The pope's Catholic problem

[rug]

February 12, 2014
By William Saletan

WASHINGTON — It's not easy being pope. You have 2,000 years of tradition to defend. You have piles of doctrine and an ecclesiastical bureaucracy. Meanwhile, you have liberals clamoring for change. And then there's your boss.

To navigate these difficulties, Pope Francis recently instructed bishops to survey their flocks about various social issues. The issues included birth control, premarital sex, divorce and gay marriage. The purpose of the survey was to reconsider not the church's teachings but how it communicated those teachings to the faithful.

Catholics in Europe and the U.S. knew what the results would be. Findings released last week in Germany and Switzerland showed a wide gap between the church and its followers. An independent survey released last weekend by Univision confirmed a similar gap in the U.S. On every issue, American Catholics are more liberal than the church's teachings.

The Univision poll found that 54 percent of U.S. Catholics supported same-sex marriage. Fifty-nine percent supported admitting women to the priesthood. Sixty percent thought Catholics who had divorced and remarried outside the church should be eligible to receive Communion. Sixty-one percent thought priests should be allowed to marry. Seventy-six percent thought abortion should be permitted at least in some circumstances. Seventy-nine percent supported contraception.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-pope-francis-catholics-perspec-0212-jm-20140212,0,2468990.story

[WildeKurt]

1. It isn't the Popes problem

Morality is not a popularity contest. Nor is the Church a democracy. Never has been, never will be. Moral relativism in religion is for the Protestants.

[rug]

2. The question is not moral relativism but morality itself.

It's everyone's problem.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

3. For example, the Church has a well established set of moral standards for war

The "Just War Theory". (I can post on it if anyone is interested.) I could see a similar set of standards for abortion. Did you know that the Jewish Talmud allows abortion to save the life of the mother, under an argument based in self-defense.

Or how about allowing the divorced and remarried to go to communion. After all, as I have said several times before, the Eucharist is spiritual food, not a reward for being good. Do you really believe that Christ would refuse to help those who might need it most? Plus, there is the simple fact that the overly restrictive rules on divorce were made, in their entirety, by a group consisting solely of unmarried men. Remember Matthew 23:4, where Jesus complains that the Pharisees "tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them."

To say that the arguments against the ordination of women are weak is akin to saying that water is wet. I posted on it at length in the thread http://www.democraticunderground.com/12211141 The basic argument is that women are inferior to men.

Married priests? There already are married priests, even in the Roman Rite -- married Episcopalian priests who convert stay married.

The argument against contraception is based more on Roman Stoicism and a distrust of sex (even fear of it in some cases) than it is on anything in the Bible. Again, it was devised by a group consisting solely of unmarried men.

[IrishAyes]

4. With the high infant death rate back then,

contraception was also frowned upon because it meant less cannon fodder for the armies.

(I like your post, btw; will follow the link shortly.)

[IrishAyes]

5. I've also read that Mother Theresa told JPII to his face that women would make better priests!