Grandmère Mimi feels wounded about the progressive blogosphere's silence regarding the
election of the
Very Rev. Morris Thompson, to be the next Bishop of the Episcopal Archdiocese of Louisiana.
Grandmère wonders why this news went neglected:
Was our election in Louisiana not controversial enough? Did you miss telling the story because we are way down south nearly in the Gulf of Mexico? Are we too French and not Anglican enough? Why? A bishop-elect is a bishop-elect, no matter that he's a straight white male. Are we not part of the Episcopal Church?
No, I don't think this story was ignored for those reasons. The problem as I see it is the denomination involved. Many bloggers didn't care because Episcopalianism is like Near Beer: all appearance without the essential, "demanding morality" of Catholicism*. At least, that's what our
Governor thinks. And he's, like, really smart.
Seriously, though, this Thompson fellow seems appealing: a former marine with an inclusive perspective, who doesn't feel like
"sexuality issues" should dominate the church's mission. Thompson
says:[W]e have forgotten who we are as people of faith. Our purpose is to have love for one another just as Jesus loved... The question to ask ourselves is, will the world know that we are followers of Jesus by our love? Can we live love or will we just speak it?
I can get on board with that. What
else?I'm passionate about ministry, about people having a relationship with Christ. And we all have a place at the table, no matter who we are.
Table? I thought Episcopalians used altars.
Anyway, from what I see this fellow seems like he would be my sort of bishop. Unfortunately, I don't have a "sort" of bishop. My nominal club is "priesthood of all believers", Presbyterian style, so bishops don't do much for me unless I'm playing chess.
Granted, I suppose I should care more about newsworthy changes in regional church hierarchical structures, because these are so often the dudes who are making decisions that irritate me. For example:
The Archdiocese of New Orleans last summer contributed $2,000 to a campaign to repeal same-sex marriage in Maine, campaign finance records there show.
That's an excellent use of money in post-Federal Flood New Orleans. I wonder how many other similar campaigns were funded?
It's interesting that the previous Louisiana Episcopal Bishop, Charles Jenkins, is leaving
because of his struggle "with the emotional trauma of Hurricane Katrina's devastating impact on the diocese in 2005 and its aftermath". Kind of echoes the exhaustion cited by Father Jerry Kramer of Broadmoor, who unexpectedly
announced his retirement this year. He explained:
If I keep hanging around, [the parishioners will] stay in Katrina mode. And they have to move on from that.
Indeed, the past four years has been a challenging time for area pastors.
Comments?
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* Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I can tell, the "demanding morality" of Catholicism to which Jindal refers requires: treating homo-love like it's an existential threat to civilization; opposing birth control in famine areas; opposing pregnancy termination to save a mother's life; minimizing or ignoring the problem of preasts raping children; but ALWAYS ALWAYS
ALWAYS conveniently dismissing the Church's principled opposition to little matters like war.
Labels: Misc, Pelicans, Weeligion
16 Comments:
In the Anglican community there are much bigger fights with the potential split between the more liberalized American and the more conservative African groups. Also with the Catholic Church "picking off" the more conservative elements, or at least offering and trying to. And the recent election of the 2nd openly gay bishop in the US group as well. So the election of the new NO bishop who sounds very middle of the road just disappeared under the turbulant waves
Hey, what's up with the quotes around exhaustion regarding Fr. Jerry?
And don't get me started with people getting bent out of shape regarding the choices of the Archdiocese. It's not a fucking democracy. Sixtus IV didn't have to put up with any of this shit. Just watch your mouth; no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.
Yeah, the scare quotes around exhaustion were just signifying a quoted word from the link, but I agree they look bad and will remove them.
I certainly wasn't trying to cast doubt on his expressed reason.
Your "demanding morality" description is a strawman. The only reason particular moral stances of the Church are at issue is because society has, in the recent past, placed them at issue. Furthermore, it simply isn't true that the Church opposes abortion to save a mother's life; abortion is generally permissible in such cases.
And to argue that "minimizing or ignoring" the problem of pedophilia among priests has anything to do with the Church's moral stances is a major non sequitur and a cheap shot. It would be akin to me, say, blaming the situation on Vatican II and the sexual revolution, which just *happened* to coincide with the ordination of most of the offending priests.
Finally, invoking the church's "principled opposition to ... war" is a massive oversimplification of just war theory, which is complex subject to many interpretations when applied to concrete situations. I think you know that it's not akin to abortion or gay marriage.
The "demanding morality" description is Jindal's, and my cheap shots are in response to his cheap shot against the Episcopal Church. (Consult the "Governor thinks" links for the quote.)
The basic point being, that Jindal and other conservative Catholics get a pass (domestically) for supporting wars that the Church opposes (ex. Iraq), where scores of thousands of innocents are killed. But if that is too oversimplified, we can use the death penalty issue if you like.
"Furthermore, it simply isn't true that the Church opposes abortion to save a mother's life; abortion is generally permissible in such cases."
While I'm certainly no authority on Catholic doctrine, I disagree with this claim and would like for you to provide evidence for it.
Furthermore, it simply isn't true that the Church opposes abortion to save a mother's life; abortion is generally permissible in such cases.
Owen, the ONLY instance in which the Roman Catholic church permits an abortion to save a woman's life is in the case of an ectopic pregnancy, using the reasoning of the principle of the twofold effect. How would I know this? Because I spent 60 years in the RCC and 16 years of schooling in RC institutions.
In a recent case in Brazil, a 9 year old girl became pregnant after her father repeatedly raped her. Her mother gave permission, and doctors performed an abortion because the girl was too small in size to carry twins. The twins could not have survived, and the girl herself was in danger.
The RCC excommunicated the mother and the medical staff, but not the father. You see, in the eyes of the RCC, repeatedly raping your 9 year old daughter is not an excommunicable offense. So much for compassion.
And to argue that "minimizing or ignoring" the problem of pedophilia among priests has anything to do with the Church's moral stances is a major non sequitur and a cheap shot.
No cheap shot at all, Owen. What caused me to walk away from the RCC was the cover-up, the bishops moving the abusive priests from parish to parish to continue their abusive behavior and paying hush money to those who were abused to buy their silence. The actions of the bishops are indefensible on any level.
And the hypocrisy! Jesus reserved some of his harshest words for hypocrites. Whitewashed sepulchers?
War involves killing. If you're pro-life, be pro-life across the board. Don't pick and choose.
Sorry, Oyster, I didn't mean to do a rant, and I did mean to thank you for the link and to address the subject of your post, but I got a bit distracted.
oyster,
The basic point being, that Jindal and other conservative Catholics get a pass (domestically) for supporting wars that the Church opposes (ex. Iraq), where scores of thousands of innocents are killed. But if that is too oversimplified, we can use the death penalty issue if you like.
The death penalty isn't cut-and-dried either. The Catechism holds that the death penalty is wrong as retributive punishment, but that is is not wrong to terminate the life of a person who poses a continuing risk to society unless executed. This is a required finding in death penalty cases.
See more debate here:
http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/41873862.html
There's at least some room for debate within the Church on the death penalty, although the Vatican and the USCCB have taken a hard line against it. This is definitely not the case with abortion and gay marriage.
While I'm certainly no authority on Catholic doctrine, I disagree with this claim and would like for you to provide evidence for it.
I'll retreat a bit on this. I didn't explain it well (or all that accurately).
My understanding is that the Church doesn't allow abortion per se under any circumstances, but that it is permissible to perform a procedure to save the mother's life that has the side effect of killing the fetus. It's definitely a close call depending on the circumstances and the procedure. The idea is that you shouldn't outright murder Person A to save Person B, but neither should you withhold medical care from Person A simply because the care will harm Person B.
I also believe that the Church contends that this rule encompasses all cases where the mother's life is in real, serious danger, and that the necessity of so-called therapeutic abortions is essentially a fraud.
In any case, I've never seen anything in the Catechism that speaks directly to this issue, so there is at least some room for interpretation. If you want evidence, here's an old book from the 70's discussing the issue:
http://books.google.com/books?id=3Ke37zpSv3gC&pg=PA337&lpg=PA337&dq=catechism+abortion+mother's+life&source=bl&ots=5NUD2Qudbe&sig=x4fxKazbQ_Vx6V3lB8tvfWtOgOI&hl=en&ei=v4AeS8bpLI6Ytgf4ofCeCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CA4Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=&f=false
Anyway, from what I see this fellow seems like he would be my sort of bishop. Unfortunately, I don't have a "sort" of bishop. My nominal club is "priesthood of all believers", Presbyterian style, so bishops don't do much for me unless I'm playing chess.
I have a good bit of sympathy for your view, Oyster, and I definitely believe in "the priesthood of all believers".
The main reason that our bishop's election was ignored is that on the same day in the Episcopal Diocese of California, a partnered lesbian was elected as a suffragan bishop. She and her partner have been together for 21 years, but nosy people everywhere focused on what she and her partner do in the bedroom, which, in my humble opinion is nobody's damned business but their own. Anyway, her election was "news" because it was controversial.
Mimi,
Owen, the ONLY instance in which the Roman Catholic church permits an abortion to save a woman's life is in the case of an ectopic pregnancy[.]
Not true. The Church would find *any* medical procedure permissible that merely caused the death of the fetus as a regrettable side-effect rather than being the primary aim of the procedure. This encompasses more than just ectopic pregnancy -- ovarian cancer, for example, can necessitate a hysterectomy, which would thus be morally permissible.
In a recent case in Brazil, a 9 year old girl became pregnant after her father repeatedly raped her. Her mother gave permission, and doctors performed an abortion because the girl was too small in size to carry twins. The twins could not have survived, and the girl herself was in danger.
This was an issue with the local diocese, and others might have resolved it differently given the extreme situation. That being said, the mother being in danger isn't necessarily the same as the mother facing probable death. This is one of those cases where nobody really wants to touch it with a ten foot pole, but the Church doesn't just sit on the sidelines and avoid tough questions; it usually resolves them in favor of preserving life.
In any event, a C-section would have been permissible, in my view, if the mother's life was placed in more serious danger as the pregnancy progressed. Depending on how premature the twins were at that time, they may still have died anyway, but that isn't the same as actively terminating their lives.
No cheap shot at all, Owen. What caused me to walk away from the RCC was the cover-up, the bishops moving the abusive priests from parish to parish to continue their abusive behavior and paying hush money to those who were abused to buy their silence.
But one has nothing to do with the other. The Church can be absolutely correct on its moral stances, and still have manifested appalling conduct in the abuse scandal.
War involves killing. If you're pro-life, be pro-life across the board. Don't pick and choose.
Just war theory can justify killing in war. Again, this is much more complex than sloganeering can encompass. Being "pro-life" means supporting the right to life, which sometimes means fighting a war and killing in order to save more lives or to preserve human dignity. It's even more complicated than that, but you get the idea.
That being said, the mother being in danger isn't necessarily the same as the mother facing probable death.
Owen, if the girl was your daughter, what would you do?
The Church can be absolutely correct on its moral stances, and still have manifested appalling conduct in the abuse scandal.
Indeed they can. For me, it's that the hierarchy in the church have no moral authority left for me to consider their opinions with any seriousness.
Having said that, I know a good many RC priests and lay folks who are about doing the work of the Lord, sometimes in spite of the hierarchy.
I know all about the just war theory, but if one insists on calling oneself pro-life, one should be consistently pro-life.
Mimi,
Owen, if the girl was your daughter, what would you do?
I don't know. I know that I wouldn't want to kill my own unborn grandchildren unless it was absolutely necessary, but I wouldn't want my own child placed at risk either. It's a very difficult situation, as I acknowledged. It would depend on a variety of factors.
For me, it's that the hierarchy in the church have no moral authority left for me to consider their opinions with any seriousness.
Fair enough, but the apostolic tradition encompasses more than just the current hierarchy. If your faith in Catholicism was really driven by the notion that the hierarchy could never, at any point in time, suffer from serious moral failings, I'd say your faith in the Church was always weak and misplaced. And if you hold liberal moral and political views upon which you weren't willing to defer to the Church, I can see why you would eventually leave.
I know all about the just war theory, but if one insists on calling oneself pro-life, one should be consistently pro-life.
Being pro-life doesn't equate with sitting on one's thumbs while people are murdered or oppressed. Sometimes refusing to go to war itself shows a disrespect for life.
Owen, my faith is driven by the Gospel. Churches will always be imperfect, because churches are made up of imperfect humans. At some point the hypocrisy in the RCC became too much to bear. And I have no illusions that my present church is perfect, but in certain areas, it seems to be trending in the right direction.
The attitude of the RCC hierarchy towards its own gay priests and bishops is, to say the least, hypocritical and less than honest. You're okay just so you stay in the closet and live a lie.
And now I'm done. If you're happy where you are, then God bless you. I have many RC friends, and I have never once tried to persuade any of them to leave their church.
Mimi,
I don't see any reason to reduce Christianity to the gospels, but ok, reductionism is a common theme in Protestant thought (i.e., sola scriptura). Even then, the Episcopal Church runs into major problems on the issue of divorce and remarriage, which Christ did address directly.
I wish the Episcopal Church the best, but I fear it is becoming too much of a vehicle for modern moral trends. The fact that a figure like Bishop Spong could have risen to such a level in the Episcopal Church while denying the divinity of Christ speaks ill of its continued viability, particularly in the midst of such upheaval. Just my two cents.
I know I said that I was done, but I kinda sorta knew that this conversation would not end without a mention of Bp. Spong on your part, Owen. I could name names, too, but I refuse to go there.
The Gospels contain all the law and the prophets in the Two Great Commandments. In the Episcopal Church, it's not sola scripture at all, rather Scripture, reason, and tradition.
As to divorce, you are correct. That is a problem, but we are all sinners of one sort or another. Lord, have mercy. The RCC has the very same tradition, but they hypocritically call it anullment, which is no more than a Catholic divorce, however you split the hairs.
And please don't explain the meaning of annulment to me. If you want to tell me that a couple who have been married for 25 years and have five children were never married, I won't buy it, however you slice it.
Mimi,
The problem in the RCC the overuse of annulment, which is a recognized problem within the Church. Both Benedict and John Paul II decried it:
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0900437.htm
With the Episcopal Church, however, acceptance of divorce and remarriage, as I understand, is written into church doctrine. It's not a problem of application, but of belief itself.
You are correct on one point -- we are all sinners. However, the RCC is right to at least delineate sinful behavior rather than just throw its proverbial hands up and accommodate it. That's a different thing entirely from compassion, understanding and humility. I'm not sure the Episcopal Church knows the difference anymore.
C'mon guys. The greatest legacy of the Catholic Church is a written code of laws and edicts. Citations, or it doesn't count.
And not to be too picky, but isn't divorce and remarriage the raison d'etre of the Episcopal Church?
Also, Erster, I hope I didn't sound too testy. I went apeshit on some Nola.com fuckwits who questioned Fr. Jerry's devotion to his flock and his neighborhood, but I know that was not likely your intent.
