They need to make a searching and fearless moral inventory of themselves, to paraphrase from the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Under the category of, how we got to this place, are a couple of good articles shared by Jim McCrea in his email thread. The first is from the NCR site, entitled Catholics need to confess their complicity in the failed coup.
From the article: "... among those with some culpability for yesterday's failed insurrection are more than a few leaders in our church. Catholic apologists for Trump have blood on their hands."
"This is the culmination of what this presidency has been about from the beginning — and some Catholics have remained silent, or worse, cheered it along, including some bishops, priests, a few sisters, right-wing Catholic media and too many people in the pro-life movement."
"We're talking to you CatholicVote.org, Attorney General William Barr and other Catholics in the Trump administration, Amy Coney Barrett, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, rogue prolifer Abby Johnson. Sadly, the list goes on."
"And what about the everyday Catholics — some 50% of them — who voted for Trump this year, after four years of incompetence, racist dog whistles and assaults on democratic norms? Not all were at the "protest" in Washington, but many have supported organizations that fanned the flames. Too many Catholic voters were content to cozy up to Trump in exchange for tax breaks, or Supreme Court judges, or subsidies for Catholic schools."
"...It must stop. If the church is to live up to the teachings of its founder, and if it is ever to be a witness to the culture, it cannot, must not, be a part of what happened at our nation's Capitol. There must be no white Catholic nationalism. And a pro-life movement that embraces white nationalism is not a true pro-life movement. Period."
"While some prelates have spoken out all along, the bishops' conference, as a body, must publicly confess and atone for its complicity in empowering the president and the Republican Party in this violence and in denigrating the Democratic Party. The U.S. bishops could start by disbanding that ad hoc, adversarial committee on President-elect Joe Biden, and use its various resources to re-shift how we discuss what it means to be pro-life Catholics. A pro-life movement unwilling to exclaim “Black lives matter” is not a pro-life movement."
The second article, shared by Jim McCrea and Gene Palumbo, is from the UK Catholic publication, The Tablet: Truth and reconciliation – what the Catholic Church needs after Trump (thetablet.co.uk)
"...For
a Christian – and a Catholic – a dictatorship of relativism must be resisted.
More needs to be done by the Church to tackle the pandemic of misinformation
which is infecting the Body of Christ. It has been profoundly disturbing to
witness the large numbers of Christians throwing themselves behind the Trump cause
while some Catholics even became tightly connected with the group which carried
out the insurrection. The shocking events on 6 January mean that action is
needed to bring about some kind of reconciliation within the Church following
this episode.
"...the
pro-Trump movement is deeply linked to those opposed to the direction of
Francis’ papacy and has been fuelled by the Catholic media conglomerate, EWTN.
Their support for Trump has been resolute and witnessed in a series of fawning
interviews with the president. At the same time, through its presenter Raymond
Arroyo and outlets such as the National Catholic Register, they
have promoted Archbishop Viganò, who in 2018 called on the Pope to resign. It
is little surprise that Bannon asked Vigano in his interview whether “the Trump
Administration could be instrumental in helping to return the Church to a
pre-Francis Catholicism”.
"Nevertheless, a better way is possible. Incoming President Joe Biden says it is time to heal the nation, and the same can be said for the Church. While the US bishops have announced a working group to examine President Biden’s view on abortion, a working group on reconciliation following the Trump presidency is equally urgent."
"One
step forward could be through a synodal process, something which the Pope has
urged the Church to embrace. It could be the equivalent of a truth and
reconciliation commission, and a genuine attempt to overcome the epic levels of
polarisation. "
“This
synodal approach is something our world now needs badly,” Francis writes in his
latest book, Let Us Dream.
“Rather
than seeking confrontation, declaring war, with each side hoping to defeat the
other, we need processes that allow differences to be expressed, heard, and
left to mature in such a way that we can walk together without needing to
destroy anyone. This is hard work; it needs patience and commitment – above all
to each other. Lasting peace is about creating and maintaining processes of
mutual listening.”
It
also requires breaking out of the dictatorship of separate information worlds
and recognising the uncomfortable truth that some in the Church played a role
in fuelling the violence on the Feast of the Epiphany 2021. In 1995, as he
opened the Truth and Reconciliation commission in post-Apartheid South Africa,
Archbishop Desmond Tutu put it this way.
“To
be able to forgive one needs to know whom one is forgiving and why. That is why
the truth is so central to this whole exercise.”
I would encourage anyone who has not already done so to listen to the message from the dean of Canterbury Cathedral which Jack linked in the update to his previous post. It is just a short bit, but is very kind, and a needed message of encouragement to disheartened people.
ReplyDeleteYes, it was encouraging without being smug or patronizing. I usually listen to evening prayer over there. Not a morning worshipper.
DeleteI did tune in to morning prayer on youtube this morning. And was amused to see "Clemmie and the girls" grazing around in the cathedral gardens. They are a group of very not-feral pigs.
DeleteThe dean tends to take the very long view of things, going back to King Ethelbert in the previous link. This morning he spoke about this day being the anniversary of St. Hadrian's relics being transferred to the monastery adjacent to the cathedral in 1091.
Yay, Aethelbert and Bertha! Reading the changing body of written Ango-Saxon laws is interesting. They held up for 500 years.
DeleteGlad you are discovering the delights of Canterbury which my friend Betty and I enjoy each morning after breakfast. The dean is a font of knowledge covering music, art, history, scripture, and sharing all the animals, trees and plants of the garden. Much better than the New York Times.
DeleteI forwarded the link of the dean's words of encouragement from your post to my sister, who was feeling blue and disheartened over current events ( as probably everyone is). She appreciated his quiet and understated manner.
DeleteA neighbor across the street has been a devoted fan of Trump. They are Catholic but he is not much of a church goer. Both are very pro-life He appreciates very much the support of the American Bishops for Republicans. He is one of several angry Republican old men whom I know who were upset for long before Trump. His wife however is very active in the pro-life movement in a positive way. She is a volunteer, board member and fund raiser for a local home for pregnant women so that they have support.
ReplyDeleteMy neighbor has a huge Trump sign in this front yard, as well as many little ones, and a Trump flag on his flagpole under the American flag. Today the Trump signs came down. Hopefully he took them down. So it will be interesting to me how this has all played out with him. He mows my lawn so we talk all the time in the summer. We generally avoid politics. I suspect my Ph.D. intimidates him. But I will ask his wife sometime how this all played out with him
Re your PhD. I have never told anyone in this town or in the parish that I taught at MSU or have an advanced degree, just that I worked "at the college." Instant rejection.
DeleteThe only time I ever saw my dad cry was when I was accepted into the doctoral program at Chapel Hill. "We'll never see you again," he said. Life intervened so I never managed to finish my PhD, but I always felt sad that he thought higher education was some kind of repudiation of him.
I think that is a common reaction of parents, maybe not seeing it so much as a repudiation as a literal fear that "We'll never see you again." That their child will live someplace far away and that opportunities to see them will be few and far between, and that they will have little in common as time goes on. I know I was relieved when my kids settled within easy driving distance from where we live.
DeleteTrue for a lot of parents, but it was more complicated with Dad.
DeleteMy father had an eighth grade education then went to work in the mines, became a steelwork about the time I was born. My mother graduated from high school. From about eight grade, my mother took over most of the cooking and housework for her ailing mother (there were three other children). Both of my parents essentially became adults after eight grade.
DeleteMy intellectual talents and interests had become apparent around eighth or ninth grade. Essentially my parents allowed me to become an adult at that time, probably because that is what had happened to them. By the time I was sixteen, I had taken over the role of pastoral associate that was vacated when a seminarian from our parish was ordained.
My talents had become evident to my high school teachers who treated me more as a colleague than a student. For example my physics teacher and I both watched a morning public television on atomic physics.
All the Catholic adults around me saw it as very appropriate that I was going off to be a Jesuit and likely become a college teacher like the Benedictines who said the extra Masses at our parish. While they would all eventually accept my being first a college professor and then a researcher in the public mental health system, most of them always saw me as someone who should have been a priest. The people in my parish who know me think that I know more than the priests.
My parents were always totally accepting and supportive of me as I was of them. Mom and Dad were always best friends as well as lovers. I grew into being their best friend as well as their child.
The abortion question is mostly used by Trumpers to shut down anti-Trump Catholics. Rarely do Catholics who voted for Trump say they despise the man but have no choice but to vote for him because abortion is so immoral. Pro-Trump commenters on Catholic forums seem to approve of his views on economics, immigration, policing of African-Americans, climate science denial. This makes me think that the abortion issue is less important to them than they let on. It is mostly a cover. White Catholics who support Trump are more white than Catholic. They are probably more white than American.
ReplyDeleteStanley, you may be right. I'd note that the core of Trump's anti-abortion support isn't from Catholics (although some of them surely are part of the picture); it's Evangelicals. Evangelicals don't always approach abortion from the same angle that we Catholics do. E.g. our Seamless Garment theology may not exactly translate into how Evangelicals view abortion.
DeleteI believe that Catholics like Joe Scheidler and Evangelical leaders collaborated on Operation Rescue, which was a direct-confrontation strategy at the doorway of abortion clinics back in the 1980s(?). I am not going to say there is no appetite for that sort of action now, but most of the folks I know personally who are motivated enough about pro-life issues to get involved in some way are more interested in peaceful witness, legislation, lobbying and other forms of civil engagement that sort of fall within the guardrails of what most Americans seem to be able to countenance.
"The abortion question is mostly used by Trumpers to shut down anti-Trump Catholics"
ReplyDeleteI think you are right about that, Stanley.
I was reading comparisons to the way some of these people were radicalized with how ISIS radicalized and recruited people. Read the accounts in WaPo about how Ashli Babbitt bought into the QAnon stuff, even though she had voted for Obama once. Mind you, I don't think someone can be recruited to a radical movement without their willing consent. I think originally QAnon was kind of a joke, so wild that no one could take it seriously. Obviously a lot of people did take it seriously, but I have to wonder about their mental processes.
Katherine, sometimes I think it provides some sort of meaning and connection for those who have neither. The bonds that hold people together are weaker than ever. Maybe they gravitate toward cults and Trumpism is the biggest cult this nation has ever seen. But I'm not a psychologist. I prefer the predictability of physical things to figuring out what makes unstable people do what they do.
DeleteI read the piece about Ashli Babbitt. Big mouth, chip on her shoulder, confrontational, problems with authority, hard to get along with.
DeletePretty much me, in other words.
I got interested hagiographical research, she got interested in QAnon. Both paths led to transformational ways of thinking about larger issues.
There but for the grace of God ...
Jean, I don't picture you as someone unwilling or unable to engage with objective truth!
DeleteI had a lot of nutty opinions in my 20s.
DeleteThe need to hold down a job and, later, not to produce another miserable, screwed up kid had a quelling effect on my temperament. I recognize and understand Ashli Babbitt better than I want to.
Stanley: is he a relation of yours?
ReplyDeleteBishop Joseph Kopacz of Jackson, Mississippi, pictured during a meeting of U.S. bishops from Regions IV and V at the Vatican, Dec. 3, 2019. (CNS/Vatican Media)
Jim, actually not a relation. But before he became bishop, he was a pastor in a parish here in the Poconos so I heard of him. One of the ladies I used to dance with saw him on the golf course and thought he was hot.
DeleteKopacz is a Polish name that is neither rare or common. A few years ago, the prime minister of Poland was named Ewa Kopacz. I grew up in the Philly area and there was a bunch of Kopacz' my family wasn't related to. The name means "digging". I come from a line of farmers going back a thousand years. I couldn't grow a potato.