Global Courant 2023-05-19 23:43:39
If you are a right-wing Catholic in the United States who profess to follow the way of Christ, what should you do in these difficult days?
Should you go to the US-Mexico border to help asylum seekers waiting to get in – the latest in the waves of Catholic immigrants who have filled this country’s pews since the days of Lord Baltimore?
Should you visit the homeless and offer them food, clothing, and shelter to fulfill the passage in the Gospel of Matthew that heaven will come to those who give such care to the stranger?
Should you give comfort to the meek, give alms to the poor, comfort the shunned people Jesus surrounded himself with and pleaded for again and again?
Or do you just hate?
As a progressive Catholic who reads and hears the other side to challenge my own views, I have shaken my head in grief that those on the right have largely chosen the latter.
Always a spiteful bunch against my kind and anything that deviates from what they consider “traditional,” conservative Catholics have thrown attack after attack since Pope Francis became head of the Church a decade ago. They mocked him as a renegade, helped get Donald Trump into the White House and created a shadow faith complete with their own schools, conferences, media and leaders far from the far reaches of the Vatican. Modernity and tolerance, not poverty and prejudice, are the enemies in this world that loves nostalgia.
They don’t care that church attendance continues to fall or that there is a Catholic in the White House in Joe Biden. They believe that to survive in a godless America, Catholicism must be a stark, humorless orthodoxy exemplified by the five conservative Catholics who make up the majority on the US Supreme Court.
That explains the furor in those circles when word got out that the Los Angeles Dodgers were planning to honor the local chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence with a Community Hero award on Pride Night, scheduled for June 16.
A banner hangs at Dodger Stadium on Pride Night 2021.
(Jerritt Clark / Getty Images)
Consisting mostly of men, the sisters dress as nuns, give themselves bawdy names and are committed to “the proclamation of universal joy and the atonement of stigmatic guilt,” according to their website, while spreading a message of acceptance and charity.
Catholic spoilsports immediately demanded that the Blue Crew withdraw their plans.
US Senator Marco Rubio of Florida has not bothered to denounce his state’s new anti-immigrant law. But he did take the time to write to Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, accusing the sisters of performing “devilish parodies of our faith” – just because they do drag shows.
CatholicVote Chairman Brian Burch — who has previously blamed the January 6 attacks on the Capitol on the “pent-up frustrations of citizens” caused by pandemic shutdowns, antifa and “election irregularities” – said it is reprehensible for the Dodgers to “bring the Sisters into the mainstream and honor them”.
Then there was Catholic League president William Donohue, who has made a career of writing nagging press releases attacking liberalism, and made a cool $1 million for it in 2020, the last year for which there are publicly available tax returns are. He wrote that the Dodgers have “broken bread with the most despicable elements in American society today” — a diatribe shared on the Los Angeles Archdiocese’s Twitter feed.
Despite the fact that the average Catholic fan cares more about the astronomical cost of beer at games than who is honored by the team, the Dodgers succumbed to the complaints of the professional Catholics. A press release stated that they “didn’t want to distract from the great benefits we’ve seen over the years from Pride Night,” and so wouldn’t be honoring the sisters anyway.
But after backlash to that backlash, the American Civil Liberties Union and LA County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said they would not participate in the event unless the Sisters were part of it, and the Los Angeles LGBT Center urged the Dodgers to celebrate Pride Night to cancel. all told – my colleague Steve Henson reported that the Dodgers were “discussing a compromise” to save face.
Here’s an idea, Dodgers President Stan Kasten: Invite the people who actually follow the principles of Catholicism.
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence originated in San Francisco in the early days of the AIDS epidemic. Their clothes were meant to mock the religious zealots who condemned them to hell, even though they cared for AIDS patients when few others did, and raised money for refugees and the city’s poor. That legacy of giving is something that the LA Sisters chapter continues. In the past year alone, they’ve raised money for animal shelters, clothing drives, stories for kids, and Long Beach’s St. Mary’s Medical Center and St. Luke’s Episcopal Church.
What would Jesus do? What the sisters do.
Sure, their performances can be up there – but that’s what drag is, and they perform for the audience for them, be it adults or kids. Besides, laughing at how nuns dress or satirizing Catholic rituals is a time-honored tradition in American humor – just ask anyone who’s attended a parochial school. Gosh, the Bill Donohues of the world better not see reruns of Sally Field in “The Flying Nun” or Molly Shannon’s old Catholic schoolgirl skits on “Saturday Night Live”!
That right-wing Catholic activists would attack an organization like the sisters shows how uncatholic they ultimately are. If these self-proclaimed warriors for Holy Mother Church want to defend the faith, they should start attacking the American bishops and cardinals who have spent decades covering up pedophile priests and are still fighting sexual abuse survivors who want justice. actual spine.
Instead, they have become some of the sharpest Pharisees in the right-wing culture war, especially against anything resembling LGBTQ+ embracing. Donohue’s press release criticizing the Dodgers, for example, dismissed the sisters as “homosexual bigots,” while CatholicVote tweeted that Pride Night should end on every major league ballpark.
In that sense, the Dodgers’ decision to side with them continues the team’s sordid anti-LGBTQ+ legacy, which includes trading Glenn Burke, the first major league player to come out as gay, because of his sexual orientation, and the lengthy denials. by Dodgers legend Tommy Lasorda that his son was gay and had died of AIDS complications.
For the Dodgers and homophobic Catholic rabble, I’ll paraphrase another passage from the Gospel of Matthew that you should all meditate on: Why worry about the alleged stain in the sisters’ eyes when you’re holding a stick the size of a baseball bat? have? in yours?
