A Sound of Sheer Silence

Well, it's over.  Everyone has gone home, and the pundits--amateur and professional--now get to dissect what has happened and What It All Means.   I continue to maintain that we should not be distracted by the shiny object that is the final document produced by the Synod, and instead focus on whatever Pope Francis ultimately says or does with regard to divorced and remarried Catholics.  Still, I think that the Synod made a number of advances from a process standpoint, even if the product that was generated is not as important as it might seem.  And, inspired by Cardinal Marx's impressive use of Shakespeare to make his points , I too will draw from the The Bard. "This above all- to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."   Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3.   With the possible exception of the handful of heads of religious orders, everyone who attended the Synod of Bishops was put into a high offic...

I received an email about my last post .  The writer of the email took me to task for failing to take the conservative Anglicans at face value.  The author felt that I was dismissive of their positions and their arguments.  That I was being "a culture warrior." He is right, in a sense.  I am finding it increasingly difficult to find common ground with the more conservative members of my own religious tradition, whether conceived of more narrowly as "Catholicism" or more broadly as "Christianity."  I am slowly losing the willingness to "see things from their point of view."  And, there is a definitely a part of me that wonders whether this does stem from a lack of perspective, a lack of charity, a lack of balance. But, I don't think so.  And the reason I don't think so is well expressed in this essay by James Alison, one of his best among his many great writings.   The essay, on its face, relates to the issue of in the inclusion of LGB...

Martin O'Malley, the former governor of Maryland, wants to run for President of the United States.  In doing so, he is going to be asked about gay marriage.  But, Governor O'Malley has a problem--he's a Catholic.  So, he is going to be asked about how the Catholic position of the question impacts his own views. He gives a typically political, mealy-mouthed answer .  And, equally typically, he gets slammed for it by people like Deacon Kandra.  Indeed, Kandra cites to some document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which purports to outline obligatory standards for what Catholic politicians should do in the context of the gay marriage debate.  And this document is unambiguous: When legislation in favour of the recognition of homosexual unions is proposed for the first time in a legislative assembly, the Catholic law-maker has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote against it. To vote in favour of a law s...