Squeal Like a Pig

A lot of news sites allow visitors to comment on posts. I read such comments way too often; they generally reinforce my belief that Americans are generally too stupid to govern themselves, and, by extension, you and me. (As an aside, whenever I see or hear something exceptionally stupid occur, especially if it’s group stupidity, I am wont to turn to whoever is nearby and remark “These people elect your president,” regardless of which party holds the White House at the time.)

            Anyway, I read with great interest Archbishop Chaput’s column in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer. (Having spent a year or two reading Philadelphia papers of the 1790s while writing my doctoral dissertation/first book, I’m always at home doing so.) While his commentary was generally good, I wish he’d used even stronger language. But as for the comments . . .  it’s a tragic thing that any such editorializing by a bishop is met these days with scores of comments along the lines of “Why should we listen to a bunch of perverts who sodomize altar boys?”

            The tragedy is that despite the many inaccuracies in that statement, there’s just enough truth in it—exacerbated by the fact that America’s bishops have grossly and recklessly mishandled the sex abuse problem—that I can’t flat-out condemn such a crack as this, much as I want to. And in this, as in the matter of adherence to doctrine in birth control and all matters, the bishops have brought this upon themselves (and thus us, the laity).

For more than forty years, in their desire to be open and groovy and non-confrontational and accepted, the bishops have retreated, compromised, capitulated, and generally been spineless—when not actually complicit—in the face of secular attacks intended to cripple or destroy the Catholic Faith. (I have long held that the two groups most responsible for abortion on demand today are the Republican Party and the Catholic bishops.) Had they stood up to the world earlier, they would have had a more cohesive group of clergy and laity behind them, as well as much more moral force and raw political power. Now they are, in the view of a great many Americans (including a ton of dissident so-called Catholics), irrelevant at best, contemptible at worst, as such “pedophile” comments show. This is true of even the relatively few solid bishops such as Archbishop Chaput, since the world lumps all of them together.

With the HHS ruling, the ultimate defining moment has come for “AmChurch.” There’s no place left, doctrinally, left for the Church to retreat to. If the bishops cave on this, there is no hope for the Catholic Church in this country, for the bishops will have shown that even when they mount some opposition, it’s a paper tiger. The government could, in time, force the performance of surgical abortions in Catholic hospitals or the performance of gay/lesbian weddings in actual parishes. And these ineffectual, timid, peace-at-any-price bishops, who are at long last finding their voices and beginning to ride into battle, are feeling the drag of forty-five years of their own sordid history on their reins. They sowed the wind; now they’re reaping the whirlwind.