“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute — where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote — where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference … I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source — where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials.” – president John F. Kennedy. At the time, the speech was regarded as an attempt to refute anti-Catholic prejudice. Today, wouldn’t the theocons regard it as an expression of anti-Catholic prejudice? Wouldn’t Bill Frist see president Kennedy as an enemy of “people of faith”? Just asking.
QUOTE FOR THE DAY II: “I worry that Pope Benedict sees liberal Catholics primarily as products of the worst excesses of the ’60s and not as people who are genuinely grateful for the Catholic tradition and the Church’s efforts since Pope John to interpret it anew for our times. Many of us know that modernity urgently needs criticism and agree with the new Pope on the importance of asserting that truth exists. We remain Catholic precisely because we think that the Church’s emphasis on the sacramental and the communal provides a corrective to a culture that overemphasizes the material and lifts up the narrowest forms of individualism.
But we also think that not all that is new is bad. Our Church was soft on slavery. It was terribly slow to embrace democracy. It still does not seem to understand that the desire of women for power in the Church reflects legitimate–and, yes, Christian–claims to justice, not weird ideological enthusiasms. Those who say that change in the Church is simply capitulation to a flawed culture must explain whether they really think the Church would be better off if it had not come to oppose slavery, endorse democracy, and resist anti-Semitism and other forms of religious intolerance.” – E. J. Dionne. Amen to that. I am tired of being told that we have two options: complete submission to everything Pope Benedict believes or moral nihilism. That’s a false choice. Modern Catholics are not relativists or nihilists. But we have seen in our own evolving lives some moral truths: that women deserve equal dignity in work and society, that gay people can construct moral relationships, that contraception can support marriage and the family, that respectful discussion is not the same as doctrinal nihilism. We have a Catholic duty to bear witness to these truths. And we will.
EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I am a 67 year old gay man (born in the reign of Pius XI and have suffered under 5 popes – John XXIII being a breath of clean air – and Benedict XVI promises to continue the tradition of the others). I read and sympathize with your agony; may I offer some advice?
1) If you want to be a Catholic, be one. Let no one define your Catholicity for you. Conservative Catholics, alternating between crowing and fulminating, do not speak for the whole church as it has marched down through the ages. (Think Dorothy Day, Bernadette Soubirous, Francis of Assisi, the fathers Berrigan, GK Chesterton, to name but a few.) Although I don’t have precise figures, my guess is that, in the Western hemisphere, they are in the minority. In America, they make “majority” noises because they have united with evangelical Protestants to vote for the Bush Imperium. It is a dangerous liaison; to the fundamentalists, the Church of Rome has always been the Whore of Babylon.
2) Decide why you want to remain a Catholic and pay attention to that.”
ONE MORE PLUG: For my 1988 essay on Ratzinger’s theology.
TWO DAYS LATE: Why 4.20? A formal explanation.
The Dish 