On May 19 The New York Times carried an opinion piece by Maureen Dowd in which she expressed her distress at what she perceives to be the current state of the Roman Catholic Church.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/opinion/sunday/dowd-here-comes-nobody.html
Dowd believes that the church of her childhood has become narrow and exclusive.
I ALWAYS liked that the name of my religion was also an adjective meaning all-embracing. …So it makes me sad to see the Catholic Church grow so uncatholic, intent on loyalty testing, mind control and heresy hunting. Rather than all-embracing, the church hierarchy has become all-constricting.
She goes on to suggest that the growing intolerance she senses in the church is attributable to a deepening insecurity among the church’s leadership.
Absolute intolerance is always a sign of uncertainty and panic. Why do you have to hunt down everyone unless you’re weak? The church doesn’t seem to care if its members’ beliefs are based on faith or fear, conviction or coercion. But what is the quality of a belief that exists simply because it’s enforced?
“To be narrowing the discussion and instilling fear in people seems to be exactly the opposite of what’s called for these days,” says the noted religion writer Kenneth Briggs. “All this foot-stomping just diminishes the church’s credibility even more.”
Predictably, the reactions to Dowd’s opinion piece vary wildly.
Many people rushing to comment on Dowd’s piece of course are in a hurry to agree.
tarry davis norfolk, virginia
The Church hierarchy in the US is ignored by the majority of Catholics. They are old, stubborn, iconoclasts. So, we simply turn our back on them. They have no relevance to our lives. They have proven time and time again they cannot be trusted to render unto Caesar. Unfortunately the bishops live in a bubble. The are out of touch with their flock
Other responders to Dowd’s piece seek to dismiss her right to make any comment at all on the life of the church in which, according to this comment, she no longer participates.
Michael in Hokkaido Mountains
Ms. Dowd has written a very unfair and contumacious piece about the Roman Catholic Church.
As a disgruntled former catholic Ms. Dowd should, in fairness, recuse herself from commenting or judging the Church. When a judge or lawyer is too close to a case or has “issues” and “connections” to a case they always recuse themselves from being involved because they are unable to be fair minded and unbiased.
In much the same way as a judge recussing himself from hearing a case—Ms. Dowd should recuse herself. She is clearly the proverbial “hostile witness”.
Ms. Dowd has written highly inflammatory and contumacious accusations and innuendo against the Roman Catholic Faith and Church and her piece is unfair and an outrage.
Then of course there is the predictable response of shooting the messenger. Rather than listening to Dowd, Elizabeth Scalia dismisses her with mockery and ridicule. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theanchoress/2012/05/21/pelosis-failure-leads-dowd-to-cuomo-again/
Dowd has demonstrated that she really doesn’t understand much about Catholicism and its unending, beautifully nuanced and constant move toward God’s ever-present “Yes” — a fundamentally sophisticated and paradoxical means toward true freedom. As with many other issues, she has completely bought into the arrested-adolescent perspective, which can only perceive the church as a numbing “no.” Since Dowd is unwilling to plumb the depths of the church in order to seek out its richness, there are absolutely no surprises in the piece.
What I have been unable to locate in my brief search of responses to Dowd’s piece are the considered reflective comments from within the church that say, “Yes Ms. Dowd may have put her finger on some legitimate concerns and here are the steps we are taking to address these issues.”
Perhaps I am naive, but it seems to me that such a response might go further to deflate Dowd’s critique than any amount of vitriolic defensive counter attack.
Curiously, Dowd’s critics seem unimpressed with the fact that she quotes appreciatively the loyal Roman Catholic Mario Cuomo who, in a telephone interview summed up his relationship with the church telling her that,
If the church were my religion, I would have given it up a long time ago. All the mad and crazy popes we’ve had through history, decapitating the husbands of women they’d taken. All the terrible things the church has done. Christ is my religion, the church is not.
Perhaps, like Ms. Dowd, Mr. Cuomo is disqualified as a voice in the Catholic conversation because he is willing to entertain the possibility that his church might at times be a legitimate object of critique.
Any organization that is unable to entertain the possibility that there may be a grain of truth in the kind of avalanche of criticism currently being leveled by many loyal voices against the Roman Church, risks losing the valuable tool of self-reflection that is an essential quality in healthy organizational life.
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May 22, 2012 at 6:49 am
jaqueline
“The Church hierarchy in the US is ignored by the majority of Catholics. They are old, stubborn, iconoclasts. So, we simply turn our back on them.They have no relevance to our lives.”
A pet peeve…this habit that Americans have gotten into of describing someone as an iconoclast, when they actually mean icon.
An iconoclast is a person who destroys religious images or opposes their veneration or who attacks settled beliefs or institutions. Clearly that cannot be the church heirarchy.
Ms Dowd is being the iconoclast here, daring to dismantle the the Church’s idol of authoritarianism.
Michael in Hokkaido ( mountains) response is telling, it betrays his understanding of the church as a distant institution that is about law and order, confirming Ms Dowd’s critique.
It is very difficult to read these words :
Absolute intolerance is always a sign of uncertainty and panic. Why do you have to hunt down everyone unless you’re weak? The church doesn’t seem to care if its members’ beliefs are based on faith or fear, conviction or coercion. But what is the quality of a belief that exists simply because it’s enforced?
“To be narrowing the discussion and instilling fear in people seems to be exactly the opposite of what’s called for these days,” says the noted religion writer Kenneth Briggs. “All this foot-stomping just diminishes the church’s credibility even more.”
..and not be aware of the Pope’s history as a young boy under the Nazis.
That is not to suggest his is Nazifying the Catholic Church, but it cannot be helped to note that his early years were spent under a regime that was about imposing order and obedience and purpose as evidence of a healthy society; an ideal, that frankly, is not exclusive to Germany under the Nazis but to be found even today in the best meaning of circles.
It is no real surprise that as our world experiences uncertainty, that the opposite is being presented as an antidote, and it is understandable that it is responsible, creative people who are the most astute critics of that approach. Ironically, the very people that the Catholic church used to fashion icons/ idols and the very people the Reformation church rejected are those who are needed now to aid us.
It is creativity that is needed to lead a people/ institution/ society out of chaos into order, an order that still breathes and allows for growth and variation. Creatives live and breath and work in that liminal space between chaos and order. To keep our world from being pulled apart by the polarity of chaos and order we need creativity. But too often relegated the fringes, what our society tends to do with creatives in these ‘difficult’ times is make them optional.
May 22, 2012 at 7:19 am
John
There is so much that could be said on this issue of Roman Catholic intransigence – or regression – depending on your point of view. What I have been saying to people from time to time lately is that the failure of the Roman Catholic church to reform itself in the modern era may come to be viewed, in retrospect, as one of the greatest tragedies of our time. One can only imagine where we might all be today had the spirit of Vatican II been fully implemented, or had we moved on – quite conceivably – to a Vatican III. Perhaps one can hope, though I personally don’t – at least not at this point.
May 22, 2012 at 9:46 am
Steve
I think the problems within the Catholic Church are a microcosm of a much larger problem that is by no means limited to the Catholic Church. It has its own unique problems, but I think the problem is no less evident in the protestant church. It is not unrelated to the discussion on de-reformation. The crisis of the church is paralleled and in my opinion not unrelated a crisis facing governments and reflected in the culture war we are experiencing here in the U.S. It centers on the connection between church and state. Mario Cuomo framed the issue in the following quotes from the Dowd article.
“The American people need no course in philosophy or political science or church history to know that God should not be made into a celestial party chairman,” he said.
“If they make the mistake of saying that a politician has to put the church before the Constitution on abortion or other issues, there will be no senators or presidents or any other Catholics in government. The church would be wiser to take the path laid out for us by Kennedy than the path laid out for us by Santorum”
May 22, 2012 at 7:10 pm
jaqueline
Here is a great article that is sympatico with your post, that I read a couple of weeks ago.
http://sojo.net/blogs/2012/05/03/idolatry-politics-and-promise-common-good
May 22, 2012 at 10:18 pm
Steve
Thank you, yes he is saying the same thing he’s just nicer about it Than I. I think the formation of the Christian coalition in the early 1980′s, and I was part of it, will go down as one of the biggest blunders in the religious history of this country. I liken it with the Old Testament stories of the Israelite’s turning from God to idolatry. We’ve got no business in politics and pretending like we represent God. We were never charged with being social reformers. He made it real simple, feed my children. If the Christian Church were obedient to God and what He called us to do, most of the problems we have wouldn’t exists. But don’t get me started.
May 23, 2012 at 9:36 am
Steve
This is anecdotal and extreme I know but it represents what is so troublesome to me. It is the extreme of what I see in a much milder version frequently. I keep asking myself if there should/could be a self policing/admonishment among Christians. Or should I just believe God is in control and not assume responsibility for what other Christians do. In any case, I can see an argument for authority structures within the church. Viewer discretion is advised.
http://bit.ly/JnEBuo
May 23, 2012 at 2:06 pm
brokenstones
We might not have the right to stop him from saying it. but we do have the right and the responsibility to say what we think. We have the right to say it is a load of rubbish and dangerous and prejudiced and as far from Jesus teaching as it gets.
We have the right actually to say he ought not to speak like that . We are allowed to say that the idea of putting people behind a fence and letting them die off has been done before and it did not go over too well.
We are allowed to remind him that as far as being biblical is concerned, we would be quite right to suggest that he ought to go to hell, that’s where gluttons belong; and that maybe he might like to suggest putting gluttons behind the fence and NOT feeding them as a solution to their sin.
PS I loved where the video finished off….nice bit of editing.
May 23, 2012 at 4:26 pm
Steve
There will always be religious quacks and fanatics and that doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is that this will be magnified 1,000,000 times and used as a weapon to further a political agenda. As of now, I’ve decided to simply let it be a motivation to pray more for the church and my country and then remind myself that the love of God is an unquenchable flame that cannot be stomped out. Then I will try to just be another one of those “flaming” Christians.
May 23, 2012 at 6:01 pm
John
I thought this thread was about the Roman Catholic Church, and not about protestants? The pastor link added above is certainly shocking – he basically sounds like a Nazi – but it’s not relevant to the discussion at hand.
May 26, 2012 at 6:14 pm
jaqueline
here you go John, from a comment above…to explain why the thread actually hasn’t become irrelevant……
“I think the problems within the Catholic Church are a microcosm of a much larger problem that is by no means limited to the Catholic Church. It has its own unique problems, but I think the problem is no less evident in the
protestant church. “