At the First Things blog, Anthony Sacramone looks at the case of a Catholic bishop who refused to let a Catholic scholar speak at a college in the diocese because of the scholar's disagreements with the Church's teachings and speculates as to why such "rebels" remain with the Church:
I love the complaint uttered by one of the parents: that the kids should be able to "hear all sides." What sides? There are no sides when it comes to magisterial teaching. If Johnson wanted to make the case for a liberal, mainline view of marriage, sexual morality, and doctrine, then he should be doing so either in debate with an orthodox Catholic or in a different venue altogether. Does he really not understand the millennium-old theological underpinnings of these matters, as understood by his own church? Again, if he wanted to make the case as an advocate for another church, fine--fight it out in an open forum. But he is doing to the Catholic Church's defined teaching of the sacramental nature of marriage, ordination, etc. what the Jesus Seminarians did to the historical Jesus: refashioning it to fit the comfort zone of neo-gnostic academics.
I have never understood why the dissenters within the Catholic Church--think Garry Wills, James Carroll, and members of Catholics for a Free Pass on Killing the Little Babies--remain within the church. It's a free country. Pick yourself up and walk over to a TEC or ELCA congregation: I promise, they would love to have you.
My guess is, and it's just a guess, is that it would be no fun knowing that the old Catholic Church was still there, teaching all that hoary stuff they simply can't abide. In effect, Rome would have won by simply remaining unmoved. As mainline Prots, these guys and gals would lose their cachet as dissenters. An Episcopalian questioning the Virgin Birth, a male-only priesthood? Yawn...
Time to grow the hell up...
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