Mother Church

I indicated in a comment yesterday that I would summarize my disappointment with the Catholic Church today. My point may take a couple of posts since we are in the final leg of "who gets in the NCAA basketball championship tournament" and I have 3 or 4 games to follow. But here goes.

Vatican2 was most attractive to me. Its message in all areas seem to be that the Church was for all---laity and clergy. Since then however there as been a growing and now dominant counter insurgency to restore the Church to an autocracy. The Church is not a democracy has been a shibboleh for Catholic apologists for centuries. Vatican2 tried to modify this a bit. But it now appears to no avail.

I posted recently on the Church as "mother." This has more meaning than many think. If the autocratic church is our mother, then the laity are the children. And in dealing with children we recognize the appropriateness of the "economy." That is, being under no obligation to be completely forthright. We allow, indeed encourage, parents to have their children believe in Santa, the tooth fairy, the easter bunny, 'mean' germs---the list is endless. This is fine. Now, our mother, the Church, acts in the same way. As our "mother" it tells us what it thinks is good for the laity, even though what it teaches may be 'dressed up' a bit. I believe the leaders of the Church, the hierarchy, thinks it is being kind; and maybe it is, but such an attitude, well meaning as it may be, has a definite downside. Later I will deal in more detail with blatant superstition. But just an example here. The church's attitude to apparitions is judged basically on its belief in such apparitions as an aid to the spirituality of some members of the Church. This end justifies the means approach leads the Church in an awkward position. Events that even the very credulous find difficult to accept receive the imprimatur of the Church. O, I know the Church does not require me to believe the notorious fantasies of children, But it 'approves' belief in such. What does 'approve' mean. But I will deal with this later.

Now how do Catholics approach these fantasies. Well, my wife, a devoted life long Catholic, argues that the Catholics she has known over the decades simply regard these as 'fables' for the uneducated. And I think most bloggers do as well. I have brought this up before. For example, Padre Pio. And no blogger does more than ignore the issue or profess no interest. Indeed on the items I mentioned in my previous post, my wife goes considerably further than I do. Of course, she says, we tell kids the storyof Jonah and the Whale, but no one really believes the story is factual. So her attitude on Fatima . A child's make believe story; and she adds in 65 years of mass attendance in the thousands she has never heard a homily on Fatima, much less 'dancing suns.' The same with her Catholic college courses. The same with her clerical family and friends. She is just as hard, if not more so, than her non-catholic friends on Mary/Jesus in your cereal, tortillas, patio doors, in the clouds, in your shaving cream etc.

Now as to the abortion issue; the sine qua non of Catholic Christianity. My wife and I are both opposed to abortion, maybe for different reasons than the Church, but still opposed. Now it seems quite clear to me, my wife and most of the Catholics I know, that here the Church is playing "mother" again. It's just too complicated to explain why abortion is a bad choice; so we'll just call it murder, even if we are just talking about ONE cell. This 'murder' position is not accepted by any Catholic my wife and I have ever met. And polls show it is rejected by close to 90 per cent of American Catholics. So, the Church decides to send out "the hammer", no not Tom Delay, but Chaput to "rough up" the laity. Of course, the Church does not really believe that ALL abortions are murder as they claim. We see this when she says the women who solicit the murder should not even be punished legally. The church's effort to proclaim one cell as a 'person' as much as a five year old would create unbelievable confusion in our legal and all other systems. Just a small example: Is a women pregnant with a child allowed to count that cell as a dependant on her income tax? Obviously absurd!!

I think the point I am making here is quite clear.The Church sees herself as a "mother." And as such, is entitled to the mother's priviledge of 'dressing' up the truth for what she perceives as a good goal. So go ahead kids; if you see Mary in your porridge, if that makes you 'better', yah, I see Her too. Jack. Be back tomorrow.