The Good, The Bad and the Blind

Blind Loyalties and Bad Judgments

     All Catholics are not a like. The split in the catholic world over those who think O'bama is the 

second coming and those who think he is satan is a pretty sharp divide with all shades of "whatever, who cares" in between. 

    All Catholics in the paid service of the church are not a like either. Some are republicans, some democrats in leanings, some with very poor judgment, some with angelic dispositions. 

Take for instance this principal in New York who is clearly what anyone would call a racist:

http://gothamist.com/2011/08/01/outraged_man_disrupts_mass_at_churc.php

He apparently passed the radar--and clearly holds views regarding darker skinned people

and all latinos generally that anyone in their right mind would consider racist.

You cannot blame all of catholicism on that because there are very fine black and

latino priests and workers who would strongly disagree with him. Just because he

is a principal in a catholic school does not make him right about anything.

The same can be said about some catholic judges, catholic lawyers, catholic priests

and catholic bloggers. Just because someone calls themselves in the service of the church

or is paid running a business catering to catholics, that does not make them sacred

definitionally. They could be whackier than a three dollar bill. Their decisionmaking

might be just wrong. It has happened time and again. Some are downright harmful

or take actions or make decisions that are downright harmful. They are all human.

For example, I do not know how to make much sense of the fact that in the Archbishop

of Washington, DC's main cathedral seat church there is a eucharistic minister that

he commissioned who is openly gay, wears a wedding ring on his wedding finger and

is living with his partner while at the same time blasting gay marriage and spending a

fortune on attorneys fighting litigation and lobbying against gay marriage. There are a number

of openly gay people serving in the DC Dupont Circle parish where the Cathedral seat

is, as it is an area with a concentration of gay people second only to San Francisco. I

am not complaining about the gays in service of the church, I love my gay priest friends

and everyone I ever met gay.

I wonder about the people being paid to blast gay marriage while taking communion from

a married gay guy who looks them in the eye and says "Body of Christ"

I also don't know how to make sense of people who call themselves conservative

republicans who would castrate a priest or drive him out of a parish for falling for a woman while spending

millions of dollars lobbying for 'pro life' pro preborn baby causes while killing potential for

progeny in their priesthood. Not only does it not make sense, it strikes one as

totally evil. Not that I think the pro preborn baby lobbying is wrong, and I fully agree

with it. I wonder about the people who think making eunichs of priests is pro life.

So to be Catholic is not to be brain dead or not to be noncognizant of these

paradoxes. Dissent is the greatest form of patriotism, it is said. I dissent.

And I don't care if you wish to call me Protestant. I would rather be conscious than

blindly loyal to irrationality.