Posted on 10/03/2005 5:55:50 AM PDT by marshmallow
TO BE A Roman Catholic in Rome this week is to remember, among so much else, the way in which leaders of this church have squandered their moral authority in recent years.
In 1968, it was the disastrous anti-birth control encyclical ''Humanae Vitae," which opened a gulf between the hierarchy and the laity and which lately has the church on the wrong side of the global fight against HIV/AIDS. The coterie of American bishops chosen by Pope John Paul II failed their greatest test by protecting abusive priests instead of the children who were their victims. Now, church authority stands on the edge of yet another act of moral self-mutilation with a coming ''instruction" banning homosexuals from seminaries. Such a policy threatens to turn an imminent program of ''apostolic visitations" of US seminaries, which overtly targets ''heresy," into a full blown sexual witch hunt.
Over the last couple of weeks, I have had direct and indirect contact with well-connected Catholics here -- hardly a hotbed of liberalism -- and the coming instruction is regarded as a catastrophe in the making. With boards of Vatican-appointed investigators poised to swoop down on American schools in which new priests are trained, interrogations of candidates and loyalty tests for teachers already betray a nostalgia for the bygone era of thought-control and snitching. A formally licensed obsession with homosexuality will push the investigation into a realm, as one senior priest put it to me, more of Joseph Stalin than Jesus Christ.
Instead of asking hard questions about the root causes of the priestly sex abuse scandal -- facing problems of the clerical culture itself, including celibacy, authoritarianism, discrimination against women, the immaturity of church teachings on sexuality -- Rome is preparing to scapegoat homosexuals.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Oh, drop dead, James Carroll.
The only thing catastrophic about Humanae Vitae is that the CLERGY refused to support it, not the laity. I can still remember hearing sermons about how ridiculous it was. The "fresh new spring" of the Church had been blowing about for a couple of years then, and clearly many of the clergy - who had always been dissidents, but quiet about it - thought that their moment had arrived.
'Former priest' -- well, now, isn't THAT an interesting bit of information??? hahaha. The former priest I know is a "Vat 3" sort.
Yes, the 60s and 70s radical priests are still rebellious and filled with Pride of Self. tsk tsk tsk.
Bumping for future reference.
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