UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Ken Briggs | Jul. 4, 2013 NCR Today
A fellow non Catholic had heard about the alleged though plainly documented charge that the cardinal archbishop of New York had won Vatican permission to hide $57 million to keep it out of the hands of victims of priest child abuse who had won their suits against the church. Noting that this kind of money scheme sounded to him a little like Apple Computer scheming to avoid paying taxes, he wonder whether it was any more likely than any of a long string of scandals to cause American Catholics to revolt.
It’s an Independence Day question or a sort. In the Declaration, the fired up patriots had had enough of double dealing and callous disregard of common decency by King George III. Though many colonists fiercely defended remaining within the British Empire, sentiment, Thomas Paine pamphlets and a visceral desire to run their own businesses eventually won the day.
American Catholics may feel their their faith based institution is demeaned by the spectacle of evidence that the cardinal manipulated money to deprive victims of funds they were apparently entitled to at the same time that he vowed to continue leading the “moral” charge against the Obama Administration’s insistence that church institutions provide contraceptives to employees who want them without having to pay a red cent for such services. It was earlier revealed that Dolan’s archdiocese has been supplying such services under a similar agreement with New York unions for many years.
But nowhere do Catholics in this country show the least inclination to assemble the fife and drum corps in the cause of breaking from Rome. They don’t have to, I theorized to my friend, because they already have. While they may feel a growing anger at the church in the wake of painful assaults on the image of the Catholic church, they have nothing to gain by marching away, though many have quit the church. Though millions of the laity care deeply about the round of moral and theological questions from birth control to the ordination of women, the bond of compliance has been largely broken and they have silently declared independence from their bishops. The moral and mental landscape has shifted toward a position where the old rewards and punishments have diminishing effect.
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