Tom Doyle Endorses Bob Hoatson’s Reflections on the Elections

By Tom Doyle
Voice from the Desert
November 17, 2012

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[Bob Hoatson reflects on last night’s election results]

Received by email from Tom Doyle; also carried in the 11.14.2012 issue of the NSAC News.

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Bob Hoatson’s reflections were carried on this blog previously.

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ENDORSEMENT OF BOB HOATSON’S REFLECTIONS

Tom Doyle

When I first saw Bob’s reflections on the election joined with his reflections on VOTF I was struck by how much on target Bob is with his thoughts on both. I suggested that his thoughts get as wide a circulation as possible.

The one aspect of the election campaign that irritated me the most was the clumsy and insulting intrusion of the U.S. Bishops. They viewed the campaign and the office of president pretty much the way they view everything: an entity subordinate to them and an entity that must submit to their scrutiny and their demands. For as long as anyone can remember the bishops have held themselves out to be the official, divinely instituted arbiters and interpreters of moral law, theology and the meaning of the scriptures. Whether their interpretation was true mattered little. If they said it was so that was it! In their way of thinking it is always been better to be right than to be true!

Well, they said what was true about a number of issues over the centuries and in time, usually much time, they were proven wrong and had to admit it. The clarion example is Galilleo who waited over three centuries for posthumous vindication and even then the mitered wizards led by the pope could not come out and simply say “we were wrong.”

The bishops’ collective efforts to unseat the president were an embarrassment to many Catholics who had come to the conclusion that they are adults and can make electoral choices on their own.

Bob’s comments are dead on target. Does that mean that the Catholics who voted for Obama or who voted for any of the other candidates or proposals so vehemently and dogmatically objected to by the bishops are really in mortal sin, as some of the bishops claimed. Hardly! The bishops’ abuse of the sacraments to get their way was not only highly toxic to them and to the institutional church, but was also a glaring dissent from the authentic teaching on the meaning of the sacraments. The bishops and their cheerleaders recoil at the word dissent. They hurl the epithet at anyone who disagrees with them as if a dissenter were the equivalent to a carrier of the plague. But truth is, the biggest dissenters in today’s Church are the bishops if one operates on the premise that at the very core of the whole establishment there must be the example and mission of Christ.

I also share Bob’s frustration with VOTF. In the beginning many pinned great hopes on the organization, born out of the courage of a small group in Boston who were determined to stand up to the despotism of Bernard Law. I’m not sure what happened over the years but VOTF is far from what it started out to be. I had the impression that Church reform became the number one value for the national leadership at the expense of supporting the never-ending procession of victims of clerical abuse and cruelty who simply keep coming forward because the legacy of abuse is endless.

The institutional Church will never reform in a meaningful way as long as the essential governmental structure is monarchical in its operation. The Church has changed its approach to child sexual abuse…. mandatory training, victim advocacy (which is a farce in many dioceses), removing predators from ministry rather than reassigning (usually but not always)…. but it has changed only because it had no choice. It was forced to change and without the force there would have been no change. I have been saying for years that dialogue with the bishops is impossible. It has to be there way or the highway but too many well meaning but seriously naive reform-minded Catholics persisted only to experience the eventual and inevitable disappointment.

Bob is 150% correct. The only way to get their attention is to hold back the money. The local pastor may be a nice guy and may promise that donations only go to the parish but that’s a promise he can’t keep. The bishop can do whatever he wants with the money. Hold it all back and let the pastor tell the bishop that his monthly share of the income is way down because people are fed up with his and the other bishops’ performance. Bob’s last point that we are all victims of a dysfunctional system beyond repair is true. That means that reformers can either bide there time waiting for the kingdom to crumble or do what 30 million have already done…walk away to spiritual freedom.