Debating the Crisis in Catholicism

As a former Catholic - 10 years as an altar boy (the first few when the mass was still in Latin), 4th Degree Knight of Columbus - from a family once strongly Catholic, I still watch from afar the unfolding drama of the Church wracked by a never ending sex abuse scandal (dioceses in New York and Pennsylvania are the center of the storm at the moment in America, but the problem remains global) and the effort of "conservatives" to cling to a 12th century understanding of sexuality.  Like many former Catholics, the only times I now darken a Catholic church door is for a wedding or a funeral.  The few in my family who are still churchgoers have now opted for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America ("ELCA") which offers a Catholic liturgy without all the moral bankruptcy and hypocrisy of the Catholic Church.   Meanwhile, "conservatives" fling arrows at Pope Francis and decry efforts to bring the Church even remotely into the 21st century. Two articles look at the spectacle as highlighted by a new book by New York Times right wing columnist, Ross Douthat - who seemingly would bring back the Crusades and the public burning of heretics and gays if he could.  One is by Andrew Sullivan and somewhat more sympathetic to Douthat in New York Magazine and another in The Atlantic which takes Douthat to task.   Both face the reality that Catholicism and Christianity are in trouble in America.  First, highlights from Sullivan's piece: 

How does anyone remain a Christian in our current modern moment? The moral implosion of American Evangelicalism in the cult of Trump, the rise of casual anti-Christian bigotry in popular culture, the continuing sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, the emergence of a movement for Christian cultural retrenchment in the church (Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option), the revolution in gay rights in the West, and the slow slide of church attendance and religious observance seem to have conspired to bring the matter to a head. And in this fevered and often ill-tempered debate, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by much of Ross Douthat’s new book lambasting Pope Francis as a small-minded heretic. 

I certainly understand his fear that in the perilous shoals of liquid modernity, the ship of the Catholic Magisterium (the authoritative teaching of the church) could run aground. I also understand his grief at what was lost as the church revamped itself in the 1960s and 1970s — the liturgy, the enchantment, the unquestioned papal authority, the reverence, the silences and the darknesses, now wiped away into too many banal ceremonies, in churches lit as if they were a branch of Target. For Ross, as for me, the church in the 1970s seemed to be abandoning the sacred and the sublime for the mundane and the modern.

[B]ut where I have to differ with him [Douthat] is in his view that Pope Francis is somehow making all this much worse — that he is, through intemperance and recklessness, risking outright schism in the church in a way that hasn’t happened for centuries. By Douthat’s account, Francis is to the church what Donald Trump is to American democracy. He’s an existential threat.

How on earth could that be? For Ross, so much seems to come down to the Pope’s willingness to contemplate allowing divorced and remarried Catholics who want to be a part of the church to receive Communion . . . . Francis’s merely airing these questions — as well as the place of homosexuals in the church — represents to him a look into the abyss of doctrinal chaos. The fact that nothing has changed in official church teaching at all is scant comfort. The elaborate, intricate edifice of Catholicism, built and repaired for two millennia, unchanging and authoritative, is endangered. To Ross, Francis’s actions threaten to send the church drifting into a kind of lame “moral therapeutic deism” that has plagued the mainline Protestant denominations — or, more likely, precipitate full-on schism.

Where to start? First off, as Paul Baumann observes in Commonweal, the church has been, er, let us say, flexible about this rule for aeons, starting with the Gospels themselves. Yes, the Gospel of Mark has Jesus barring any divorce, period; but the Gospel of Matthew adds a caveat — with Jesus saying you can divorce if your partner commits adultery. So not quite as definitive. For centuries, moreover, there was no Catholic sacrament for marriage — it was entirely a secular thing, acknowledged by the church. The Orthodox churches — not just the Protestants — have long allowed for divorce. Catholicism itself, especially in America, hands out annulments that operate as de facto divorces like confetti.  . . . Indeed if the formal rules strictly applied, and communion was never allowed except after a full confession, virtually no Catholic in America would be participating in the Eucharist at all.

We’re talking here about caring for people whose marriages have failed and who want to come back to the church and its sacraments. That’s all. We’re not talking about a formal end to the existing doctrine against divorce. We’re not talking about a second marriage in church. We’re talking about pastoral adaptation to an individual’s position and sincerity in wishing to be reconciled with God. We’re talking about not rejecting people looking to follow Christ. And that means gay people as well, people who, despite so many pressures among their peers, despite widespread cultural taboos on being Christian and gay, insist on coming to the Lord’s table.

This stringency on sexual morality — combined with flexibility on so much else — is part of what has rendered the church toxic for so many, especially given its own recent, horrifying sexual standards. When you barely bat an eye at the rape of children and come down hard on someone who left a toxic marriage, you run the risk, to say the least, of seeming somewhat lacking in moral integrity.  . . . . is it really worth creating a schism over a pastoral attempt to include those beached by a bad or toxic marriage?

Is a modern Christianity even possible without the enchantment, mortality, fear, and ignorance of the past? And what we do with the fact that neither Benedict’s retrenchment nor Francis’s outreach seems successful in stopping the slow slide of institutional and cultural decline, and the emptying of the pews, especially among the young?

Part of me wants the simple certainties and mysteries of the past; part of me is profoundly grateful that the world has indelibly changed. Reimagining what faith can be in the context of modernity will not be easy. But exactly the wrong tack to take, it seems to me, is an ever-more intense and bitter internal fight over the legacy of the last 50 years in the Catholic Church.

To me, Douthat - like his evangelical counterparts - desperately needs two things: (i) others to look down upon and condemn, and (ii) a simple checklist that allows him to feel good about himself even if it requires being brain dead.

The second piece in The Atlantic is harsher, and deservedly so.  Here are excerpts:

Across every continent, in every country, Catholics “find themselves divided against one another,” writes the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat in his new book, To Change the Church. On one side stand the orthodox, who see doctrine and tradition as the best antidote to a changing world. On the other stand the liberals, who yearn for a Church that focuses on pastoring rather than enforcing rigid rules. This “widening theological and moral gulf,” Douthat argues, is potentially “wider than the chasm that separated Catholicism from Orthodoxy, and later from Lutheranism and Calvinism.”

That’s a bold claim to make. After all, the schisms of East and West, Catholic and Protestant, were world-shaking, often bloody events. But in today’s Church—and specifically in this pope—Douthat sees the possibility that the Roman Catholic Church will once again break apart.

Ostensibly, his beef is with Pope Francis, whom Douthat paints as an unyielding and stubborn manager who has spent his five years in Rome failing the clean up the Vatican’s messes, hurling insults at conservative clerics, and pushing radical doctrinal changes without buy-in from major wings of the Catholic hierarchy.

His focus is almost always on one topic: the pope’s efforts to address issues related to family. Early in his papacy, Pope Francis convened two meetings of Catholic bishops, called synods. The pope seemed to feel that the Church had not figured out how to serve people whose lives don’t fit the Christian ideal, from single moms to same-sex couples to those who have been civilly divorced and remarried.

While many Church leaders welcomed this pastoral flexibility, others complained that it created ambiguity—“what is sin in Poland is good in Germany,” wrote four conservative cardinals in a letter to the pope—or even directly violated the teachings of the Church.

Douthat was, and is, in the latter camp. He began tossing the word “schism” around. He published a scathing Times column accusing the pope of being the “chief plotter” in the Vatican’s Renaissance-court-style politics. A large group of prominent liberal American clergy and theologians published a response letter, pointing out that Douthat does not have theological credentials, warning him of the seriousness of accusations of heresy, and arguing that his “view of Catholicism [is] unapologetically subject to a politically partisan narrative that has very little to do with what Catholicism really is.”

Francis’s solution is to embrace a flexible, ecumenical spirit, both within Catholicism and without: It’s no coincidence that he has put rapprochement with Roman Catholicism’s closest cousins, the Lutheran and Orthodox churches, high on his priority list over the last five years.

[U]nity matters in the Church—little c or big. Jesus calls on believers to be one flock in community together, and any loss of comity might be interpreted by some as evidence of human failure to make good on that vision. This pope will test whether it’s possible to maintain connectedness among communities of incredible diversity in a time of immense change—or whether the politics of the day inevitably lead to tribal fights among the faithful.

Personally, I believe the Church continues to do immense harm, and not only to the ever growing numbers of sex abuse victims.  Fear and self-hate are not positives and not something that will attract new adherents.  Throw in the hypocrisy and outright meanness of so many Christians , both Catholic and Protestant, and it is easy to see why 36% of those under 30 have walked away from Christianity.  What Douthat wants will only accelerate the exodus.  Francis, for all my criticisms of him, at least is trying to look for a solution. 

"Conservatives" Accuse the Pope of Spreading Heresy

Just as the media falsely describes right wing Republicans and evangelical Christians as "conservatives" even though their agenda is not truly conservative and instead is focused on hatred of others, so to are reactionary Catholics called "conservatives" despite a similar reactionary agenda.  In both cases, the adherents of these agendas have, in my view, a very sick need to condemn others and to feel superior that is the true motivation for their policies of division and exclusion.  Indeed, some in the Catholic Church seem hell bent to bring back the Tridentine mass and the Inquisition of the Medieval Ages rather than accept modernity and the more inclusionary, less animus based policies that Pope Francis is seemingly trying to implement albeit in a halting and haphazard manner. A piece in CNN looks at attacks launched by extreme elements in the Church (check out the site Church Militant for a taste of the extremism) that have gone so far as to accuse Francis of spreading heresy. Here are article excerpts:

Several dozen conservative Catholic scholars and clergy have charged Pope Francis with spreading heresy, a bold but perhaps futile salvo against Francis and his reform-minded papacy.

The widely publicized, theologically dense letter was delivered to the Pope with 40 signatures on August 11, according to its organizers. It has since gained 22 more signatures and was released to the public on Saturday. In a press release, the organizers say they speak for "a large number" of clergy and lay Catholics who "lack freedom of speech."

The letter does not accuse the Pope himself of being a heretic, but of supporting "heretical positions" on "marriage, the moral life and the Eucharist."

Francis has not responded to the letter publicly and the Vatican declined to comment.
 Specifically, the letter charges Francis with promoting seven "heresies," most notably through his openness to allowing some divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion.

"Scandal concerning faith and morals has been given to the Church and to the world," the letter states. It accuses the Pope of imposing "strange doctrines on the faithful," and asks him to publicly correct his teachings.

The lightning rod for complaints is the Pope's 2016 document, Amoris Laetitia -- which has opened the possibility for some divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion -- and the differing interpretations of the document, which conservatives say have sown confusion among Catholics. A number of the signees are members of a traditionalist group that has already broken away from the Catholic Church.

Still, the heresy charge crystallizes some conservatives' deep anxieties about Pope Francis, especially his teachings and impromptu statements about how to apply centuries-old Catholic doctrine to the complexities of modern life. None of the heresy letter's signees are cardinals or bishops in good standing within the Catholic church. The most prominent is Bishop Bernard Fellay, the head of the Society of St. Pius X, a traditionalist group which broke away from the Vatican under Pope John Paul II over doctrinal issues. Conservatives contest that the Pope is tinkering with what is written in the Bible and has been affirmed throughout centuries in the Catholic Church on marriage: that a divorced person who is remarried without an annulment may not receive communion, because the second marriage is considered adulterous. The question is whether Francis can hold together the church's left and right flanks while implementing reforms in how the church applies those teachings.

Monsignor Robert Wister, a professor of church history at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, said he can't recall anything similar to the heresy letter in recent times. Pope John XXII was rebuked in the 1330s for teaching that the souls of the dead do not see the face of God until the Last Judgment.

"In the grand scheme of things, it will fuel some of the more extreme anti-Francis websites," Wister said. "And I think it will encourage various priests and bishops who do not like his pastoral direction."

"But, if you look in the pews or even at polls, most people like Francis," he said. "They see in him a compassion they have not seen in the church, an understanding of the very difficult reality of living in this very complicated world."

I am no fan of Pope Francis who has failed to hold to account the bishops and cardinals who aided, abetted and protected sexual predators within the ranks of the clergy.   Likewise, he has done absolutely nothing to end the Church's anti-gay jihad.  This said, Francis is far better than his "conservative" opponents who refuse to accept modernity and the common humanity of others, and who would bring back some of the Church's worst past practices that lacked both compassion and decent treatment of others.   Also so that these people can fee superior to "sinners" and inflict their foul dogma on others. 

Papal Document Again Kicks Divorced Catholics and Gays to the Curb

In the last post I stated that religion, particularly conservative Christianity (I would add Islam to that category) is the enemy of human progress and the embrace of knowledge.  In a new document ludicrously titled "Amoris Laetitia," or “the Joy of Love,” Pope Francis made it clear once more that there is little room for love for those who are divorced or LGBT in the Roman Catholic Church.  No changes in Church doctrine are made and at best, Francis tells Catholics to be less condemning in the treatment of divorced and remarried Catholics and LGBT Catholics.  Once again, I am left thinking that gays who remain Catholic suffer from a severe form of masochism.  Why remain in a Church that treats you as little better than garbage?  The only way the Catholic Church will ever change is for people to walk away in a mass exodus, taking their financial support with them.  The Washington Post looks at Francis' mealy mouthed  blathering that proves again that he is not the great hope that liberal Catholics and others desperately wanted him to be.   Here are excerpts:

He called for divorced and remarried Catholics to participate more fully in church life. But he closed the door on gay marriage. . . . But more than anything, Pope Francis’s long awaited document on family life, released Friday by the Vatican, amounts to an exultation of traditional marriage while recognizing that life, in his own words, isn’t always “perfect.” 

Some two years in the making, the 256-page document known as an apostolic exhortation and titled Amoris Laetitia, or “the Joy of Love,” amounted to his most sweeping pronouncement to date on the social issues that have deeply divided his senior clergy. . . . offered no changes in church laws – either to the status of gay people or those who divorce and remarry outside the church.

Nodding to the fact that many hoped for a blanket rule allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to take communion, [Cardinal] Schönborn said “many people expected such rules, but they will be disappointed, and persuaded that this is the necessary choice made by our pope.” But he suggested that the pope did offer “renewed encouragement” for a pastoral path in “particular cases.”

Austen Ivereigh, a prominent Francis biographer, wrote Friday that Francis basically punted in the document in terms of the very specifics of who gets Communion and when.

“In effect, Francis has cleared the ground for maximum pastoral flexibility, refusing to treat civilly remarried divorces as a category,” he wrote on the Catholic site Crux.

Ivereigh said this of the changes that might come as a result: “Yet while this is a significant development, it is unlikely to affect that many people.” 

“There is some disappointment in Pope Francis [among progressives] now because they want him to act quickly, they want him to change laws, they want him to be different,” said Christian Weisner, a founding member of the Munich-based Catholic reform group who advocates church-sanctioned same sex unions.

On the topic of gay equality, Francis repeated words he has written and said before: same-sex unions are no in way “similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.” Yet for the pope who floored the planet when he said, of gay priests, “who am I to judge,” there may be others who still hold out hope, based on other comments Francis wrote in his document.

After praising Christian marriage as being “fully realized in the union between a man and a woman…” he write that “Some forms of union radically contra­dict this ideal, while others realize it in at least a partial and analogous way. The Synod Fathers stated that the Church does not disregard the constructive elements in those situations which do not yet or no longer correspond to her teach­ing on marriage.”

There will undoubtedly be Catholics who see Francis as closing the door on gay equality forever while others will say he left it open a crack .

Pardon me as I go vomit.  The good news is that the under 30 generations are walking away from the Church in droves - many spurred to leave because of the Church's continued anti-gay jihad.  In my own family where we were all raised attending mass, almost no one now darkens the door of a Catholic Church other than perhaps to attend a wedding or a funeral.  Let's hope Francis is hastening the Church's own funeral and irrelevance.  

Will Pope Francis Overrule The Haters in the Hierarchy?

The so-called synod on the Family at the Vatican continues to display open conflict between those who would moderate the Church's position on gays, divorced and remarried Catholics, and those who engage in cohabitation without marriage and those who want to maintain the rules of exclusion and denigration that are driving away Catholics in growing numbers in educated parts of the world.   The irony, of course is that by some estimates, 50% of the bitter old men in dresses at the Vatican are self-loathing closet cases who either (i) cannot let go on 12th century dogma, (ii) who want to keep others as miserable as they are themselves, or (iii) cannot overcome their own psycho-sexual dysfunctions.   The ultimate question, of course, is whether or not Pope Francis will use his imperial like authority to force change.  I would love to see change in the Church not because I would ever return to it, but instead so that fewer LGBT lives would be damaged or ruined by it.  The Washington Post looks at the ongoing infighting.  Here are highlights:

During a major summit of the Roman Catholic hierarchy that will end this weekend, a senior conservative bishop took the floor inside the Vatican’s assembly hall and promptly charged his liberal peers with doing the devil’s work.

The three-week gathering, known as a synod, has erupted into a theological slugfest over Pope Francis’s vision of a more-inclusive church, and it has displayed the most bitter and public infighting since the heady days of Catholic reform in the 1960s.

The pushback by traditionalists has been so strong that the chances of fast changes on contentious family issues — whether to offer Communion to divorced and remarried Catholics or to craft more-welcoming language for gays and lesbians — have substantially dimmed, if not died.

“Francis has the same problem that Obama had,” said the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a senior analyst for the National Catholic Reporter. “He promised the world, but Congress wouldn’t let him deliver. If nothing much comes of this synod, I think people will give the pope a pass and blame the bishops for stopping change.”

The 270 senior church officials, from 122 countries, are scheduled to finish voting on a final document by Saturday. But Francis has the last say, with the power to accept the synod’s recommendations, go beyond them or withhold judgment to encourage further debate.

Using his powers to go beyond the synod’s recommendations could rouse the wrath of conservatives, some of whom already are openly questioning the trajectory of his papacy. But if the final recommendation of the synod falls short of liberals’ hopes, ­rubber-stamping it or encouraging more debate could generate disappointment among Francis’s fans worldwide. They may begin to view him as a revolutionary only in gestures and words, not on substance.

If he agrees fully with the synod’s recommendations, “there might be a collapse of his popularity in world public opinion, but there might also be an increase of his popularity among Catholics,” said Massimo Franco, author of “The Crisis of the Vatican Empire” and a columnist at the Italian daily Corriere della Sera.

Even by Vatican standards, the level of drama at the synod has been extraordinary.

Francis still has not openly stated if, when and how he would like to see church policies altered. But his calls for a more merciful and open church, his pastoral outreach toward divorced and gay Catholics, and his decision to allow wide-ranging discussion at the synod have inspired leading church liberals to press for change.

Of the many measures under debate here, two have emerged as the most polemic.

One is whether to grant divorced and remarried Catholics, who are committing adultery in the church’s view, access to Communion. The other is the question of whether to offer a warmer welcome to gays and lesbians, including cutting references to being gay as “intrinsically disordered” from church teachings.

The divide is not just a liberal-conservative split; it is also geographic, with prelates in Africa, for instance, denouncing the “Eurocentric” and “Western” fixation with issues such as gay rights.

The vehemence of the backlash has shocked even some moderate conservatives, and it has suggested the rise of a tea-party-like faction of bishops within the hierarchy.

“Some of them are talking now like this is Armageddon,” Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane, Australia, said in an interview with The Washington Post.

Some also have denounced the general sense of chauvinism hanging over the debates, in which only male clerics have voting rights.

Maureen Kelleher, an American nun serving in one of the non-voting roles at the synod, told the National Catholic Reporter that there were “times that I have felt the condescension so heavy, you could cut it with a knife.”

Speaking of women in general, she added: “I see a high level of non-acceptance of us as holding up half the sky.”

Ultimately, Francis' decision comes down to either killing reform and losing the West - which still bankrolls most of the Vatican's funds - and becoming an Africa centric church, or  embracing modernity and letting the Tea Party like faction to whine and shriek and at worse break away.   Either way, if I was Francis, I would be using a taster before I ate or drank anything.  There are few things more dangerous than angry, self-loathing closeted gays be they in the Church hierarchy or the Republican Party. 

Hypocrisy on Display: Richmond Bishop Francis DiLorenzo

On issues of human sexuality the Roman Catholic Church continues to ignore modern knowledge and science, especially on issues of sexual orientation.  Rather than accept the fact that homosexuality is (i) a normal, naturally occurring condition for a portion of the world's population, and (ii) no more sinful than breathing, the Church continues to embrace 13th century batshitery first launched by individuals who modern experts would likely label as mentally disturbed.  Locally, one of the worse proponents of such backwardness is the Bishop of the Diocese of Richmond, Bishop Francis DiLorenzo, who is virulently anti-gay.  Similarly, he believes in the subjugation of women to men and bars divorced and remarried Catholics from positions  in the diocese's schools.  Yet this Neanderthal knuckle dragger is now exhorting local Catholics to accept the science of climate change.  As regular readers know, I am all for accepting and acting on scientific knowledge of climate change and regularly , but for DiLorenzo to suddenly embrace knowledge and science on every other issue, is the height of hypocrisy.  The Virginian Pilot looks at this hypocrisy on display:

Responding to Pope Francis' call this summer for prompt action to address climate change, Catholic Bishop Francis DiLorenzo told an audience of about 200 Tuesday night that people must learn about the science of what is happening to the world.

DiLorenzo's remarks came at the start of a symposium of theologians and climate experts, including retired naval officers, that was sparked by the lengthy papal encyclical in June that called for a worldwide effort to confront climate change.

The pontiff condemned the destruction of the environment for personal profit and short-term gain. Such a pronouncement from the pope in a formal letter to Catholics is considered an authoritative teaching.

The bishop said he believes the region's Catholics should begin with stronger education about environmental problems and issues in the church's elementary and high schools, as well as colleges and adult education.

Tackling environmental problems is in keeping with the Catholic beliefs that "every human being has the right to life, food, clothing, shelter, health care," he said.

The last part of the quoted language is perhaps the most hypocritical since DiLorenzo consistently opposes any and every gay friendly proposal in Virginia as well as women's rights.   He epitomizes the bitter old men in dresses that are steadily killing Catholicism in America.  Oh, and before he condemns gays, perhaps he should focus on his own sin of gluttony - the man obviously hasn't missed any meals given his large girth.

US Catholic Bishops Are Ignoring Pope Francis' Message

The Republican Party is not the only group that is denying reality and changing attitudes towards LGBT individuals.  In lock step you will find U.S. Catholic bishops continuing to double down on anti-gay bigotry - as well as discrimination against divorced Catholics in the case of the despicable Bishop of the Diocese of Richmond, Virginia.  This despite the message that Pope Francis has seemingly tried to send that business as usual is not going to cut it, especially as the Catholic Church suffers membership loses across the globe except in backward, uneducated regions of Africa (ignorance and lack of education being a prerequisite to embracing the Christian narrative).   A piece in the National Catholic Reporter looks at the U.S. Bishops' subversion of Pope Francis' message.  Here are excerpts:

There have been a number of recent firings of gay or lesbian employees within the Catholic church in the United States. Principals, teachers and a variety of parish ministers are among those who have been fired. Gay priests and women religious have been dismissed from significant positions of influence. Fr. Warren Hall, a gay priest and chaplain at Seton Hall University, was removed from his position by the archbishop of Newark, N.J.

Hall has written a letter to Pope Francis requesting a meeting with the LGBT community within the church when Pope Francis visits the United States in September. In his letter, Hall writes, "Good teachers are being fired, pastoral and compassionate priests and religious women are being silenced ... and good, faith-filled people are leaving the Church as they witness all of this happening."

It is clear that bishops have the power to make these decisions and to hire and fire for any reason or for no reason. Having the power to do something, however, is not the same thing as it being the right thing to do. It is interesting to note that the bishop, not the school, made the decision regarding Hall.
Schools, hospitals, universities, etc. have often been pleased or satisfied with their own employees, yet bishops have seen fit to intervene. There is also the issue of firing people who are doing a good job, as Hall himself notes.

[T]he bishops appear to be ignoring the words of Pope Francis. Pope Francis has made no attempt to change any church doctrine, and there is no indication he has any plans to. Conservatives should be happy about this. However, Pope Francis has also made clear that there does need to be a dramatic change in the way the church does business. Gone are the days of wholesale condemnation. Instead, we need to live in the world and embrace God's creatures and creation as good. A new openness is needed . . .

Why are the bishops not hearing or responding to this message? Do they simply not get it? Do they just not agree with the pope and are choosing to defy or ignore the Francis message? Do they believe that Francis won't be around that long and they will just wait it out until a pope more to their liking comes along?

What they need to understand is that this is not just about Francis. This is about coming to grips with the world around them. Bishops need to recognize that today's culture has moved to a different place on a number of issues. They can choose to stand on the sidelines and become more and more irrelevant. In doing so, they will find that fewer and fewer members even of the faithful will bother to listen to what they have to say.

The alternative is to be more welcoming to the world around them. Bishops need to stop the knee-jerk reaction of forcefully condemning every statement that they don't understand or disagree with. . . . How refreshing it would be if the bishops were to choose to be a part of the world rather than isolating themselves and ensuring that their utterances are not seen as constructive or helpful to the wider world around them. Ultimately, the bishops need to shed their attachment to power and learn to serve as did the Lord Jesus.

Will the bishops get the message?  Probably not.  The majority are likely self-loathing closet cases who cannot stand the fact that some gays have come to terms with their sexuality.  They are bitter, nasty men who have no concept of the real world and who surround themselves with sycophants  and pandering ass kissers. It is they, along with other Christofascists who are slowly but surely killing Christianity.

National Catholic Reporter: Church Must Stop Divisive Anti-Gay Foot Stomping

With the massive defeat it experienced in Ireland and now with the same sex marriage ruling by the Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges, one would think that the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy would see the hand writing on the wall: either stop the anti-gay hysteria that the sky is falling and angry foot stomping or else become even more irrelevant in the world, especially in the educated western world. Many of the high clergy - many of whom I suspect are self-loathing closet cases who don't want to admit that they have squandered their lives following 13th century understandings of sexuality - are not getting this message.  A main editorial in the National Catholic Reporter (which is not under the control of the hierarchy) makes the case why a changed approach to gays and gay marriage (among other issues) is needed.  It's a message lost on Francis Xavier DiLorenzo,the bishop of the Diocese of Richmond who still bars divorced teachers from working at Catholic schools even if they are the best qualified. Here are some excerpts:

The Catholic church, which has used some of the most severe language of major denominations in its condemnation of homosexuality, labeling those with a homosexual orientation "intrinsically disordered," is especially challenged by the ruling.

At least its leaders are, for it has become clear in recent years that when it comes to believers, Catholics are among the most accepting of homosexuality. In terms of same-sex marriage, according to recent Pew Research polling, "Among Catholics and white mainline Protestants, roughly six-in-ten now express support for same-sex marriage."

Churches certainly don't run on polling data, but the bishops should at least be informed of what the flock is thinking. And the majority of the flock is not in agreement with assertions such as those voiced by Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Ky., who called the decision "a tragic error."

Kurtz, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, compared Obergefell v. Hodges to Roe v. Wade . . .

The comparison with Roe is simply way off base. Obergefell is not a matter of life and death. The case thus stated by Kurtz also places the conference in the posture of combatant -- with everyone: gays and lesbians, their families, government structures, not to mention the church itself in the expression of the many Catholics who disagree.

Further, if the church's experience with Roe is any indication, taking the combative approach will mean endless years of litigation and lobbying, convincing few and alienating many while further depleting whatever political capital the church might have left. 

These complex matters will demand more of the bishops than a foot-stomping "no." . . . a combative stance is not the only option. First, the church's treatment of divorced and remarried people is an apt comparison to gay couples. Divorce and remarriage is legal in all states, but the church is not required to perform such weddings. Ministers remain free to denounce divorce. At the same time, it is rare that Catholic institutions fire people who divorce and remarry; moreover, they and their new spouses often receive benefits. Such consideration is not viewed as an endorsement of a lifestyle.

Further, Reese points out, "In Catholic morality, there is nothing to prohibit a Catholic judge or clerk from performing a same-sex marriage. Nor is there any moral obligation for a Catholic businessperson to refuse to provide flowers, food, space and other services to a same-sex wedding." Bishops, even those intent on railing against the decision, need to make that point clear to their people.

[B]ishops and others should not underestimate the power of human experience nor the depth of insights gleaned in the short period during which parents stopped being embarrassed by their children, and gay children stopped hiding themselves and their sexual orientation.

Cupich's "take a deep breath" approach seems a far more productive way to sort out the tangle of issues that certainly will unravel in the wake of this decision. The bishops -- many of whom like to compare themselves to fathers of a family -- might, before they commit to a protracted fight, sit down with gay and lesbian Catholics and their families and respectfully listen to their stories.

Meanwhile, we need to call a halt to actions that will further divide and damage the body of Christ. 

What we must avoid at all costs is a spate of firings of Catholic high school track coaches and math teachers. We can respect a narrow definition of the ministerial exemption out of respect for religious belief, but the broadening of the definition of "minister" to include schoolteachers, food pantry workers, diocesan accountants and parish musicians is wrong and must be resisted.

The editorial authors clearly understand the concept of "change or die."