When Your Church is Wrong, Say So!

The argument between science and "Intelligent Design" is too often limited to whether religious beliefs belong in public schools. That's only half the story and the other half is much worse. Some religious beliefs are so misguided that they don't belong in churches any more than they belong in schools.

Biblical Literalism damages not only young people who should be learning real science, it also harms young and old who should be learning genuine Christianity. Literalism is to Christianity as steroid use is to baseball.

The fundamentalist movement, which has infected all the Abrahamic religions, is only about 200-300 years old, born of the inability of a few to cope with modernization and the rapid advance of scientific knowledge at the end of the Renaissance. It has nothing to do with Biblical truths; it is a distortion of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, perpetrated by the unscrupulous on the uneducated.

To reduce the Creation story, for example, to a mere history or geology lesson is to gut it of its inherent beauty. The Genesis authors borrowed a more ancient Sumerian/Babylonian myth and added God’s assertion that creation is good, plus strong statements about male-female equality and our duty to care for the planet.

Likewise, the great Exodus myth begins with the core Judeo-Christian value that God hurts when one group of people oppresses another. Moses was told to free the people because God couldn’t stand hearing their cries anymore. The Hebrew Bible is about nothing if not lofty notions such as freedom, justice and equality.

Ultimately, the beautiful Jesus myth, exaggerated and edited during the first three centuries as it may be, calls people to extraordinary living, a message sorely needed in the 21^st century. Though the story’s historical integrity is being called into question today as we learn that most of the biographical details were lifted almost verbatim from older god/man myths from more ancient cultures, the message is still compelling. “Love your enemies.” “Do good to those who harm you.” “We, though many, are one.” “You will be judged by how you feed and clothe the least ones.” “Forgive and you will be forgiven.”

To glorify the messenger (“only begotten Son of God”) while distorting the message (“all are sons/daughters of God”) is idolatry. But that's what fundamentalism does. To reduce the great Creation story to a mere geology or history lesson is to deny its beauty. To make that the extent of the religion lesson and never tell children that the Earth is good is to teach an impoverished, distorted faith, unlike the faith of our ancestors who understood the power of myth.

Why does all this matter to more than science teachers? The danger of replacing original Christian teachings with this recently-invented distortion is experienced not only in science classes but globally. One need only count the dead and wounded as misguided religious fundamentalists in Washington wage war on misguided religious fundamentalists in the Middle East to see just how dangerous it is.

# posted by Truth Chaser @ 5:31 PM 0 comments

In the summer of 2004, the Catholic bishop of Colorado Springs appeared on ABC-TV’s Nightline to explain a controversial essay he had published that May in his tightly controlled diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Herald. In the piece, Bishop Michael Sheridan instructed Catholics that they vicariously participate in abortion, euthanasia and gay marriage when they vote for any candidate who supports making or keeping any of those activities legal for all Americans. Thus guilty of serious sin, these Catholic voters must voluntarily abstain from the Church’s sacraments until they had repented and been sacramentally forgiven.

Sheridan was the only U.S. bishop, out of nearly 300, to extend such a warning to voters. A handful had limited their call for what amounts to voluntary excommunication to pro-choice Catholic candidates. The vast majority of bishops, however, took the high road, urging Catholic voters to weigh all of a candidate’s positions and allow their consciences to consider political nuance and the concept of greater and lesser evils. Nevertheless, many agree that Sheridan’s lonely stance, with the help of the controversy-hungry media, achieved sufficient national attention to influence a tiny fraction of Catholic voters. Considering the incumbent President’s fraction of 1% victory margin in Ohio and Florida, the deciding states, Sheridan’s tiny following may have included enough voters to change the election’s outcome.

Consequently, it can be said that the religious leader of a few thousand Rocky Mountain Catholics was instrumental in the re-election of a U.S. President. This in spite of the fact that a large percentage of members of his small diocese, who helped elect a pro-choice Catholic Senator and a Democratic state legislature that day, rejected Sheridan’s single-issue voting instructions as politically naïve, theologically misguided and strategically counter-productive.

With the perspective of a full year, it is possible to evaluate the wisdom and efficacy of Sheridan’s decision to seek the national spotlight in this way. Is he a moral theology ideologue who clings to strict Catholic doctrine regardless of political consequences? Or is he merely a politically conservative Republican who happens to have a theology degree and who chooses to apply Church teaching selectively in order to promote his chosen candidates? Conscious of the restrictions imposed by his tax-exempt status, he did not mention Kerry or Bush by name in front of the ABC cameras. What he did say on Nightline was, “It would be a very short leap for people to figure out who I am talking about.” A short leap indeed, shortened further when Sheridan offered the opening invocation at a Bush campaign appearance in Colorado Springs just days before the election.

Today, residue from Sheridan’s 2004 campaign appearances, written statements, and Q&A meetings continues to cast a pall over his relationship with his diocese, even its Bush supporters. Many indicate their displeasure by continuing to withhold payments pledged to his several fundraising campaigns. Though some mistakenly reduce the episode to a mere 1^st Amendment violation, the majority knows that Sheridan disappointed U.S. Catholics on a far more profound level. Faced with an opportunity to be prophetic, he chose to be merely political.

When Democrats and Republicans presented the nation with two presidential candidates, neither of whom holds a “Seamless Garment” pro-life stance suitable to satisfy Catholic moral doctrine, Sheridan could have put on the stole worn by the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago and prophetically called both candidates to task. He could have pointed out that they both promote killing, and that each one’s chosen killing method is no more admirable than the other’s.

Such an opportunity to speak truth to power comes along rarely. Even rarer are the prophets who appear on the world stage at just the right moment and grab those rare opportunities. Bishop Michael Sheridan of Colorado Springs could have chosen to be a prophet. Instead, he chose to merely take sides, to reduce the Catholic pro-life ideal to a useless liberal vs. conservative debate. He made a name for himself, momentarily grabbed the national spotlight, and squandered the opportunity. Imagine the good he could have done with that spotlight if he had had the courage to use it the way Cardinal Bernardin did.

Instead, he helped re-elect the President, thousands more have been killed and maimed in Iraq, more and more federal dollars are diverted from social programs to military programs and to welfare programs for oil companies. And the budget deficit and the number of abortions continue to rise.

Oh, and Bernardin’s stole? It has been picked up by Jim Wallis, an Evangelical Protestant who embodies the spirit of the late Cardinal more than any U.S. bishop, certainly more than the Republican ideologue who leads the Catholic Diocese of Colorado Springs. Wallis’ books, magazine and online articles and public lectures explain the late Catholic Cardinal’s seamless garment approach to the sanctity of life better than any of Bernardin’s rightful Catholic heirs.

# posted by Truth Chaser @ 11:02 AM 0 comments

Bishop Michael Sheridan of Colorado Springs spent most of 2004 misrepresenting Catholic theology. I see a three-fold source for his errors: Ego-driven moral relativism, Ideology-inspired political strategy, and Blinder-impeded theology.

Error 1: Ego, bad timing and hubris

The Catholic Church in the United States was still immersed in its self-inflicted credibility nadir in the months leading up to the 2004 Presidential election. The priest pedophilia scandal and accompanying leadership scandal had been daily headlines two years earlier. As the 2004 election heated up, the twin scandals pushed the Iraq war and Michael Jackson trial off center stage again when Pope John Paul II assigned Cardinal Bernard Law, the icon of both scandals, to a prominent Vatican position.

Law had been accused of unnecessarily multiplying the number of victims by moving sexually deviant priests from parish to parish instead of sending them for treatment. Other bishops were subsequently found to have engaged in the same practice, as though it were policy, and the Church became the target of lawsuits and late-night TV comedians. Law’s 2004 assignment as Archpriest of the Roman basilica of St. Mary Major was regarded as a Papal slap in the face by thousands of U.S. pedophilia victims and the scandals returned to newspaper front pages.

Amidst this embarrassing environment, Bishop Sheridan decided to assert Catholic moral authority on national television. Naturally, he was frequently asked whether it was prudent for him to admonish Catholic politicians and voters over their stances on selected, sexuality-related moral issues – abortion, gay marriage – while new reports of pedophilia lawsuits and his brother bishops’ sinful administrative decisions continued to mount. His answer was always the same, “Sure, we’ve made some mistakes, but that doesn’t mean we should just shut up.”

Apparently, it does. At least, that seemed to be the opinion of 280 other American bishops. While a half dozen or so made some noise about refusing Communion to John Kerry, not one joined Sheridan in extending that ban to Catholics who planned to vote for pro-choice candidates. He was left dangling in the wind by nearly all U.S. bishops and the Pope. Normally, we honor brave individuals who stand alone in the face of ridicule, but only when they are right. Unfortunately for Sheridan, his theology did not measure up to his ego. His response? To step up the bravado.

Error 2: Ideological agendas do not require facts

We can never be certain whether Sheridan himself or some U.S. or Vatican mentor was the author of his unabashed hubris. All we can do is speculate based on what we do know. Sheridan’s diocese is the home of one of the most Republican counties, and safest Congressional seats, in the country. The home of the Air Force Academy and Focus on the Family, Colorado Springs is one place where extreme statements can be made with impunity. Dr. James Dobson got away with calling stem-cell scientists Nazi’s. Pat Robertson should have come here to propose assassination.

We can’t know if they did, but if a consortium of ultra-conservative U.S. bishops, or a Vatican congregation, wanted to test the political waters for a sensitive right-wing position, Colorado Springs would be the logical place to assign someone to do it.

However, as we continue to speculate, anyone pulling such puppet strings was faced with a s

# posted by Truth Chaser @ 10:16 AM 0 comments