Posted on 04/15/2002 5:27:52 PM PDT by jrherreid
Sunday, April 14, 2002
By Andrew M. Greeley
Anti-Catholicism is as American as apple pie a la mode, chocolate malts, Diet Pepsi and silly nostalgia at the beginning of the baseball season.
No Catholic who has to work in the higher media, the upper academy, or the New York publishing world has any doubts about its existence.
Most American Catholics rarely encounter it in their daily lives. Hence, they do not take it seriously. Not enough Catholics suffer because of it for there ever to be a serious battle against it. Therefore, anti-Catholicism will persist in American life indefinitely, giving the lie to the claim that Americans have left prejudice and discrimination behind.
It lurks beneath the surface of American culture and raises its ugly head only on occasion — as it now is doing on the sexual abuse crisis.
As someone who has denounced child abuse by priests and cover-ups by the hierarchy for 16 years, I defend neither. If there has been a new outburst of anti-Catholicism that the country has not seen since the John Kennedy election, one must admit candidly that the leadership of the church has provided much raw material for the Catholic haters.
The current feeding frenzy goes far beyond the stupidity and the arrogance of Catholic leadership. The argument one hears and reads over and over that celibacy is the cause of sexual abuse is a vicious anti-Catholic lie, even if it comes from columnists and editorial writers who claim to be Catholic. In an ABC news poll, 6 percent of Catholics and 6 percent of other Americans said that there had been a sex abuse case in their congregation, a finding that shows the problem is not just celibate or Catholic.
Most child abusers are married men (and in some cases married women). Their abuse results from deep emotional problems. If a priest with these proclivities marries, then he will be a married sex abuser. No clinician disputes that truth. The alleged link between celibacy and sexual abuse is specious.
Is there no historian of anti-Catholic nativism who will rise up and shout that attacks on the celibate priesthood have been an integral part of anti-Catholic bigotry for two centuries? Historically, the bigots insist that the priest is either a slimy character looking for young people or nuns to assault or something less than a real man.
Some few resigned priests make that argument, in effect, today against those of us who have tried to keep our promise of celibacy. Those who accept the argument as though it were unquestionable truth are de facto anti-Catholics. Somehow the fact these loudmouths now sleep with a woman seems to constitute prima facie evidence that they are more real men than we are and uniquely qualified to criticize our inadequacies. That, too, is anti-Catholic bigotry and should be labeled as such.
Moreover, the mode that the media use to report the reaction of Catholics to the abuse and the cover-up — "faithful shaken by abuse charges" — is also anti-Catholic. It assumes, as do most Americans, that Catholics are clinging weakly to a faith and a heritage and a church that can barely survive one more crisis. In fact, Catholics remain Catholic because they like being Catholic. They like their heritage, their communalism, their sacraments, their sense of God's presence in the world, their stories, their images, their rain forest of metaphors. They should give that up because their clergy fail to be what they should be and because some of their leaders are idiots?
Gimme a break!
Do the bigots really think that Catholics were in the churches on Easter because of the priests?
Yet that is the paradigm that permeates American society and the only one which the media seem capable of using.
How about "Catholics are angry, but not leaving!" Then how about a serious discussion of why they're not leaving — as the present paradigm suggests they should. And, finally, a discussion of the historic hatred for Catholicism that has generated such a paradigm.
The tradition of celibacy is part of that heritage, a dispensable part, perhaps, but still understandable within the parameters of the heritage. Intelligent discussion about it should begin with respect for its purposes and accomplishments and not sweeping assumptions about sexual perversion and abnormality.
Do Americans really want to do away completely with men such as Father Damian or M. Vincent or Father Kino or Joe Bernardin because the self-serving diatribes of a few resigned priests fits so neatly our culture's anti-Catholicism?
Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, author and sociologist. He teaches at the University of Chicago and the University of Arizona. His column on political, church and social issues appears each Sunday in the Daily Southtown. Father Greeley's e-mail address is Agreel@aol.com and his home page, which includes homilies for every Sunday, is www.agreeley.com.
No kidding, especially when they launch into round CLXXVII of Calvinism vs. Arminianism. What a bunch of wackos.
-ccm
This is the key point, and something that most people don't understand about Catholics. Priests are incidental to the Catholic Church. Not that they are not valuable, but it doesn't matter WHO the priest is. They are interchangeable. (I love my two parish priests and would miss them dearly if they left, but that's beside the point.) The Catholic Mass is about JESUS CHRIST. The priest is the instrument by which the bread and wine are turned into the body and blood of Jesus. God turns the bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus; the priest celebrates the Holy Eucharist with the flock.
Many Protestant churches -- I will not say all, because I don't have knowledge on all -- but many to revolve around a particularly charismatic, or smart, or attractive, or saintly minister. Without the minister, the church disappears or weakens. In the Catholic Church, changing priests doesn't take away from the Mass, the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, and the Real Presence of Jesus Christ.
I think that is worth remembering, particularly us Catholics who might feel betrayed by the actions of a few wayward and sinful priests.
God bless.
In my diocese, I haven't had a problem with priests being elevated or whatnot based on their charisma or some external gift. Maybe other churches are doing it. I have no problem evangelizing in any way we can, provided that we hold fast to our ancient beliefs and firm and steadfast in our doctrine.
I think one reason some Catholics have left the church, particularly in the 80s during the era of Pat Robertson et. al. was because they felt a sense of community in a Protestant church that had been lost in their own parish community. I have many protestant friends who tell me of the weekly prayer meetings, the groups of couples who get together monthly to talk about faith and family, the hours they spend at church socializing, the sense of family and community among the parishioners.
I am fortunate to have that in my parish. At the same time, I have been to churches that feel cold and sterile. While it doesn't bother me because I am there for the Lord, I can see how some with outside influences might be more attracted to the comraderie and fellowship of the large Protestant churches.
We need to bring them back home, but we have to understand why they left in the first place.
God bless.
God bless Sister Philip.
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