Someone's Got to Do It!

The lamentable New York Times saw fit to publish this op-ed piece by one Nicholas Kristof today.  Once upon a time the so-called "paper of record" pubished opinion columns by individuals whose opinions were well-informed and whose arguments were well-reasoned and carefully considered.  Even when one failed to agree with their premise or conclusions one could typically respect the honesty of the writer and the legitimacy of their opinions.  That is no longer the case, and hasn't been for a few years now.

I thought one of the real pros on the web might give this piece a solemn high fisking but it seems that the task has fallen to this humble amateur.  So, on to the show:

A Church Mary Can Love  

I heard a joke the other day about a pious soul who dies, goes to heaven, and gains an audience with the Virgin Mary. The visitor asks Mary why, for all her blessings, she always appears in paintings as a bit sad, a bit wistful: Is everything O.K.?

Mary reassures her visitor: “Oh, everything’s great. No problems. It’s just ... it’s just that we had always wanted a daughter.”  Really classy beginning.  In addition to betraying his utter ignorance of Catholic dogma it immediately informs the reader that the author has already decided that the beliefs of Catholics are a proper subject of ridicule and not worthy of his respect.

That story comes to mind as the Vatican wrestles with the consequences of a patriarchal premodern mind-set: scandal, cover-up and the clumsiest self-defense since Watergate. That’s what happens with old boys’ clubs.  You know the drill - patriarchal is bad, "premodern" [sic] is bad, etc.

It wasn’t inevitable that the Catholic Church would grow so addicted to male domination, celibacy and rigid hierarchies. Jesus himself focused on the needy rather than dogma, and went out of his way to engage women and treat them with respect. Three quick points: 1.) An organization which is faithful to its tenets is "addicted" to them?  Do you suppose he feels the same way about, say, B'nai Brith or the N.A.A.C.P.?  2.) Caritas versus dogma is a classic false dichotomy.  Having proposed it as fact, expect him to continue this theme.  3.) He implicitly accepts the notion here that Jesus founded the Catholic Church - do you suppose he really believes it?

The first-century church was inclusive and democratic, even including a proto-feminist wing and texts. Really?  "Inclusive" as in "including" those who dissented from Her central beliefs?  "Democratic" as in "majority rule"?  A "proto-feminist wing"?  What serious basis has he for these outlandish claims?  Read on...  The Gospel of Philip, a Gnostic text (if you don't know what Gnosticism is, look it up.  There is a reason it's not called a "Christian" text, nor was it included in the Bible.  Catholics call these texts "apocryphal" - 'nuff said) from the third century, declares of Mary Magdalene: “She is the one the Savior loved more than all the disciples.” Likewise, the Gospel of Mary (also Gnostic and apocryphal) (from the early second century) suggests that Jesus entrusted Mary Magdalene to instruct the disciples on his religious teachings. (So what?  How many of us were taught the Catholic Faith by our mothers, or by the nuns?  Nobody says a female cannot transmit the Faith!)

St. Paul refers in Romans 16 to a first-century woman named Junia as prominent among the early apostles (in addition to the doubt over the gender of Junia, there isn't even any degree of certainty as to whether Junia was personally an Apostle or simply well known to them...), and to a woman named Phoebe who served as a deacon. The word "deacon" comes from the Greek "diakonos" which means "to serve", i.e. "one who serves"  It was applied in the primitive Church both to males who were ordained to serve and females who were entrusted with specific tasks such as preparing female catechumens for Baptism.  "Deacon" and "deaconess" were neither equivalent nor interchangeable (except nowadays in the fantasies of the wymynchurch crowd)  The Apostle Junia became a Christian before St. Paul did (which proves what?  St. Paul was *personally* called by Jesus Christ to his Apostleship.  Is Judas also greater because he became a Christian before St. Paul?)  (chauvinist translators have sometimes rendered her name masculine, with no scholarly basis).  And he knows they're "chavinist"... how exactly?  By the same infallible intuition which yields the conclusion that anyone who disagrees with President Obama on matters of policy is ipso facto a racist?  And how is he qualified to pronounce on their scholarship, other than by dint of his disdisdain for its conclusions?

Yet over the ensuing centuries, the church reverted to strong patriarchal attitudes, while also becoming increasingly uncomfortable with sexuality. This is absurd.  The shift may have come with the move from house churches, where women were naturally accepted, to more public gatherings. How does Mr. Kristof - or anyone else - know what went on in these "house churches"?  When the Church came out of the Catacombs, so to speak, much of the pattern of Her public worship followed the model of Jewish temple services in which the sexes were segregated to preserve modesty and maintain attention on the liturgy.  Does promotion of modesty and protection of chastity equate to discomfort with "sexuality" or is he implying that the Church of Junia and Phoebe was libertine in morality?

The upshot is that (heretical) proto-feminist texts were not included when the Bible was compiled (and were mostly lost until modern times). "Compiled" as if it were a secular anthology, assembled by a committee of editors, as opposed to the Catholic teaching of Divine Inspiration. Tertullian, an early Christian leader, (neither a pope nor a bishop, a priest whose opinions were his own) denounced women as “the gateway to the devil,” (five words presented without a shred of context) while a contemporary account reports that the great Origen of Alexandria took his piety a step further and castrated himself. Which proves... what?  Again, not a pope, not a bishop, and someone who at various times espoused some very strange ideas about the Christian Faith.  I'll bet Mr. Kristof pooh-poohs Papal Infallibilty but he seems to accept uncritically some very dubious assumptions about two controversial priests from the Patristic Era (again - not popes, not bishops, not saints) about whom our knowledge is fragmentary.

The Catholic Church still seems stuck today in that patriarchal rut. Again, consistency is bad, now it's equivalent to a "rut" The same faith that was so pioneering that it had Junia as a female apostle way back in the first century can’t even have a woman as the lowliest parish priest. Female deacons, permitted for centuries, are banned today.  Having floated the dubious "Junia/Pheobe" theories as if they were true, he now attempts to make them the foundations for his argument...

That old boys’ club in the Vatican became as self-absorbed as other old boys’ clubs, like Lehman Brothers, with similar results. And that is the reason the Vatican is floundering today.  One could well substitute "The New York Times" and "Goldman Sachs" (Mr. Kristof would understand both references) for "the Vatican" and "Lehman Brothers"...

But there’s more to the picture than that. In my travels around the world, I encounter two Catholic Churches. How does he "encounter" them - is he a Catholic or a catechumen?  One is the rigid all-male Vatican hierarchy that seems out of touch when it bans condoms even among married couples where one partner is H.I.V.-positive. We are called to accept the consequences of our previous acts, even though our sins may be forgiven.  Mr. Kristof doesn't seem to know the difference.  To me at least, (assuming that he is somehow qualified to judge an entity he doesn't understand which exists to propagate a faith which he does not espouse) this church — obsessed with dogma and rules and distracted from social justice — is a modern echo of the Pharisees whom Jesus criticized.  "Social Justice" is very important to Mr. Kristof and his bien pensant friends, especially when they get to define it.  "Dogma" and "rules", on the other hand, are the marks of "rigid", "patriarchal", "premodern" [sic] organizations "addicted" to their misbegotten beliefs and stuck in the "rut" of consistency...

Yet there’s another Catholic Church as well, one I admire intensely. This is the grass-roots Catholic Church that does far more good in the world than it ever gets credit for. This is the church that supports extraordinary aid organizations like Catholic Relief Services and Caritas, saving lives every day, and that operates superb schools that provide needy children an escalator out of poverty.  Organizations and schools founded by the "grass-roots Catholic Church", right?

This is the church of the nuns and priests in Congo, toiling in obscurity to feed and educate children. This is the church of the Brazilian priest fighting AIDS who told me that if he were pope, he would build a condom factory in the Vatican to save lives. And if I were pope I'd send such priests to a monastery in the Antarctic.  It does not appear to be the Will of God that either Father Rubbermaker or I become pope at this juncture...

This is the church of the Maryknoll Sisters in Central America (best known for their embrace of "liberation theology" and support of Marxist regimes in Central and South America - the sort of nuns of which Mr. Kristof approves) and the Cabrini Sisters in Africa. There’s a stereotype (which expired about forty years ago) of nuns as stodgy Victorian traditionalists. Would that it were!  I learned otherwise while hanging on for my life in a passenger seat as an American nun with a lead foot drove her jeep over ruts and through a creek in Swaziland to visit AIDS orphans. After a number of encounters like that, I’ve come to believe that the very coolest people in the world today may be nuns.  "Cool" trumps fidelity to the actual teachings of the Church founded by Jesus Christ.  I wonder if Sister Leadfoot was wearing a sweatshirt with an image of Che Guevara...

So when you read about the scandals, remember that the Vatican is not the same as the Catholic Church. And remember that what appears in the pages of The New York Times isn't the same as the truth.  Ordinary lepers, prostitutes and slum-dwellers may never see a cardinal, but they daily encounter a truly noble Catholic Church in the form of priests, nuns and lay workers toiling to make a difference.  The "Vatican" which Mr. Kristof wishes to implicate is the current leadership of the Church, men who have done much to rein-in the moral laxity which developed in the immediate post-Conciliar years.  One senses that Mr. Kristof found much to admire in (his perception of) the "Vatican" of the Paul VI era, many of whom were directly responsible for that laxity which now gives him occasion to attack the Church...

It’s high time (Pope Nicholas of New York has spoken, the case is closed) for the Vatican to take inspiration from that sublime — even divine — side of the Catholic Church, from those church workers (Workers?  As in "employees"... or "hirelings"?  Has he the slightest idea what he's talking about?) whose magnificence lies not in their vestments, but in their selflessness. Again, the false dichotomy.  They’re enough to make the Virgin Mary smile.  Is it a sign of hubris or delusions of infallibility when a lefty reporter purports to know what "make[s] the Virgin Mary smile"  Other than to bash the Church has he ever given the slightest thought to doing what "make[s] the Virgin Mary smile"?

To wrap-up: other than "the (institutional) Church sucks but Marxist nuns are cool" what's his premise?  Where are his conclusions?  This isn't a serious piece!  He's denigrates "the Vatican" but can only muster ad hominem attacks rather than legitimate criticisms; and he seems to think that reversing two thousand years of doctrine on the flimsiest of "evidence", i.e. Junia and Phoebe, in order to permit the novelty of "women priests" would somehow solve all of the problems he ascribes to the Church?  Rubbish!

Given that the NYT is hell-bent on attacking the Church one would think they'd at least make a better effort, but unfortunately legions of ignoramuses will eat it up anyway.  If I were Mr. Kristof I would be embarrassed to have my name on this hackwork...