Boston Globe columnist Eileen McNamara never lets facts or accuracy get in the way of a good rant against the Catholic Church. For example, in her latest column she accuses Archbishop Sean O’Malley of chastising a Westborough priest for “calling efforts to overturn gay marriage an ‘attack’ on his homosexual parishioners.”
Sorry, Eileen, but if you’d taken a moment to peruse your own newspaper’s archives you’d see that the priest and parish are in the Worcester diocese and the bishop responsible was Worcester’s Bishop McManus.
Then she says of Fr. Walter Cuenin: “The popular, progressive pastor in Newton ousted on trumped-up charges of mismanagement.” She speak in incomplete sentences. In any case, her facts are wrong here too. She has no evidence that the charges were “trumped up.” In fact, Cuenin himself has never denied their accuracy and has indeed pledged to pay back the money he took. Or is this like Dan Rather’s accusation that the Bush/National Guard memos were “fake, but accurate”?
A day I don’t read a rant against the Church in the Globe is a good day. Needless to say, I’m a depressed individual.
Seriously, though, what’sup with the idea that every Priest and layman can speak the truth as they see it? Last time I checked, nobody was forced to join the Catholic Church. If you don’t accept its creed, go start your own Church. Of course, then you won’t get press in the Globe. You’ll just be another nobody in the atmosphere. Priests are not independet contractors. They are commissioned by the Church. If they will not do their job as the Church expects, quit. You don’t have a right to preach heresy and rape God’s people behind the guise of a collar.
And here’s another pet peeve of mine—what about the concept of “full disclosure?”
Columnists, I’m told, are supposed to identify any connections they might have that would possibly prevent them from being objective. For example, former Enron advisers (like Paul Krugman) should always identify themselves as such when writing about fraud, or deceit, or greed, or …. well, you get the picture.
Thus, we could expect a columnist (although not an ordinary reporter, since as you are well aware, opinion never makes it into ordinary news stories, nudge nudge, wink wink) who was writing on the topic of contraception to divulge whether he/she was in the practice of using contraception.
So here’s my point—if priests all over the place are opining aloud about the necessity for gay priests, shouldn’t they (as “persons of integrity”) identify whether they are gay themselves?
Let’s face it, if the practice of journalism (which profession is not exactly teeming with integrity) requires it of its columnists, doesn’t it stand to reason that the priesthood is worthy of at least the same standard of ethics?
Just wondering . . .
. . . because it would be helpful to know how many of those priests who are clamoring for the free exercise of the “gifts” that allegedly celibate gay males bring to the priesthood are themselves allegedly celibate gay males.
Again, just a random thought.
Why those two instances of “allegedly,” Father?
Because I suspect that there are a number of priests with SSA disorder who are not celibate.
I remember hearing—often—while in the seminary (from other seminarians, who themselves claimed to have heard it from faculty) that “celibacy” didn’t apply to gays, because it was only about marriage and gays didn’t get married.
“Loophole ecclesiology” was the rule, rather than the exception, in those days . I think that’s changed, by and large, but there’s still an awful lot of priests out there who were the product of those days.