WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

The following is a clinical evaluation of a sick organization, including symptoms and signs, diagnoses and proposed treatment.  It is performed, with a heavy heart, by a seven decades-long staunch member of the Roman Catholic Faith and usually a loyal supporter of the Catholic Church.  The latter support has at times included prescribing a dose of salts.

• We deal with the worst-case scenario first: the Bishops’ positions and action regarding proposed Personhood amendments to State Constitutions.  See the report of Judie Brown, enclosed.  This is absolutely scandalous.  And it is directly born of the trauma and intimidation, both personal and financial, resulting directly from the on-going Clergy Sex Scandals, rightly felt by the Bishops.  But it is simply an unacceptable response to the abomination of abortion, to realistic efforts to define Personhood (medically, morally and legally), and to a critical election wherein 54% of Roman Catholics voted for the most pro-abortion candidate or office holder.  Nor is it acceptable for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, at its recent post-election meeting (as reported in the December issues of the Four County Catholic) to exhort the President – Elect with platitudes and pieties.  Cardinal George, the Conference President rightly notes: “This statement is written at the request and direction of all the Bishops, who also want to thank all those in politics who work with good will to protect the lives of the most vulnerable among us.  Those in public life do so, sometimes, at the cost of great sacrifice to themselves and their families; and we are grateful.” Two points here: 1) where is the voice of the many U.S. Bishops who are on record as being in favor of much more aggressive action with regard to the Bishops’ anti-abortion efforts; and 2) what “great sacrifice” have the Bishops endured or are willing to endure in this effort?  All of this is a failure of the greatest importance. 

• Although having been written by Pope Paul VI in 1968 as an accurate predictor of the immorality then beginning to spread throughout society, his decision in the encyclical Humanae Vitae  regarding birth control hormonal contraception as being equally wrong as abortion…a position taken in opposition to his Commission on the subject… contributed to the alienation of millions of good Catholics and did little to stem the explosion of abortions performed in subsequent decades.  Indeed, when one reads through the chain of conclusory and outcome-determinative statements he used to support his position, we find in Section 14 that he differentiates between birth control hormonal contraception and abortion, and that he is at pains to explain the inherent contradiction between his position on hormonal  contraception and “natural family planning”.  Both approaches have the same intent. And both manipulate the necessary normal hormones involved in conception.  Furthermore, only in that Section does he come close to claiming, although not articulating, an “ex Cathedra” teaching, and only with regard to abortion.  Beyond and before all of this, there is the threshold question of Jurisdiction in the most intimate affairs of a loving and committed married couple and in the discharge of their legitimate parental responsibilities toward spacing the births of their children (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, Section 2368).   This continues to be a serious self-inflicted wound.
• At the parish level, all we hear is silence.  This may be based upon the vow of obedience taken by priests and deacons to their bishops.  But it is a failure of the Magisterium at all levels.  In this situation, the Laity, as the Body of the Church, has a responsible role to play.

Our Bishops can rehabilitate themselves.  In Connecticut and elsewhere, they can refuse to have Catholic hospitals abide by the law regarding requiring the prescription of the abortifacient Plan B without an ovulation test.  They can mount a nationwide, State-by-State effort to pass Personhood amendments defining human life as beginning at the moment of conception.  They can inform and mobilize Catholics throughout the country regarding the importance of any new nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court by the new pro-abortion President-Elect.  They can inform and mobilize all Catholics to block with all peaceful means passage of the pending Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) now wending its way through Congress with a promise by President-Elect Obama to sign it.  And they can immediately exert all of their efforts, through every parish in the country, to urge the Bush administration in its final days to promulgate a Provider Conscience Rule through the Department of Health and Human Services. None of this can adversely affect their charitable tax status, as they purport to fear, as being the legitimate exercise of our rights as citizens to petition our government under the 1^st, 5^th and 14^th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. 

This is a Call to Arms, if there ever was one.   Will our Bishops discharge their leadership responsibilities?  Or will the Laity have to show them the way?