When it comes to bigoted anti-Catholics ads this one takes the cake even for the New York Times. If atheists published Chick Tracts this is what they would look like. Though maybe Chick Tracts are downright ecumenical compared to this.
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Full text at the Creative Minority Report.
I find it also rather interesting in a strange way. For one they seem to consider liberal Catholics to be brothers-in-arms and rightly calls them dissenters. There is some truth to this understanding as atheists have a moral worldview quite similar to dissenting Catholics. If by their fruits will you know them how can you differentiate the fruits of dissenting Catholics from secularist atheists? Exactly what would divide them as far as practice goes besides the obvious belief vs. unbelief in God. When it comes to the issues of the day they are locked step in agreement. Moral relativism with no foundation in unchanging truth embraces both camps.
Reading through this screed I really can’t see where there view departs from dissenting Catholics and lines like “Why are you propping up the pillars of a tyrannical and autocratic, woman-hating, sex-perverting, antediluvian Old Boys Club?” could easily appear in the National Catholic Reporter. Funny though how these atheists are upset about the lack of women priests when they don’t even believe in God.
In some ways though this ad asks the right questions. Why are dissenting Catholics who have such a negative view of the Church and who disagree on foundational questions remaining Catholics? The Protestant reformation did not start out to leave the Catholic Church, but they came to understand that their ecclesiology and theology was such a departure that they were forced to leave. As incorrect as this understanding was, it at least had a follow through in measure with their beliefs.
If you imagine you can change the church from within — get it to lighten up on birth control, gay rights, marriage equality, embryonic stem-cell research — you are deluding yourself. If you remain a “good Catholic,” you are doing “bad” to women’s rights. You’re kidding yourself if you think the Church is ever going to add a Doctrine of Immaculate ContraCeption.
Now here is a back-handed compliment if I have ever seen one. This groups has a better understanding of the Church than dissenters do. The Church indeed is never going to change one of dogmas whether it concerns hot buttons issues or more obscure points of theology. The Church is never going to u-turn on her magisterial teachings because truth itself is unchanging. We can come to a better understanding, but not a reverse understanding.
The Amish, as Pollitt points out, don’t label cars “an assault on religious liberty” and try to force everyone to drive buggies. The louder the Church cries “offense against religious liberty” the harder it works to take away women’s liberty.
I guess they didn’t realize how ironic their example is since the Amish are exempt from Obamacare which is all that faithful Catholics are also requesting. As usual liberals are irony-deficient in framing the debate as a forcing of beliefs while they attempt a Borg like assimilation forced at the arm of government that extends with a fist.
Now the actual question of why dissenters remain Catholics is not going to be answered here. People are quite complex and their are no one theory fits all explanations. There are complexities of culture which include tribal Catholicism along with aspects of being drawn by grace. I’m certainly glad that God didn’t give up on me as a once very liberal atheist. While I might wonder why dissenters remain in the Church and don’t follow their ideology into Anglican/Episcopalian channel I still pray for them to come into a fuller understanding and love of the Church that Christ gave us. They might be wrong about the Church’s teaching, but they are not wrong that this indeed is the Church.
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Ya know, I saw this today and need to make a confession. I have been thinking about telling all of the nominal Catholics to shape up or just ship out. Release your inner Protestant and just go. I have the misfortune of living next to the Diocese of Rochester where women who are members of the Womens Ordination Conference are Pastoral Administrators and they give homilies. Earthen ware and glasses are used at communion time. I just want to tell them that if the Church is so bad, they are so oppressed, the rules are so wrong… just go. Why put us all through such turmoil? Anyone who reads online forums or comments in blogs and online news sites knows that everything in that ad is stated on a daily basis. I’m not typically so uncharitable, but between the ongoing HHS Mandate battle and Planned Parenthood supporters in the pew, I really just want to “shake the sand off my sandals” and move on figuring that I prayed, I planted a seed, and just let it go. Our Catholic school is sending middle school aged kids to a youth conference which is co-sponsored by Planned Parenthood next week. I’m tired. I think it’s time for tough love. If you look Protestant, talk like one, act like one, worship like one, believe like one — you just plain are one. So much for my Lent of renewal.
It’s not as easy as that. Even if a person’s connection to the Church is all sacramental and no mental and activity… well, your soul has been forever marked and you’re a body part of Christ’s Body. It’s hard to just walk off when you’re part of Christ’s legs; you tend to bring the rest of the Body along, no matter how hard you try to get away.
Even if you’re just sitting in the pew, even if you’re a sinner of the worst sins, you’re still right next to Heaven and the angels and saints, and Jesus Christ is right there with you. I’m not surprised people find it hard to go; I’m just surprised they don’t turn more to the Lord instead.
Maybe they aren’t leaving the church because they’re hoping they can spread the actual truth. Just because something was always done this way, or that some old guy a thousand years ago decided so, doesn’t make the fairy tale true. FFRF has been an amazing resource.
[…] New York Times Flagrant Anti-Catholic Ads – Jeffrey, The Curt Jester […]
“If you imagine you can change the church from within — get it to lighten up on birth control, gay rights, marriage equality, embryonic stem-cell research — you are deluding yourself.”
Stopped clock!
The worst thing the Church has done for liberal Catholics is to pretend there is nothing wrong. This era has no glory; it’s merely a bunch in dissenters in cahoots with another bunch of losers who don’t dissent but are afraid of their own shadows.
People (read: bishops) think they are being charitable by ignoring dissent, but that’s really just an excuse. In truth, ignoring dissent is merely a self-serving vice that enables everyone to feel good about themselves. God is in second place.
I wish I believed that we could approach this like the Amish, but I don’t think that Congress can even help us: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faRjF3-WGVA
Our government no longer answers to us, and the bishops have delivered us to elites that want to neuter the Church.
@Pepper, if by truth you mean that chemically causing a functioning biological system to fail to function is healthcare, and mandating religious folks violate their consciences is freedom, then you have a long row to hoe.
@BillyHW a stopped clock is also like to a teenaged boy who refuses to see human sexuality as anything beyond his own orgasm. The Church teaches human sexuality in the context of the virtue of charity and the complete, lifelong commitment of self-giving, life-giving love. And she is always waiting for her children to come home.
@ mdavid please read what the Church has been saying about herself – the Catholic Church freely acknowledges the Church is frequently in need of reform. The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried. The great Protestant Reformers of the 16th century reformed by separation, which led to separation as the preferred response to problem-solving ever since. The reformers are usually right about what is wrong, but they are often wrong about what is right. Western civilization owes a great debt to the Catholic Church.
Atheists pretending to instruct believers in how best to serve God, imagine that!
Silly leftists, they’re all “blah blah women’s rights” but oh so silent about men’s rights. Sexists!
I find the timing hilarious. I decided to pray for my enemies this Lent, and I picked Annie Laurie, her mother, and her husband Dan! I saw that their site they were a running Jack Chick-like “Hitler was a Catholic!” screed, so they were my choice. This ad is probably just another prong of their campaign to attract donations from people who don’t like Catholics and hostile to religion on the public square.
FFRF and I go way back. I disliked it even when I was an atheist. I was living in Warren, Michigan, when they went after a church’s nativity set for being too close to the road and after city council for not discriminating when they granted local nonprofits a month of rent-free space for community outreach. One of my friends wanted me to join, but two things rubbed me the wrong way:
1) The members were busybodies. I don’t know what’s in the Wisconsin water, but most Michigan atheists actually LIKE people, even people whose ideas differ from their own. (My people call it “diversity.” Your people call it “corn.”) Banning Christmas decorations and carols from public, flipping out because the USPS offered stamps for Christmas, Hanukkah, and Ramadan – why should atheists behave like joy-sucking Puritans?
2) FFRF reminded me of the Christian churches I hated. Technically it’s one of those legal-eagle groups that employs lawyers to find something to litigate, which is free advertising to donors, which then allows them to pay themselves out of donations – then rinse and repeat. But it reminded me of my hometown’s nondenominational “cult of personality” that seem to thrive on defining an “enemy” (satanic music lyrics, bingo, Methodists, etc.) and getting members to pay to fight for their cause, especially if it involved exotic vacations, erm, mission trips or employing family members to write, produce and star in radio productions. My friend told me that Dan used to be a reverend at a couple different churches and still gets royalties for Christian plays he wrote. So it struck me as ironic that Dan used the same modus operandi but without God as the middle-man: a nonprofit that sells his CDs of free-thinker carols and spreads the Bad News (“death is the end and in the meantime you’re living in a world full of godbags who will annoy you with their godbaggage unless you send us five bucks to sue ’em”).
Anyway, I hope you’ll join me in praying for them and anyone they’re trying to reach with their crusade.
Do the Amish employ large numbers of non-Amish employees in institutions that accept federal funding? If they did, they probably wouldn’t be exempt from the HHS mandate.
Nor do I recall hearing about the Ohio Amish providing serious financial and organizational support to promote Proposition 8 in California. I guess they really do keep their religion to themselves.
Most unlike the Catholic bishops.
Cowalker, that’s such a tired old excuse. Does the government get to change UPS or any other private delivery services’ insurance policies just because the US Postal System contracts out some of their services? Because that’s the type of “government funding” that Catholic hospitals get.
Or are you saying that Catholic hospitals should stop accepting Medicare and Medicaid patients? It would be a real shame in my area, since many of the clinics and small hospitals closed and the Catholic hospitals are the only ones still servicing some of the outlying (read: poorer) areas. Or maybe they should only service their co-religionists, like Sebelius suggested. Yeah, right.
BTW we wouldn’t be having a conversation about the health care system AT ALL if the bishops kept their religion to themselves. Who do you think created public hospitals in the first place? Who created the first hospitals in the US that would serve people who couldn’t afford private physicians? Oh, that’s right: Those idiot bishops following their religious convictions about serving “the least.” The government is a relative newcomer to the providing health care in this country.
God Himself said that he waits patiently for the sinner to repent and return to Him, but not forever. I suspect His allotted patience has run out because the entire flock is in danger because of these dissenters. This is the “housecleaning” we have been praying for. Those who absolutely refuse to repent of their evils and insist upon poisoning the flock with their dissent will no longer feel welcome and will indeed leave.
No one desires the spiritual death of anyone here. If they won’t repent and continue to lure others into their own unfaithfulness, let them be cut off as Christ Himself said would happen. We rejoice that the cancer will be removed, we are saddened that said cancer refuses to become healthy tissue to be regrafted into the Mystical Body of Christ.
Barb
Fiat Voluntas Tua
NY Times is desperate for ad $$$ as their business is in decline.
MissJean- Appreciate your comments. FFRF’s ad reads as a rant of an uninformed middle-schooler.
Decades ago leading up to the Protestant church’s changing their teaching in favor of birth control, advocates of the change said access to contraception would strengthen marriages, help end prostitution, and result in more respect for women. In the 21st century, this has proven to be a lie.
As for the Church’s teaching leading to overpopulation and, thus, an accompanying damage to the environment, how is one to hold the Church responsible for China’s and India’s respective populations of 1+ billion people each. Also, it is the contraceptive using West that is consuming a disproportionate amount of the world’s resources. Environmentalist have argued the US alone w/ its 5% of the world’s population consumes 20% or more the resources.
Actually this add is doing us a favor. I completely agree with the main points:
1. The Church is not going to change defined doctrine on faith and morals (that includes the intrinsic sinfulness of abortion and contraception). They are right. Dissenters and progressives need some reality therapy here.
2. Those who don’t accept the teachings of the Church on faith and morals and consequently find themselves alienated from “The Institution” should just leave and become true to themselves.
3. The rest of this screed is nothing but the overheated foaming at the mouth typical the anti-Catholic bigots. But even the bigots can get things right. And on 1. and 2. they hit the nail on the head.
@Basil, thanks for your intelligent commentary.
I also agreed in those points, I think its really good to be someone true instead of hiding a face of lies.
Jessa
My blog : garde corps terrasse