The Rottweiler’s Rottweiler by
Bill Keller, NYT Op-Ed, June 17, 2012
I CAN’T believe I’m saying
this, but Bill Donohue is right. Donohue, the chronically peeved president of
the Catholic League, and I rarely see
eye to eye, but he is right about one very big thing: how to resolve the crisis
in Catholicism. My endorsement may horrify him as much as it surprises me.
(Small world – strange bedfellows – Bill and
Bill)
Donohue, for those of you without
cable TV, (yeah that’s you, you poor f*cks on welfare) is the Vatican’s most
vociferous American apologist. (I always thought
he was Dolan’s exclusive bootlicker) Any time a critic — especially a
Catholic critic — casts doubt on the wisdom of the Catholic hierarchy, Donohue
fires off a press release attacking the attacker or otherwise changing the
subject. Bring up pedophile priests and he’ll talk about pedophile
public-school teachers or pedophile Orthodox Jews. That nun who is under a
Vatican cloud lately for having written a book with decidedly liberal views on
sexuality? Donohue’s response bypassed her arguments and focused on
the fact that she sometimes cites Michel Foucault, the creepy French
philosopher known as an acolyte of the Marquis de Sade and a darling of the
radical left. (Guilt by footnote.) (Them vagina bearers, nuns, read fancy frenchie stuff! How dare they.)
Another
ferocious defender of the faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, used to be known as
“God’s Rottweiler.” (If the Hague ever
gets their hands on him, he will be known as "prisoner 8846295".) Ratzinger is
now Pope Benedict XVI, and Bill Donohue is the Rottweiler’s Rottweiler. (A senile old bugger’s blind junkyard dog is
still just a senile old bugger’s blind junkyard dog.)
In person,
Donohue — a big, 64-year-old Long Island Irishman, divorced father of two grown
daughters — has the genial manner of the parish priest he almost became (A wail
of Thank Gods from the world’s altar boys!). Instead he digressed to military
school (reform school?), the Air Force (the military or prison?), and the
sociology faculty of a Catholic college in Pennsylvania (Alabama north). He is
more likable one-on-one than his notorious sound bites, which have an Ann
Coulterish reductiveness: Hollywood is “controlled by secular Jews who hate
Christianity.” President Obama “supports selective infanticide.” Progressive
Catholics are “termites.” The title of his 2009 book catches the snarly
Donohue: “Secular Sabotage: How Liberals Are Destroying Religion and Culture in
America.”( blah, blah, blah, blah )
I picked up his new book — “Why
Catholicism Matters” — expecting another fountain of invective (I didn’t pay
for it, it was sent to me). But this is a mellower work, a believer’s portrait
of the church he loves, built around the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice,
temperance and fortitude. It dwells on Catholicism’s estimable contributions to
scholarship, Western culture and humanitarianism, while airbrushing those
episodes where the church came up short in the cardinal-virtue department. Thus
the case of Galileo — who was branded a heretic for endorsing Copernicus’s
theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun — does not merit our indignation,
since Galileo spent his last years under house arrest (under threat of torture) rather than in a dungeon. “Why
Catholicism Matters” gives us the defense counsel’s version of the Crusades (a
natural response to Islamic jihad) (and greed
to take over the trade ratline to the middle east held but the Eastern Church in
Constantinople, which Rome broke away from in 1054 in the Great Schism) and
the Inquisition (never mind the torture, secular authorities did the
heretic-burning). He sums up the shameful cover-up of predatory priests with
that weasel classic, “mistakes were made.” (
and sadly still being made )
By now some
readers are wondering Why Donohue Matters (
The Bishops at the USCCB Atlanta annual meeting are embarrassed by him. There
looking for a new spokesman.). Indeed, when he took charge of the Catholic
League in 1993, Donohue could be dismissed as a conservative blowhard, one of
those laymen who was, ahem, more Catholic than the pope. But the official
church has moved far enough to the right that Donohue now speaks for its
mainstream. (mainstream McMansion Long
Island that is)
And what you
learn if you listen to the Catholic Church in the plain language of Bill
Donohue is that it is not about to change direction. Not in this century. The
parishioners who hope for a kinder, more inclusive church, the nuns who are now being rebuked by the
Vatican because they have doubts
on subjects like gay marriage and the ordination of women — the church’s
message to them is: Shut up or go. (Shut
up and sign over your real estate holdings dears.)
Face it,
even at the high-water mark of contemporary church reform, the Vatican II
council, issues like the stained-glass ceiling and intolerance of gays were not
really on the table. And that tide was been receding for nearly 50 years.
Indeed, the church’s 1960s effort to engage the modern world is now regarded in
the current Curia as part of an era of degenerate individualism — Woodstock,
Stonewall, Vatican II — that is blamed for all kinds of deviant outcomes,
including the scandal of priests who can’t keep it in their cassocks. (Democracy was such a terrible modern
mistake, let’s bow to a Catholic King in Rome.)
Donohue
notes that roughly a quarter of Americans identify themselves as Catholic (No the church claims numbers beyond reality
in that department). He reckons maybe half of those, the more conservative
half, attend church regularly and contribute. “They’re the ones who pay the
bills,” he said. “Can we afford to ignore the other half? I think we can.” (The Nazis in WWII Germany were the regular
church goers and the resistance Christians were too busy to go to church fighting for human
rights in Europe) And as for the unsettled religious orders, the nuns and
priests who vowed allegiance and now preach dissent, why should the church put
up with insubordination? (What dissent?
They are not lobotomized. They can’t have any opinions. Wow.)
“Do we have
more than a handful of nuns who have totally lost their moorings?” Donohue
mused. “Oh, yeah.” (Wow again!)
His point:
“Quite frankly I believe, as Pope Benedict the XVIth said just before he became
pope, that maybe a smaller church would be a better church.” (What
the hell ever happened to the good shepherd and going out of the way for the
lost sheep. Segregated exclusive racist white gated community of God?)
Much as I
wish I could encourage the discontented, the Catholics of open minds and open
hearts, to stay put and fight the good fight, this is a lost cause. (Yeah we know, the church lasts for
centuries or it used to.) Donohue is right (Gag!). Summon your fortitude, and just go. (Fuck you…) If you are not getting the spiritual sustenance you
need, if you are uneasy being part of an institution out of step with your
conscience — then go (…and your mother).
The restive nuns who are planning a field trip to Rome for a bit of dialogue?
Be assured, unless you plan to grovel, no one will be listening. Sisters, just
go. Bill Donohue will hold the door for you. (Bill is already out the door Bill.
You applying for his job?)
Go where?
Well, the history of Christianity is filled with schisms and offshoots. Last
spring I attended Sunday Mass at a breakaway church called Spiritus Christi in Rochester, a
congregation that describes itself as “Catholic, not Roman Catholic.” Spiritus
Christi has a female pastor and began performing gay marriages long before the
State of New York legalized them. Mass was packed with as joyous a crowd of
worshipers as I have ever seen. I could imagine hundreds of Spiritus Christis —
and leave it to the theologians to debate whether the Vatican or these
defectors have the stronger claim to being the authentic heirs of St. Peter. (Defectors? Deserters? Wehrmacht terminology?)
This is,
admittedly, easy for me to say. I have not spent my life in a religious order,
embracing vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. So I called someone who
speaks with more authority about what it costs to leave the church. Sister
Margie Henninger was expelled from the Order of St. Joseph and excommunicated
for affiliating with those not-Roman Catholics in Rochester. She now runs a recovery house for the drug- and
alcohol-afflicted (yeah more poor minority
f*cks on welfare).
“It was
certainly painful, after 42 years,” she told me. “I lost my community. I lost
my home. I lost so much. But, God being God, I gained much more.”
At 71,
Sister Margie feels deeply Catholic, very much in harmony with her conscience,
and happy. And of the Roman church she left behind, she says: “It almost has to
completely come apart before something new and beautiful can spring up.”
There are
many nuns who hold fast to the church out of genuine devotion. But there are
others who stay out of fear — fear that they will grow old alone, fear of
penury and homelessness, fear of losing purpose.
Thankfully,
Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York has offered us one possible remedy for this
problem. As Laurie Goodstein documented in The Times recently, when he was
archbishop of Milwaukee Dolan
authorized payments of up to $20,000 to
predator priests if they agreed to leave the clergy without resisting. He
described this as “an act of charity.” Bill Donohue calls it “a severance
package.” (Now I get it Bill Keller, this whole article has been sarcasm. Right? I am so dumb at times. Mea Culpa.)
I suggest
that any long-serving nun who has come to find church teachings incompatible
with her conscience should be offered a generous severance. We could call these
acts of charity “Dolan Grants.” Surely a church that offers a lifeline to men
who brought disgrace on the institution can offer a living stipend to women who
brought it honor at great sacrifice. (the floor of hell I hear is paved in “Dolan
Grants” LOL)
Great article Bill. (Sarcasm)
(I read the quote about telling everybody in the Church "to go" first over at the right wing rag Catholic Culture.org pimping that quote out of context etc...whatever.)
Have a nice day.
.
