Catholicism's Internal Culture War

As a former Roman Catholic I know the dark side of Catholicism which is predominated by guilt, self-loathing and almost a form of hatred towards women and, of course gays - even though the ranks of the priesthood and Vatican are likely filled with closeted gay men. Looking back more than a decade after leaving the Catholic Church, I feel with the benefit of hindsight that I had recover from almost a form of psychologically abused inflicted on me as a closeted gay teen and then later for many years as a closeted gay man. Fortunately, many within the Catholic laity have come to recognize the severe harm done to many by the intransigent Catholic Church leadership and the huge disconnect between the Christian message of love and compassion and the almost hateful and intolerant rigidity preached by conservatives appointed by the less than saintly John Paul II and the Emperor Palpatine like Benedict XVI. An article in the Washington Post looks at this internal culture war within the Church. A war which hopefully will ultimately won by the laity which increasingly ignores the dictates from Roman and Benedict XVI's henchmen in bishoprics around the world. Here are some highlights:

Barbara Johnson reached out to receive Holy Communion at her mother’s funeral Mass last month at St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Gaithersburg. The Rev. Marcel Guarnizo, standing before her, placed his hand over the offering bowl, denying her the sacrament.

Those mere seconds between Johnson, no ordinary Catholic, and Guarnizo, no ordinary priest, have touched off a heated controversy among Catholics across the country — another battle in the seemingly endless cultural wars that have invadednearly every corner of daily life, even funerals.

What’s clear, amid all the dissension, is that distinctly different beliefs about Catholicism turned a random meeting of a grieving woman and priest into a theological collision.

What’s next for Guarnizo is unclear. In his statement, he questioned the Washington archdiocese’s handling of the case and its allegations of his intimidation. Some Catholic commentators noted how unusual it is for a priest to publicly contradict and criticize his superiors. Doctrine dictates that priests are to be submissive to their bishops.

“If I was Cardinal [Donald W.] Wuerl, I’d buy him a one-way ticket to Moscow,” the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Washington Jesuit and former editor of liberal Catholic magazine America, said in reference to the archbishop of Washington. “These days, arch-conservative priests feel much more comfortable attacking their bishops than do liberals because they feel they’ll get support from conservative Catholic blogs and maybe some in the Vatican.”

While the priest has been fiercely attacked by liberal Catholics and non-Catholics, conservative Catholics have rushed to defend Guarnizo‘s decision to deny Johnson Communion. That Johnson ultimately received the sacrament from a lay minister that day hardly seems to matter at this point.

The vitriol the incident has unleashed online has unnerved Johnson and her family.

Personally, I cannot understand how anyone LGBT remains involved in any manner with the Roman Catholic Church. To me, it's like someone who is Jewish joining a Nazi party or someone black belonging to the KKK. With viable alternatives like the Episcopal Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America that offer nearly identical services available to LGBT Catholics, there truly is no reason to remain affiliated with an institution that denigrates one's very existence. Especially when the worldwide sex abuse scandal has clearly revealed the moral bankruptcy of the Church hierarchy. And what I find equally telling is the number of members of the younger generations who have walked away from the Church both because of the sex abuse scandal and the Church's anti-gay jihad. All three of my own children have abandoned the Catholic Church and, to the extent they give any credence to institutional religion, only consider fealty to gay friendly denominations.

These conclusions are not just my own. The Seattle Times has a piece on the disconnect between everyday Catholics and Rick Santorum who markets himself as uber-Catholic and a darling of the Church hierarchy:

Across all states where Republican primary voters were asked their religion in exit polls, Mitt Romney, a Mormon, trounced Santorum among Catholics, with an average margin of victory above 20 percentage points. Even in Southern states, where Romney has struggled, Catholics broke his way.

On Sunday, overwhelmingly Catholic Puerto Rico was holding its primary. Catholics haven't voted as a bloc in decades, leading analysts to declare "the Catholic vote" as such doesn't exist. Still, the results are surprising given that the former Pennsylvania senator puts Catholicism at the center of his public service and personal life.

Santorum underscored his distance from other Catholics by saying recently that he "almost threw up" when he read Kennedy's famous 1960 speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association addressing anti-Catholic bias.

Catholic primary voters were less likely than Protestants to see Santorum as their best ideological match. The polls found that 52 percent of Protestant voters described Santorum's positions as just right, compared with 42 percent of Catholics, while 28 percent of Catholics called Santorum too conservative.

The other thing that is noteworthy is that the current far right form of Catholicism is unable to attract seminarians in America. A New York Times article that looks at the retirement of the Archbishop of Canterbury notes that both the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church the inability to attract seminarians in educated, developed countries is striking compared to what is happening in ignorant, uneducated nations in the third world:

Roman Catholicism’s decline in the West has likewise been accompanied by striking growth in the developing world. (As the number of Catholic seminarians has dropped in the United States and Europe, for instance, it has risen by 86 percent globally since 1978.) In both churches, this geographic and demographic shift is putting a strain on institutional structures that evolved in a more Eurocentric age.

This is probably the last era in which the public face of the world’s major Christian bodies will look the way it did in 1780, or even 1950. The next pope could well be Latin American or African; if not in the next election, then it’s only a matter of time.

A hundred years ago, the idea that one of Western Europe’s most ancient religious offices could be occupied by a black man born in Africa would have seemed like something out of science fiction. By the end of this century, in a globalized Anglicanism and Catholicism alike, it will probably seem like the most normal and necessary thing in the world.

With its refusal to accept modernity and modern medical and mental health knowledge on sexual orientation, the Catholic Church is slowly but steadily condemning itself to a future where it will flourish - at least until education levels increase - only as a third world religion where ignorance and a lack of education predominate. Benedict XVI may want to save Catholicism in the developed world and Europe, but instead his efforts to restore a 13th century mindset in the Church is accelerating the death of Catholicism.