Catholic Church's Image Post Francis

Is there a "Francis Effect"?

The image of the Catholic Church appeared to improve after the new pope, Francis, began talking about the poor, rejected some of the regal trappings of the papacy, and even promised to purge the Vatican and the Vatican Bank of criminals; but, unfortunately for the new pope the sins of the past continue to arise.

Recently we learned that, contrary to his denials, Cardinal Timothy F. Dolan, the head of the US Catholic bishops and presumably one who made a run for the papacy, has been lying about illegally transferring funds  ($57 million) to a cemetery fund to protect the money from being used to compensate victims of clergy sexual abuse. A letter he sent to the Vatican explains exactly what he was doing, although he fails to inform the Vatican that such an action is a crime.

And, then, there is Boston where Cardinal O'Malley  prevented the Austrian priest, Father Helmut Schuller, from speaking at a Catholic parish. The reason? Father Schuller advocates ordaining women and making celibacy for priests optional. So much for openness and dialogue. One has to consider the irony here. A priest who suggests non-doctrinal change in the church is not allowed to speak in a Catholic parish while in the not-too-distant past priests who had sexually abused children were delivering homilies and celebrating mass in parishes throughout the diocese.

(For those of you in the Midwest who are interested in hearing Father Schuller, he will be speaking in Cleveland on July 25 and 26, Detroit on July 26, and Cincinnati on July 27.)

 On top of all this, there is the birth control fiasco. The US Bishops, headed by Cardinal Dolan, and some politicians like Rick Santorum, are going out of their way to make a political issue out of an irrational belief that the use of birth control is immoral. Although they are entitled to their beliefs and are presumably following their own consciences, they wish to impose their beliefs on others who happen to work or teach in a Catholic institution. Catholic and non-Catholic employees of these institutions are rational adults, are capable of following their own consciences and are offended by a church trying to tell them how to have sex.

Not only do the bishops want to tell their employees what to believe, they have gone so far as to turn the concept of religious liberty upside down. They argue that because in the United States they cannot impose their beliefs upon their employees, the church's religious liberty is being usurped. Such logic would have St. Thomas Aquinas scratching his tonsured head. Of necessity, freedom of religion implies freedom from religion, as several founding fathers pointed out. 

Using their convoluted logic the US Catholic Bishops are seeking a "Catholic Exception" to the Affordable Health Care Act. Perhaps it's time they stop playing politics and start acting as humble priests ministering to the impoverished, abused, sick, and downtrodden.

It should occur to the US Bishops that a majority of the Catholic faithful hold Catholic nuns in higher regard than the hierarchy because the nuns are out in the trenches carrying out the Church's Christian ministry. The last time I saw a bishop in a soup kitchen was as part of a photo op with a national politician. But, perhaps I am mistaken; the hierarchy may have recognized the religious women are better ministers than they are and they are therefore attacking these women on "dogmatic" grounds in order to take them down a notch. Who knows? Perhaps many of the US bishops are just confused about their role as good shepherds.