The Catholics Still in Exile

As prior posts have noted, much of the media remains in a swoon over Pope Francis as evidenced by Time selecting him as 2013 person of the year.  Such fainting spells and vapors overlook (i) Francis' utter failure to date to sack bishops and cardinals who covered up for predator priests (my Google search agent literally yields a half dozen new stories on abuse each day), and (ii) that doctrinally, nothing has really changed in terms of the Church's treatment of gays, divorced Catholics, and the hierarchy's obsession with contraception and abortion.   Nice words do not make up for a lack of serious action.  An op-ed in the New York Times looks at this reality.  Here are excerpts:

HONEYMOON isn’t a word usually associated with pontiffs, but Pope Francis is having an extraordinary one. Last week Time magazine named him its person of the year, saying that he had given fresh hope to many Catholics estranged by the church’s censorious ways. The magazine noted the absence of harsh condemnation in his mentions of divorced couples, of women seeking abortions and of gay people . . . . From all of this, Time concluded that he had lifted the church “above the doctrinal police work so important to his recent predecessors.”

Well, they didn’t get the memo in the suburbs of Philadelphia, where a teacher of French and Spanish was fired from a Catholic high school earlier this month because he’d let the school know that he intended to take advantage of New Jersey’s legalization of same-sex marriage and tie the knot there. According to news reports, it wasn’t any secret that the teacher was gay; he and his partner wore rings and attended faculty parties together. But honoring that union? Pledging the kind of commitment that is, or should be, more consistent with the church’s values than keeping it in the shadows? His Catholic supervisors, sending the message that the shadows were just fine, terminated his 12-year employment. 

The memo also didn’t make it to Little Rock, Ark., where Tippi McCullough, 50, got the ax after 14 years as an English teacher at a high school affiliated with the Sisters of Mercy. This was in October. Her crime, too, was to take a relationship that Catholic co-workers apparently knew about and formalize it. . . . . Her dismissal upset some school employees, one of whom apparently gave The Arkansas Times remarks that another Francis — Msgr. Francis I. Malone, a local priest — made in a faculty meeting afterward. “The devil is real,” he reportedly said. “He goes after people like you and institutions like this one.” 

Pope Francis has indeed been a revelation, his gentle tone and sustained humility more in touch with the heart of Catholicism than the bitter jeremiads of other Catholic leaders were. But it’s important to note that he hasn’t pledged to revisit doctrine, nor are such revisions likely to happen anytime soon.

It’s equally important to note that beyond Rome, the very focus on sexual morality that the pope seems to be waving Catholics away from can still be keen and uncompromising. Examples are made where they needn’t be; punishment is meted out when it doesn’t have to be. And it’s this, as much as anything uttered in Vatican City, that continues to drive a wedge between open-minded Catholics and the church’s hierarchy. 

The church’s treatment of gays and lesbians is especially rife with mixed messages and hypocrisy.  . . . . For a gay person who doesn’t want to be exiled, secrecy is smarter than honesty, which is supposedly a virtue. 

McCullough observed that many employees of Catholic schools run afoul of Catholic doctrine — and of the morals clause they routinely sign — but aren’t reprimanded or removed. Maybe they’re divorced. Maybe they use artificial birth control. The church turns a blind eye, as it frequently does with gay employees — until, all of a sudden, it doesn’t. 

I will only believe Francis' good intentions when I see concrete action and doctrinal change.  Until then, I will see him largely as a PR artist who is trying to superficially change the image of a corrupt and toxic institution.