Annoyed and pissed off, so ranty. Don't expect 'fair.'

[demiurgent]

One of the things I hear from Christian friends -- meant entirely seriously, and I do not deride them for this -- is "hey, [x] doesn't speak for me. That kind of prejudiced garbage has nothing to do with the teachings of Christ." This is particularly something I hear from folks about the organized and intentional persecution of homosexuals.

(And yes, when the Mormon church, as an example, rallies to get something like Prop 8 passed, overwhelmingly from a different state, that there's organized persecution, and one day it will be written about in the same sympathetic tones we write about Jim Crow laws and whipping slaves. But this is not about Mormans at the moment.)

I'm generally willing to accept that. I really am. I know Fred Phelps doesn't speak for anyone but his own deranged cult made up of family members. I know that fewer and fewer evangelical Christians are willing to accept what their 'leaders' declaim in their name.

Yeah, that won't fly this time. Not for Roman Catholics. Because the Pope does speak for them. The Pope by definition speaks for them. So when the Pope uses his End of the Year Christmas Message, celebrating the birth of savior of Mankind (in their view), a time that we have been told unceasingly is a time of love, of peace, of joy, of brotherhood, of hope and of compassion, to directly attack homosexuals and transsexuals, comparing their existence to ecological disaster? He's speaking for the Catholics.

If you're a Catholic? He's speaking for you. He's speaking for you. And repudiation of that message of hate will take more than just disavowing him. You can't disavow the Pope and still take Communion next week. It doesn't work like that.

If you're a believer, and if you're a Catholic, then -- and I mean this sincerely, without irony -- God help you. Good luck with all this, because you're going to need it.

Comments

[snowspinner.livejournal.com]

However the Catholic Church does allow for dissent. I mean, there is debate within Catholicism, and it is permitted.

Nowhere in the Catechism that I am aware of does it declare that one must agree completely with everything that the Pope says. Now, action? Action is another matter. If you're a Catholic engaging in extra-marital sex or using birth control, you've got a contradiction to resolve.

But disagreeing with the Pope? Not forbidden.

I mean, the Pope is given a wide authority on theological matters. He gets taken very seriously. And there are official teachings of the Church, and they matter. But outside of papal infallability, disagreement with the Pope is allowed.

[flemco.livejournal.com]

Then all the "dissenting" Catholics can nod their bobble-heads like puppets and go "well, that's okay then."

[snowspinner.livejournal.com]

I'm not even sure what the scare quotes are supposed to mean there.

It's not OK. It's a fucking appalling statement. I'm mortified, and I'm at best a lapsed Catholic.

But the Catholic Church is not a "love it or leave it" organization.

[flemco.livejournal.com]

You're 100% correct. And those who "dissent" left and right but still call themselves Catholic are pussies.

Stand by your convictions or GTFO.

[snowspinner.livejournal.com]

No. However ass-backwards its policies in some areas may be, and they are ass-backwards, the Catholic Church as an institution, via its work on education, social justice, and hospitals, has done a staggering amount of good in the world. Could they do more if they would abandon stupid policies like not advocating condom usage in AIDS-ravaged countries? Yes. But they do a staggering amount of good.

And on top of that, I find astonishing beauty and power in the core of their doctrine - a beauty and power that is, frankly, not there for me in other Chrtisian denominations. They have a respect for the mystical, a sense of the sublime, and a focus on wonder that moves me. Combined with the basic Christian teaching of forgiveness, and the hard belief in the power of men, through free will and reason, to better themselves, I find much to respect.

And on the other hand, they are wrong on issues. Birth control. Homosexuality. Women as priests. Abortion. They're wrong.

The courage of my convictions is that I'm willing to fight to make them better. I'm willing to stand up for an organization that does good while still holding a firm line on the stuff they do that sucks.

And if you think that's being a pussy and that the moral obligation is to leave any organization that one does not agree with fully, well then, frankly, I'm going to call you a fucking hypocrite unless you live on a desert island micronation somewhere.

Fuck it. If those are my options, I'll take the Church any day. If my options are "get the fuck out if you disagree" or "be a Catholic," I'll take be a Catholic. And I'll say, as a Catholic, that the Pope is dead fucking wrong on this, that for all his understanding and knowledge of philosophy and theology, and his insistence on absolutes is a childish naievete that does a disservice to his faith.

If your position is the alternative, I'll take the church. The disagreements I have with it are far less than those that I have with the cowardly ease of absolute denunciation.

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

And on the other hand, they are wrong on issues. Birth control. Homosexuality. Women as priests. Abortion. They're wrong.

The courage of my convictions is that I'm willing to fight to make them better.

And this, right here, is the crux of the equation.

Because it's not A La Carte. You can't put charitable works and the sanctity of the sacristy on your plate and leave off homophobia and birth control. You get the whole package with your membership. If you think their views and policies are wrong, then as you say you have to actively fight them.

Because these are the positions of your church, and when you declare your membership in that church to an outsider, that outsider is going to ascribe those positions to you. And when Benedict makes this kind of horrible statement, it reflects on you.

Put bluntly, the Catholic Church, in the person of the Pope -- the Leader who was given the Keys to Heaven as Christ gave them to Peter in founding said Church, by Catholic doctrine -- has stated that Birth Control is a sin and homosexuality is an abomination. If you find those positions reprehensible, you have to do so actively and loudly, or else you're going to be counted on that side of the equation.

Because I promise you -- I promise you -- that when lawmakers are considering appropriate legislation on these issues, representatives of your Church are saying "the one hundred and seventy-three million American Catholics agree with us on this." And those lawmakers believe them.

Do I seem angry? It's because I am. And like I said in the title, I'm not inclined to be 'fair' right now. Not when the avowed leader of one point one billion Catholics is making horrible statements like this one. If Catholics don't pitch a fit about it, then it does a huge amount of damage to people who've already suffered plenty.

Honestly, whether or not you forswear the Catholic church, why you wouldn't want to denounce that statement, completely and unequivocally, as bigoted, hateful, and innately unChristian is beyond me. Christ knows (no pun intended) I wouldn't want anyone thinking otherwise.

[zorbathut.livejournal.com]

I'm finding a very uncomfortable similarity between this post and . . . well, this post, with "Catholic Church" replaced by "(American/Canadian/German/Australian) Government". The same arguments here that I see used when people say "well, if you don't like this country, you should just go live in a different country!"

The avowed leader of the United States of America has made his own set of horrifying bigoted frequently-trivially-falsifiable statements. The avowed leader of Canada has as well. I don't remember offhand which of those countries you're a citizen of, but I believe it's at least one of them.

Are you planning on leaving this continent?



From my own perspective - The USA has made a bunch of truly horrific ghastly decisions lately, that I disagree with and loathe with every fiber of my political being. However, I still fundamentally agree with the tenets that the USA was founded on, and while I'll quickly add qualifiers, I'd still describe myself as "an American". I think the concept was good, as corrupted as it's becoming now. And while I cringed every time Bush opened his mouth, and said "goddammit I think he's evil, I don't know how he ended up as President", I still considered myself American - I just didn't consider him American.

Perhaps other people feel the same way about Catholic Christianity with regards to the Pope.

[magentamom.livejournal.com]

You know, that is exactly what I thought.

George W. Bush speaks for this nation for another 28 days. This administration has advocated torture and spying and a war that clearly had no clear grounds in international law. We're not all renouncing our citizenship, tempting though it might be at times.

Now, I did leave the Catholic Church for myriad reasons of disagreement. But I think you've expressed it perfectly. When I say "I'm Christian and believe in these ideals, and I don't see that in these views" it is identical to the sentiment that "I am American and believe in American ideals and I don't see them in these policies."

I get that non-religious people do not understand the level of identity that Catholics feel for the church, but it took me years to really think of myself as not Catholic. And I didn't have a serious Catholic upbringing. Huge influence, but my parents were agnostic.

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

As I said to zorba -- the difference is you have the innate right to reform your government, to repudiate what they have said and done. You have the duty and the responsibility to do so, and mechanisms with which to do it.

Catholics can endure doctrine they disagree with, or they can loudly debate it, or they can leave the Catholic church. However, they can't actually reform the church unless their Ecclesiastical Authority chooses to do so. They can't vote the Pope out of office, any more than they had any say in putting him into office. But as he is the Pope, he speaks for them.

The advantage of Protestantism is the capacity to move parishes or even denominations when doctrine becomes offensive or immoral. And when a Protestant leader -- even at the head of a given convention -- pushes beyond what the flock will endure, there are inevitably means to remove them and start over. The Catholics have no such luxury.

It is a damnable position to be in, but it's one no one but they can resolve.

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't leave America, but I would firmly fight for what I believe to be right in America. And as an American citizen, I have the right to both firmly debate and advocate for the removal from office of those I think are causing harm to others and to our international reputation.

And yes, when the American leader makes an outrageous statement, I believe we have a responsibility and a duty to call it the bullshit it is, make it clear he does not speak for all Americans, and pressure to make change.

Catholics who think such statements as Pope Benedict's are reprehensible have a responsibility to stand up and firmly, sharply make that clear -- and all the moreso because they have no power to remove the Pope from his position. All they can do is rail against the positions he and hte Church take when they veer into hatefulness and spite, and indeed they must do so. If they do not, then they are going to be tarred with their pontiff's opinions as surely as I would be tarred with those of President Bush.

I will not soften a thing about this. We are discussing hatefulness and prejudice, persecution and simple meanness. We are discussing trivializing our fellow man, taking away their right to pursue happiness or indeed just live their own lives away from us. We are discussing bigotry, pure and simple. And it is being done by the leader of the Catholic Church in the name of the Catholic Church -- a leader who can't be removed short of death, and whose doctrines are not subject to revision or review.

What if George Bush declared Martial Law tomorrow, suspended Congress (setting aside blatant illegality for the moment), and made Signing Statements and Executive Orders the only means of disseminating law in the land? What if he could direct the course of education without a legal challenge or without any check on him. What is your responsibility then? To quietly seethe, or to scream from the hilltops?

As I said to Snowspinner -- you can't take Catholicism a la carte. If the Pope or other Ecclesiastical Authority makes statements you find reprehensible, you have three choices: 1) you can say nothing save maybe to close friends, granting tacit approval despite your disagreement; 2) you can speak out, debate, cause a ruckus, and try to do something about the things you find reprehensible while preserving the things you love; 3) you can decide that the offensive doctrinal points can't be reconciled with your worldview and you can seek a spiritual or theological system and organization more in keeping with your personal views.

You mention that you fundamentally agree with the tenets that the USA was founded on. One of those tenets -- the core reason any of us are here -- comes from people who decided they couldn't abide the untenable positions their society held any longer. And when that society imposed the Intolerable Acts on their colonies, denying the Colonists the right to even protest or be represented in their legislature, we said "fuck that" and went to war.

Right now, we have the power as a people to force governmental change. And we have the responsibility to use that power when our government goes corrupt, venal or actively evil. The only power a Catholic has to force Catholicism to change is vigorous debate. Absent that, or absent a receptive audience, their only power to stand up for what is right, in the end, is to leave.

My original post's core point is this: Catholics don't have the innate defense others have had. They can't claim that Pope Benedict "doesn't speak for them." He does speak for them. If they don't like what he's saying, then they're the ones who have to do something about it. Otherwise, they bear the burden of tacit approval.

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is. At certain points in the Catholic Church's history, it has even been encouraged. Rigorous theological debate was once considered, to borrow from the Synagogue across the street, a mitzvah.

However, the Pope, absent speaking ex cathedra, is still the ruling agent of the Church. The Pope sets the formal policy and the formal belief of the Church. The Pope, to go back to the phrasing I used above, speaks for the Church. That is, in fact, his job.

When we speak of someone like Rick Warren or Pat Robertson, we speak of them as "religious leaders," and in one sense that's true. They're influential in their churches. They are given great credence and great authority. But they do not speak for their churches. There are rather involved bodies of authority in the Protestant churches. At most, a given Pastor can be said to speak for his Congregation, with his Bishop standing as his supervisor. And plenty of times in the last few hundred years Protestants who disagree with their Pastors on fundamental theological questions stand up and walk out, and attend a different church in the same or a related denomination.

But for Catholics, the Pope is the end of that chain. The College of Cardinals can come up with anything they like -- if the Pope disagrees with them, the Pope's word goes.

A Catholic can disagree with Pope Benedict XVI. But what he can't do is claim the Pope doesn't speak for Catholicism -- there can be rigorous debate about his decision or opinions, but those opinions are the ones that go out on the official Catholic stationary, and no one can gainsay them. One must actively disagree with the Pope. One must go on the record. One must state, directly or indirectly, that the Pope is wrong, if one wants to step out from the Pope's umbrella. And sooner or later, the more someone does that the more they end up standing away from the Catholic Church in toto.

If a Southern Baptist says Pat Robertson doesn't speak for them, that's all there is to it. Pat Robertson doesn't even have a current congregation -- and his views are significantly more in the Charismatic camp than the Southern Baptist Convention holds to. But when the Reverend Sun Myung Moon speaks for the Unification Church, there is no body or convention jurying his statements. His statements are what the Church holds, and a Moonie who wants to dissent must do so openly, and accept the consequences.

A Catholic who doesn't believe that Homosexuality is innate self-destruction that is condemning the human race on a par with the ecological destruction accompanying the loss of the Rainforests will still be held to their Pontiff's beliefs. They have to make it clear they think the Pope is wrong. And in doing so, they have to risk the consequences.

This 'message' is reprehensible and hateful -- the direct codification of a policy that comes down to 'we feel these people are subhuman and their mere existence is an affront to God, so we must see them destroyed.' And it's being done in the name of the Catholic Church, as a whole, and in the name of the Catholics who make it up. Dissent can only come when it is active.

[snowspinner.livejournal.com]

Yes. But that does not mean refusing to take Communion. Which, to be fair, I will not be doing this week, nor have I in some time, but this has very little to do with why.

In fact, I would say that there is a bravery I wish I had in me to take communion and declare one's self part of the body of the church while dissenting. My position - of estrangement from the church - is more cowardly than those who demand change from within.

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

I would say that there is a bravery I wish I had in me to take communion and declare one's self part of the body of the church while dissenting. My position - of estrangement from the church - is more cowardly than those who demand change from within.

*nods enthusiastically* I think you're right on that one. :D

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

I can accept this. I should have said 'blithely take communion' instead of 'take communion.' Does that mitigate somewhat?

[snowspinner.livejournal.com]

It does. :)

[wednesday]

When we speak of someone like Rick Warren or Pat Robertson, we speak of them as "religious leaders," and in one sense that's true. They're influential in their churches. They are given great credence and great authority. But they do not speak for their churches.

I'm not sure you're right about Rick Warren. He's not empowered to speak for the Southern Baptist Convention, but as pastor and director of Saddleback Church? I do believe he can actually speak for that. Once you're running a megachurch, the terms change quite a bit.

Robertson does not have a church to speak for. (CBN is a complicated borderline case, though.)