If you are a right-wing Catholic in the United States who claims to follow the path of Christ, what should you do during these difficult days?
Should you go down to the US-Mexico border to help asylum seekers waiting to enter — the latest in a wave of Catholic immigrants who have added church pews in this country since the days of Lord Baltimore?
Should you visit the homeless and provide them with food, clothing and shelter to complete the passage in the Gospel of Matthew that says that heaven will come to those who care for such strangers?
Should you comfort the meek, give alms to the poor, comfort the alienated whom Jesus surrounded and defended again and again?
Or should you just hate?
As a forward-thinking Catholic, reading and listening to the other side to challenge my own views, I shook my head sadly because those on the right largely chose the latter.
Always a bunch of antipathy towards my fellow human beings and anything that deviates from what they consider “traditional”, conservative Catholics have time and again since Pope Francis became a pope. became head of the Church a decade ago. They mocked him as an apostate, helped get Donald Trump into the White House and create a faith in the dark complete with their own schools, conferences, media and leaders far beyond the reach of the Vatican. Modernity and tolerance, not poverty and prejudice, are the enemies in this nostalgic world.
They don’t care whether church attendance continues to decline or about having a Catholic in the White House in Joe Biden. They believe that in order to survive in an atheist America, Catholicism must be a gritty, non-humorous orthodoxy, as exemplified by the five conservative Catholics who make up the majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.
That explains the outrage in those circles when it was leaked that the Los Angeles Dodgers planned to honor the local chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence with a Community Hero award on Pride Night, scheduled ant on June 16.
A banner hangs at Dodger Stadium on Pride Night 2021.
(Jerritt Clark/Getty Images)
According to their website, the Sisters, who are mostly men, dress like nuns, give themselves obscene names and dedicate themselves to “enacting common joy and eradicating the sin of discrimination.” , while spreading the message of acceptance and charity.
The Catholic killers immediately demanded that Blue Crew cancel their plan.
US Senator Marco Rubio of Florida didn’t bother to denounce New state anti-immigrant bill. But he did take the time to write to Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, accusing the sisters of performing “devil parodies of our faith” – just because they performed. drag show.
CatholicVote President Brian Burch — who was previously blamed for the January 6 attacks on the US Capitol on the “pent-up frustrations of the people” due to the pandemic shutdown, antifa and “election irregularities” – saying that it is worth it for the Dodgers to bring the Sisters “to the mainstream and to honor them.” blame.”
Then there was Catholic Federation President William Donohue, Who made a career? write lame press releases attacking libertarianism and make a wonderful $1 million for it in 2020, the last year tax returns are made public. He wrote that the Dodgers “break bread with the most despicable elements of American society today” – a taunt shared on the Twitter feed of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
Despite the fact that the average Catholic fan is more concerned with the exorbitant cost of beer at the games than who gets honored by the team, the Dodgers have succumbed to the complaints of professional Catholics. A press release says they don’t want to “distract from the great benefits we’ve seen over the years of Pride Night,” and will therefore not honor the Sisters in the end.
But after the backlash to that backlash – the American Civil Liberties Union and LA County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said they would not be participating in the event unless the Sisters joined and the Los Angeles LGBT Center Angeles urged the Dodgers to cancel Pride Night altogether — my colleague Steve Henson reported that the Dodgers “talking about a compromise” to save face.
Here’s an idea, Dodgers president Stan Kasten: invite people who truly follow Catholic tenets.
The Order of the Permanent Sisters originated in San Francisco during the early days of the AIDS epidemic. Their costumes are meant to mock the religious fanatics who sent them to hell, even as they cared for AIDS patients when few others did and raised money for the city’s refugees and poor people. That legacy of giving is what the LA Sisters chapter continues. In the past year alone, they’ve raised funds for animal shelters, closets, children’s story time, and St. Mary’s Long Beach and the Episcopal Church of St. Luke.
What will Jesus do? What do the Sisters do?
Sure, their performance might be out there — but that’s the charm, and they perform in front of the crowd, whether it’s adults or children. Besides, laughing at the way nuns dress or mocking Catholic ceremonies is a long-standing tradition in American humour – just ask anyone who’s ever attended a parish school. God, the Bill Donohues of the world better not watch the Sally Field rerun of “The Flying Nun” or Molly Shannon’s old Catholic schoolgirl skit on “Saturday Night Live”!
The fact that right-wing Catholic activists target an organization like the Sisters shows just how non-Catholic they are after all. If the so-called Marian Church warriors want to defend their faith, they should start by attacking American bishops and cardinals who have sheltered pedophile priests for decades. century and are still fighting sex abuse victims who want justice – but that will take a long time. realistic backbone.
Instead, they have become some of the most jarring Pharisees in the right-wing culture war, especially against anything like embracing LGBTQ+ people. For example, Donohue’s press release criticized the Dodgers, calling the Sisters “homosexual bigotry,” while CatholicVote tweeted That Pride Night will end at every major league ballpark.
In this sense, the Dodgers’ decision to side with them continues the team’s own dirty anti-LGBTQ+ legacy, including the trade-off of Glenn Burke, First major league player to come out as gaybecause of his sexual orientation and the long denial of Dodgers legend Tommy Lasorda that his son is gay and died of AIDS complications.
To the Catholic Dodgers and the bigmouthed homophobics, I will paraphrase another passage from the Gospel of Matthew that you should all ponder: Why worry about the speck? supposedly in the eyes of the nuns when you have a bat the size of a baseball bat in you?
