Columnist's solution for disobedient Catholics: 'Get out'
Says a smaller Church purged of 'bad Catholics' would be a better one
- Gary Wills
- United States
- June 26, 2012
Former New York Times editor Bill Keller thinks it sounds shocking that he agrees with the Catholic conservative Bill Donohue, but he need not be disturbed. Some of us have long thought he was closer to Donahue than he pretended.
Keller ran the paper of record when it cheered on the Iraq War. Now he is a columnist for the same paper, where he promotes disasters like Donohue. Donohue is president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, which means that the more fatuous bishops get, the more furious Donohue gets in defending them.
He recently defended the Vatican’s inquisition into the Girl Scouts for having supported Doctors Without Borders, which gives out condoms to prevent AIDS. I am sure he is chafing to join the assault on Sister Margaret Farley for arguing that masturbation is not a mortal sin.
In the Times of June 18, Keller praised Donohue’s new book, Why Catholicism Matters. What he particularly liked is the way Donohue argues that half of Catholics should just leave the church they pretend to believe in. Only those who attend church regularly and “pay the bills”—a number Donohue estimates at 50 percent—should be considered real Catholics. They will be better off without the other 50 percent—because, as he quotes Benedict XVI before he became pope, “Maybe a smaller church would be a better church.”
Keller puts the matter even more punchily. He tells the useless half, “Summon your fortitude and just go.”
On nuns, too, Keller is even harsher than Donohue, who simply says that some sisters “have totally lost their moorings.” Keller mocks the nuns going to Rome to protest papal criticism of them. He tells them: “Unless you plan to grovel, no one will be listening. Sisters, just go.” He even suggests they should be bribed to help them skedaddle. If, after a life of service, a nun should “find church teachings incompatible with her conscience, [she] should be offered a generous severance. We could call these acts of charity ‘Dolan Grants.’”
Keller no doubt considers himself one of Donohue’s good Catholics, who will be better off without us “bad Catholics” who do not blindly follow Vatican teachings. But there are far more of us than the 50 percent the two Bills consider salvageable. Multiple polls have shown a majority of American Catholics in disagreement with Vatican precepts on contraception, abortion, the male priesthood, in vitro fertilization, the celibate priesthood, and divorce (Donohue and Keller have both been legally divorced).
Full Story: Keller to nuns: Get Out!
Source: New York Review of Books Blog
Keller ran the paper of record when it cheered on the Iraq War. Now he is a columnist for the same paper, where he promotes disasters like Donohue. Donohue is president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, which means that the more fatuous bishops get, the more furious Donohue gets in defending them.
He recently defended the Vatican’s inquisition into the Girl Scouts for having supported Doctors Without Borders, which gives out condoms to prevent AIDS. I am sure he is chafing to join the assault on Sister Margaret Farley for arguing that masturbation is not a mortal sin.
In the Times of June 18, Keller praised Donohue’s new book, Why Catholicism Matters. What he particularly liked is the way Donohue argues that half of Catholics should just leave the church they pretend to believe in. Only those who attend church regularly and “pay the bills”—a number Donohue estimates at 50 percent—should be considered real Catholics. They will be better off without the other 50 percent—because, as he quotes Benedict XVI before he became pope, “Maybe a smaller church would be a better church.”
Keller puts the matter even more punchily. He tells the useless half, “Summon your fortitude and just go.”
On nuns, too, Keller is even harsher than Donohue, who simply says that some sisters “have totally lost their moorings.” Keller mocks the nuns going to Rome to protest papal criticism of them. He tells them: “Unless you plan to grovel, no one will be listening. Sisters, just go.” He even suggests they should be bribed to help them skedaddle. If, after a life of service, a nun should “find church teachings incompatible with her conscience, [she] should be offered a generous severance. We could call these acts of charity ‘Dolan Grants.’”
Keller no doubt considers himself one of Donohue’s good Catholics, who will be better off without us “bad Catholics” who do not blindly follow Vatican teachings. But there are far more of us than the 50 percent the two Bills consider salvageable. Multiple polls have shown a majority of American Catholics in disagreement with Vatican precepts on contraception, abortion, the male priesthood, in vitro fertilization, the celibate priesthood, and divorce (Donohue and Keller have both been legally divorced).
Full Story: Keller to nuns: Get Out!
Source: New York Review of Books Blog
