By KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ
Posted: 3:42 am
August 17, 2008
Being Catholic now is a tragedy. That is, at least, if you read National Public Radio's Cokie Roberts. "I disagree with the church all of the time. There's hardly ever a time that I agree with it, except on social justice issues."
She's not into Pope Benedict. At the time he was elected she announced, "I think this pope could be a problem." She prays, but only as a soothing habit - like listening to a sea sounds CD from Sharper Image. "I don't hear much. That would be a little spooky."
Since she's not listening to Christ - or his representative, Benedict - Roberts doesn't have a problem reconciling being "Catholic" with what the Church teaches. "They can't run me out of this church no matter how hard they try. And that sense of inclusion that you feel when you are with other Catholics, and with people who have been raised in the same way, and have the same like-mindedness and sense of love and giving, is very strong."
I don't begrudge Roberts love and giving. But her essay in "Being Catholic Now: Prominent Americans Talk About Change in the Church and the Question for Meaning" is, in many ways, meaningless. Roberts doesn't realize that the church hasn't left her, she's left the church.
"Being Catholic's" primary virtue is as an indicator to faithful Catholics - lay, priests and religious - about how much work needs to be done to educate our own flock about what exactly Catholicism is. Large parts of the book, and the premise of it - that anything goes as long as you feel it's Catholic - is scandalous. There are churches that change their doctrines with the times, but they're not Catholic.
Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Robert F. and editor of the collection, announces that she also has issues with Benedict. She complains: "Before becoming pope, Cardinal Ratzinger was a staunch defender of the magisterium of the Catholic Church," where, as prefect of the Congregation on the Doctrine of the Faith, he elucidated Church doctrine on issues that American Catholic dissenters would rather the Church left alone.
