Trivial pursuits - important issues ignored at meeting between Pope John Paul II and Roman Catholic bishops - Column

Humanist, March-April, 1998 by Ann Pettifer

The reporter who filed the November 1997 Associated Press story on the Synod of Roman Catholic Bishops from North and South America seemed greatly impressed by the bishops' costume. Meeting in Rome, the church's grandees were decked out in gold vestments and twin-peaked hats for the pope's opening address. While it is customary for the frivolous rich to don extravagant gear for big occasions, it's a touch strange for the followers of a Nazarene carpenter to follow suit. We had been led to believe that the Roman gathering was serious business; the bishops were there to discuss weighty issues. However, it turns out that gold vestments were in keeping after all, as the bishops had taken everything of importance off the agenda.

Issues of distributive justice were shelved. Poverty, international economic relations, and the environmental wasteland being created in the Amazon basin were all displaced in favor of theological hocus-pocus. Evangelization was to be the theme. The pope, in his welcoming address, noted that this was the first synod of the Americas since Columbus "opened the way for legions of missionaries on both continents" -- a feat the pope called admirable. No mention was made of the darker side of Senor Columbus' arrival in the New World, of which historian Howard Zinn has written:

Bartoleme de las Casas, an

eye-witness, described in detail the

horrifying atrocities committed

by Columbus and his compatriots

against the Indians -- which

resulted in the native population of

Hispaniola being wiped

out -- genocide is an appropriate term.

So what does 'this latest burst of evangelizing fervor add up to? The bishops speak of "guiding the consciences of all men and women of good will toward an encounter with Christ, helping them experience the full depth of the mystery of redemption achieved once and for all in the Son of God." Golly. At last, a radical agenda to gladden the hearts of all those disposable street children in Sao Paulo, or the men, women, and children toiling in squalid, unregulated sweat-shop along the Mexican border. Looking to the bishop to provide courageous moral leadership in an increasingly fragile world is fast becoming a waste of time. Their game is trivial pursuits.

Take, for instance, this obsession with costume protocols. Vestments symbolize for these conservative Catholic prelates the species difference between themselves -- the ordained caste -- and unordained lay folk. Sartorial privileges are jealously guarded, and contamination of any part of the sacred wardrobe is strenuously avoided. Recently, a friend o( mine wanted her three grandchildren to wear family baptismal stoles at their baptisms. No stoles, said the priest; the only stole at the sacrament would be around the ordained neck. One begins to sense how rigid and insecure orthodoxy has become when it fears competition from babes -- children entering the priesthood of all believers, to boot!

Vital, spirit-led faith should have a confident moral center that expresses itself as a longing for the just society. But when religion and its guardians become consumed with getting the magic right and tinkering with legal codification you know the rot has set in. With so much in contemporary American life that is morbidly disordered and crying. out for attention, the U.S. bishops' latest wheeze is a proposal for the return of the meatless Friday. To what purpose, you might ask? Apparently to stiffen the resolve of Roman Catholics in their stand against abortion and euthanasia. Naturally, if these fellows lived in the real world, they would know that there is nothing in the least penitential about the meatless Friday. Indeed, there are people for whom the consumption of one of Ronald McDonald's beef patties would itself qualify as penance -- or even an act of self-abuse.

If these guys think they are going to close abortion clinics by having Catholics switch from beef Wellington to grilled tuna one day a week, they are in urgent need of a reality check. Cardinal Law of Boston, who appears to be the chief agitator for this idea, surely could have come up with more effective ways to reduce the abortion numbers. Why didn't he gather a posse of young mothers from the Roxbury area of his archdiocese who had been threatened with the loss of their welfare support, and take them to Washington, D.C., to confront the enemy in the halls of Congress? After that, he could have tried a real penitential fast on Capitol Hill. The sight of a starving cardinal might just help restore benefits to poor women who might well prefer to have their babies -- if they had the financial means.

The bishop of Camden, New Jersey, James T. McHugh, is another representative of the preening episcopal class now making waves. McHugh is currently on a crusade of sorts to quash any serious discussion of the global population problem. From his chancery armchair, he asserts with chilling certainty that there is no such thing as overpopulation. It is clear that he has not done his homework; he also specializes in dogmatic simplisms. Breed, and to hell with those neo-Malthusian Johnnies, is roughly his shtick. His most recent target is William Hollingsworth's book, Ending the Explosion: Population Policies and Ethics for a Humane Future. McHugh follows the mendacious tactic of associating concern about the exploding number of births with the promotion of abortion as a means of reducing fertility. In a letter to the National Catholic Reporter, the patient, civilized Hollingsworth writes: