Welcome to an angry and unfocused rant!
I'm a cradle Catholic and in more than 50 years have never seriously considered leaving the Catholic Church. I doubt if I ever will. My bottom line is that my grandmother was a saint, and if the church was right for her, it's right for me. And I have other reasons to be loyal.
But darn if I'm not starting to have stray thoughts about visiting local Episcopalian, Presbyterian and other Protestant churches.
The reason is that, for the first time in my life, the bishops are starting to browbeat us from the pulpit with outrageous, right-wing propaganda. "Religious liberty," they claim, is being outrageously violated by the recent government regulations on insurance coverage for contraception and so forth.
I don't want to revisit the details of that dispute, which was discussed here at depth.
The bishops may actually have some good points in the midst of the propaganda. I don't know, because I thought all along that that was a tempest in a teapot. But they have escalated!
What most infuriates me is their abject hypocrisy in not taking up the cross for so many other issues of social justice!
When have they ever spoken out against the American aggressive wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan? Never! The great saint Pope John Paul II did publicly oppose Bush's attack on Iraq, but he was not joined by the American Catholic bishops.
When have they ever spoken out against poverty and income inequality in the United States? Recent popes, including the current pope, have had strong statements on this. But one never hears about this from the bishops in U.S. Catholic churches.
When have they ever spoken out against the injustices in the U.S. immigration system? A few bishops have been courageous on this, but not most.
When have they ever spoken out against the death penalty? Again, a few have, but not most.
When have they ever spoken out against the millions unfairly imprisoned by the war on drugs? Never!
When have they ever spoken out against the immorality of cutting social services while increasing defense spending?
Here I'm just typing up a rant I was making as my wife and I drove home from Mass. As I've said before, I like the concept of a DKos diary, because it's a way to do ongoing snapshots of things that mattered to me on different days.
This probably won't sway anybody at all in any direction. I understand, of course, that the bishops are always way to the right of the laity, and that the laity, especially in the United States, generally ignores the bishops. And they generally do not vote as told by the bishops. On the other hand, this current propaganda campaign within the church is stronger than I've seen in 50-some years, and it will affect many voters.
I'm not satisfied with the fact that the bishops may have rather limited influence. Their smug hypocrisy is supremely infuriating. I wish there was a strong, charismatic leader within the U.S. Catholic community who could make this case in public in a way that would force the bishops (or at least some of them) to be ashamed of themselves.
It is true, of course, that the Catholic Church does an incredible amount of good with charities, schools, hospitals, free legal clinics, and so forth. That work is supervised by the bishops, and they generally do an excellent job of that.
But I wish they'd stop being so concerned about what goes on in people's bedrooms and more concerned about war, economic injustice, and other great issues of social justice.
(I'm deliberately trying to avoid the vexing issues of same-sex marriage and child molester priests. Please let's not derail the diary with comments on those important and often-discussed issues. I'd hope to focus on the monumental hypocrisy related just to the few points I've listed above. I say this not to minimize these other extreme issues. But those issues can overshadow everything. I want to emphasize the point that I would be outraged by the hypocrisy of the bishops even if those issues did not exist at all.)
P.S. Anybody know of a good Internet forum for leftie Catholics? This is not exactly a safe place for any kind of Catholic, although some of us survive here a long time, for good reasons.
/endrant