Apparently, EJ Dionne’s piece about why he isn’t leaving the Catholic Church generated a huge feedback at Kaplan. We got a lot of interesting responses here too. Aimai:
You belong to a criminal conspiracy of rapists and thieves and you are no more than a beard, interchangeable with any widget that likes incense and history and is willing to look the other way.
It seems to me that DougJ, rather uncharacteristically, is making the same mistake that the media makes.
To wit: he allows the hierarchy to speak for the institution.
But as we’ve seen in all those polls, that’s just not the way it works in real life. He’s right that the Official Story has it that “Catholics are deeply concerned about how important it is to ban gay marriage and in vitro fertilization!” and whatnot, but that story is wrong.
It’s true that the Church-going Catholics I talk to don’t listen to anything the crazy ass bishops say. But, for me, I would not join any club that would have someone like Joe Ratzinger or Karol Wojtyla as a head member. I can understand thinking “Joey Ratz is an asshole, he doesn’t get to win, we get to win”, but I think conservatives are like termites or black mold. Once they’re really in the foundation, blow the this shit up and start over, because you’ll never get them out. If that means that I have to leave this country, or this planet, someday, so be it.