A Catholic is not a Protestant…

…and vise-versa.

Yes, I know, it’s obvious, but sometimes the obvious must be stated, and a guest post at Brutally Honest has brought us to one of those times.

Rick’s guest blogger, Tom Flake, urging “intellectual honesty” writes:

Sean Hannity, perhaps more than any other pundit, has lambasted Senator Obama for his association with Pastor Wright. At the same time, while verbally condemning the Catholic hierarchy for its lack of action in the church pedophilia scandal, where, not only were individual priests guilty of serial pedophilia, but various Bishops and Arch-Bishops were accessories after the fact, shuffling know pedophiles from parish to parish and from diocese to diocese all in an effort to protect the guilty from exposure and perhaps prosecution. This in turn allowed them to victimize others.
[…]
…until conservatives are willing to take the same medicine we would prescribe Senator Obama on his church affiliation we ought to leave the Pastor Wright subject alone. Either Sean Hannity should leave the Catholic Church and denounce its leadership or he should drop the Senator Obama/Pastor Wright topic entirely. Because the sin of Senator Obama’s church is nothing in comparison to the sin of Sean Hannity’s church.

If you read the whole post you see the fellow seems to be making a real attempt at intellectual “honesty” but without full understanding of the apples-to-orange comparison he is making. The writer also seems not to understand that a Protestant may jump from one church to another and get essentially (not precisely, of course) the same stuff.

Catholics, in contrast, cannot get their liturgy and Eucharist just anywhere. Their choices would be to go Orthodox (which is very different worship, although also Eucharistic) or Eastern Rite (nearer to Orthodox) or Anglican – which we cannot do because we do not recognize their Eucharist as valid.

So Obama may be asked “why did you not leave your pastor,” and a Catholic may be asked “why did you not leave your PARISH” – if the parish was one involved with the shameful priests or pastors. It is quite a different thing to ask, “why did you not leave your church.” If the writer does not understand that distinction then his whole point is unmade. Believing, as Catholics do, that the source and summit of our faith is the Holy Eucharist, which we believe to be the Real, Physical Body and Blood of Christ, “walking away” is not an option. You don’t “leave;” you fix the problem.

In making his erroneous comparison the writer does not acknowledge that Wright and his church have done nothing to “clean up their act” so to speak, while it is undeniable that the Catholic Church has done an excruciating public penance and taken dramatic steps to both make restitution and to insure that these pederasty exploitations and scandals do not happen again – that effort is ongoing and it is thorough and “zero-tolerant.” Some, happier to keep hating, simply refuse to acknowledge that.

As to the rest, we have a constitutional right to worship freely where we will…why demand Obama leave his church? Let him stay and let that speak for itself.

I don’t know that it is ever right to demand that anyone “leave their church.” Someone might consider it a right thing to do, or a politically expedient thing to do, but no one should ever leave their church because they feel pressured to. And as I’ve written elsewhere, a pastor is not a whole church community, so, I am not even sure I accept Sean Hannity’s premise. And frankly, if Obama did leave the church because of political pressure, I’m sure his critics would quickly suggest that he was doing so solely for political considerations…so that doesn’t exactly encourage “intellectual honesty,” anywhere, does it?