Tag: Catholics

Conscience butt out when gummint speaks

The bothersome thing about the birth control discussion is the ongoing defense of conscience as regards resisting church teaching combined with disrespect for conscience as regards government mandate.

Chi Trib today on the point is interesting.  It’s Rex Huppke on birth control etc. in John Kass’s spot, which I would link if the Trib site were not so uncooperative in the matter. 

More later on this, but have to get off now to post-mass breakfast with my friends Winnie and Mair.

Later: Ho-kay, Trib has Huppke-column link now.

In context of the above about conscience, consider what Notre Dame liberal studies prof Clark Power said.

Power — who spent seven years in a Catholic seminary [relevance not at all clear here] — said in an interview: “Some people see it as a liberty issue, and I understand that. But we all know there’s another issue: What about the consciences of Catholics?”

I’ll say.  What about them?  Shouldn’t gummint respect them and not make them buy what they don’t want?

Undoubtedly some Catholics would consider a world view that runs afoul of the church’s teachings to be disqualifying. They’d say, “Sorry, if you feel that way, you’re not a Catholic.”

Not quite.  Rather, it’s “Sorry but we’re not cooperating.”

But Power believes this: “The only way I know to do things right and morally is to have frank and honest discussions about things.”

Yes, and even then you might not know.  And if Power thinks birth control hasn’t been discussed by Catholics, he’s got no business teaching under the golden dome.  Especially in a time of increasing govt incursion into religion.

Catholics conform

Sister tells of her conversion to religious life twenty years previously, has back of her hand for her then-fiance’s wanting 15 kids, depending on how many God decided they should have.  She chose religion for its structured prayer life and conferred ability to “love all,” not just one, failing to mention the other potential fifteen.

Parish school principal to parishioner gathering refers to “common core” curriculum and common report card eliminating A’s and B’s etc. in favor of something else, both “national,” omitting to explain who imposed the common core, etc.  U.S. dept. of education, it turns out.  He mentions the core only in passing, with no questions about what feds have to say about RC schools’ teaching and grading, except that the archdiocese has adopted this common core, etc.

Visiting scholar lectures at RC university to packed small-auditorium crowd of students, nuns, teachers, and others, elicits dismissive chuckles from students about rules for confessors in days of old as to how they were to deal with female penitents, all geared to protect chastity.  No one takes him up on this, which is at least mildly subversive of church as vehicle of grace and role of confession.

RC traditions about (a) family and role of Providence, (b) freedom of church schools from state interference, (c) academic respect for church practices prior to our own enlightened age — each ignored or dismissed by church representatives,  making three cases of bit-by-bit conforming to the age we live in.

Later:  The Common Core was adopted by 40 states including Illinois, whose board of ed explained itself in June of 2010.  The parish school principal assumed too much of his audience or at least of some parts of it.  The archdiocese sells the new report card in a letter to parents last June and explains it at length in a frequent-questions page here.  I can only trust that something similar was offered parish schools by their principals and staffs.

No sooner ordained, complaints about McGuire SJ

The most detailed account yet of Fr. Donald McGuire as molester and the Chicago Jesuit province as looking the other way — for decades.

The newly public documents date from the early 1960s, when a concerned Austrian priest, in imperfect English, first observed in a letter to Chicago Jesuits that Father McGuire, newly ordained and studying in Europe, had much relations with several boys. The reports extend into the last decade, when Father McGuire reportedly ignored admonitions to stop traveling with young assistants, molesting one as late as 2003, as law enforcement was closing in.
. . . . .
McGuire, now 80, was convicted on several counts of sex abuse in state and federal courts in 2006 and 2008, and is serving a 25-year federal sentence.