be an incredibly arrogant group of people who continue on their self-defeating path to render themselves totally irrelevant. Unfortunately, I bought into the Bishop's initial overture on the religious liberty issue. Like Joe Feruello, (NCR February 13, 20120, I now feel like an idiot. I was taken. What's happened is that the Bishops themselves opened the door for a grand discussion and review of the old birth control issue. They got the President's positive accommodation and the Sensus Fidelium’s loud negative response. I suppose that was humiliating for the Bishops. So they responded by blaming President Obama and Sister Carol Keehan for the backlash that their own stupidity unleashed. It's interesting that, so far as I know, they haven't publically taken on the Jesuit Colleges and Universities as yet.
Anonymous

What these posts illustrate is how cold-bloodedly oblivious lib Catholics are to the carnage around them. Just how do you plan to explain, at your final accounting, that indulging smug, infantile, defiant trivializations of Catholic truth was more important to you than rescuing the innocents from their slaughter.
Just a question for the Obama worshipers. What kind of expert do you suppose he asks as to what criminal penalties should be given for those seeking to give medical aid to babies born alive during abortion procedures?

I first read the suggestion (or implication) of a 'divide & conquer' strategy in the Feb. 10 New York Times article by Helene Cooper & Laurie Goodstein who wrote that the President's revision "was never really driven by a desire to mollify Roman Catholic bishops... Rather, the fight was for... Catholic allies of the White House seen as the religious left." That assertion was confirmed 2 days later when White House chief of staff Jack Lew told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday: "We didn’t expect to get universal support of the bishops or all Catholics." But it appears to me that the President has only succeeded in dividing his original Catholic supporters.

Socially they are children in a tantrum for what they believe they must have.
A kind parent might tell them to be careful as they might get exactly what they ask for only to find it may not be exactly what they want. What a shame for catholic adults to have to endure these spoiled brats.
Mens sana in corpore sano!
TomC

Thank you Manuel, for posting Rev. McBrien's article, it was an intelligent and thought provoking addition to the discussion. It certainly adds some perspective to current issues.

I am a married man of 30 years.... trying to be faithful catholic, but God knows falls terribly short. My wife and I have never used artificial birth control. I did not see how I could ask her to take artificial hormones and turn off a perfectly operating reproductive system would be a good thing. We practiced n f p .... and yes have a family of 7 children. I probably would only have had 4...... thank God I didn't listen to me. I woulda missed out on 3 incredible human beings .My wife is 50 now.... still cycling...and yes we still are practicing nfp.. and I thank God the church guided me this way. I totally respect the way my wife is made.... fertility and all. I really didn't need to medicate her to make her available to me anytime I wanted. I see the beauty now.. I really didn't see it when I was 23.... I just had to really on my faith at that time. I'm not trying to be provocative or in anyone's face... I just want to tell you it can be done without the artificials... do you really think these are a good thing for women to be on from the time they are young girls to the day they want to have a baby? Anyway I've said enough ....God bless.