Wednesday, November 4, 2009

New York's Dolan: Archbishop of Paranoia ?

Last week , Maureen Dowd wrote a marvelous commentary on the plight of American Catholic nuns:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/opinion/25dowd.html?_r=1

which precipitated an outrageous response from Timothy Dolan, the new archbishop of New York:

http://www.archny.org/news-events/columns-and-blogs/blog---the-gospel-in-the-digital-age/index.cfm?i=14042

Why is it that the American Catholic bishops seem to interpret every questioning or unfavorable comment about some aspect of the church as "anti-Catholic"? When will we of the American Catholic laity finally understand that no questions, no challenges of the Church are allowed? The bishops want us to forget about the priests' sexual abuse of children around the world and their widespread homosexuality and violations of the vows of celibacy. They are incensed that we do not blind ourselves to the continuing lies and deceit of the hierarchy. After all, they are the spiritual authorities, the so-called "magisterium"; they claim to know what is best for us, the mere laity, the "sheep"! How often must the bishops remind us that our duty is to "pay, pray and obey"?

Dolan's essay on anti-Catholicism is nonsense. It is disturbing that, as evidenced by so many comments following his diatribe, among the laity, there are still so many dumb sheep. Fortunately, Laurie Goodstein's thoughtful rebuttal stands out among the comments as fair and quietly, but justifiably, indignant.

Dolan missed the point of Maureen Dowd's column. Those of us who grew up with dedicated nuns as teachers and benefited from their sacrifices understand and applaud Ms. Dowd. Clerical misogynistic mandarins, like Dolan, view the women of the Catholic Church solely as servants. Their profound ignorance of women, presumably as a result of clerical celibacy and homosexuality, persists to the detriment of us all. This serves as one more example of the bishops, in their unChrist-like way, continuing their crusade to destroy the outcome of the Second Vatican Council and to subjugate the laity, once again, to spiritual serfdom, while driving the Catholic Church back to the Middle Ages.