Begin forwarded message:
From: Sandy Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed Dec 10, 2003 4:17:07 PM US/Eastern To: "Jonathan Cass" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [UC] RE: Catholicism
On Wednesday, December 10, 2003, at 03:18 PM, Jonathan Cass wrote:
[in response to Liz Campion's comment:]"Of all the major religions, Catholicism may be the most a la carte." ___________________________________________________
That may be how practicing Catholics in the U.S. treat the religion, but I
would dare say that the Church would disagree with such an approach. In
Catholicism, more than other religions, there seems to be schism, at least
in the U.S., between what the hierarchy says the "rules" are (for lack of a
better word), and how the laity responds to the "rules." It reminds me of
the relationship between a parent and a teenager. The parents knows that
the teenager is not precisely following the rules and the teenager knows
that the parents know, but everybody pretends that it is not going on.
Doesn't sound very healthy to me or the basis for a strong and thriving
institution.
Delurking because this has nothing to do with the institution I work for.
I have a strong suspicion that the American Catholic Church is as it is because it operates in a *strongly* Protestant culture influenced heavily by the humanistic values of the Enlightenment.
More even than in such nominally Protestant nations as Britain (which is Protestant in England mainly because Henry VII wanted a divorce and the Church wouldn't let him have one) or Germany, Christians in America have strongly endorsed the notion that the relationship between God and man is ultimately a matter of individual conscience and choice, not subject to mediation from anointed intermediaries (church congregations in most American Protestant denominations choose their leaders rather than have them assigned by a hierarchy). Given such a powerful cultural tide -- and given the appeal of the basic principle, as it is highly empowering of the individual -- I think it would be surprising indeed if the American Catholic Church *succeded* in holding it completely at bay. The wink-and-nod approach--like "don't ask, don't tell" in the military--is simply the easiest way to reconcile two incompatible ways of viewing the world. And as "hypocrisy is the price vice pays to virtue," it is also the easiest way for the people in charge of the hierarchy to deal with a reality that would threaten the institutional core if it were officially embraced. A Catholic Church that made its clergy an appendix or agent of the laity, or one that let the laity decide questions of theology, would no longer be recognizably Catholic; at the same time, an American church that did not recognize the independence of its members as moral agents and communicants with God would soon find itself bereft of members.
--Sandy, baptized Presbyterian, attended black Baptist Sunday schools, confirmed Episcopalian
----------Sandy Smith, Exile on Market Street, Philadelphia----------- Managing Editor, _Penn Current_ / [EMAIL PROTECTED] 215.898.1423 / fax 215.898.1203 / http://pobox.upenn.edu/~smiths/ Got news? Got events? Got stories? Send ’em to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------If you see this line, the opinions are my own, not Penn’s-------
----------Sandy Smith, Exile on Market Street, Philadelphia-----------
Managing Editor, _Penn Current_ / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
215.898.1423 / fax 215.898.1203 / http://pobox.upenn.edu/~smiths/
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