Apr
25
Of hobbyhorses and obsessions
April 25, 2008 | 7 Comments
For an ex-Catholic, Rod Dreher evidently spends a LOT of time writing about the Catholic Church. Normally I just don’t read Dreher, aka Andrew Sullivan-lite, but I was pointed in his general direction by Pauli at Est Quod Est, and I was also treated to this gem, (written by a colleague of Dreher’s):
They are the majority of worshipers every Sunday (and through the week), and they make up some 80 percent of the more than 30,000 lay ministers (and growing fast) serving in the nation’s 19,000 parishes. There are more of them working in U.S. churches than there are priests. They distribute communion, raise the next generation in the faith, and younger versions of themselves serve as altar girls. Yes, they are Catholic women. And yes, they were nearly invisible during last week’s Pope-a-palooza.
Really? Speaking as someone who was, you know, actually there, I saw a lot of women – a lot of happy women joyous to be in the Pope’s presence. Maybe Rod (Dave) just needed some cool x-ray glasses to see them.
Oh, he means this of course:
Benedict got an eyeful of the American church while he was here, but not from up close. No women were allowed to distribute communion (nor lay people for that matter–only ordained dudes) nor were any girls allowed as altar servers.
Yes, from what I understand any female would-be EMC was physically restrained and placed deep in the caverns of both Nationals Park and Yankee Stadium. Allowed only bread, water, and an Ipod filled with liturgical music penned by Marty Haugen, these women were finally released only after they promised never to look a priest directly in the eyes again.
Of course the actual explanation is that there were approximately a thousand Priests in attendance, and it may have been inappropriate – nay, it would have been canonically wrong – to have EMCs of either sex distribute Communion.
In fact, the liturgies that American Catholics are used to, with women and girls playing important roles, had to be re-gendered for the papal masses.
Yeah, you couldn’t find a woman at all playing an important role.
Pay no attention to that female cantor on the big screen. Or the women who read the Scripture readings. Or the petitions.
Now many people will see this as just so much whining by wannabe women priests. But the reality is that women, especially lay women, make the church run “on the ground.” This has some critics fearing a “feminization” of the church.
Yet it is simply the reality that was not acknowledged or even discussed last week. And it is one of those realities that we are left to grapple with as we move beyond the visit by the pope.
There is a lot to entangle with this comment, from the weird psychoanalysis to thhe notion that women are underappreciated in the Church.
Look, women are never EVER going to be ordained. Get over it already.
You know what’s sad? I now have to turn to Mark Shea as the voice of reason, as he deals with Rod in the comments section on Rod’s post.
And my point, Rod, is that what you call an “abstract theory” may in fact be something constitutive of the sacrament of Holy Orders as it was established by Jesus Christ, which the Pope does not regard himself as competent to just breeze past with the stroke of a pen. Until that possibility has really been grappled with, the actions of the Pope will continue, I think, to be enigmatic and perverse to you, just as his “refusal” to ordain women continues to completely baffle certain folk who simply regard it as his personal sexism and not as having anything at all to do with the nature of the sacrament.
And as for Rod’s bringing up the potentiality of a Paraguayan Bishop being defrocked for being elected to office, contrasted with the non-removal of Bishops for covering up the scandal:
I repeat: this does not mean that “bishops exist in some special mystical state that the Pope shouldn’t threaten”. Bishop can be and have been removed. But it does mean that such actions are not going to happen at “the stroke of pen”. Not even when the bishop is begging for it and demanding it. Some explanation [other than] “circling the wagons” has to be found to account for the Pope’s actions. And I would start with the nature of the sacramental office the bishop has and his *real* relationship with the Papal office, not the Innocent III fantasy that seems to dominate so many people’s minds. The Constantinian papacy is loooooong gone. You will not make any headway at all analyzing the actions of either Benedict or John Paul so long as you continue to do so politically first and do not take *seriously* into account their understanding of the theology of the sacrament of Holy Orders. For the matter of that, you won’t understand many of the actions of your own bishops till then either.
Dreher and his minions lament the fact that the Pope can apparently defrock Lugo much more easily than those Bishops who played a part in covering up the abuse scandal, but this ignores the fact that the cases are different as the Lugo case involves the willful disobedience of a Bishop to canon law.
Reading Rod’s comments in the combox is even more amazing, turning to an abuse victim’s suicide note when cornered with evidence that refutes his original argument. Look, when you make Mark Shea look like the voice of reason and charitable dissent, then you might just have gone off the rails a little bit.
As for the McCarrick case – I refuse to condemn a man before the facts are in. I hope to God that the allegations are untrue, but if they aren’t – then shame on Cardinal McCarrick. But let us see where the evidence leads before casting stones – a concept evidently foreign to Dreher.
Update: Egads, I mixed up my authors. Dave Gibson wrote the post on the lack of women at the Papal events, and Rod Dreher was focused more on the McCarrick-Lugo controversies. I actually did think it strange that Dreher would have made an issue of the lack of women. My most humble apologies for the error, and I have updated the rest of the post accordingly. Thanks to Tom in the comments for pointing out the error.
No TagComments
7 Comments so far
[...] Continue Reading [...]
Thanks Cranky. Yeah, that guy is a convert and a writer but he is not ready for prime time. I was actually interested in maybe checking out his book until I read that nonsense. PASS!
Also, I’m guessing that the allegations are true and the reason Rod is so cocksure about them because he’s in direct contact with Richard Sipe, an ex-priest who hates the Catholic church’s teachings on sexuality. Of course by extension he hates the Orthodox teachings as well since they are nearly the same; but hey, the enemy of his enemy….
The Beliefnet article was written by David Gibson.
Thanks, Tom. That was a big frakkup on my part.
Here’s a new Gibson post with a high nonsense to content ratio: http://blog.beliefnet.com/benedictions/2008/04/be-faithful-and-multiply.html#more
I’ll let you dissect it; this guy is striking me more and more as the Catholic version of David Kuo.
That was just . . . weird.