The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #45382   Message #678755
Posted By: GUEST,adavis@truman.edu
28-Mar-02 - 11:51 PM
Thread Name: BS: Catholic Bishop and Priest Scandal
Subject: RE: BS: Catholic Bishop and Priest Scandal
Well, I try to be a good and loyal catholic, but there's no reaction but sorrow and horror. The crimes have to be prosecuted as crimes, very publically. And then some seriously overdue housekeeping, with lots of light and fresh air. But for that second part of it -- issues of celibacy, hierarchy, authority that everybody seems to have an opinion about-- I guess I don't appreciate commentators from Time and CNN weighing in with their wise advice on how to run a church whose faith and obligations they have no intention of sharing. Women don't like to be lectured by men about what's wrong with women, blacks don't like to be told by whites how they ought to run their communities, and I'd ask the same thing for Catholics. As has been pointed out, this is not something peculiar to the Catholic church (which doesn't in any way lessen the seriousness of our problem), but lots of folks want to chime in. I sometimes feel, watching media representations and discussions of Catholicism that it's one of the few places where progressively minded people still feel at liberty to exercise the natural human vice of bigotry.