The Bishops, the War, and the Average Man

Extreme Catholic calls our attention to this blog by David Mills at Touchstone yesterday:

.... I wonder if these men, speaking as they do, realize what they are doing not only to their own authority but to the authority of the Church herself. (I write as a Catholic, but anyone in the mainline and Orthodox churches will have the same problem.) They are staking their authority — their practical authority, I mean, their power to influence and guide their people and the trust their people have in them — on political judgments the Catechism itself gives to the state.

And not only that, but they are staking their authority using arguments and claims that are just not . . . terribly . . . bright, that make specific judgments with the cloudiest of arguments and the least bit of evidence, that show almost no real engagement with the questions to be answered, and that often come with slanderous and mean-spirited descriptions of Americans and American interests (but rarely with equally critical descriptions of Hussein and his interests). They are simply begging their own people to blow them off.

This seems to me, as a laymen, most unwise. It is all very good to argue, as some conservatives do, that they retain their God-given authority even when they abuse it, fail to use it (as in the homosexual priest scandal), or claim to have it in areas in which they don't, but this does not change the fact that when they do any of those the average man will learn to ignore them. Or rather, they will have taught the average man to ignore them.

They are failing to be fathers to their people. I am conscious, as a father, of my failings to be to my children all a father should be. I think most fathers must feel this way. I have some idea of the barriers my own sins put between my children and their full understanding of God their Father, and their ability to trust in Him. They have free will, but they cannot be blamed completely when they fail to respond to God as they should because I have, by example, taught them badly.

This is what I think the various bishops, archbishops, and cardinals, with all their windy statements about "peace," are doing to the average Catholic. (And other religious leaders are doing to their people.) They are teaching him to ignore them, even when they speak the word of the Lord.

By speaking as they have done, they have made it harder for their sons to listen to them with the trust and confidence sons ought to have for their fathers. And so they are partly responsible when the sons do what the fathers tell them not to.

Allow me to refer you to Bryan Preston, a Protestant, at JunkYard Blog yesterday:

The Vatican has issued a warning of sorts to countries that will shortly disarm Saddam Hussein: You'll have to answer to God for it. The implication is quite clear: The Catholic Church believes the coming war to be an immoral one, and is invoking God's name to scare us. Meanwhile, a Romanian Catholic bishop in Ohio is threatening excommunication for anyone who supports the war, and for troops fighting in it. And let's not forget the hands raised in triumph with Arafat some months back, and the Church's non-response to Palestinian terrorists who laid seige to the Church of the Nativity last year.

This coming from a church that refuses to this day to hold child-molesting and pederast priests responsible for abusing those in their care and trust.

With all due respect to the Pope who helped defeat Communism, the Catholic Church has surrendered what remained of its moral authority.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 03/19/03 07:18:54 AM
Categorized as Religious.