Straw men by the left, straw men from the left

I'd hazard a guess that I disagree with David Gibson on close to 96.2756% of most issues, but he tends to be a fairly sober analyst of those issues and I often read his commentary. But his most recent post, "Who Is a Real Catholic?", is truly horrible. It would take several hours and five gallons of espresso to cover all of it, but here, at the very least, is the opening:

All you need to know to diagnose the state of the Catholic Church in America today is that Pope Benedict XVI -- who has a knack for ticking off Muslims and Jews -- spent the past week wandering the Middle East, yet Catholics here barely noticed. They were too busy fighting over Barack Obama's appearance as commencement speaker at Notre Dame or arguing about the fate of a popular Miami priest known as "Father Oprah," who was caught on camera sharing a seaside embrace with his girlfriend.

Is this what Catholicism in America has come to? Bickering about whether Notre Dame is really Catholic, or whether a priest can make out on the beach with his gal pal? Well, yes. And that should come as no surprise.

This is—what's the word?—shallow. If it were any more shallow, it would be a dust bowl buried beneath the "bodies" of a hundred straw men. It's also misleading. If you are going to make Huge, Sweeping Generalizations about a group of some 65 million people, it might help if you backed up, even in anecdotal form, your essential assumptions:

1. "Catholics here barely noticed" the Pope's trip to the Middle East. Really? I visited numerous Catholic blogs and news sites with dozens of posts and articles about the trip. Of course, those were predominately traditional, orthodox Catholic blogs and sites, so maybe Gibson is talking about some other group of Catholics (more on them in a moment).

2. "Is this what Catholicism in America has come to?" Yeah, how silly to get caught up in trivial issues such as abortion, Church authority, the sanctity of life, the nature and purpose of Catholic education, the place and meaning of celibacy, and the state of the Catholic priesthood. I was hoping to catch some gossip about Jimmy Clausen's off-season work-out regiment and the latest in Progressive, Action Nun Wear.

3. "Bickering about whether Notre Dame is really Catholic..." Ah, c'mon, get real: it is a meaningful debate, especially since Notre Dame symbolizes and embodies so much to so many people, and has such a significant place in Catholicism in the U.S. And it has become, of course, the epicenter of a tense but long overdue, uh, conversation about not only Catholic education, but what it means to be a Catholic in the U.S. in 2009. That, it seems obvious, is worth bickering about.

4. "... or whether a priest can make out on the beach with his gal pal?" Gibson overlooks the blatantly obvious fact that the number one reason most Catholics are responding to this story the way they are is because of how the story is being used by MSM puppets and yapping heads to call for an end to the discipline of celibacy for priests in the Latin rites. For example, in case you didn't catch these headlines:

• "Commentary: Celibacy should be rethought" (CNN)
• "Celibacy — the Vatican vs. church-goers" (National Post)
• "Priests and Celibacy" (Washington Post)
• "Priestly celibacy: A self-inflicted wound" (Miami Herald)
• "Commentary: A case for celibacy for priests" (CNN)
• "HOT TOPIC: Father Cutié and celibacy" (Palm Beach Post)
• "Straying media priest sparks debate on clerical celibacy" (Irish Times)
• "Catholic Church Should End Celibacy Rule, Let Rev. Cutie and Other Priests Marry" (U.S. News & World Report blog)
• "Catholic Priests And Celibacy" (NPR)
• "Should Catholic priests be allowed to marry?" (WIVB)
• "Poll: Most Miami-Dade Catholics oppose celibacy vow" (Miami Herald)
• "Priest's romp with a gal pal has folks talking about celibacy -- again" (USA Today)
 • "Changing an Unchanging Church" (Washington Post's "On Faith" blog)
• "A man of the cloth but still just a man" (Arizona Daily Star)
• "Catholic Reform in the Face of the Father Cutié Scandal: Why Stop at Just Celibacy?" (Miami New Times)
• "Supporters of Embattled Father Cutie Say Catholic Chastity Vow is Outdated" (Hispanic Business).

Shall I keep going?

If Gibson should be criticizing anyone, it is the big-but-rapidly-shrinking-media, who have not only used the Fr. Cutie story to push for an end to priestly celibacy, but have failed miserably at presenting both sides of the story. But, hey, there's a good reason for this failure: most journalists haven't even attempted to understand the Church's teachings about celibacy, chastity, vows, and sexuality, let alone sought to accurately convey them. Gibson doesn't bother, for some reason, to discuss such details; he is far more concerned with chiding those "hard-line activists" who have abandoned the way of capitulation—er, I mean "assimilation." Gibson frets:

This civil war, as the Catholic writer Peter Steinfels recently called it, between hard-liners and those seeking greater engagement, is one the church cannot win. A recent Pew survey showed that despite a generally greater "brand loyalty" than most faiths, Catholicism in America is bleeding out, to the point that nearly one in 10 Americans identifies as a former Catholic. For every one convert, four Catholics are leaving the church -- half of them to traditions like evangelicalism that they find more spiritually fulfilling. Without the inflow of millions of Latino immigrants in recent decades, American Catholicism would be in decline, and even still the church is shrinking in many areas.

He would have readers believe the reason for this "bleeding out" is the failure of the "hard-liners" who haven't yet embraced "greater engagement" with American society, culture, tolerance, etc. But, really, this isn't an engagement: it's a torrid, forty-year-long adulterous love affair that has exposed liberal/progressive/dissenting Catholics as shameless, needy, politically-opportunistic hussies desperately searching for a secular sugar daddy while insisting on wearing a white dress and a demanding an expensive Church wedding. Think I'm being too harsh? Read on:

A recent courageous editorial in the national Jesuit weekly America (which has at times felt the wrath of Rome) cited the dangers that the Notre Dame furor has revealed: "For today's sectarians, it is not adherence to the church's doctrine on the evil of abortion that counts for orthodoxy, but adherence to a particular political program . . . They scorn Augustine's inclusive, forgiving, big-church Catholics . . . [and] threaten the unity of the Catholic Church in the United States."

This priority on unity is the principle that most American Catholics still live by, and it makes them accept Father Cutié, girlfriend and all, and welcome Obama to the iconic campus in South Bend. As the conservative Catholic legal scholar and Reagan administration lawyer Douglas Kmiec put it in Slate earlier this year, "Beyond life issues, an audaciously hope-filled Democrat like Obama is a Catholic natural."

The icing on the cake is how Gibson and Co. dismissively sniff at the concern so many "activist" ("active," actually) Catholics have about a sexually permissive culture of death. But what do tramps usually resort to when confronted with their ambiguous approach to immorality? They say, wide-eyed, "Hey, everyone else is doing it! Besides, I kinda like it." And, inevitably, they utter an obligatory, shrill cry of "Hypocrisy!":

And this is perhaps the greatest irony: Conservative Catholics are proving to be the greatest assimilationists, with their efforts to decertify fellow Catholics mimicking a sectarian and divisive culture that classic Catholicism has always rejected.

Because, foolish reader, everyone knows that Big Tent, Inclusive, Assimilating, Greater Engagement Catholics have never and would never criticize or attack or belittle or denounce loyal, orthodox, "hard-line" Catholics! Of course not! And if you believe that...

The Greatest Classic Catholic of all time once said, "Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man's foes will be those of his own household" (Mt 10:34-36). The Fourth Gospel repeatedly points out how divisive were the actions and words of Jesus (cf., Jn 7:43), and recounts Jesus saying of his disciples: "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world" (Jn 17:16). Jesus explained to his followers: "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you" (Jn. 15:18-19). "Do not be conformed to this world," wrote St. Paul, "but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect" (Rom 12:2).

There is sometimes a fine line between "engagement" and capitulation. But Gibson has it precisely upside down: real Catholicism has always been divisive; it has always divided truth from falsehood so that real unity is established and upheld. "Does a spring," asked St. James, "pour forth from the same opening fresh water and brackish?" (James 3:11). Trying to establish unity without an interest in what is truth or false, right or wrong, good or evil, is shallow and self-serving; it may be politically expedient, but it is also spiritually deadly—not to mention covered with a lot of straw.

Finally, on a related but lighter note, the same "On Faith" blog has a post by Susan K. Smith, the senior pastor of Advent United Church of Christ in Columbus, Ohio; it is titled, "What Does God Require?" and addresses the question, "Should the Catholic priesthood be restricted to single, celibate men? Do clergy restrictions based on gender, marital status or sexual orientation make sense these days?"

Smith's opening sentence is: "I have never understood why the Roman Catholic church required vows of celibacy of its nuns and priests." And then, to her credit, she goes on to prove this statement to be completely true and accurate. At this rate I expect her to be a journalist very soon.

Comments

[T. Shaw]

I am finally (I'm pretty slow) beginning to realize that whenever these dissenting idiots sit down and outline their diabtribes the major headings in the outline are:

I. Intro

II. Ad Hominem

III. Your Mama

IV. Conclusion

Because they have nothing.

[Joe]

Gibson encapsulate the riddle of American Catholicism at the higher levels. He is brilliant it seems, and understands the theology... but then he must not, since his applications are inside out/upside down backwards and wrong. As an example, read his "Rule of Benedict XVI." The book is thrilling where it provodes the best available explanations of Benedict's theology from various vantage points. It easily bests Nichol's book in doing the reductionisms for the layman. And then Goibson excoriates both the man and the theology he describes so well. I don't get it.. Except to say that perhaps there is a filter or predisposition in our current culture that makes confusing the Gospel for the the Gospel of Social Action almost impossible to avoid. Back in the era of Dorothy Day the two were distinguishable. But now... so much confusion.

[Joe]

And does this not really say it all:

"... the concern so many "activist" ("active," actually) Catholics ... "

Really good piece.

[Daniel G. Fink]

When all is said and done, I'm afraid individuals who do not object to President Obama being honored by Notre Dame could not possibly have the same degree of abhorrence, however unconsciously buried deep within their being, for the direct and intentional destruction of human life within the womb, as those who oppose the decision of Notre Dame.

[LJ]

"I have never understood why the Roman Catholic church required vows of celibacy of its nuns and priests." And then, to her credit, she goes on to prove this statement to be completely true and accurate.

Well said. I am amazed at the numbers of non-Catholics that are offering their advice on the celibacy issue. Thinking back to before I was Catholic I don't recall thinking that it was my place to tell Catholics, or anyone else how to run their Church. But perhaps that is just me. I suppose we should thank them for their input, and perhaps the Pope will take it under advisement.

This is the one Church of Christ which in the Creed is professed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic, which our Saviour, after His Resurrection, commissioned Peter to shepherd, and him and the other apostles to extend and direct with authority, which He erected for all ages as "the pillar and mainstay of the truth". This Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him, although many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure. These elements, as gifts belonging to the Church of Christ, are forces impelling toward catholic unity. Lumen Gentium 8

It goes to show that all of Christianity exists in relation to the Catholic Church. The longer I am Catholic the more I see evidence of this. Even those whose raison d'etre is anti-Catholicism. In fact more so. Perhaps this is the reason for the great concern over disciplines of the Church such as celibate clergy.

I take it from the last line of the article that Gibson is a baptized Catholic. So much the worse in that he missed the same point as those who swing about with the "judge not, lest ye be judged" cudgel. (What's up Hannity) Love and forgiveness are the heart of the Church's inclusivity but forgiveness is only just available and not realized until it is appropriated through the door of repentance.

The Notre Dame issue doesn't threaten unity, because in the citation above from Lumen Gentium and in other places, as well as the councils from which we got the Nicene Creed, the unity has always been in doctrine and fidelity to the Bishop of Rome. The Church hasn't moved (isn't that the complaint?) so guess who did?

The accusation against the objectors to Obama's receipt of an honorary degree (if not his invitation as commencment speaker) of playing politics is funny. Doesn't Gibson spend time proving that the American Church is shrinking in numbers, and if that isn't a political calculation, what is? The "big tent" notion is best left to the GOP to figure out. The Catholic tent includes the entire world's people, and her doctrine and teaching are the same for everyone. And they are free to walk away anywhere in the world as well. Our concern is making certain they know what it is they are leaving.

[Craig]

God bless the 70 plus bishops who spoke out--now the whole lot of them need to step back and say, "how did we get here?" The answer lies within the episcopate itself--in their zeal to be collegial, to be inclusive, too many of them forgot or, worse, ran from what it means to be a true father--which includes correction! Remember Land O' Lakes? By ignoring it and hoping it would just go away, not only did their flock go astray but they came back and took over the house.

The bishops need to man up or an ever greater portion of the Church in America will look like the frat in Animal House the morning after the toga party.

It started and ends with the bishops. Your move.