'Selective Catholics' are theologically irrelevant

Joy, joy, joy! A bunch of theologians in Europe have reminded us why they are about as relevant as a shampoo salesman at a bald and proud convention.

Britain’s Catholic Herald newspaper explained it pretty well recently: “More than 140 Catholic theologians from universities in Austria, Germany and Switzerland have called for the Church to end priestly celibacy, ordain women and allow lay people to help select bishops, among other changes,” it reported. “The 143 professors said their appeal was made in response to the clergy sexual abuse scandals that surfaced in Europe last year and that they no longer could remain silent in the face of what they say is a lingering crisis within the Catholic Church.”

Just in case we poor fools in the pews, who really ought to take notice when our betters who teach at universities give their opinion, don’t quite get it, the good professors also demanded “the Church welcome same-sex couples and divorced and remarried couples.” Quite so. The Church should also stop teaching that Jesus is the Messiah, that Mary was a virgin and that good is better than bad.

Actually what these alleged theologians were saying was that the Church should stop being the Church. Be warned; whenever activists argue that the Church should be more democratic, what they really mean is that the Church should listen not to everyone or anyone else but to them. The democracy of the dead, the very tradition that extends from the first century to the present day, matters not a bit to zealots who have far more faith in current political fashions that they do in authentic Catholicism.

The reason the Church cannot ordain women is because Jesus didn’t ordain women. Yes I’ve heard all of the arguments, but if you study ancient history, know the early Church and then apply simple logic, it’s clear this is not about equality or rights but about the teaching and example of Christ, and His authority is more significant than pleasing a tiny minority of people who place their own wants above God’s demands.

Married priests? It could happen, and does in some rites and with a small number of Anglican clergy coming to Rome. The Church, however, always insisted on celibacy after ordination and what some falsely assume to be a medieval invention was in fact older than the Gospels. When the pope emphasized celibacy in the early middle ages he was merely reminding his flock because they had fallen into sin and lapsed observance. Clarification of teaching is not invention of teaching.

As for same-sex couples, the campaign for homosexual acceptance is a dogma of modernist, liberal Christianity and is so flawed as to be laughable. Gay people are loved, but sin is not. We are more than our sexuality, just as we are more than our personal feelings. Of course divorce is serious for the Church, because marriage is serious for the Church. So serious that it’s a sacrament! Divorce is not trivial, marriage is not trivial, children watching mom and dad separate is not trivial, the authority of Christ’s Church is not trivial.

Nor should we be fooled that this latest spasm of political correctness has anything to do with the abuse crisis. That monstrosity had nothing to do with celibacy — abuse figures are higher in, for example, public education and as high in denominations that allow married clergy — and was far more a product of, oh yes, the failure of certain Church leaders to impose the precise authority and discipline that these theologians so detest. If the Church had been stricter in whom it allowed into seminaries and how it reacted to sexual deviancy, the horror may not have happened.

Where the Church is growing, in the developing world and in orthodox circles in Europe and North America, these subjects that so obsess selective Catholics are seldom discussed. Faith, worship of God, feeding the poor, combating disease and leading full and meaningful Catholic lives are far more important than pompous statements. Those poor theologians. Nobody outside of their own little circle cares very much about them, and that makes the darlings angrier than anything.