The University of Dayton will host a conference next month exploring the role of the laity in the Church. Empowered by Baptism: The Mission of the Laity Today will focus on how the laity “continues to energize the Catholic faith.”

“For the church to be strong today, we need lay people to step up and be involved,” said the Rev. James Fitz, S.M., vice president for mission and rector of the University. “The church can take its mission out into the world only if lay people feel that vocation and take that mission into neighborhoods, workplaces and all parts of society.”

Bishop Matthew Clark, Bishop of Rochester, N.Y., and author of Forward in Hope: Saying AMEN to Lay Ecclesial Ministry, will deliver a keynote address at 10 a.m. on “The Challenge of the Contemporary Lay Vocation.”

Clark, who has served as Rochester’s bishop for 32 years, has actively supported and promoted increasing the number of lay ministers as well as expanding the roles of lay people in the church.

One wonders whether Fr. Fitz and the conference organizers are aware that weekend Mass attendance in the Diocese of Rochester has dropped by more than 1/3 in just the last 10 years, despite modest growth in our overall population (story here). At first blush this would seem to be the polar opposite of the energized Catholic faith of which the UoD article speaks.

Could it be that Bishop Clark’s incessant focus on lay ministry has come at the expense of what should have been his primary concern, the spiritual well-being of his flock?

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BTW, Rich Leonardi wrote about Bishop Clark’s appearance at this conference here. The comments are worth perusing (and not just because a couple of them are mine).

Thanks to a reader for the tip on this story.

You may recall this post about the egregious misuse of the Sanctuary at St. Ambrose Church each Lent.  Well, congratulations are in order for St Christopher in Chili and their Pastor, Fr. Bob Gaudio, for decidedly topping this abuse!  Apparently, Fr. Gaudio has not only allowed, but advertised in his bulletin, and sold tickets at Masses to a performance of the secular musical “Guys and Dolls,” a show about gangsters.  Now, while this would probably be an inappropriate thing to advertise and sell tickets to in general for a Catholic parish, this is certainly not blog-worthy.  What’s more disconcerting is that this is clearly happening in the Church, with Our Lord present in the Tabernacle.

You can clearly see the sanctuary lamp burning in the picture, and the tabernacle behind the cast.  Can anyone objectively say that this is an appropriate fundraiser to hold in the Church Proper, ESPECIALLY with Jesus in the Tabernacle?!  While there is a disordered, unreasonable, but at least somewhat valid conception of the passion mime as a prayer, I cannot imagine a scenario in which this can be construed as such.  This is not portraying anything Christian.  The score from Guys and Dolls is not sacred in its character, nor is it conducive to meditative prayer.  It fails to bring anyone closer to Christ (except, perhaps, as part of the age-old prayer “Oh my God, make it stop!”), and it fails to uphold the character of a Catholic Church.

Why do these dissenting priests (recall: Fr Gaudio signed the infamous 2004 letter suggesting that the Church change its approach to homosexuality…read: pretend it’s not sinful.) continue to use their Churches for inappropriate performances?  In my humble opinion, it fits clearly with the rest of their agenda: turn the Church into a social club, whose only moral directives focus upon the poor and the environment, and some flim-flam about “being Christian,” while never explaining that “being pleasant” is hardly an indicator of Holiness (after all, St. Jerome was something of a curmudgeon!)

If this is not their motive, why not hold this performance in a parish hall, gymnasium, or basement?  When I attended a talk sponsored by The Station of the Cross by Dr. Ray Guarendi at St Salome, Our Lord was reserved elsewhere so as to not be disrespectful…and that was a Catholic talk by a Catholic speaker, rather than a performance of a well-known secular show.

As long as the Church is treated like some performance hall, Catholics will fail to see it as a place set apart, the domus Dei, and they will keep showing up to Mass immodestly and improperly dressed like ragamuffins and floozies, chewing gum and generally acting as though they are at a high school play.  One needs only to look at Our Lady of Victory downtown to see the difference from their parish churches full of old women bustling through the sanctuary with guitars and tambourines.  If the parishioners fail to see the Church as the House of God, they will fail to act accordingly, fail to believe accordingly, and disappear to some “more exciting pastures.”  After all, services at The Father’s House sure are a more entertaining performance…just ask the hundreds of lapsed Catholics who attend.

Casey and Mary Ellen Lopata have published an opinion piece at ReligionDispatches.org, taking many Catholic bishops to task for acting like, well, Catholic bishops.

Entitled Bad Faith: The Catholic Hierarchy’s Pointless Campaign Against LGBT Rights, the Lopatas dissent from Catholic teaching is clear for all to see.

What follows is the text of the Lopatas’ article (in white), my comments (in red) and a few quoted sources (in blue).

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In early July, Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles opposed a modest piece of legislation that requires schools in that state to include lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender people, and other previously excluded groups, in their social studies curricula.

The archbishop argued that he was merely supporting parents’ rights to make decisions regarding their children’s education. But Catholics who pay attention to our bishops’ energetic campaign to thwart any legislation that legitimizes (or in this instance, even recognizes) same-gender attraction are familiar with this ruse.

Our hierarchy has a habit of invoking noble sounding principles but applying them only when they can be used against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.

[Was that really Archbishop Gomez' game? Hardly! Anyone who bothers to spend a couple of minutes reading California Bill SB48 will quickly realize that this "modest piece of legislation" goes far beyond including "lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender people, and other previously excluded groups" in the state's social studies curricula.

Here are the pertinent sections of the bill ...

SEC. 2. Section 51500 of the Education Code is amended to read:
51500. A teacher shall not give instruction and a school district shall not sponsor any activity that promotes a discriminatory bias on the basis of race or ethnicity, gender, religion, disability, nationality, sexual orientation, or because of a characteristic listed in Section 220.

SEC. 3. Section 51501 of the Education Code is amended to read:
51501. The state board and any governing board shall not adopt any textbooks or other instructional materials for use in the public schools that contain any matter reflecting adversely upon persons on the basis of race or ethnicity, gender, religion, disability, nationality, sexual orientation, or because of a characteristic listed in Section 220.

SEC. 5. Section 60044 of the Education Code is amended to read:
60044. A governing board shall not adopt any instructional materials for use in the schools that, in its determination, contain:
(a) Any matter reflecting adversely upon persons on the basis of race or ethnicity, gender, religion, disability, nationality, sexual orientation, occupation, or because of a characteristic listed in Section 220.
(b) Any sectarian or denominational doctrine or propaganda contrary to law.

Taken together, these sections make it effectively impossible for a teacher or a textbook to say anything negative - no matter how true or how germane to the topic under discussion - about any member of the protected classes. Given California's liberal judiciary, any such statement will almost certainly be seen as promoting "a discriminatory bias" or "reflecting adversely" on class members.

Thus it will be possible to teach about the Watts Riots (1965), the Detroit Riots (1967) and the Stonewall Riots (1969), but any mention of such things as looting, arson or physical assaults committed by rioters will almost certainly be off limits. It also wouldn't be surprising to find the words 'riot' and 'rioters' expunged from history and replaced with more politically correct terminology.

For the same reasons California students will almost certainly remain ignorant of the full story behind the American Psychiatric Association's decision to remove homosexuality from its diagnostic manual. Any accurate mention of the threats and guerrilla tactics employed by gay activists would surely reflect adversely on gays and thus would be likewise banned from the classroom.

Finally, the role of gay activists and their political sympathizers in thwarting "the tough measures necessary to curb the [AIDS] epidemic’s spread, opting for political expediency over the public health” and thus causing countless unnecessary infections and deaths, will almost certainly be left out of California’s retelling of history.

And there are other problems with the law.  According to the August 4, 2011 edition of The Wanderer …

… Charles LiMandri … is west coast regional director of the Michigan-based Thomas More Law Center, a public-interest firm that defends traditional morality.
…
A new California law requiring young students to be taught about homosexuals as role models is the result of “a very well-organized, well-funded political agenda .. . representing less than 2% of the population,” LiMandri told The Wanderer.

Although maintenance drugs have lessened the fear of looming death from sexual disease among active homosexuals, LiMandri said, often their lives still are shortened by decades.

Holding homosexuals up for emulation in public schools isn’t giving students the necessary warning that “it can and will kill you,” he said.
…
Teaching young people to regard homosexuals as role models is “encouraging them to engage in this behavior,” LiMandri said.]

Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington did something similar last year when he announced that the legalization of same-sex marriage in the District of Columbia had forced him to stop offering health insurance to the spouses of new employees of Catholic Charities. The marriage equality law, he explained, would force him to extend benefits to gay and lesbian couples, and since this violated the church’s teaching on marriage, he could not do it.

There is Sin, and then There is Gay Sin

To take this argument seriously, one has to overlook the fact that Catholic Charities already offered benefits to the spouses of employees who had not been married in the Catholic Church, or who had been remarried without benefit of an annulment. These are also clear violations of the Church’s teaching on marriage. But Wuerl’s harsh and unloving stance is typical of a hierarchy that behaves as though there is sin, and then there is gay sin—and gay sin is much worse.

[Critical thinking would seem to be a foreign concept to the Lopatas. In the first place a quick check of the Catholic Charities of Washington web site would show that one doesn't need to be a Catholic to work for CCoW. Secondly, it's a pretty safe bet CCoW doesn't even ask about a job applicant's religion or lack thereof. So all that verbiage about some of their Catholic employees - and it would be only their Catholic employees - being married outside the Church or being remarried without benefit of an annulment is just so much noise, as there is simply no way CCoW would know that information.

On the other hand, should Adam be hired by CCoW and then list Steve as his 'spouse' for the purpose of benefits, it wouldn't take much beyond a kindergarten education for one to conclude that Adam and Steve are most likely of the same sex.

And so Cardinal Wuerl's "harsh and unloving stance" is, in reality, a refusal to materially cooperate in an objective evil of which his archdiocese would be aware, a refusal that Catholic moral theology has insisted on from day one.]

Catholics faithful to the scriptural admonition to love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly with their God, have become increasingly alienated by bishops who seem obsessed with pushing a narrow anti-gay agenda to the exclusion even of simple charity. Our bishops were in the small minority of religious leaders who failed to speak out when a wave of anti-gay bullying, some of which led to suicides, swept the country last year. At a time when seemingly every organization in the United States was finding a way to tell young lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people that “It Gets Better,” our hierarchy, to our shame, was silent.

[The Lopatas seem unaware that, more than any other organization, religious or otherwise, the Catholic Church has consistently and continually stressed the inherent dignity of each individual human being. But even if they had acknowledged this, it still would never be enough for the Lopatas, as evidenced by the two links they inserted into this paragraph.

The first link seeks to lay bullying at the feet of churches that "perpetuate theologies that undergird and legitimate instrumental violence," i.e., churches that teach the inherent sinfulness of sexual relations outside of traditional, male-female marriage. It doesn't matter that these churches might also teach the inherent dignity of every human being because some wackos might not get that part of the message. Therefore, these churches must also change their sexual doctrine or risk taking the blame for the actions of members who choose to ignore the full teaching of these churches.

The second link points to videos aimed at teens who begin to feel a same sex attraction, encouraging them to come out and thereby get support because "It Gets Better." As one blogger recently wrote,

... an enormous amount of people have bought into the logic that a person's sexual orientation is the sum total of their being. Further many people have bought into the logic that a person is GAY or STRAIGHT. There is no in between.

We have now arrived at a place where a young person that is experiencing normal sexual confusion is being told by the world that one same sex sexual experience makes him or her gay!!

Well that is pretty bad science and very bad theology. ]

In their zeal to deny any form of legitimacy to same-sex relationships, the bishops have neglected more urgent pastoral duties. Catholic schools and parishes are closing by the dozen in dioceses across the country, yet somehow the hierarchy and its allies in the Knights of Columbus have found millions of dollars to spend in one state after another opposing marriage equality, or its weaker cousin, the civil union.

[Outside of our city cores where shifting demographics has played a significant role, the primary reason Catholic schools and parishes are closing is the refusal of Catholic bishops and priests to proclaim the faith in its fullness. People like the Lopatas may not want to hear that proclamation, but most of those former Catholics now inhabiting evangelical pews might never have left, had our clergy only fulfilled its basic obligation to preach the good news in season and out of season.]

Leaders Without Followers

The rhetoric our bishops employ in these campaigns is hardly pastoral. Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, referred to same-sex marriage as “an Orwellian nightmare” and an “ominous threat.” He compared his state’s government to North Korea’s during New York’s recent debate on marriage equality. Then, upon losing the debate, this prince of the Church, with a palace on Fifth Avenue, proclaimed himself a victim of intolerance.

We are well acquainted with the history of anti-Catholic bigotry in this country, and keenly aware of what our forebears in the faith suffered at the hands of hateful fellow citizens. But we find it reprehensible when that legacy is invoked by those who themselves advocate discrimination and repression. If you are the Catholic parent of LGBT daughter or son, you know firsthand that it is your child’s sexual identity, and not a belief in the Immaculate Conception, that puts them at risk for beatings and taunting. Archbishop Dolan and his colleagues should stop pretending that they face anything like the intolerance that our children do.

[Ah, so the Lopatas' 'victim card' is bigger than Archbishop Dolan's? That would seem to be their only justification for being intolerant of the Church's right to point out the intolerance of gay activists and their sycophants. How wonderfully Christian of them!

BTW, Archbishop Dolan and company do not "advocate discrimination and repression"; rather, they proclaim the truths of the Catholic Church, the Church established by Jesus Christ to teach in his name, the Church he promised to be with until the end of the age. And these particular truths are not some arcane musings of medieval theologians. Rather they are blindingly obvious from natural law, clearly inherited from our elder brothers in the Faith, equally clearly reinforced in the scriptures of the New Testament, and consistently and universally taught for nearly 2000 years.

That the Lopatas reject these truths does not diminish their status as truth; it merely highlights the Lopatas' own willful rejection of the Church's authority to teach in the name of Jesus Christ.

Finally,  "this prince of the Church, with a palace on Fifth Avenue" never says a word about being a victim of intolerance in the blog  post linked to by the Lopatas.   He does, however ask this question:

But, really, shouldn’t we be more upset – and worried – about this perilous presumption of the state to re-invent the very definition of an undeniable truth – one man, one woman, united in lifelong love and fidelity, hoping for children – that has served as the very cornerstone of civilization and culture from the start?

It is telling that the Lopatas nowhere in their 1,200 word piece attempt to refute this basic Catholic understanding of marriage.]

A Gay-Friendly Church?

The one fortunate aspect of the bishop’s campaign against LGBT people is that it has been singularly ineffective. Polling by the Public Religion Research Institute makes clear that almost three-quarters of Catholics support either marriage equality or civil unions, and that we back legal protections for LGBT people in the workplace (73 percent), in the military (63 percent), and in adoptions (60 percent) by significant margins.

We are, in other words, an extremely gay-friendly church; and while it has taken a while for this fact to filter out beneath the bluster of our bishops and their lobbyists, political leaders have begun to take note. A Catholic governor and Catholic legislators made marriage equality a reality in New York. A Catholic governor and legislators passed civil unions into law in Illinois. Heavily Catholic Rhode Island passed a civil union bill over the protests of Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, and a Catholic governor has promised to permit same-sex couples to marry in Maryland, if the legislature will only put the bill on his desk.

[That so many self-identified Catholics (one wonders how many actually attend weekly Mass) seemingly reject Church teaching is symptomatic of our clergy’s failure to consistently and convincingly proclaim the moral truths of the Church. The result is a laity largely ignorant of what it should believe and why.

Be that as it may, Jesus did not come to proclaim the Democracy of God. Much recent Mainline Protestant theology notwithstanding, Matthew's Gospel doesn't end with Jesus telling the eleven to go back to the upper room and carefully review everything he had taught them, and then to toss out whatever they thought was too difficult to live with.

No, the content of the Church's teaching is not subject to the whim of some electorate. It never has been. It never will be.]

A few days after Archbishop Gomez announced his opposition to the legislation requiring California schools to give an accurate recounting [Absent pertinent negatives, how can any recounting be accurate?] of the nation’s history. Gov. Jerry Brown, a [dissident] Roman Catholic, signed it into law.

Those of us who support equality for LGBT people in civil society do so not in spite of our Catholic faith but because of it.  [While it may be their faith, it isn't the Catholic faith.] We learned in childhood that Jesus moved freely among the outcast and the marginalized [and, in the process, telling at least one person to go and sin no more], that he warned his followers to judge not lest they be judged [The Lopatas seem ignorant of the fact that Jesus was talking about judging internal motives, not external actions. If this were not the case, how could he have also told his followers to treat recalcitrant sinners like pagans and tax collectors - i.e, to shun them (Matthew 18:15-17)?], and that he taught that our neighbor was not the priest who passed the beaten traveller on the other side of the road to avoid ritual impurity, but the hated Samaritan who bound up his wounds, and paid for his care.

We learned later that the Church’s teachings on social justice compelled us to act as advocates for fairness, justice, and individual dignity [all properly understood, of course], that its teachings on politics instructed us to vote for the common good [again, properly understood], and that in making moral decisions [which voting almost always is], we were to follow the promptings of our own well-formed consciences.

[The word 'conscience' comes from the Latin cum scientia, meaning 'with knowledge'.  Thus a person with a well-formed conscience would know the teachings of the Catholic Church. Furthermore, he would accept these teachings because he also understands that one of the reasons Jesus gave us the Church was to teach in his name and with his authority after he had ascended to the Father.

That is not to say that there may not be some areas of difficulty, that the reasons underlying certain teachings might not be fully understood, or that the necessity of the crosses arising out of obedience to some teachings will not sometimes be questioned. It is in these areas that he, despite the difficulties, the lack of complete understanding or the lingering questions, puts his faith in Jesus and is obedient to the Church he established to teach in his name.

This is not blind obedience. Rather, the person with the well-formed conscience chooses to make the completely logical decision that the same God who has already proven his love for him by first creating him to share in his eternal happiness and then by suffering and dying on the cross to make his salvation possible, that this same God really does know both what is good and what is bad for him, even if his own personal feelings - to say nothing of the world around him - might be telling him just the opposite.]

There are times, it seems, when our hierarchy is so committed to cultivating political power [certainly not by opposing same-sex marriage!], and deploying our Church’s resources in contemporary culture wars [i.e., fighting sin], that they expect us to forget all of this. We won’t.

As Philadelphia Burns

Last week, the Vatican announced that it had appointed Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver as the new archbishop of Philadelphia. The clergy abuse scandal that has badly damaged the hierarchy’s credibility is still spinning out of control in Philadelphia, and Pope Benedict XVI clearly thinks that Archbishop Chaput is the right man for a difficult job.

We would only note that in his previous post, he supported a parish priest who expelled a girl from a Catholic school because her parents were lesbians. The archbishop argued that parents must be able to cooperate with Catholic schools in the education of their children, and that those who do not embrace Church doctrine cannot do so.

This was not an argument he employed against Protestants, or non-Christians, or children whose parents had remarried after a divorce. It was employed exclusively against lesbian parents. Because in the theological universe that our bishops are constructing to support their personal biases, there is sin, and then there is gay sin, and gay sin is so much worse.

[Actually, Archbishop Chaput's argument is far more substantial - and logical - than the Lopatas would have us believe:

"Our schools ... exist primarily to serve Catholic families with an education shaped by Catholic faith and moral formation. This is common sense ... The idea that Catholic schools should require support for Catholic teaching for admission, and a serious effort from school families to live their Catholic identity faithfully, is reasonable and just.

"That’s the background. Now to the human side of a painful situation. The Church never looks for reasons to turn anyone away from a Catholic education. But the Church can’t change her moral beliefs without undermining her mission and failing to serve the many families who believe in that mission. If Catholics take their faith seriously, they naturally follow the teachings of the Church in matters of faith and morals; otherwise they take themselves outside the believing community.

"The Church does not claim that people with a homosexual orientation are “bad,” or that their children are less loved by God. Quite the opposite. But what the Church does teach is that sexual intimacy by anyone outside marriage is wrong; that marriage is a sacramental covenant; and that marriage can only occur between a man and a woman. These beliefs are central to a Catholic understanding of human nature, family and happiness, and the organization of society. The Church cannot change these teachings because, in the faith of Catholics, they are the teachings of Jesus Christ.

"The policies of our Catholic school system exist to protect all parties involved, including the children of homosexual couples and the couples themselves. Our schools are meant to be “partners in faith” with parents. If parents don’t respect the beliefs of the Church, or live in a manner that openly rejects those beliefs, then partnering with those parents becomes very difficult, if not impossible. It also places unfair stress on the children, who find themselves caught in the middle, and on their teachers, who have an obligation to teach the authentic faith of the Church.

"Most parents who send their children to Catholic schools want an environment where the Catholic faith is fully taught and practiced. That simply can’t be done if teachers need to worry about wounding the feelings of their students or about alienating students from their parents. That isn’t fair to anyone—including the wider school community."

And what about those "personal biases" our bishops are so intent on propping up? Actually, those "biases" are not their own, but come directly from St. Paul:

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:9-10).]

Editor’s note: Casey and Mary Ellen Lopata wrote the above as individuals; the piece doesn’t necessarily represent the position of Fortunate Families