Maybe the Catholic Church should be turned upside down.
Jesus wasn’t known for pontificating from palaces, covering up scandals, or issuing Paleolithic edicts on social issues. Does anyone think he would have protected clergymen who raped children?
Yet if the top of the church has strayed from its roots, much of its base is still deeply inspiring. I came here to impoverished southern Sudan to write about Sudanese problems, not the Catholic Church’s. Yet once again, I am awed that so many of the selfless people serving the world’s neediest are lowly nuns and priests ”” notable not for the grandeur of their vestments but for the grandness of their compassion.
As I’ve noted before, there seem to be two Catholic Churches, the old boys’ club of the Vatican and the grass-roots network of humble priests, nuns and laity in places like Sudan. The Vatican certainly supports many charitable efforts, and some bishops and cardinals are exemplary, but overwhelmingly it’s at the grass roots that I find the great soul of the Catholic Church.
Oh, just more New York Times…
The only problem with the Catholic Church is the Pope… and bla-bla-bla-bla.
And then: “…she would make a great pope, too”.
More and more of the same.
“Paleolithic edicts on social issues.” Perhaps, Kristof had in mind, “But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one’.” You can’t get much more paleolithic then “from the beginning”.
A good reply here: [url=http://www.thecatholicthing.org/content/view/3267/]The Catholic Thing[/url]
A completely secular view of the church. Roman Catholics can be tolerated, even praised, as long as they are doing humanitarian or “social justice” work, but damn those “paleolithic” teachings that clash with the spirit of the age and the old man who upholds them so nobly.
It was the flat out disobedience to those paleolithic teachings that caused this mess in the first place. One would assume that stricter adherence to those teachings is the way to go in preventing such horrors in the future.
Isn’t paleolithic probably one of the most inaccurate periods of history to use to describe the Church’s ethical stances? I mean.. Grok smash Ug to take Ug’s woman isn’t anywhere in the Catechism.. at least not the version I have.
Kristof fails to understand that disappointing though “the Vatican” often is, it nonetheless preserves and maintains the faith, the avenues of grace, by which this “other Catholic church” lives and breathes and labors and prays.
Surely that NYT article is a parody of news. Well, I suppose it is an opinion article. But is it a considered opinion article?
If the churches (and I include some others as well as the RCC) are doing such good things despite the moaned-about patriarchy and “paleolithic” value, what makes the writer think that it would do better things without those values? Is there any evidence in support of such a thesis, whether religious or secular?