I received a comment today on a blog I wrote some time ago on Melinda Gates as a real Catholic (that is, a person who practices Social Justice), suggesting that I "don't know of what I speak" and that I should stop bashing Christians and start bashing Muslims instead. I studied Catholic theology for some 12 years and decided to republish an earlier blog (of March 12) on Catholic views and Social Justice, which very few American Catholics are aware of and worse rarely practice. Paul Ryan, by every stretch of the imagination, is not a Catholic, whatever he may claim.
My blog of March 12 entitled, Where are the Bishops?
I attended an anniversary mass yesterday for my mother who died eleven years ago on March 10. In the church bulletin, I found the following passage:
Catholic Social Teaching
The economy must serve people, not the other way around. Work is more than a way to make a living. It is a form of continuing participation in God's creation. If the dignity of work is to be protected then the basic rights of the worker must be respected--the right to productive work, to decent and fair wages, to organize and join unions, to private property, and to economic initiative.
I find the above to be ironic in so many ways. I agree with all of the above, mainly because this is what I was taught as a child and as an adolescent, in Catholic grammar and high school. Yet this teaching of the church is buried in its weekly bulletin, hidden among announcements of pancake breakfasts and appeals for money. The sermon from the pulpit, on the other hand, made references to reality TV, the housewives of something or other, Jersey Shore, and Tim Tebow--not negatively I might add, and I can't remember a day later the point of the sermon. Where is the church, beyond the hidden paragraphs, on what used to matter in Catholicism?
John the 23rd in Mater et Magistra (1961) reaffirmed the importance of a living wage as something that must not be left to the laws of the marketplace or the will of the more powerful. John Paul II in Laborem Exercens (1981) defended the purpose and right of labor and trade unions. Yet, American bishops focus their attention on only one of the encyclicals, contraception. Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae in 1968 wrote that artificial contraception is considered intrinsically evil. What does this say about the vast majority of Catholic Americans of reproductive age who practice some sort of contraception? (And as an aside, shouldn't words like "evil" be reserved for acts such as those practiced by Hitler in WWII or George Bush in his attack on the people of Iraq. If contraception is evil, what then is murder, torture, rape, or the sexual abuse of children, "very evil"?)
Note: All of the above that I write of Gingrich and Santorum is also true of Paul Ryan and no doubt also true of the person who commented on my Melinda Gates blog.
Catholic Social Teaching
The economy must serve people, not the other way around. Work is more than a way to make a living. It is a form of continuing participation in God's creation. If the dignity of work is to be protected then the basic rights of the worker must be respected--the right to productive work, to decent and fair wages, to organize and join unions, to private property, and to economic initiative.
I find the above to be ironic in so many ways. I agree with all of the above, mainly because this is what I was taught as a child and as an adolescent, in Catholic grammar and high school. Yet this teaching of the church is buried in its weekly bulletin, hidden among announcements of pancake breakfasts and appeals for money. The sermon from the pulpit, on the other hand, made references to reality TV, the housewives of something or other, Jersey Shore, and Tim Tebow--not negatively I might add, and I can't remember a day later the point of the sermon. Where is the church, beyond the hidden paragraphs, on what used to matter in Catholicism?
John the 23rd in Mater et Magistra (1961) reaffirmed the importance of a living wage as something that must not be left to the laws of the marketplace or the will of the more powerful. John Paul II in Laborem Exercens (1981) defended the purpose and right of labor and trade unions. Yet, American bishops focus their attention on only one of the encyclicals, contraception. Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae in 1968 wrote that artificial contraception is considered intrinsically evil. What does this say about the vast majority of Catholic Americans of reproductive age who practice some sort of contraception? (And as an aside, shouldn't words like "evil" be reserved for acts such as those practiced by Hitler in WWII or George Bush in his attack on the people of Iraq. If contraception is evil, what then is murder, torture, rape, or the sexual abuse of children, "very evil"?)
Why this unrelenting single focus on sexual acts in the Catholic church? Some critics have suggested that the church must keep the focus on this one encyclical over all others because to admit error would be to acknowledge that popes are fallible and by implication that the Catholic church is also fallible, and not the true and only Christian church. (Indeed, before the pope issued Humanae Vitae a majority of bishops expressed their view that artificial contraception was not sinful. The pope instead accepted the minority view that it was.) My own view on the church's refusal to accept contraception is less subtle. All religions are patriarchal, with an overriding interest in suppressing women, and the church's teaching on contraception is most burdensome to women in achieving any sort of independence in their lives, sexual or otherwise. Whichever view you take, if any, it's clear that American Catholic bishops have decided that all other teachings of the church are of lesser importance than those that focus on our sexual lives.
Now is the time if American bishops believe in any of the other teachings of the church to make their views known. Two of the candidates for the Republican nomination, Gingrich and Santorum, profess to be Catholics, yet neither has reaffirmed any of the basic teachings of the Catholic church on social issues, including abolition of the death penalty, the right of workers to unionize, or the need of society to share its wealth with those less advantaged. (The Obama's health care bill is an excellent example of legislation that supports Catholic teaching.) Gingrich and Santorum are in strong opposition to the health care bill and other Catholic social teaching. It's time for all those who profess to be Catholics to make their views known to their bishops, or as my sister did recently, to their confessors. We must stop partaking in Catholic hypocrisy.
Note: All of the above that I write of Gingrich and Santorum is also true of Paul Ryan and no doubt also true of the person who commented on my Melinda Gates blog.
Well written Grace.
ReplyDeleteThank you. Grace
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