Of the fate of contemporary Catholics, Flannery O'Connor once said that we must suffer at least as much from the Church as for it. Certainly, the past weeks have been a cause for suffering for Catholics of all political stripes, but the suffering takes on a particular flavor for progressives. We are deluged by questions from those who think of themselves as our colleagues and comrades. Actually, only one question: "How can you still stay in the Church?"
When I answer, I insist that the terms be defined properly. It is an error of vocabulary to assume that "the Church" is a direct synonym for "the hierarchy," "the bishops," "the Vatican." Those of us of a certain age remember traveling abroad during the Vietnam years when we would be asked, "How can you still call yourself an American?" Our answer was: we are not the White House. We are not the Pentagon. We are the people protesting; America is larger than your words suggest. Why must I believe that the church is Pope Benedict and not the courageous nuns who took real risks to defy the American bishops on health care in the name of the poor whom they serve? Some say we owe the passage of health care to these brave women; their position would not have been so effective if they had been speaking not as nuns, whose lives had been dedicated to the Church, but, say, as a group of nurses or social workers. The Church has a very long history; this history includes a fair share of scoundrels; it also includes those whose heroism was achieved despite the opposition of the official Church: Joan of Arc and Oscar Romero, to name only two.
An important source of the Catholic imagination is the parables of Jesus, and so I would like to explain the position of people like me in the form of a parable.
There was a family that owned a very large house, surrounded by extensive property. It also owned a business which employed many people and controlled great assets. Through a series of machinations, the family business and most of the wings of the house were taken over by a group of uncles: the most rigid, punitive, and aggressive of the family. One part of the family was relegated to one of the house's side wings. The uncles kept insisting that they really had no right to be in the house at all; their proof was the architecture of their wing: it had so many open doors, and the uncles were very distressed that they had no control over who was going in and going out. The marginal people said they thought maybe that wasn't so important. Meanwhile, the uncles surrounded the windows of their house with increasingly strong steel bars; they included metal detectors at the doors, and a machine for reading retinal prints, just to make sure they were firmly in control.
The marginal people were aware of the great psychic cost of inhabiting the part of the house that was so fragile and so far from the center. Also, they were aware that the uncles controlled the money and had it in them to cut off the heat and the water, make it impossible that they continue to meet, serve, and eat with their friends.
"How can you stay?" their friends kept asking. "In staying, don't you suggest that you are one with the uncles?" But the marginal people refused to leave. Because they knew that their father had left them the house as well, and if they left, it would be only in possession of the uncles. And they believed that the house was too important for that. For one thing, they worried about all the folks who wouldn't make it through the uncles' detection systems.
How do some of us stay in the Church? In grief, in sadness, with a resolve not to be shut out by those who say they are speaking in the name of the Father. We just don't believe them. The Church is not an institution; it is the people, people who are now wounded and scandalized, not only by the sexual crimes of priests, but more important, by the cover-up by those in power. In 1959 the election of Pope John XXIII was a surprise, a kind of miracle. It happened once. It could happen again. We wait, in stubborn hope, for the return of miracle. We want to make sure some of us are at home when it happens.
Ira Glasser: Easter Sunday Questions
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Good point - I would ask the author above, despite my appreciation - on one level - of the nuanced defense of her position - what she does with her mammon....???
Does she keep feeding the beast? Is that why it is still here? Is she and what I suspect are very humanitarian nuns the real cause of the problem?
Why not a genuine separation from the phony institution into one in which the church is a manifestation of the people of Jesus Christ rather than corruption ridden institution with roots into medieval history and pompous proclamations of its own self grandeur.
An unfortunately titled, but a must read book about the Church's history is Elaine Pagel's The Origin of Satan.
...so, this parable presupposes that the uncles just occurred on the scene, disrupting an ideal house...yet the uncles' machinations in the Catholic Church--from a torturous Inquisition, to Da Vinci exile, to colonialism, to anti-choice, anti-contraception, limited female involvement, unlimited guilt, anti-homosexual (pro-hypocritical), to sex abuse have gone on and on...honey the uncles didn't take over the house they've owned it for centuries...
...I like the comparison to Americans being questioned about their nation's policies, but the difference is you can choose a new church, a new house, a better house, a new faith, and you don't have to get a new passport to do it...
Well, like Mary Gordon, I see the Vatican and its hierarchy as essentially different from the religion Jesus founded, one based on love and truth. This means being true to one's integrity and loving one's neighbors, especially those who are marginalized, be they gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender or devastated straight spouses. That's my faith and that's why I founded the Straight Spouse Network as a peer support system to help spouses wounded by their partners' coming-out and why I also serve on the board of the Catholic Association for Lesbian and Gay Ministry.
So, when people ask, "Why do you stay Catholic?" my answer is "I will not give the Vatican the power o take away my faith."
The Church is out of touch with reality right now. I'm worried they won't start taking us seriously until they start losing talent. Then again, if I leave I can't work within the system; so I find myself in a paradox. That's why I'm taking the power back and started churchrater.com.
Your friends ask how you can be a Catholic? Mary, guess what? You are not a Catholic. You just like the smell of incense.
I don't know if you are a Catholic, but everyone I know who is still a Catholic says what you do: "The Pope is not always infallible..." Wouldn't it be a cruel joke on God's part? Because how do you know when he is and isn't then? Was Pope Pius XII, who made the Assumption of Mary an article of faith, only infallible in that case? How about when he remained "neutral" as regards the Holocaust?
To be a Catholic, you must accept Papal teachings, blindly, and wait for the reasons behind them to be revealed. Or you are a Protestant.
If the people are the church, not the architecture or the institution, then you can leave the buildings and the institution to the evil uncles and hold onto the people.
Leave the trappings of the church behind. After all, the people are so much larger than the so-called church.
There's a materialistic quality to staying in the church, such as it seems to intrinsically involve remaining in the building, instead of embracing the large mass of people outside the building.
I'm pretty sure if the American Nurses Association had been opposed to healthcare reform it wouldn't have happened... ditto the AMA.
Did you leave the country over the last ten years. It was the look on everyone's face if not the question from their mouthes.
Even in the mid-'90s, I encountered assumptions in Europe about who I was and then questions about why I wasn't.
And so we hide it, as we are taught.
Martin L. King held the opposite view. He encouraged out rage with an addendum, peaceful outrage.
Peaceful protest. He didn't hide what happened under the rug; he spoke openly and honestly.
In view of that time, what can the Catholic do to take back their life, their dignity, their sovereingty that is peaceful?
They can file an act of defection from the church.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actus_formalis_defectionis_ab_Ecclesia_catholica
They can google the subject to understand it better.
Many are filling acts of defection from the church, by the thousands. I have filed an act of defection from the church. I wasn't to going to be bothered because what's a piece of paper?
And then I knew, peace of mind. I did the right thing for me. I sent mine yesterday; certified mail, receipt requested.
I write this in the memory of Dr. King, and all other who have helped forge peaceful protest; including the church.
The violence, and the teaching that violence and suffering is acceptable, ordained and sanctioned by some higher power must stop or the violence will never stop.
Perhaps this is what Johnny Kay is speaking about?
My birth family has been murdered by this church for almost nineteen hundred years for demanding and living the truth of Jesus' and John the Baptists' lives.
I am a descendant who found my way long before I found my birth family, and already knew the secrets they've possessed so long about this church, the Inquisition, the Crusades, the murders of Joan d'Arc and Jacques de Molay, as well as the horrors inflicted on my Native American heritage, as well.
I know some truths I wish to share with the world, and have already been threatened by this church, as readily as my ancestors have paid with their lives for their devotion to God and the truth.
I accept my path gladly, without restraint or hesitation, and without the Fear drummed into me as a Catholic child who ended up in a Catholic teaching order by eighteen, and left as soon as God showed me an honest way to live a sefless life.
You speak truth.
Bless you for that.
And more.
IT is difficult to reconcile the RCC consistent epic fails over the last two thousand years. Yet it is similar in my mind to this country and its Declaration of Independence and Constitution, both written as ideals that the nation has yet to live up to; both written at a time when some of its ideals were flagrant lies as citizens were enslaved and unable to pursue happiness or be treated with equality. The disconnect between American values/ideals and the lack of their manifestation is still evident and the land of the free continues to have a long standing history of human rights violations.
Walking the talk is the hardest part no matter what you "believe".