#294: Timidity and Transparency

EXCERPT:
When Boston Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham charged local Catholic officials with “moral timidity,” she named the difficulty many Catholics have had with their own leadership in recent years.

Abraham was commenting on the case of a child removed from a parochial school because her parents are lesbians. The principal made the initial decision, which was supported by her pastor. The Archdiocese of Boston then apologized to the family and offered to place the child in another school. This triggered criticism by some insisting the Church should stand up for its teaching against homosexuality, and citing Denver Bishop Charles J. Chaput, whose policy is to refuse enrollment to any child with homosexual parents. Boston’s Archbishop Sean O’Malley subsequently blogged in support of everyone at once, saying (1) the Church welcomes all and discriminates against none, (2) the pastor had only acted in the child’s best interest, and (3) the Denver policy would be given serious consideration.

We often find conservative leaders like Archbishop Chaput behaving as if they (and only they) occupy the high moral ground, with the courage to stand firm on right values while others yield to the pressures of a secularized society.

Sometimes this leads to unseemly (not to say un-Christian) displays of self-inflating presumption. Case in point: C.J. Doyle, head of Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, questioned why couples whose lives are at odds with Church teaching would want to send their children to Catholic schools – as if his own inability to understand was somehow the parents’ problem to solve!

But such self-righteous people, with their knee-jerk instinct to withdraw Catholicism’s benefits from those less worthy, often gain undeserved traction by presenting themselves as the courageous ones, willing to defend good against evil. Perhaps some militant conservatives see us progressive Catholics lacking the courage of our convictions, and this fuels their own self-serving posture as faith’s lone heroes.

I believe it’s time to say the emperor has no clothes. Such self-righteous posturing is cowardly, not courageous. And such posturing threatens to corrupt Catholicism’s message to the world.
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As early as 1968, Joseph Ratzinger fled his teaching post when confronted by student protests. His flight has become symbolic of a whole new generation of post-conciliar bishops, clergy, and church leaders who, confronted by values and practices they cannot accept, withdraw from the encounter even while proclaiming themselves firm defenders of the faith. But however gifted they may be at articulating their faith and values, they are preaching to the choir – a choir chanting over increasingly empty pews. The rest of us–especially the increasingly alienated generation of post-boomer Catholics–see this façade of courageous convictions for what is: a return to the fortress, pulling up the drawbridge and refilling the moat.

In these scandal-ridden times, Catholics sick of cover-up welcome their leaders’ promise of greater transparency. But the transparency we seek is about honesty and accountability, not this: an all-too transparent attempt to cloak one’s cowardly fear of modernity in the guise of righteous convictions, and to rationalize even discriminatory practices with the lame excuse of “protecting the innocent.” At best such claims provoke deserved skepticism; at worst, they render the hierarchy a laughingstock.