Catholic Bishops Insist on Waging a Culture War

May 11, 2012 By Tony Jones 13 Comments

It seems that every week, Catholic bishops in the U.S. are speaking out against something. Their target now: the Girl Scouts. That’s right, it seems that the organizations whose mission statement reads, “Girl Scouting builds girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place,” is a threat to Catholics. From the AP:

NEW YORK (AP) — Long a lightning rod for conservative criticism, the Girl Scouts of the USA are now facing their highest-level challenge yet: An official inquiry by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

At issue are concerns about program materials that some Catholics find offensive, as well as assertions that the Scouts associate with other groups espousing stances that conflict with church teaching. The Scouts, who have numerous parish-sponsored troops, deny many of the claims and defend their alliances.

The inquiry coincides with the Scouts’ 100th anniversary celebrations and follows a chain of other controversies.

Why? Because there are rumors that the Girl Scouts partner with Planned Parenthood. They don’t, says spokesperson Gladys Padro-Soler. She adds, ”It’s been hard to get the message out there as to what is true when distortions get repeated over and over.”

Already this year, Catholic bishops have been bashing gays, claiming religious persecution, Sandra Fluke, and now attacking the Girl Scouts. Seems an odd strategy in the face of ongoing pedophilia problems.

In fact, it seems that humility and a few years decades of quiet service to humanity might be a better strategy.

Filed Under: christianity in america Tagged With: , 13 Comments

“Shut Up, Old Man”

March 8, 2012 By Tony Jones 43 Comments

That’s what Scott Paeth wants to say to Catholic bishops who think that female contraceptives shouldn’t be covered by health insurance:

In all honesty, my first reaction to any attempt by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to make any kind of moral argument, least of all one involving sexuality, is to want to say “Shut up, old man.” And no Bishop who is honest about the negligence and criminal malfesence of the Catholic Church around the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of allegations of child molestation and rape around the world over the last half century should expect any other response.

How can any Bishop expect to excercise moral authority, particularly in the authoritarian “do it because I say so” manner that they use, given their record? Every single solitary Bishop should be on his hands and knees begging for forgiveness from both those they’ve directly harmed, and from every Christian, Catholic and non-Catholic, for the damage that they have done to the church. The Bishops, through their choices, erased 2,000 years of authority over the period of a few decades. And why? To protect their own institutional position while shielding absolute moral monsters from being held accountable for acts that were both criminal and detestable. There is no excuse. And it will probably take another 2,000 years for them to regain that authority. In the mean time, the only thing I want to hear from a Bishop is the phrase “I’m sorry.”

Scott also has some thought’s on Romney’s Mormonism and Santorum’s gag reflex here: Against the Stream: Back to Religion and the Public Square.

Filed Under: christianity in america, politics Tagged With: , , , 43 Comments

“Beneath Christianism is a deep fear of the human mind”

February 28, 2012 By Tony Jones 11 Comments

Andrew Sullivan money quote:

For Santorum, as for Ratzinger, if your conscience says one thing, and the Pope says another, you obey the Pope, not your conscience. And for the Christianists, if your conscience or intelligence says one thing, and the Bible says another, you obey the Bible, not your conscience, and certainly not your intelligence. Because beneath Christianism is a deep fear of the human mind – as if they actually believe that reason is stronger than religion and therefore must be restrained. As if the human mind can will God out of existence.

via Santorum Exposes The Real Republican Party – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast.

Filed Under: christianity in america, politics Tagged With: , 11 Comments

The Official Catholic Marriage Prayer

December 17, 2011 By Tony Jones 26 Comments

The Catholic archbishop of Minnesota has released a prayer that he wants recited at mass for the next year, as our state approaches a vote on a constitutional amendment defining marriage.  Here’s the prayer:

Heavenly Father,

Through the powerful intercession of the Holy Family, grant to this local Church the many graces we need to foster, strengthen, and support faith-filled, holy marriages and holy families.

May the vocation of married life, a true calling to share in your own divine and creative life, be recognized by all believers as a source of blessing and joy, and a revelation of your own divine goodness.

Grant to us all the gift of courage to proclaim and defend your plan for marriage, which is the union of one man and one woman in a lifelong, exclusive relationship of loving trust, compassion, and generosity, open to the conception of children.

We make our prayer through Jesus Christ, who is Lord forever and ever. Amen.

Too bad for those heterosexual quadripalegics who want to get married but aren’t “open to the conception of children.”  They’re obviously not part of God’s “plan for marriage.”  In fact, I can think of some other examples of couples who are in a “lifelong, exclusive relationship of loving trust, compassion, and generosity,” but can’t conceive children.

To read my thoughts on this issue, see my $.99 ebook, There Are Two Marriages.

Filed Under: same sex marriage Tagged With: 26 Comments

The Cost of Clergy Pedophilia

December 14, 2011 By Tony Jones 3 Comments

 

Jeff Anderson

Attorney Jeff Anderson announces his case against former Catholic deacon Michael Weber (Courtney Perry/StarTribune

Yesterday, yet another news conference with yet another lawsuit accusing yet another Catholic clergyman of abusing yet more children.  Jeff Anderson, the attorney from Minnesota who represents many victims, announced on behalf of his client “Terry,” that he would be suing the Diocese of St. Cloud for abuse that occurred decades ago.

Calling in the press conference by telephone, Terry told reporters how the abuse changed him.  Anyone who is not yet horrified by the costs of this systemic abuse should be, after hearing from a victim:

On Tuesday, Terry said the abuse has “affected me in every part of my life, from drug and alcoholic addiction to divorce to low self-esteem to failed relationships with my family. No spiritual life to speak of. I’m still to this day not really a believer, but I hope to be one day. I would say that incident changed me, changed everything about me, from being a nice little innocent kid to the exact opposite.“

Read the whole article by Rose French here.

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Female Catholic Priests in Minnesota

December 12, 2011 By Tony Jones 4 Comments

 

Monique Venne, a priest at Compassion of Christ Church that meets at Prospect Park United Methodist Church, gave communion to Judith McKloskey, also a priest in the church, during a recent service on Sunday, November 6, 2011 in Minneapolis, Minn. (Renee Jones Schneider/StarTribune)

Interesting, based on my post Friday, that the StarTribune on Sunday had an article by Rose French on a group of renegade Roman Catholic priests who just happen to be women:

Dressed in a priestly white robe and green stole, Monique Venne lifted communion bread before an altar — defying centuries of Catholic Church law.

Despite promises of excommunication from the Vatican, she and six other women in Minnesota say they are legitimate, ordained Catholic priests, fit to celebrate the mass. They trace their status through a line of ordained women bishops back to anonymous male bishops in Europe.

“We love the church, but we see this great wrong,” said Venne, 54, who cofounded Compassion of Christ Church, a Minneapolis congregation that just celebrated its first anniversary. “Not allowing women to be at the altar is a denigration of their dignity. We want the church to be the best it can be. If one leaves, one cannot effect change. So we’re pushing boundaries.”

Minnesota has emerged as a hotbed for the growing movement to ordain women as priests, with the highest per-capita number of female Catholic priests in the nation, according to the organization Roman Catholic Womenpriests. Women priests are working in the Twin Cities, Red Wing, Winona, Clear Lake and soon St. Cloud. The group claims about 70 women priests in the United States and more than 100 worldwide. READ THE REST

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The Bible Made Impossible: Part Three – The Fatal Flaw

December 9, 2011 By Tony Jones 46 Comments

This post is part of a three-part series on The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture by Christian Smith

The Ailment – The Cure – The Fatal Flaw

This is an extremely difficult post to write, primarily because I consider Christian Smith a friend.  I am a huge fan of his work, and I have admiringly cited him in almost all of my academic work.  Both his research and his theory are, I think, the very best in the sociology of American religion these days.

Also, I have stood in solidarity with him in the past as he struggled with the theology and policies of Young Life.  In fact, knowing something of his struggle in that regard, I am tempted to think that his struggles there led directly to this book.  And possibly to what I consider its fatal flaw.

Further, I think this is a very, very good book, and I’m glad that Brazos published it.  It is both well-written and well-researched, as are all of Smith’s books.

To summarize the posts of the last two days, Smith argues that biblicism, practiced by a large number of conservative evangelical Protestants in America, is an untenable position to hold.  It is, he argues, ultimately unreasonable.  For instance, biblicists claim that the Bible is without error, yet they seem unable to account for the myriad evangelical interpretations of a particular passage or issue in the text.

Instead, Smith proposes a christological hermeneutic, which he borrows from Karl Barth (by way of Jeff McSwain, who was at the center of the Young Life controversy).  In this reading, Christ is the key – Christ renders unimportant the contradictions in the Bible; Christ makes the archaic prohibitions in the Bible inapplicable (e.g., women should wear head coverings and stay silent in church); Christ and his salvific acts supersede all arguments about ancillary biblical issues and texts.

So far, so good.

But here’s the paragraph from the introduction where this all comes undone for me, and herein lies the reason that this post is so difficult to write:

[Read more...]

Filed Under: books, christianity in america, church Tagged With: , 46 Comments

Former Presiding Bishop of the ELCA Confronts His Catholic Peers about Gay Marriage

December 8, 2011 By Tony Jones 23 Comments

Herbert Chilstrom

Herbert Chilstrom is the retired presiding bishop of the ELCA, and before that he was a bishop in Minnesota.  In his work, he developed strong ties with the Catholic bishops of Minnesota, a group that is currently fighting to constitutionalize a prohibition of same sex marriage.  And Chilstrom doesn’t get it:

Over my 35 years as an active and retired bishop I have come to know hundreds of gay and lesbian persons. I have yet to meet even one who is opposed to the marriage of one man and one woman. After all, they are the daughters and sons of such unions.

What they cannot understand is why church leaders would oppose their fundamental desire and right to be in partnership with someone they love and respect who happens to be of the same gender and sexual orientation. They don’t understand why they should not enjoy all the rights and privileges their straight counterparts take for granted.

Read the rest: Lutheran leader confronts state’s Catholic bishops over gay marriage | StarTribune.com.

Filed Under: christianity in america, glbt, same sex marriage Tagged With: , 23 Comments

Why He’s Not a Catholic

August 29, 2011 By Tony Jones 14 Comments

Andrew Brown has written for the Guardian, Why I’m Not a Catholic:

At the moment, Catholic sexual teaching is like a broken computer program. It needs to be rewritten from scratch in a better language. But Catholic social teaching, and the attempts to produce an economics centred around the needs of humans, rather than of money, look like the only thought-through alternatives to unbridled market capitalism – and certainly the only ones which have a chance of widespread popular support.

I think it’s some pretty shallow reasoning on his part, but it got me thinking. I think I’ll start a new occasional series: Why I’m Not a…

What would you like to see me put in the slot of what I’m not?

Filed Under: blogging, theology Tagged With: , 14 Comments

Who Can Preach?

February 25, 2011 By Tony Jones 10 Comments

 

from Wikicommons

Apparently not just anyone, at least in the Catholic Church.  But it’s actually a little more arcane than that.

A Catholic parish not far from my house did the unthinkable a few weeks ago and allowed a woman to preach.  It seems that the problem is not that she’s a woman, but that she’s not ordained.  Of course, being a woman in the Catholic Church means that, by definition, she cannot be ordained and therefore, de facto, she cannot preach.

Someone from the parish reported this horrendous sin to the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis (yes, the Catholics are the only people around here who list St. Paul before Minneapolis).  The StarTribune reports:

Before long, the vicar general of the archdiocese was paying a call to St. Edward’s pastor, the Rev. Mike Tegeder, and reminding him that the rules of Vatican II have changed. Lay people, even someone with a master’s degree in theology from St. Paul Seminary like this woman, can’t give homilies anymore. That job can be done only by priests.

Well, that’s not exactly true.  They can give homilies, but only after the Eucharist.  Before the Eucharist, only homilies by priests.  After Eucharist, any old layperson can preach.  If you’ve been to Catholic mass at your local parish lately, you know that a significant number of parishioners leave the church immediately after the Eucharist, neglecting to stay for the announcements and closing hymn.  And I can’t say I’ve ever experienced or heard of a homily coming after the Eucharist at a Catholic mass.

In order to describe the finer points of this amendment to the liberalizations of Vatican II, the spokesperson of the Archdiocese departed from his normal role of deflecting questions about pedophilia and speaking out against marriage equality and ventured into homiletical theory:

“The purpose of the homily at the mass is to interpret the gospel,” said archdiocese spokesman Dennis McGrath. “Normally a priest is far more qualified to deliver that message. A priest is ordained to preach. Also, there’s an opportunity there for wrong teaching or misinterpretation [with lay preachers].”

Do I really need to expound on the fallacious logic of his quote?

Filed Under: christianity in america, minnesota Tagged With: 10 Comments
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