USCCB Head Timothy Dolan Endorses Gay Marriage: Oh, Never Mind

The head of the U.S. Catholic Bishops' Conference Timothy Dolan is fighting for marriage (still; again).  The title of a recent blog posting he has published about this fight: "Marriage: the core of every civilization."

And that title beautifully summarizes why gay and lesbian folks and our allies are fighting for our right to marry.

Oh, wait.  I am now reading further and I see that Archbishop Dolan didn't mean to endorse marriage as a core value for everyone.  It's only for heterosexuals.  It seems his blog title is a tad misleading.

What he really means to say is, "Heterosexual marriage: the core of every civilization."  With a subtitle: Catholic bishops' definition of marriage must trump civil law and its definitions.

Because we say so.  And because everything we teach about human rights and justice for all doesn't apply to gay and lesbian human beings. 

Because we say so.

Catholic Ethicist Daniel Maguire on USCCB President Timothy Dolan's "Love Letter" to Paul Ryan

Also noteworthy today: Marquette University ethics professor Daniel Maguire's assessment of the recent love letter that the head of the U.S. Catholic bishops Timothy Dolan wrote Representative Paul Ryan.  Though Ryan seems to have only the most tenuous possible passing acquaintance with Catholic social teaching and with the preferential option for the poor that animates this teaching, and though he has stated that his social philosophy is radically influenced by the self-centered social Darwinism of Ayn Rand, the USCCB president has essentially given Ryan his blessing and imprimatur.  

While he lays into Catholic thinkers who even begin to imagine deviating from the Catholic magisterial party line on issues like contraception, abortion, or homosexuality.  As Maguire notes, he himself experienced the rough side of Dolan's tongue in a letter Dolan wrote him as archbishop of Milwaukee, which characterized Maguire's moral theology as "preposterous and disingenuous," and "totally at odds with clear Church teaching, Sacred Scripture, the Magisterium, and Natural Law."

Ryan, by contrast, receives from Dolan a missive that is, in Maguire's view, a "mellifluous effusion" dripping with "adulatory congratulations" and "sweet nothings."  If Dolan were acting "in Jesus mode" (and not qua the mouthpiece of the Catholic Republican American Party [CRAP] that he actually is), he'd come to conclusions similar to those of the seventy Catholic scholars who recently took Speaker Boehner to task for promoting social and economic programs that attack and damage the least among us:

Could you not be as tough as Jesus was when he rebuked those in power who were mouthing pieties, while stripping the poor and favoring the pillaging rich? “Whitened sepulchers,” Jesus called them, covered with platitudinous posturing on the outside but inside filled with the stench of moral decay. “Hypocrites,” Jesus called them repeatedly, “blind guides” who are “fit for hell.” “Outside you look like honest men, but inside you are brimful of hypocrisy and crime.” (Matthew 23)

Nothing tepid about Jesus when poor workers and children were being trampled.

But, then, Archbishop Dolan doesn't intend to speak and act "in Jesus mode."  Not as long as he is  financed by, indebted to, and answerable to the Republican business leaders to whom he and other U.S. Catholic bishops have sold their soul.

For whom Jesus and his teachings clearly mean far less than Ayn Rand does.

Enlightened Catholicism on Ayn Rand Economic Fantasies of U.S. Catholic Bishops

Quote for the day, from Colleen Baker's Enlightened Catholicism blog, re: the Ayn Rand economic fantasies now being promoted by the U.S. Catholic bishops through their president Timothy Dolan:

Between what Bishop Finn has just admitted to, on top of what Cardinal Rigali has admitted to, added to what Archbishop Dolan has written Congressman Ryan, I have completely lost any faith in the body politic of American bishops to ever act like their Apostolic predecessors.  The USCCB can no longer expect to cover all their other indiscretions with the abortion diaper.  It just ain't gonna stretch.  The stench is too strong.

Yes.  Colleen's right on target.

Two More Valuable Statements on Catholic Abuse Situation: Patrick Wall and National Catholic Reporter

And, to place the discussion of Donohue's New York Times ad in the broader context of ongoing discussion of the cover-up of the abuse crisis by church leaders, two more valuable statements hot off the press:

The first is a posting Patrick Wall made on his blog yesterday about how Philadelphia signals the turning of the tide in the public's understanding of the abuse situation in the Catholic church, and the understanding many faithful Catholics now have of this situation.  In Wall's view, it is and always has been about cover-up.  Not about addressing the abuse crisis honestly and proactively.  It has been about cover-up from the very moment the U.S. Catholic bishops told us in 2002 that they intended to offer healing to survivors of clerical sexual abuse and to assure that children would be protected from abuse in the future.  

From that time forward, Wall maintains, the bishops have been mounting a "grand plan" that has employed "four distinct modes of tactical deception."  These are the National Review Board, the John Jay study, the Gavin Group's annual audit, and diminishing enforcement of the Dallas charter.

Re: the National Review Board, Wall reminds us of a significant bit of history we ought not permit ourselves to forget, as Donohue raves on (with the apparent blessing of the USCCB): former FBI agent and federal prosecutor Frank Keating resigned from the board in 2003 stating, after a year of frustrating experiences trying to deal with bishops whose behavior he characterized as akin to that of the Mafia, “To resist grand jury subpoenas, to suppress the names of offending clerics, to deny, to obfuscate, to explain away; that is the model of a criminal organization, not my church.”  And since that time, Wall points out, the Review Board has done little to nothing to assure that the bishops adhere to their promises of 2002.

Re: the John Jay study, which Bill Donohue and others keep using to "prove" that the abuse crisis is all about the abuse of young adolescent males by gay priests, Wall points out: "John Jay was utterly dependent upon the information each Bishop decided to give them."  And: "The study was nothing more than a third-party rehash of only the information that the USCCB wanted to be publicly disseminated."  As Wall notes, the method this "study" employed was tantamount to asking the police to investigate a murder, and then informing the criminal investigators that they could use only evidence turned over to them by the murder himself.

Re: the annual "audit" conducted by the Gavin Group, Wall reminds us, the auditing method is like nothing we'd encounter in the real world, where outside auditors have the right to request any and all evidence available to assure a group is on the financial up and up.  Instead, the method used is "stunningly similar" to that of the John Jay "study": "The Bishops ONLY give the Gavin Group what the Bishops want the public to know."

And we now know, per the 2010 audit just published, that the archdiocese of Philadelphia can pass the annual audit just as a grand jury investigation finds an alarming number of priests credibly accused of abuse still in ministry!  And it has done so every year the audits have been conducted!!

And, finally, there is a growing body of serious evidence demonstrating that the bishops are quietly engaged in diminishing enforcement of the 2002 charter, despite their claims that the abuse crisis is resolved, over and done with, things all cleaned up.  Even with its access to partial, highly selected, carefully massaged information, this year's audit found 55 dioceses and eparchies out of compliance with the Dallas charter.

Catholics, are you listening?  The U.S. Catholic bishops have played you for fools.  And they have every intent of continuing to do so, if you permit this.  If anybody can tell you the truth about what's going on with the abuse cover-up, he (and Tom Doyle, and Richard Sipe and the folks at SNAP) can do so.

And there's also this: the same day that Donohue published his New York Times ad and the USCCB released the results of the annual audit, National Catholic Reporter published an editorial deploring the constant "legal shenanigans and ethical lapses" of the Catholic bishops vis-a-vis the abuse cover-up, shenanigans and lapses on full display all over again in Philadelphia courtrooms right now.  And so, 

It is time for Catholics to acknowledge what is clear: Despite the promises made at the height of the sex abuse crisis nearly a decade ago, the leadership of the church on both a local and national level has failed to deal forthrightly with the clergy abuse crisis. Certainly many dioceses and bishops are diligently applying the charter they adopted in 2002. They respond quickly to accusations and do their best to work the canonical system to remove problem priests. But what Philadelphia reveals is that the system is easily compromised, dependent as it still is on sheer trust at too many levels and on the goodwill of bishops who remain above accountability.

And what does NCR propose, concretely?  First, faithful Catholics need to call on the hierarchy to implement the recommendations of the Philadelphia grand jury at a national level.  Second, there need to be "Philadelphia-style investigations" in more places.  And, finally, Cardinal Rigali needs to resign.

Because, if Philadelphia shows us anything, it shows us the whole system is broken and not capable of working without major overhaul.  And all the bullying and the frothing at the mouth of Bully Bill Donohue and whoever keeps funneling money to him to engage in his shameful, mean-spirited carnival sideshow is no longer going to divert most thinking folks' attention from that glaringly obvious reality.

More Responses to Bill Donohue's New York Times Ad: Bully Bill and the Bishops Lose Control of the Narrative

Commentary about Bully Bill's expensive full-page ad in the New York Times just keeps pouring out.  And it continues to be unsparingly critical of the deceptive, blame-shifting message Bill Donohue wants to give the American public on behalf of the U.S. Catholic bishops: that everybody except the bishops is responsible for the abuse crisis.  And above all the gays--they're the chief malefactors.  Since we all know what the gays do, given access to children.

Though Bully Bill and the bishops seem to have unlimited funds from some undisclosed source to engage in their diversionary gay-bashing, no one seems to be buying the expensive wares they want to hawk right now.  Not in the wake of the Philadelphia grand jury reports.  In fact, that they'd even try this mean-spirited blame-changing tactic all over again in the wake of those reports only confirms the judgment a growing number of people are reaching about the abuse crisis: namely, that something is rotten at the very center of the Catholic church, in its leadership structure.

And it's that rottenness that's on full display in the abuse crisis.  And the crisis will never be resolved until the rottenness is faced honestly and dealt with squarely.

The following links come, once again, from Kathy Shaw's Abuse Tracker blog at the Bishop Accountability site, to which Bilgrimage links in its list of blogs I follow:

Mark Silk at Spiritual Politics:  

To read Bill Donohue's latest defense of the virtue of the Catholic powers-that-be--published as a full-page ad in yesterday's New York Times--is to be struck by the degree to which he and his episcopal buddies refuse even to discuss the issue that lies at the core of the sex abuse scandal over the past decade. From the intemperate remarks of New Hampshire legislators about Bishop John McCormack's past to the prosecution of Cardinal Justin Rigali's regime in Philadelphia to the implosion of the Church's moral authority in Ireland, it has been the refusal of the Church to hold bishops accountable for anything other than their own private sins that continues to outrage Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

Garrett Quinn at Boston Globe:  

Donohue likes to alienate people - not welcome and accept. He's looking to make enemies and fight battles over things that don't always make sense. Much of the apologetic work that Donohue and his organization does hurts the greater Catholic cause. Donohue doesn't represent the Catholicism I know and practice. He is not formally affiliated with the Catholic Church in anyway, something I wish more people knew. He represents the extreme conservative wing of the Church that thinks Church teachings revolve around sex and nothing else. He comes across as a hack that uses his well-funded bully pulpit for self-promotion. He should be dismissed by Catholics who want the Church to grow and not shrivel into some fundamentalist sect limited to pre-Vatican II adherents.

Natalie Hope McDonald at Philadelphia Magazine: 

The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights seems to have misplaced its dictionary. Recently, the conservative group made a statement (via a full page ad in The New York Times) blaming homosexuals for the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests, adding that the abuse has been exaggerated by the media.

There are two things gravely wrong with this statement. The first: Gay people aren’t the problem. Pedophiles are. And they come in all shapes and sizes – and in Roman collars.

The other issue I have with this response is that rather than standing up for the safety of its children, the league has somehow lessened these cases of abuse in hopes of sparing the Catholic Church any further embarrassment. But I have a message for the league and the church: It’s too late. When the church decided to cover up this scandal rather than deal with it fairly and honestly, it lost its right to accuse anyone of anything. It doesn’t get much worse than child rape. And to somehow attack the accusers is inexcusable behavior – especially coming from a so-called “place of God.”

Jon Carroll at San Francisco Chronicle: 

"The gays made us do it" is just not going to work as a viable defense.

There's more: Unfortunately for Donohue, the clinical definition of pedophilia is not at issue here; what's at issue is the legal definition of child abuse. "Adolescence" is not a legal term; indeed, it's not even a medical term, because the criteria by which adolescence may be gauged are vague. There are kids who are physically mature and emotionally very much children; the reverse is also true.

More important, adolescents or not, children put their faith, literally and metaphorically, in priests. They trust them, and when that faith is shattered by the ever-so-inconsequential inappropriate touching, a young human life is damaged. The amount of concern Donohue shows for the victims is tiny. In his view, the priests are the real victims.

Bully Bill and the U.S. Catholic bishops have lost control of the narrative.  When that happens, the usual course taken by people with any wisdom or dignity who insist they're being unfairly maligned by a prevailing narrative is either to remain silent and let circumstances vindicate them, or to offer as many documents and unvarnished pieces of evidence as they can possibly submit to show us that they're not guilty as charged.

When they ratchet up the bullying, the belligerent shouting, and the blame game instead, they only give us more reason to think something really is fundamentally wrong with them.  And what people are saying about them must be true.  And that they've lost control of the narrative for a good reason: because increasing numbers of people recognize that the morally corrupt diversionary tactics are designed to hide the moral rottenness of those doing the bullying, the shouting, and the blame-shifting.

Mary Hunt on U.S. Bishops' Condemnation of Elizabeth Johnson: All about Power

In her inimitable, straight-to-the-point way, theologian Mary Hunt dissects the U.S. Catholic bishops' recent action against theologian Elizabeth Johnson's book Quest for the Living God.  Hunt's analysis doesn't contain any information that hasn't already appeared in other accounts.  But as always, better than other tellings of the story, it drives right to the heart of the matter, framing the USCCB's condemnation of Johnson as an assertion of naked power at a time when the bishops' moral and teaching authority could not be in more disrepute, due to their handling of the abuse crisis.

And it's not at all without significance, Hunt notes, that the bishops are targeting a feminist theologian right now, one who has argued for women's ordination.  As she points out, groups like her WATER have long made the connections between clericalism and other issues that demand moral analysis from the standpoint of justice, and it is, in large part, the willingness of feminist theologians and women's activist groups to challenge the Catholic system of clericalism and connect it, through critical analysis, to other insupportable forms of injustice that incurs Rome's wrath.  These challenges are challenges to the claims of the clerical system to wield unilateral power in defining Catholicism--the kind of power on which Michael Sean Winters continues to insist authentic Catholicity is based.*

The Elizabeth Johnson story is, Hunt thinks, all about the Vatican and bishops asserting their right to define what is or is not Catholic, who is in and who is out, at a point in history when many Catholics--notably feminist thinkers--challenge the clerical system's right to unilateral ownership of the symbols and definition of Catholicism:

At issue here is not theology but power—the power to name theology ‘Catholic’. Countless interpretations of Dr. Johnson’s work later, the bishops’ point is simply to insist that they alone are the arbiters of all things Catholic. It doesn’t matter that many don’t understand, much less appreciate, contemporary theological method, nor that Elizabeth Johnson is hardly outré in feminist theological circles. What matters here is the fact that she writes and teaches at Fordham University, a social location that matches her commitments to theologize in the heart of the tradition.

The whole point of this exercise in my view is to send a message to the larger academic community that only those who toe the doctrinal line, absolutely and without any wiggle room, are theologically acceptable.

And as Mary Hunt's outstanding analysis of the Elizabeth Johnson story and what it means at a fundamental level appears, the board of the leading Catholic theological society in the U.S., the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA), has also issued a statement.  As this statement notes, the bishops' action in Johnson's case violated their own rules requiring dialogue with a theologian before her book was condemned.  The U.S. bishops, in dialogue with U.S. Catholic theologians, had worked out a system that permits theologians to know when questions have been raised about their work, and what those questions are.  The system worked out for the U.S. also creates a place for theologians under investigation to engage in dialogue with the bishops as the bishops scrutinize their work.

None of this happened in the case of Elizabeth Johnson.  Because what happened with Johnson is not really about the integrity of her work or the soundness of her theology.  It is really about power, pure and simple: naked power.  It is about the assertion of power over others at a point in history at which the claim to power of those doing the asserting is being robustly challenged, particularly by feminist thinkers.

For me personally, there's a grand irony in reading the CTSA statement side by side with Hunt's truth-telling analysis.  This irony points to some of the key tensions between groups on the cutting edge of theological reflection, like Hunt's WATER group, and centrist Catholic organizations like CTSA, which in my view do not and cannot point the way to a vibrant future for the American Catholic church.  To explain this I'll have to tell a personal story.

I know a number of the current CTSA board members personally.  I was in grad school with them, in fact.  And though one of these CTSA members now has exceptionally strong power to include Steve and me as Catholic theologians pushed to the margins of the academy in a way we have not been included in the past, neither she nor the other person whom we know on the CTSA board has ever lifted a finger to see we're included.  And they don't intend to do so.

To the contrary: the CTSA member with great power to include us told us after we were both fired at Belmont Abbey College that, though she deplored what that school did to us and how it was done, we had not played the political game adroitly.  We had, in other words, brought our own humiliation and marginalization down on our heads--by not pretending and hiding successfully enough.  

We had outed ourselves--the unforgivable sin, for a Catholic institution--simply by being.  By being gay.  By being a gay couple.  By living together.  By not apologizing for doing so.  And so, though neither of us had ever made any public statement at all about our sexual orientation or our relationship, we had not played the game adroitly enough because we had not dissimulated successfully enough.

This analysis--you weren't politically savvy, and look what happened--defends the system wielding unjust power and using ethically shabby methods to target gay folks working in Catholic institutions.  It blames the victim.  It's the kind of analysis centrists, who continue to cozy up to the power of the center and thereby gain positions of authority there, love to dole out to those on the margins.  This is how centrists get their power, and why they don't ever intend effectively to challenge the presuppositions on which the unjust power of ruling elites is based: when push comes to shove, they always defend the system itself, only mildly criticizing the operations of its power when those have been grossly unethical. 

But never breaking with that system or mounting any effective, honest analysis of it.  And blaming those hapless and powerless people who find themselves caught in the machinations of the power system, chewed up, and spit out--blaming these victims for what the merciless machine does to them.

And there's more.  The other CTSA board member Steve and I know well was one of our closest friends all through graduate school.  She was a close friend, that is, until Belmont Abbey fired us and pushed us out of the closet.

When that happened, we became like lepers whom she could not, would not touch.  We would go to CTSA national meetings, see this friend in hallways during meetings, say hello, and she would run--literally scamper--to get away from us.  The one time we actually managed to corner her and talk to her about what had happened to us as Catholic theologians, she said to us, "Well, now you'll have to find your community of support in the gay community.  Not the Catholic church."

This woman is a nun.  We were astonished at this conclusion: we Catholics can't offer you support as gay human beings who belong to our church every bit as much as we do.  You'll have to look for it somewhere else--outside the church, where support for your kind of people exists.  I do not want or intend to remain your friend, now that you are out of the closet.  Catholics can't offer that kind of friendship (and certainly not jobs and health care benefits) to those who are openly and unapologetically gay.  You're going to have to make your way in the world now without the support of the body of Christ--which continues to preach about the obligation to love everyone and challenge discrimination against anyone, and which promotes everyone's right to have bread on the table and access to health care.

Just not gays working in Catholic institutions, though, you understand.  Those statements stop applying in that case.  We are family.  You are not.  Your "gay lifestyle"--your open, honest acknowledgment of your God-given identity, your refusal to apologize for it.  That's the impediment we can't get around.  Keeping it well-hidden wouldn't be a problem for the family at all, since, God knows, there's enough closeted homosexuality in Catholic episcopal palaces and rectories and convents and the Vatican to sink a fleet of good-sized battleships, if they were loaded full of all the closet cases about which we wink--because they remain in the closet.

All of this is in my mind right now as I read Mary Hunt's article about Elizabeth Johnson side by side with the CTSA statement about the Johnson case because of another comment I recall this former friend who is now on the CTSA board making to me.  At some point not long before our firing at Belmont Abbey, I happened to mention to her that I was in touch with Mary Hunt, who was involved in the editorial process for an article of mine soon to be published in a journal.

When she heard this, my then-friend raised her eyebrows and said, "Mary Hunt.  I'd leave her alone.  And WATER.  They're way out on the margins."  

What she meant, of course, was, "Mary Hunt is a lesbian.  Lesbians don't really have a place in the bosom of the church.  As I do.  Lesbians and lesbian feminists find their support network in the gay community.  The church can't embrace them and offer them support."

As I say, reading Mary Hunt's article alongside the CTSA board's statement about Elizabeth Johnson makes me think about the two very different futures for American Catholicism both documents envisage, and for which they're working.  One of the two is still so situated within, comfortable with, the institution it mildly criticizes, that it blinds itself to the significant shortcomings of that institution which make it impossible for the institution to proclaim the gospel effectively at this point in history.

Quite specifically, the centrist model imagines it can defend women and the rights of women while remaining totally silent about heterosexism and homophobia--about the considerable heterosexism and homophobia still embedded in Catholic institutions, which completely undercuts those institutions' claims to be about justice for women or anyone else.  

I spent a good bit of time this weekend talking back and forth at this Commonweal thread about racism, the churches, and politics.  And, as any reader who has the patience to slog through the comments here will discover, in the context of that back-and-forth dialogue, one contributor who surely knew--since my username is William Lindsey--that I'm a male (and who would, if [s]he follows Commonweal threads often, also know I'm a gay male), decided at some point to shift to a she/he construction in talking about me.  Because (s)he bitterly disliked what I was saying in the conversation.

This anonymous contributor, j.a.m., has been on other Commonweal threads recently making nasty comments about feminism and women's rights.  And then, surprisingly, another contributor, Gerelyn (Hollingsworth), who also often appears on Commonweal threads making statements that appear to support women's rights, suddenly weighed in, criticizing several other contributors who called j.a.m.'s bluff--because he was gay-bashing--and sided with j.a.m.!  She sided with a Commonweal contributor who frequently knocks women and feminist theology.  Which she claims to support.

The Catholic "feminist" sided with the Catholic anti-feminist against the gay man.  And she took to task the other contributors in the thread, William Fitzgerald and Mary, who had called j.a.m.'s bluff in a hilarious way (by beginning to identify j.a.m. himself with female pronouns) due to his or her nasty gender-switching attack on me, which was intended to discredit anything I said.  And, above all, to tell me I'm not welcome in respectable Catholic conservations of the center--the real name of the game when these attacks take place.

This is an interesting exchange, isn't it?  At one level, what's most interesting about it, perhaps, is the freedom people still seem to enjoy in centrist Catholic circles that want to claim intellectual credibility to use these adolescent tactics to disempower someone who's gay.  The gender-switching game with the pronouns: that's embarrassingly crude and embarrassingly immature.  It wouldn't fly in most other intellectual circles that want to claim any credibility in the academy at large.  That it can still fly in Catholic centrist circles says a lot about where we are (or aren't), as American Catholics right now.  It says a lot about how stuck in adolescence the club of the American Catholic center is.

And also interesting is the pretense of some Catholic intellectuals that it's possible to be feminists and then collude with homophobic prejudice that is, when it targets gay men, all about using crude anti-feminist stereotypes to attack men imagined as women.  The gender analysis of Catholic "feminists" who can't recognize that homophobia targeting gay men is rooted in the very system of insupportable claims men make about male entitlement and male superiority as they deny rights to women: this is not very sophisticated gender analysis at all.

Mary Hunt does and has long made those connections.  And for that reason, I see her and those with whom she stands as important signposts to the future for the American Catholic church.  Though I was warned against her years ago by someone who is now a CTSA board member and who is now claiming to stand in support of Elizabeth Johnson and Johnson's feminist theology, I'm rather happy, on the whole, to have ended up out on the margins with Hunt and not in the center with my former friends in CTSA.

The air feels more salubrious out on the disreputable verges where we ragtag and thrown-away folks are told we belong.

* For Mary Hunt's very effective response to Michael Sean Winters about who defines Catholic identity and how that defining gets done, see this Religion Dispatches article--and see my summary of this debate in this Bilgrimage posting.

John Aravosis and Mark Jordan: A Debate about How to Approach the Role of the Bible in Gay Bashing

I agree with John Aravosis here.  When I linked several days ago to Mark Jordan's essay on which Aravosis is commenting (I linked to an earlier version at Religion Dispatches, while Aravosis is linking to it at the Alternet site), I did so to point to a problem that needs to be addressed in the American cultural and political discussion of homosexuality.  This is that many people talk about what "the bible says" without having a clue about what it actually says.

In the American political and cultural context, people speak about the Jewish and Christian scriptures with supreme confidence that the bible condemns homosexuality--and that supreme confidence is usually in direct proportion to their ignorance of what the scriptures actually say about anything at all.  Because I thought Jordan made that point well, and his call for educating ourselves (and the public at large) re: these issues seems on target, I linked to his essay.

At the same time, I did know, of course, that he was responding to John Aravosis on these points.  But my posting didn't mention that, because, to be honest, I thought Jordan had misunderstood Aravosis's primary point about how the bible is used to support gay-bashing in the U.S.  And so my references to Jordan's essay didn't mention Aravosis at all, since I didn't want to reinforce the critique of John Aravosis.

Now that Aravosis has reiterated his point--and I'm very glad he has done so--I want to address the debate between him and Jordan, and others who have also been criticizing John Aravosis re: how the bible is understood and used in American culture to lambast gays.  I think this criticism has been unfair.  The primary point I understand John Aravosis to be making--and it's an extremely important one--is this: regardless of whether the Jewish and Christian scriptures actually do condemn homosexuality, and regardless of what they really say about "homosexuality," the bible is constantly used in the American cultural and political context as a basis for discrimination and violence against those who are gay and lesbian.

And we have to acknowledge and deal with that fact if we hope to get anywhere with movements to combat anti-gay oppression and secure gay rights.  There's a double challenge in the American cultural context, vis-a-vis gay bashing and the bible, and Jordan and Aravosis are identifying two different facets of that challenge, it seems to me.

On the one hand, the persistent, serious challenge faced by anyone struggling for recognition of the human rights of gay persons in American culture is to face the fact that, for millions of Americans, the bible is an obvious and unquestioned source of anti-gay teaching.  And that uninformed, widespread cultural assumption is going to continue to be there, and to continue to be strongly persuasive for a large sector of the population, regardless of what scholars say about the biblical texts. 

On the other hand, for the last several decades, there has been significant scholarly discussion about the six clobber texts to which homophobic groups persistently return, which strongly refutes the widespread cultural belief that "the bible condemns homosexuality."  And it's important to educate ourselves and others about that biblical scholarship.  It's particularly important, I'd maintain, for people of faith committed to gay rights to begin to assure that this scholarship impacts what the churches say, think, and do about gay people and gay issues.

The role of the churches in challenging cultural misappropriation of the bible to attack gay people could, if the churches ever dared to do the work they claim they are about, be considerable.  And that correction of cultural misapplications of the scriptures needs to begin in the churches themselves, if communities of faith are to make a dent in the prevailing cultural norms.

Here's why I think John Aravosis's point is undeniable and important: no matter how wrong or misguided they are in thinking so, many Americans, whether churched or unchurched, take for granted that the bible instructs them to despise and marginalize those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered.  I cannot think of a single other minority group in this country right now that is routinely subject to violent attacks by people spouting bible verses.  I don't know of any other group of citizens we can point to, where someone still takes for granted that he or she has the right to fill a sock with stones and beat a man to death because the bible tells us to stone homosexuals.  Or where someone defending the savage beating of a gay man comes out to defend that action displaying a tattoo quoting the Leviticus verse that, as we all know, condemns "homosexuality" and calls for the stoning of gays.

Or where this kind of ugly hate speech, which is in the news today at the Box Turtle Bulletin site, pours out of the mouth of someone attacking a minority group, who repeatedly cites the bible as the source for his hatred--and for his right to attack.  We have a problem in American culture, and it is, to some degree, unique to our culture.

That problem is the taken-for-granted, casual belief that the bible supports hatred of those who are LGBT, and that those engaged in activities to demean and deny rights to gay people are doing a holy thing, something commanded by God--whether they themselves happen to be churchgoers or not, or whether they've even read the bible (and noticed how predominant its insistence on love, justice, and mercy is--and not on those six exegetically murky clobber texts).  In American culture, those working for gay and lesbian rights have a volatile combination of factors to contend with unique to American culture and politics: biblical literalism (undergirded by ignorance) runs throughout our cultural and political lives, whether people are churched or not; and because we are a nation with the soul of a church in which people, whether churched or unchurched, take for granted that the bible is the foundation of our unique city on a hill, ignorant biblical literalism wields enormous influence in our culture and political sphere.

My point in posting about these themes several days ago, as I cited Jordan's essay, was to note that this kind of biblical literalism is now affecting many American Catholics, too, despite the skepticism of traditional Catholic theology and teaching re: biblical literalism.  Listen again to those video clips of Fr. John Hollowell indoctrinating Catholic high school students in Indianapolis about their gay brothers and sisters, to which I linked several days back, and you'll hear the surprising claim that there are "multiple" bible passages condemning homosexuality, which see homosexuality as an "abomination" and "grave offense" against God, and if we question any one of these, the whole bible will become "completely useless."

These are not in the least traditional Catholic arguments.  They're not how Catholics do theology at all, including moral theology.  They're not how Catholics would approach any other moral issue today.

There's something unique about how contemporary Catholics have decided to deal with the issue of gay and lesbian people and rights, and, as I noted in my previous posting about this matter, that uniqueness begins with the 1986 letter of the current pope on the "pastoral" care of homosexual persons, which was roundly criticized by biblical exegetes and theologians when it was issued precisely because it adopts a fundamentalist approach, and pulls biblical proof texts out of context to insert into its argument, without grappling at all with the core meaning, the real meaning, of the scriptures to which it points.

The Catholic magisterium has made a calculated decision at this point in history to do, in the case of gay persons, what it refuses to do in the case of any other moral or theological issue.  The Catholic church has decided, in the case of the discussion of gay and lesbian people, to adopt a biblical literalist approach that is far more characteristic of Protestant fundamentalism than of traditional Catholicism.

To me, the reason for that calculated decision is obvious: it's a politically driven decision motivated by the desire of the leaders of the Catholic church at present to make common cause with the religious right, particularly in the United States, but also in developing parts of the world such as Africa where American-style religion has made huge inroads, to combat gay people and gay rights.  The price of this calculated decision and the coalition it forms is that Catholics are encouraged, in the single area of combating gay rights, to adopt a biblical literalism alien to traditional Catholic theology.

And this has proven to be effective.  As I've noted, I'm suspicious of the way in which the Catholics-promote-gay-rights story has gotten shopped around in recent weeks.  I'm suspicious about that story not because I doubt that an increasing number of Catholics in the U.S. do reject the politics of the hierarchy and endorse gay rights, nor because I doubt that this is a very positive development.

I'm suspicious because I think the growing meme about this development overlooks (and even masks) the very real and very powerful continued ability of some influential, highly placed, and well-funded Catholics in the U.S. to keep on doing serious damage to their gay brothers and sisters.  Anywhere that there are battles for gay rights underway in this nation, Maggie Gallagher and the National Organization of Marriage are there, with tons of money flowing their way from donors whose names they refuse to disclose, with expensive, slick videos pouring hateful disinformation into people's minds.

Anywhere there are struggles for the rights of gay and lesbian folks in the U.S. now, the Knights of Columbus are on the scene, funneling large sums of money that this organization used to give to the homeless and the hungry into the anti-gay cause, colluding with other religious groups, many of them fundamentalist ones, to block gay rights or remove rights from gay people.  And then there's the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic bishops, Timothy Dolan, who went on national television recently to inform America--and he was speaking as head  of the USCCB, as the spokesman of all American Catholic bishops--that same-sex marriage is equivalent to incest, that it would be equivalent to his wanting to marry his mother (for more on this, see the link at the end of this posting).

The bishops, the Vatican, Maggie and the Knights: they know very well what they're doing when they make outrageous, incendiary statements like this.  They're playing to deep-rooted prejudice, prejudice fueled by misappropriation and misunderstanding of biblical texts--precisely the kind of misappropriation and misunderstanding these Catholic leaders now deliberately seek to foster as they attack gay and lesbian people in concert with religious groups used to biblical literalism.

The bishops, the Vatican, Maggie and the Knights know what they're doing and why they're doing it, why they have allied themselves with fundamentalists of the religious right and why they're adopting the tactic of biblical literalism exclusively against the gays: they're doing what they're doing because they intend to keep on bashing gays.  And the bible--the culturally deformed version of the bible that circulates through American political networks of the right--is a useful tool in this battle.  It's one of the most useful tools they have.

For that reason, we need to keep listening (I think) to what John Aravosis has to say on these points, even as we also listen to Mark Jordan when he encourages us to educate ourselves and others about how these cultural misuses of the scriptures misrepresent what the bible actually says.  And we need--I would also argue--to push back.

If you want to push back against Timothy Dolan and what the U.S. Catholic bishops are doing to their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters right now, here's one way you can do so: the Care2 site has a petition now underway calling on Dolan to apologize for his incendiary remarks equating gay marriage with incest.   I encourage readers to log in and sign this petition.

The hate-mongering needs to stop.

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn and the Future of American Catholicism: Laity Defending Human Rights Tradition Abandoned by Bishops

One of the themes about which I've blogged persistently on this blog, when I've dealt with the pro-life movement, is that I find many of the claims of Catholic pro-lifers not at all credible, due to the lack of a consistent commitment among Catholic pro-lifers to the value of human life--across the spectrum, from the prenatal stage to death.  I've noted, in particular, that the constant attacks of the ardently "pro-life" U.S. Catholic bishops on the human rights and human worth of gay and lesbian people radically undermine, as far as I'm concerned, the claim that the bishops really believe in the value of human life as they work to outlaw abortion.  I've come to the conclusion that factors other than a defense of human life--chief among them, the desire to control women and women's reproductivity--lie behind the bishops' "pro-life" crusade.  

And because this is how I've come to see the pro-life movement within American Catholicism, I'm very interested in what has happened in recent weeks in the state of Illinois, where a Catholic governor, Pat Quinn, supported and signed into law legislation providing for civil unions for same-sex couples in that state.  Acting, as he did so, against the fierce opposition of the Catholic bishops of Illinois, including the past president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Francis George.

And here's what has happened in Illinois since the civil unions bill passed: Pat Quinn has also recently signed into law a bill abolishing the death penalty in that state.  And as he did so, he noted that he was moved to take this step by meditating on the teaching and example of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago (and see also Tom Gallagher at NCR).  

Bernardin was a leading proponent of what is called the seamless garment or consistent ethic of life understanding of Catholic teaching about life.  This calls for a consistent approach to the value of life from prior to birth to the grave.  This approach to Catholic pro-life teaching argues that it is inconsistent--it is not coherent or credible--for Catholics to defend the value of life only in the area of abortion.  When Catholics focus exclusively on pre-born life while ignoring the value of the lives of some human beings following birth, they completely undermine the credibility of their pro-life stance when it comes to the issue of abortion itself.

I'd argue that we're seeing an interesting development with what has taken place in Illinois recently, and with its Catholic governor: we're seeing lay Catholics of sound conscience taking the lead in promoting a consistent ethic of life, while the bishops themselves undermine that ethic by rejecting Cardinal Bernardin's consistent ethic of life for a hard-line abortion-exclusive focus, and while attacking their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.  The morally based political decisions taken by Pat Quinn in recent weeks illustrate the importance of being consistent, of linking support for the human rights and human worth of gay and lesbian persons to the pro-life debate.  

The bishops continue to miss the point, and as a result, they continue to lose credibility as moral teachers.  As Michael O'Loughlin points out in a recent posting at America's "In All Things" blog, in his "60 Minutes" interview two weekends ago, the president of the USCCB, Archbishop Timothy Dolan, equated gay marriage with incest, and last Friday, the USCCB issued an appalling news statement asking the federal HUD agency not to add sexual orientation and gender identity to protected categories in HUD program anti-discrimination guidelines.

The bishops want to keep discrimination alive against gay and lesbian persons in the area of housing.  They are actively defending discrimination against LGBT persons, while (as they speak insincerely out of the other side of their mouth) they claim that Catholic teaching prohibits such discrimination.  

Meanwhile, as they also continue to promote an argument they have to know is false--that permitting same-sex couples the right of civil marriage will undermine heterosexual marriages--data from the Netherlands on the tenth anniversary of the legalization of same-sex marriage in that nation show a five percent divorce rate for gay male couples in the Netherlands in the past ten years.

As opposed to a 38 percent divorce rate for traditionally married (heterosexual) couples.

Governor Quinn in Illinois, along with the majority of American Catholics who defend the human rights of gay and lesbian persons, points the way to a Catholicism that is truly pro-life, and that retains some credibility in the public sphere as it proclaims the values of life.  The bishops don't.

They seem intent on abdicating moral leadership hand over fist these days, as they also remain largely and conspicuously silent about the organized attack on the value of the lives of working Americans in Wisconsin and other states.  An attack spearheaded by the political party with which they have worked long and hard to align American Catholicism, to their extreme discredit as pastoral leaders . . . .

Lines I Wish I'd Written: Jamie Manson at NCR on Archbishop Dolan's "60 Minutes" Interview

Jamie Manson writing in National Catholic Reporter about USCCB president Archbishop Timothy Dolan's recent "60 Minutes" interview:

But once the laughter dies down and the pigs in a blanket are but a grease-stained memory, this man for all seasonings unveils his very unpopular convictions. 

Indeed.  As I wrote in the conclusion to my posting earlier today, the theatrics and bombast are all designed to keep us from seeing what's hidden in the smoke and what's behind the mirrors.  It's hardly a tribute to their understanding of the intelligence and moral insight of lay Catholics that the bishops continue to push these glad-handing, grinning actor types onto the stage, hoping we'll be fooled one more time--and allowing them to buy more time as they continue to resist transparency and accountability about the abuse crisis.

USCCB President Timothy Dolan on Cuomo Concubinage Controversy: Tempest in Teapot

A day ago, Brian made a comment at my recent posting about the remarks of the president of the U.S. Catholic Bishops' Conference, Timothy Dolan, re: the Obama administration's decision not to defend DOMA.  Brian's comment--which notes (rightly) that there's an inbuilt dialogic space exclusively for the powerful in the American Catholic church--points to a New York Times article on Tuesday, in which Nicholas Confessore discusses the response of Dolan to calls to exclude New York governor Andrew Cuomo from the eucharist.  Since, you know, he lives with a live-in girlfriend, Food Network talk maven Sandra Lee.  Without benefit of holy matrimony.

The push to exclude Cuomo from communion began with Edward Peters, a professor at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit and a consultant to the Vatican's Apostolic Signatura (headed by none other than Cardinal Ray Burke, the "de facto pope of the Republican Catholic church" who called for U.S. Catholic bishops to ban "grievously anti-life"--read: Democratic--politicians from communion in the 2008 elections).  Peters denounced Cuomo's reception of communion as "objectively sacrilegious."  Because of, you know, Sandra.  And the live-in thing.  Which is concubinage.

And we all know what the Catholic church thinks about concubinage.  Especially for high-profile Democrats.  Who happen to support same-sex marriage.

And, of course, as the USCCB president and a high-profile Catholic bishop in the same state in which Cuomo lives, Timothy Dolan had no choice except to jump into the fray.  Dolan and several other bishops had lunch with Gov. Cuomo Tuesday, and here's the USCCB president's take on the Cuomo-concubinage-communion controversy following the lunch: asked whether the concubinage came up during lunch, and the question of communion, Dolan states,

Thank God it didn’t, because it was a bit of a tempest in a teapot.  We were just happy to be there, and he obviously was, too.  We got lunch out of it.

And isn't that nice of Archbishop Dolan.  And pastoral and all.

But here's the thing: as his recent remarks about the Obama administration and the defense of marriage act indicate, it's not a tempest in a teapot for the USCCB president when two committed gay people seek the right of civil marriage.  To, you know, solemnize and even consecrate (if a church or synagogue agrees) their union--to move it beyond mere concubinage.

Remember what Dolan just said about the Obama administration's judgment that DOMA--with its legalized discrimination prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying civilly--can't be defended constitutionally?  For Dolan, that decision to stop defending indefensible discrimination is an "alarming and grave injustice."

And remember what that hoary neo-culture war document seeking desperately to gin up new attacks on gay and lesbian Americans, the Manhattan Declaration--which Dolan signed and whose planning meetings he helped organize and host--says about marriage?:

We confess with sadness that Christians and our institutions have too often scandalously failed to uphold the institution of marriage and to model for the world the true meaning of marriage. Insofar as we have too easily embraced the culture of divorce and remained silent about social practices that undermine the dignity of marriage we repent, and call upon all Christians to do the same.

But as the Manhattan Declaration goes on to argue, the real threat to the sanctity of marriage in our society today is not heterosexual couples living in concubinage, or divorcing and remarrying à la the Newt.  It's the gays.

It's the gays and their--get this--their desire to marry!  To live in stable, committed, blessed relationships.

That's what's undermining traditional marriage.

And that's why the gays and their desire to marry are definitely not a tempest in a teapot, but a real tempest, such that it is an "alarming and grave injustice" to question discriminatory laws that do not permit same-sex couples the rights and benefits of marriage.

But when a high-profile heterosexual Catholic lives in an extra-marital relationship and people ask whether his "concubinage" gives scandal and should cause him to be barred from communion, that's a tempest in a teapot.

Something seems not quite right about this picture, doesn't it?

Because remember that while the USCCB president finds the push to deny communion to Gov. Cuomo on the ground that his lifestyle gives public scandal and his reception of communion is "objectively sacrilegious" a bit of a tempest in a teapot, Catholic bishops in the U.S. keep denying communion to people who even dare to wear a rainbow sash or pin, simply to show solidarity with their LGBT brothers and sisters.  The most recent highly publicized case of that action involved Bishop Nienstedt in Minnesota last fall.

And remember that in Colorado last spring, the children of a lesbian couple who belong to a Catholic parish and are practicing Catholics were turned away from a Catholic school, with the blessing of Archbishop Chaput of Denver.  And remember that a Catholic college in Pennsylvania has just fired a faculty member, stating publicly that his being openly gay and partnered puts him at odds with Catholic teaching.   And remember that the U.S. Catholic bishops joined with other religious rights groups to send a letter to Congress last August asking for their continued "right" to engage in such discrimination in workplaces and institutions owned by faith-based groups.

As I say, a bit of a tempest in a teapot when people call for excluding Gov. Cuomo from communion because he lives in "concubinage," per the president of the USCCB.  But decidedly not a tempest in a teapot when it comes to discriminating against gay folks. 

Something's not quite right with this picture, is it?

Oh, and about the now-Catholic Mr. Gingrich?  And his three wives and the affairs and all of that?  It turns out they were all about his excessive love of his country.  Love of country made him philander.  And swap wife for wife.  And treat the discarded wives with shocking disdain.

I kid you not.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan Responds to Obama Administration's DOMA Decision: Redefining Discrimination as Justice

As a brief postscript to my posting earlier today reflecting on Richard Gaillardetz's analysis of the 2009 U.S. bishops' pastoral letter "Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan," I want to take note of the response of the current president of the U.S. Catholic Bishops' Conference, Timothy Dolan, to the recent announcement of the Obama administration that it will not defend the constitutionality of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). 

Several days ago, Archbishop Dolan released a statement condemning the Obama administration's  DOMA decision as an "alarming and grave injustice."  U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has stated that the current administration "has concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny."

Dolan's rejoinder to the Attorney General: DOMA "does not single out people based on sexual 'orientation' or inclination. Every person deserves to be treated with justice, compassion, and respect, a proposition of natural law and American law that we as Catholics vigorously promote. Unjust discrimination against any person is always wrong."

It's clear from Dolan's response that the question of discrimination--of answering charges that their position on civil marriage for same-sex couples is discriminatory on the face of it--is first and foremost in the bishops' attempt to deal with growing societal acceptance of same-sex marriage and of the right of same-sex couples to enter civil marriages.  As I noted when the bishops issued an immediate response to the Obama administration's decision through general counsel Anthony R. Picarello, Jr., what the Catholic bishops of the U.S. continue to push for is their "right" to discriminate against people on the basis of sexual orientation, and to have this "right" enshrined in and protected by law.

The bishops also continue to ask for their "right" to define their radically unjust position--namely, that people of faith opposed to same-sex marriage should be permitted to block civil marriage for same-sex couples--as just.  In short, the bishops are asking for the right to redefine what the terms "discrimination" and "justice" actually mean, and to twist the meaning of both terms to make them mean the precise opposite of what both terms mean, when it comes to the bishops' response to same-sex marriage.

And so Dolan states,

It is hardly "discrimination" to say that a husband and a wife have a unique and singular relationship that two persons of the same sex -- or any unmarried persons -- simply do not and cannot have.  Nor is it "discrimination" to believe that the union of husband and wife has a distinctive and exclusive significance worthy of promotion and protection by the state.  It is not "discrimination" to say that having both a mother and a father matters to and benefits a child. Nor is it "discrimination" to say that the state has more than zero interest in ensuring that children will be intimately connected with and raised by their mother and father.

And so Archbishop Dolan concludes, "Protecting the definition of marriage is not merely permissible, but actually necessary as a matter of justice," he added.

Note how Dolan's response turns the facts about the U.S. bishops' opposition to same-sex marriage on their head, and how it seeks to redefine discrimination as justice.  No one is seeking to force any community of faith to redefine marriage or to accept any other definition of marriage than the definition held by that particular community of faith.

What is being contested, however, is the right of people of faith including the Catholic bishops to determine who may be civilly married, who has the right to enter into a civil marriage contract, and who can determine what civil marriage means.  The bishops are asking for the right not to debate questions of marriage in the public square, and to come to some agreement, based on open, free, respectful dialogue in the public square about how issues of marriage are to be handled by their society.

They are asking for their "right" to control the debate, to impose their definition of marriage on everyone in a pluralistic, democratic society.  And they're asking for their "right" to deny access to civil marriage to same-sex couples, even when a growing number of citizens of the country--now over half--support the right of same-sex couples to same-sex marriage.

Which means, in the final analysis, the bishops are asking for the right to redefine the terms discrimination and justice, since they are overtly promoting discrimination against gay and lesbian citizens that is no longer supported by societal consensus.  And in doing so, they are defining that discrimination as justice and are shouting that it is a "grave injustice"--to them!--not to permit them to behave unjustly towards a vulnerable minority group.

And to return to the discussion of Richard Gaillardetz's article: this is among the reasons many American Catholics are now walking away in droves from the Catholic church.  Doublespeak.  Injustice and discrimination disguised as justice and love.  The refusal to entertain questions and engage in dialogue when social consensus (and Catholic lay consensus) on various issues is shifting.  The insistence on dictating rather than listening and engaging in dialogue.

And all of this when the bishops are living in a glass house vis-a-vis their own moral  values and moral lives, in their handling of the abuse crisis.

U.S. Catholic Bishops' Response to DOMA Decision: Continued Demands for the "Right" to Discriminate

Yesterday, I noted that the immediate response of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to the Obama administration's announcement that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and the administration cannot defend DOMA was this: the bishops argued that their religious freedom is curtailed by this decision.  Though the USCCB statement (which was made by the USCCB general counsel Anthony R. Picarello, Jr.) professes to decry discrimination, it precisely and explicitly rejects the definition of gay citizens as a group of citizens subject to systemic and unjust discrimination, who are therefore covered by the equal protection clause of the U.S. constitution.  

To qualify as what is called a "suspect class" under that clause, a group must meet the following criteria:

1. It must have a history of having been discriminated against purposefully by others intent on discrimination solely because the members of the group share a certain characteristic.

2. It must have demonstrated that it is relatively powerless in political terms to defend itself against this discrimination.

3. The basis for the discrimination must be an immutable trait of the group experiencing discrimination, a trait that, on the face of it, does not warrant the stigmatizing discrimination to which the group is being subjected (as with pigmentation or gender).

4. And, finally, the ongoing, systemic, legally codified treatment of the group by those with political power must be grossly unfair.  

The Obama administration's decision not to defend DOMA implies that this law does, in fact, subject gay and lesbian citizens to a kind of unwarranted discrimination that falls under the purview of the equal protection clause.

So, though their statement about the DOMA decision professes to deplore anti-gay discrimination, what the U.S. Catholic bishops are continuing to ask for in their response to the decision is actually this: the bishops are asking for the "right" of Catholics to continue discriminating against LGBT persons in the name of religious freedom.  This is that argument I've been analyzing since the start of the new year, in which Catholic officials insist that the right of religious freedom trumps all other rights, and that this right trumps, in particular, the "alleged" human rights of gay and lesbian persons. 

This is the same argument that Austen Ivereigh uses in his two recent America postings (and here) about the proposed change in how the United Kingdom will handle civil unions and religious marriages.  As I have noted, Ivereigh actually encourages the Catholic bishops of the U.K. to be bold, as they "stand up against equality laws which had the effect of diminishing religious freedom."

Mr. Ivereigh is encouraging a group of Catholic bishops to stand up against equality!  And to call this anti-equality stand a bold and praiseworthy move among followers of Christ.  Take his argument apart and see what he is actually asking the bishops to do, and it comes down to this: the bishops are being encouraged to argue that their religious freedom is impeded by the decision of other faith communities to bless same-sex unions.  

Mr. Ivereigh is arguing that the religious freedom of Catholics and others opposed to same-sex marriage in the U.K. should trump the rights of any faith community--e.g., the Quakers--that has decided that it can no longer support the discrimination inherent in the two-tiered system of unions-marriages in the U.K., and which wishes to celebrate gay unions or marriages.  This is hardly an argument for freedom: it is, in fact, an argument for the precise opposite.  It is an argument for the right of one faith group to impede the freedom of other faith communities and of the public at large, by insisting that the faith group's understanding of marriage control civil law.

As I noted last Labor Day, in August 2010, the U.S. Catholic bishops joined other leaders of the religious right to send a letter to send a public letter to Congress demanding that the U.S. government continue to respect their "right" to practice religiously based discrimination in hiring and firing decisions.  One of the key issues of concern to those sending this letter to Congress is the question of the rights of workers to be protected from discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.  The bishops are arguing--explicitly so--for the "right" to continue discriminating against LGBT employees in Catholic institutions, as they see fit.

The Catholic bishops of the U.S. continue to argue for the "right" of Catholics and Catholic institutions to practice-faith-based discrimination against those who are gay and lesbian.  This bogus argument about religious freedom and the right of religious freedom to trump the "alleged" human rights of those who are gay and lesbian is at the heart of the bishops' response to the decision of the Obama administration that DOMA is unconstitutional and indefensible.

And here's the interesting observation that a reader named Peter Stockton makes to National Catholic Reporter's summary of the USCCB response to this DOMA decision:

The General Counsel of the USCCB, in a statement that has inexplicably disappeared after only one day on this website, wrote that disciminating against homosexuals was a matter of religious liberty. He argues that the Church and its institutions (such as Catholic Charities), and its affiliated institutions (such as Catholic hospitals and universities) should be allowed to discriminate against homosexuals (in such matters as health benefits, visitation rights, survivor's benefits, etc.) while at the same time receiving tens of millions of dollars from US taxpayers in the form of Medicare, Medicaid, social service grants, student loans, research grants, Homeland Security grants, etc., money taxed from all Americans, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jew, atheist, etc. and including the taxes of homosexuals and legally married homosexuals. This he calls "religious liberty." If the bishops' lawyer imagines such an egregiously self-serving argument would pass muster in the federal courts, then the USCCB should get a new lawyer.

Catholics who keep dropping your dollars into the collection baskets at Sunday Mass: please be warned.  This is what you are helping to fund: gross, institutionalized, religion-based discrimination against a vulnerable minority group, which uses your dollars to try to remove or block the right of civil marriage for gay and lesbian persons throughout the U.S., to support video productions and media campaigns that depict gay and lesbian human beings in ugly prejudicial terms, to send letters to Congress demanding that the bishops have the "right" to discriminate against gay and lesbian persons in manifold ways in Catholic institutions.

As I stated when I dealt with Mr. Ivereigh's argument for the "right" of Catholics in the U.K. to block any faith community which wishes to celebrate gay unions or marriages within the context of the faith community--the right to stand up boldly against equality!--there will come a day, and it won't be far down the road, when people of moral acumen will look back at this point in history and shake their heads as they ask, What did Catholic leaders ever imagine they were doing, when they stood against equality for a persecuted minority?

And tried to convince us this was a noble and Christlike action?

John Allen Moves the Center to the Right: Timothy Dolan Not An Extremist

Here's an example of that process of redefining the center, always ever more to the right, as the pendulum swings rightward in various areas: John Allen defines the new head of the U.S. Bishops' Conference Timothy Dolan as not in any sense an extremist.

But, ummm, yes, it is extreme to ally oneself with Bully Bill Donohue (and see also here). Whom Allen's own paper, the National Catholic Reporter, has labeled Billy the Bully.  And about whose obnoxious crusade defending "Catholic values," which Archbishop Dolan endorses, Joe Feuerherd writes:

The Catholic community’s response to this frequently subtle bigotry [against Catholics] is a buffoonish bully, a carnival barker posing as a defender of the faith. Such behavior might make for good television (which prefers heat to light) but it does nothing to help the church. In fact, it does considerable harm because it plays to the worst stereotypes of triumphalism, homophobia, misogyny and intolerance the church long since abandoned.

And it's decidedly extremist not only to sign and promote, but to help organize, a politically motivated conference of people of faith--all allied to a single political party--whose primary objective was to produce a document continuing the culture war against gay and lesbian human beings.  For the political gain of the party they serve.

I'm speaking about the Manhattan Declaration, of course, a project dear to the heart of Archbishop Dolan, which places him in the company (once again) of Bully Bill Donohue, along with Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly, Michael Youssef (Islam is not a true religion, Episcopalians are no longer Christian), Chuck Colson (go build your mosque somewhere else), Tony Perkins (no my Family Research Council is not a hate group), Maggie Gallagher, Ken Hutcherson, Harry Jackson, and, well, you can do the googling for yourself, and discover the names and what these luminaries of the far right stand for.

What these far-right luminaries stand for, with whom Archbishop Timothy Dolan proudly stands, via the Manhattan Declaration.  "Not extremist" is hardly the first phrase that leaps to most folks' minds, when they hear names like Ann Coulter, Bill Donohue, or Bill O'Reilly, and when they read that list of other signatories and promoters of the Manhattan Declaration.

Redefining the Catholic center, so that more and more extreme positions of the right begin to relabeled as centrist, has been John Allen's journalistic game for some time now.  And so it's not surprising to see him leap to the assistance of Timothy Dolan, as the new leader of the U.S. Bishops' Conference seeks to play the same game with the official voice of the U.S. Catholic church.

Which, under his leadership, is now being identified with some of the most extremist voices of the religious right and the single party they serve.