The Catholic Church and the Doctrine of Mental Reservation, Jeff Epperly, Bay Windows, December 1, 2009

The Catholic Church and the Doctrine of "Mental Reservation"

By Jeff Epperly
Bay Windows
December 1, 2009

http://www.baywindows.com/index.php?ch=opinion&sc=guest_opinions&sc2=news&sc3=&id=99561

Bishop Donal Murray briefing the media last Thursday. Pic: Press 22

Those of us in Massachusetts who’ve followed the Catholic Church’s hyperbolic machinations on LGBT issues since the days of disgraced pedophile-enabler Cardinal Bernard "Daisy" Law, can recite a long list of end-of-days predictions the Church has used to try and derail every single pro-LGBT initiative that has come up on a state and local level. Under the mournful guise of protecting children and families, the Church spent years trying to convince city councils and state legislators that, were we afforded even the most basic civil rights in housing and employment, the world as we know it will come to an end.

Nothing of the sort has happened, of course -- same-sex civil marriage would appear, according to government statistics, to have actually strengthened the institution of civil marriage in Massachusetts, which now has the lowest divorce rate in the nation. The state’s divorce rate is so low -- 2.0 per thousand in 2008 -- you have to go way back to pre-World War II days to match it with even a national rate that low.

Never an institution to allow science and reality to get in the way, that’s not stopping the Church from continuing to spread doom and gloom over same-sex civil marriage from Maine to California. Its latest lame effort in this regard involves the District of Columbia, which is on track to approve same-sex civil marriages. The church announced with great flair that the approval of same-sex marriages in D.C. would force it to stop providing much-needed social services rather than submit to civil anti-discrimination laws.

The Church has since backtracked somewhat in a bit of double-speak that also not-so-mysteriously made an appearance in Maine, saying it did not mean to say that it would stop providing social services, but rather that "without a meaningful religious exemption in the bill, Catholic Charities [CC] and other similar religious providers will become ineligible for contracts, grants and licenses to continue those services."

Of course, we here in Massachusetts know differently, since it was only back on March 10, 2006, that the Archdiocese of Boston announced in response to a law outlawing anti-LGBT discrimination in adoptions that Catholic Charities would cease to provide adoptions at all. "This is a difficult and sad day for Catholic Charities," said Brian J. Hehir, president of CC, to the Boston Globe. "We have been doing adoptions for more than 100 years."

At the time, nobody cancelled any "contract, grants or licenses" or was threatening to do so. Everyone knows that the Catholic Church has been, a likely always will be, in violation of some anti-discrimination ordinance somewhere. But the work of CC has been deemed important enough that they have been given a pass with continued government dollars -- and a tax exemption despite the Church’s habit of meddling in electoral politics. The Church decided simply that its own politics were more important than the needy children it might serve. Don’t fool yourself: they will do the same thing in D.C. if doing so means the Church can continue to scapegoat homosexuality as a way of diverting attention from its own well-publicized failings. Pay no attention to those men behind the curtain, Dorothy.

The Church is in trouble all over the globe, and it seems unable to muster any reaction beyond trying to blame others for shortcomings that become more breathtaking with each revelation. In an ever-widening scandal that is engulfing the Church in Ireland, it was discovered this week that decades of church leaders covering up physical and sexual abuse of children in orphanages and local dioceses were aided by the centuries-old church notion of "mental reservation."

According to a Nov. 26 article in the Irish Times, "one of the most fascinating discoveries in the Dublin Archdiocese report was that of the concept of ’mental reservation’ which allows clerics [to] mislead people without believing they are lying."

The report gives an example. "John calls to the parish priest to make a complaint about the behaviour of one of his curates. The parish priest sees him coming but does not want to see him because he considers John to be a troublemaker. He sends another of his curates to answer the door. John asks the curate if the parish priest is in. The curate replies that he is not."

The report added: "This is clearly untrue but in the Church’s view it is not a lie because, when the curate told John that the parish priest was not in, he mentally reserved the words ’...to you.’"

Put another way, Boston’s Cardinal Law would not have lied if he told parishioners that "priests are not sexually molesting your children" because he thought but held back the unspoken words "right now, that I know of."

This sounds more like a lesson in philosophy from Peter Griffin of "Family Guy" than it does theology, but there you have it.

And they paint us as disordered.