“I was raised in the Archdiocese of Newark. Cardinal McCarrick, Archbishop Myers’ predecessor, is a down-to-earth but charismatic man who gay Catholics could live with. Through clergy in the family, I know the Cardinal, and the worst I’ve ever had to deal with from him are the repeated entreaties to consider the priesthood (he does that to all unmarried men, actually). I liked him. The faithful in the Newark Archdiocese adored him.
Myers is a totally different story. I’ve attended a few Masses he presided over, and he is an awful preacher: one Ash Wednesday Mass he went on for approximately an hour discussing how ashes make lye, which can be turned into soap, so, you see, the ashes are like soap, so they invite you to wash your sins away, etc. Uninspiring nonsense. Not that I’ve conducted a scientific survey, but my relatives in the Archdiocese (who are devout) think the new Archbishop is a pompous dullard. He has done a number of deeply unpopular things, surprise parish closing announcements and the like. Like McGreevey, he is an unpopular public figure. Forget the McGreevey communion flap. What Myers is loathed for is his recent decree that friends and loved ones are not permitted to give eulogies at their loved ones’ funeral masses.
While I think the refusal to give (essentially) Democratic politicians communion is mean-spirited and unfair (much like the eulogy decision) I think it reflects a deeper problem with today’s Church and her clergy. The Archbishops of Newark and St. Louis, and the Bishop of Camden are all poor public speakers. They are unsympathetic. They are unable to convey their positions with humility. Instead, they behave like members of the Curia (many of them were, of course). They don’t bother explaining, because they can’t be bothered to. So many members of the hierarchy never wanted to be priests, just bishops. They are concerned with doctrines and ecclesiastical politics and power. They did not cut their teeth as traditional parish priests, assisting their parishioners as they experienced the many joys and many devastating things about real life. Unfortunately, the Church in America doesn’t get the best and brightest anymore. They get the equivalent of lifelong government bureaucrats in the hierarchy. People who love having power over people but who lack empathy – or even feigned humility.
McCarrick – who is cordial with Senator Kerry – is a star. He could have been a politician himself. He gets it. Whether you agree with the Church’s bizarre positions on gay rights and capital punishment, or her (eminently defensible) opposition to abortion, the Cardinal knows that the bishops need to persuade people gently, and with humility. People like Archbishop Myers? They just don’t care. Do what I say, or don’t bother coming. The Church is so much the worse for it. And it’s why I’ve begun attending a wonderful and welcoming Episcopal church down the street.”
EMAIL OF THE DAY II: “It is rather telling that Jonah Goldberg finds your writings and opinions on same-sex marriage ‘radical.’ Though many in the African American civil rights movement are loathe to equate gay rights/same-sex marriage as a similar struggle in some ways, it was common for segregationists to call ’60’s-era forerunners radical for their simple quest for racial equity. If Goldberg’s purported ‘tunnel vision’ on this subject isn’t a cop out, how else to categorize the lack of attention he devotes to a blaringly overt latter-day civil rights struggle that is taking place across this country and around the globe? Radically disingenuous, perhaps?”
