Heresy:May he Rest in Peace
I find myself thinking of the coverage of the death of the pope as a twenty-four seven advertising blitz for Catholicism as somehow more holy, more reverent, than other religions, despite being perhaps the most irrelevant.
Post the priest pedophilia scandals, the Boston archdiocese among others, has summarily closed down something like eighty local parishes. As the parishioners occupied their churches, if found myself wondering when the Catholic church would just disintegrate. At what point do you finally decide that it is the fellowship of your local church, the worship service itself that is important , not the connection to and orders from the hierarchy in Rome. After all, even before the bankruptcies, moral and monetary, the church was having trouble supplying priests for all the parishes. So if your local church can’t have a priest, a spiritual leader, or you can’t even have a local church, why not just take over the church, dis-affiliate, and hire one of those apostate spiritual leaders, the former priests who have married for example. Join with your neighbors, take your spiritually into your own hands, and support your own church.
I confess that that is how my religion works, it is democratic, and grass roots. Doesn’t that seem more American. Perhaps that is why I have never understood the idea of the pope as relevant at all. What difference does he make? Why should the beliefs of this guy in Rome dictate to the rest of us on abortion rights, birth control, gay marriage. The worst of it is that the Pope’s views seem only to matter in regards to conservative viewpoints. When do we hear about the social gospel, caring for the poor? Anti-war? Getting rid of the death penalty? The inherent right to health care?
Never, it seems.
May he rest in peace.
The New York Times > Week in Review > Catholics in America: A Restive People: "nation has more Catholics now than ever before, some 65 million and growing, fed by a steady flow of immigrants. Many who attend Mass regularly are passionately engaged in their parishes. But many others have drifted away, and Mass attendance has fallen steadily throughout John Paul II's papacy. Fewer families are sending their children to Catholic schools every year.
The pope has inspired men to join the priesthood, but a nationwide shortage of priests has nonetheless grown so acute that many parishes have none of their own. At the same time, many priests and bishops quietly complain that the Vatican has centralized authority more than ever, leaving less able to respond flexibly to the concerns of American parishioners. And the church continues to reel from the effects of the clergy sex-abuse scandal, with more priests accused of molestation nearly every week and with the mounting cost of compensating victims driving several dioceses to seek bankruptcy protection."