Tyler, Texas -- Center of American Catholicismhttps://t.co/ZZkzLAvVC4— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) September 6, 2020
In the 10-minute video, set to ominous music and dark lighting, the priest slams Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Washington D.C., for his criticism of President Donald Trump’s photo-op and appearance at the St. John Paul II National Shrine earlier this summer. He also criticizes Jesuit Fr. James Martin and his closing prayer at the Democratic National Convention; refers to participants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects immigrants who entered the United States as minors from deportation, as “criminal illegal aliens"; and calls climate change a hoax.
It's the attack on Fr. Martin that caught my eye. Of course, this doesn't help, either:
Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, has endorsed a video that includes anti-immigrant remarks and homophobic slurs by a priest of Wisconsin in which the priest claims, “You cannot be Catholic and be a Democrat.”
I know Tyler*, and that sentiment probably goes over well, there, but most people in town when I lived there (lo these many decades ago) probably thought you can't be Catholic and be a Christian, either. Never have been too keen on boundary-line drawing, because of that experience. "Don't judge, and you won't be judged," Jesus said. Nobody pays any more attention to that than to "Do to others what you want to be done to you," or "The first of all will be last and servant of all."
I was going to go into a defense of Fr. Martin, but why give Gregory and Strickland the attention their views (IMHO) don't deserve? I don't think Tyler has changed all that much (although in many ways it has changed a lot); culture, somehow, is immutable. I'm still working on that, but it as true as climate (which shifts but doesn't "change," not the fundamental sense, except over eon; pretty much, I expect, at the same rate as cultural change), but I grew up there, and I still have friends from there (not too many actually there, anymore), and they turned out all right. Not all of them as politically and theologically "liberal" as I am, but they don't hold that against me.
I do think a strong dose of Christian humility would serve Bishops Strickland and Gergory well, but then, it would serve all of us well, especially those of us who profess to be Christians. I always wonder what these guys would say if Jesus showed up and told them "No, that's not what I meant at all." And then I think he'd say that to me, too, so.....
*I actually drove past the cathedral Saturday; twice. Kinda surprised now I didn't see any "Trump-Pence" signs out front. I did see more Biden signs in rural East Texas than I thought I'd see. Actually, more than I've ever seen since LBJ was POTUS. Even saw some in Tyler. That, folks, is almost revolutionary.
This is sad and disturbing. As you know (since you were there), I was married in the Cathedral, and Father Joe baptized my daughter.
ReplyDeleteAnd he was certainly not this way then. The church was of course not a hotbed of liberalism. Noplace in Tyler was. But I understand that the constitutional challenge to exclusion of the children of "illegal aliens" began in the church basement, the case that ended in the Supreme Court as Plyler v. Doe. (You and I of course both knew Plyler and his son, who went to school with us.)
A sign of the times, I suppose. Still, I have to wonder, if a bishop actually says, you can't be Catholic and a Democrat, how many, at this point will say, I won't be a Catholic if it requires me to re-elect a stupid, corrupt, cruel, lying, faithless libertine to the most powerful office on earth.
Who decides who is a “Catholic “? I’m sure the Bishops did once upon a time. But now?
ReplyDeleteNot that that’s limited to Catholics. Lots of people want to decide who’s allowed in their “club.”
Didn’t know that about the Plyler case. Curioser and curiouser.