UNITED STATES
The Columbus Dispatch
By JoAnne Viviano
The Columbus Dispatch
Sunday July 1, 2012
Some Roman Catholic nuns are being compared to Martin Luther and referred to as radical feminists for their views on sexuality and the ordination of women.
President Barack Obama is being likened to Henry VIII over a contraception provision in the federal health-care law. (The British king was excommunicated from the church because of his struggles with Rome.)
And bishops are being criticized as out of touch with their flocks for upholding traditional Catholic views despite society’s shifting morality.
Theologians say the disputes have led to what could be an irreparable break between Rome and some U.S. Catholics even as the church recovers from the priest sex-abuse scandal.
“There’s a moral schism going on in the Catholic church, and the bishops are the schismatics, broken from the laity and theologians,” said Daniel Maguire, a theology professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee.Such breaks often lead to membership upticks for other faiths, he said. “As long as the bishops are behaving this way, there are going to be more Unitarians.”
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