{"id":3974,"date":"2012-05-17T10:09:30","date_gmt":"2012-05-17T16:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/diaryofawimpycatholic\/?p=3974"},"modified":"2015-03-13T15:03:01","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T21:03:01","slug":"fair-play-for-the-girl-scouts-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/diaryofawimpycatholic\/2012\/05\/fair-play-for-the-girl-scouts-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Fair Play for the Girl Scouts!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

A friend of mine, actually one of my old parish\u2019s most accomplished busybodies, once talked her way into the hotel room of a 1950\u2019s rock guitarist when he was performing in the Phoenix area. Her goal \u2014 her sole goal \u2014 was to get the legend\u2019s autograph for a friend of hers.<\/p>\n

After sizing my friend up, the man smiled. Cocking his head toward another man, who was holding a camera, he asked her, \u201cDo you object to pictures?\u201d When my friend looked puzzled, he asked again, \u201cDo you object to pictures?\u201d Finally, it dawned on her that he was really asking, \u201cIs it okay with you if my friend here photographs us while we\u2019re having sex?\u201d<\/p>\n

My friend bridled, took umbrage, flew into a state of the highest dudgeon imaginable. With finger wagging, she addressed the aging satyr: \u201cMister<\/em> _____, I\u2019ll have you know I was a Girl Scout. I\u2019m no groupie! All I want is for you to put your signature on this piece of paper, for my friend, who idolizes you, though I can\u2019t imagine why. He saw you play at _______.\u201d She named a ballroom in Connecticut. <\/p>\n

By this point in his career, this performer had made the transition to nostalgia act without downsizing his headliner\u2019s ego. Even Keith Richards, who considered himself deep in the man\u2019s artistic debt (and who had managed to get along, more or less, with Mick Jagger for over two decades) found him hard to take. He had also been convicted of a sex crime. But something about my friend\u2019s straight-backed rebuke brought out the rake\u2019s gallant side. Picking up her reference, he asked, \u201cThat place is closed now, right?\u201d My friend nodded, and the two fell into a pleasant conversation. After about half an hour, he signed her paper, and she left triumphant.<\/p>\n

Extracting the Girl Scout training from this friend of mine would have been impossible. Easier to deprogram a Moonie. In tandem with the Catholic Church, the GSUSA had poured the concrete that held her value structure together. \u201cAlways leave a place looking better than when you found it,\u201d she\u2019d lecture me, and had no sympathy for my argument that cigarette butts add reverse chic to picnic spots. Once, while catering a retreat \u2014 one of her chief charismata \u2014 she discovered she\u2019d overestimated the amount of milk required by half. Me? I\u2019d have yelled, \u201cMILK FIGHT!\u201d and it would have been on. This goody-goody-friend of mine insisted on hauling the overage down to Maggie\u2019s Place, a local house of hospitality for expectant mothers. <\/p>\n

Not only did this woman follow a neurotic compulsion to do the right thing, she insisted on doing it for the right reasons. If I rouse myself to throw someone\u2019s discarded Coke bottle into the recycle bin, I expect to be inducted into the Orde Pour le M\u00e9rite.<\/strong><\/a><\/em> My friend, on the other hand, would warn, \u201cDon\u2019t do anything for the badges,\u201d meaning merit badges. In her book, virtue rewarded hardly counted as virtue at all.<\/p>\n

As grating as I often found this just-canonize-me-now attitude, I hope the bishops find generous traces of it as their Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth investigates GSUSA materials it fears are \u201cproblematic.\u201d Exactly what sort of heterodoxy the committee expects to find is unclear; in his announcement, committee chairman Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Ft. Wayne, Indiana doesn\u2019t say. But among culture warriors nationwide, the buzz against Girl Scouts has been building to a roar for some time. <\/p>\n

The Huffington Post <\/em>reports<\/strong><\/a> that a Colorado troop became a target for critics by accepting a biological boy who considered himself transgendered. Just this past February, GSUSA spokeswoman Michelle Tompkins issued a letter<\/strong><\/a> refuting what she says were false allegations broadcast via EWTN, in a program titled Women of Grace. According to Tompkins,<\/strong><\/a> GSUSA has no relationship with Planned Parenthood, and no plans for creating one. Neither did it have any hand in distributing a Planned Parenthood brochure that turned up at a United Nations event. The HuffPo identifies the brochure as \u201cHappy, Healthy and Hot,\u201d and says its purpose is advising HIV-positive young people \u201chow to safely lead active sex lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

But for the Girl Scouts\u2019 ciritcs, it may not be necessary that, in Girl Scout usage, the \u201chead\u201d in \u201chead\/shoulders\/knees and toes\/(knees and toes)\u201d refer to the head of Baphomet, once venerated by Templars. The real problem may lie in a general orientation. Mary Rice Hasson, a visiting fellow in Catholic studies at the think tank Ethics and Public Policy Center, calls the GSUSA leadership \u201creflexively liberal.\u201d Dismissing the generally positive review given the Girl Scouts by National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry executive director Bob McCarty as \u201cwhitewashing,\u201d she predicts that the Girl Scouts and the Church are on a \u201ccollision course.\u201d<\/p>\n

I find myself hoping that this collision will not end too bloodily. It\u2019s true, when it comes to ideology, the Girl Scouts are not the Boy Scouts. The GSUSA may not order its members to become atheists or homosexuals, but unlike the Boy Scouts, they leave room in the ranks for both types. If GSUSA has no formal relationship with Planned Parenthood, it does belong to the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, whose spokespeople have called for \u201can environment where [girls] can freely and openly discuss issues of sex and sexuality.\u201d It would be very hard for a Catholic Girl Scout to avoid concluding that people who contest Church teachings are worthy objects of fellowship.<\/p>\n

That conclusion seems like nothing more than common sense. It\u2019s the opposite conclusion \u2014 that one rejected doctrine anathematizes an organization the way one drop of African blood was once thought to make a person black \u2014 that looks persnickety. If the Bishops\u2019 Conference wants to cut its own ties to organizations like the Leadership Conference of Civil and Human Rights, which supports same-sex marriage and abortion, that\u2019s one thing. If it wants to prohibit Catholic universities from honoring public figures who buck the Church\u2019s line, it\u2019s at least operating within its jurisdiction. But to reach outside of its own organizational limits to make demands of institutions that include Catholics, but which never claimed to be Catholic, is to reach into strong-arm territory. If this is evangelization, it\u2019s not a style of evangelization I see winning many converts.<\/p>\n

Indeed, that may not even be the bishops\u2019 goal. Implicit in their latest move seems to be a fear that no young person could remain an orthodox Catholic if exposed to any opposing point of view \u2014 roughly, \u201cHow are you\u2019re going to keem \u2019em down on the farm after they\u2019ve seen Paree\u201d? If I were a young Catholic, I\u2019m sure I\u2019d find that inference unflattering, to say the least. Lately it\u2019s become fashionable among Catholics to claim persecution, Cardinal George\u2019s prediction that his successor would die in jail being only the most melodramatic example. But I cannot find an instance where the GSUSA, acting in odium fidei, <\/em>shunned, harrassed, or even denied preferment to a Catholic. If the barbarians won\u2019t come to the gates, then, it seems, we\u2019ll drag the gates out to the barbarians.<\/p>\n

Among their merit badges, the Girl Scouts offer one called \u201cMy Promise, My Faith.\u201d According to the GSUSA home page, <\/strong><\/a>\u201cA girl earns the My Promise, My Faith pin by carefully examining the Girl Scout Law and directly tying it to tenets of her faith.\u201d It represents a lesson on living in a pluralistic society; only though a complementary badge with a name like \u201cYou Heretic Knuckleheads Are My Cross\u201d could that lesson be more thorough.<\/p>\n

Cervantes \u2014 whom I\u2019m quoting via Florence King \u2014 once defined a lady as someone so determined to be respected that she could make herself so even in an army of soldiers. Change \u201carmy of soldiers\u201d to \u201chorny rock has-been,\u201d and you\u2019ll have a fair picture of my Girl Scout friend. Throw in stewardship and (occcasionally) a sanctimoniousness that made me want to garrotte her with her own kerchief, and you\u2019ll have your case that Catholicism and the Girl Scout Promise can go together like milk and Peanut Butter Tagalongs.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A friend of mine, actually one of my old parish\u2019s most accomplished busybodies, once talked her way into the hotel room of a 1950\u2019s rock guitarist when he was performing in the Phoenix area. Her goal \u2014 her sole goal \u2014 was to get the legend\u2019s autograph for a friend of hers. After sizing my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":192,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5,417,112,418,419,235],"class_list":["post-3974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abortion","tag-girl-scouts-of-america","tag-homosexuality","tag-kevin-rhoades","tag-planned-parenthood","tag-united-states-conference-of-catholic-bishops"],"yoast_head":"\nFair Play for the Girl Scouts!<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A friend of mine, actually one of my old parish's most accomplished busybodies, once talked her way into the hotel room of a 1950's rock guitarist when he\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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