Catholic Sensibility

GLB's and GLG's I used to be one of the former, in the sense that I believed that doing the right thing in cooperation with legitimate authority was an important and a moral way to live. It was my Catholic high school experience that disabused me of that notion. It was in those years when I found some few authority figures were even more saintly than I had thought: these were people I admired enough to imitate. But for the most part, I found that many adults were very much like, if not far worse than the bullies, thieves, and slackers I knew among my peers. These I found beneath contempt. So the die was cast, and ever since, I have been a doubter when it came to authority. I found if I looked far enough into what authorities were saying, I could easily see the cracks in the machine. What's the line from the psalm? "Put no trust in princes." I saw it in high school, in college, in the Church, and if I dared to look, even in the people I befriended or loved. Some of my brothers and sisters in Catholicism are still "Good" in the sense of these acronyms. They want to remain faithful to the Vatican, the bishops, their parish priest, or their EWTN or St Blog's guru. It is part of their moral skeleton: a loyalty which has far, far fewer questions than I have. It is the reason I think some of them are, in part, more upset with the bishops' mishandling of sexual predators than the sexual predation itself (except perhaps for those who are victims or have a victim as a loved one). A single sex predator can be dismissed. (Even forgiven and rallied around if said predator was a pastor or admired figure.) But dozens, if not hundreds of bishops being stripped morally naked and paraded through the public square is just too much to ignore. I was struck by a comment on another blog, a person who told me it was pretty much my moral duty to vote to reelect the president next week because we need to "begin" to turn the tide against abortion. Excuse me? Begin? You mean we haven't started yet? Except for two of the last twenty-four years, the Republicans have pretty much controlled most of the federal government. The Democrats who have surfaced in those years have hardly been raving liberals: mostly moderate southern guys who enjoy the gravy train of corporate campaign money. And power, of course. If we haven't seen a beginning under Mr Reagan who started the new conservative morning in America, or with the Contract on America, or with the neocons of Bush II, then I think the anti-abortion cause's best hope on All Soul's Day is to maintain the status quo: the most radical approach to ending pregnancies pretty much anywhere in the world with no shift in sight, not from comfortable Republicans in suburban gated enclaves. We're told we have to follow the wisdom of Chaput, Burke, seminarians who protest but don't get arrested, Hudson (oops, no, not Hudson), Balestrieri, and the others who tell us all we have to be is good little boys and girls, do what's right, and those in authority will take care of the rest. Sorry. I didn't believe it in high school, and I don't believe it now. I don't think you need to start wearing black leather, drive loud two-wheeled vehicles through school hallways, or smoke non-tobacco angiosperms to make a real stand. I'm not impressed, not in the slightest, with the stories of people who will hold their nose and vote either blue or red on Tuesday and pop a Tums before bed that night. The GLG's and B's, along with Archbishop Chaput, EWTN, and the rest are pretty much like the complaining Israelites on the shore of the sea. Bush or Kerry? The choice might as well be going back to Egyptian slavery or drowning in the sea. I think some people have put so much faith in authority, they have lost their own true sense of faith. God had something other than door number one and door number two up His sleeve in Exodus, and though I can't see it clearly today, my sense is that there's another option -- not just Tuesday, but in the whole effort to promote the Gospel of Christ (or the Gospel of Life, if you will.) I think a good Catholic here and there could possibly come up with a moral reason to vote for one major candidate or the other. Frankly, I don't see it for me. I think pulling the lever to settle for least evil would be probably be a sin against hope. I'm not going to say your vote for Bush or Kerry is a sin. Maybe your insight is better than mine, but I only know I hear and see today what I heard and saw in high school. The motto "Put no trust in princes" seems to ring as clear today as it did in the 70's. I think Tuesday will be a victory for the GLG's and GLB's no matter who wins. But I remain convinced by faith there's a better choice between slavery and drowning.