From www.politico.com
The Roman Catholic bishops need more time. That is the recent word from Sen. Ben Nelson — news reports noted that before he introduces his amendment to restrict women’s access to coverage under health care reform, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops needs more time to review it.
Why is it that the bishops are more concerned with restricting millions of American women from making health care decisions that are best for them and their families than they are with ensuring that millions of Americans — women, men, children, immigrants, the poor, the middle class — get much-needed health insurance?
The simple answer is that they need desperately to remain relevant. And to continue to believe that they still have power over the secular state.
The Roman Catholic Church has been and always will be ruled by aged mostly white men and only men for hundreds of years. Contrary to what they preach, their real gospel is that of self-preservation. The Church is immutable. It took over forty years to overturn the modernization of the Church begun by Pope John the XXIII in 1962. But Pope Benny the Great is making sure that the Council of Trent will once again be the gold standard of Catholic belief and ritual.
When I was a young seminarian back in the late 60's and early 70's, the Catholic Church was in the midst of great change and upheaval. In the wake of the Second Vatican Council, the Church found itself for the first time in centuries being challenged from within and without both doctrinally and theologically. The Church establishment, i.e., the Pope, cardinals, bishops, administrators, etc. had their authority and judgment exposed to questioning and debate. They awoke one morning to discover that the belief system they had been schooled in and now defended was no longer absolute. The "radical" theology of Hans Kung or Teilhard de Chardin were quickly gaining a foothold in the theological studies of seminarians, in Catholic colleges and universities, and in the rarefied atmosphere of Church theologians.
Over the course of the following two decades, a battle raged between the defenders of the established Church and those who sought to revitalize an institution which many perceived as being an anachronism as the twentieth century was coming to a close and the twentieth-first quickly approached. Catholics no longer followed or believed every part of Church doctrine but rather sought to adopt them to how they experienced and practiced their faith in the real world. The esoteric debates lasted for years and only led to disillusionment on the part of the average Catholic further exacerbated by the sex scandals which enveloped the Church.
What began as Pope John XXIII's hope for "aggiornamento" or bringing up to date in order to attract more people into the fold resulted in the opposite. The Church has been hemmoraging congregants by the tens of thousands a vast majority being Americans. One aspect of the "modernization" in my time in the Church was the use of brightly colored enormous banners which were hung about the altar enscribed with either scriptural quotes or similar words of faith. We had a running joke in the seminary that someone should create a banner with the "seven last words of the Church" which was an illusion to Jesus' "seven last words" as he hung on the cross. The seven last words of the Church, we said, would be: "We never did it this way before".
The "Teabaggers" can't hold a candle to the radical conservatives who rule the Church.