Glad to be both Catholic and American

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The liturgical time after Easter, Ascension and Pentecost is oddly named: Ordinary time. What is ordinary about Russia bullying Ukraine, 300 million handguns in the U.S. or American marriages lasting seven years on average? Ordinary time is meant to be the time of the church between the two comings of the Lord: Christmas and the world’s end. We call attention to ourselves, one, holy, catholic and apostolic – even if we are extraordinarily divided, sinful, exclusivist and less than faithful to the tradition of the apostles.
But I am still glad to be Catholic. Did you see the editorial-page essay on Ash Wednesday in the Inquirer by a Jesuit lay volunteer who served in Latin America? He was, too. He narrated some of the heroic witness there, such as how the continent’s bishops met at Medellin in 1968 to better minister to the poor by overturning the longstanding policy of hand-in-glove cooperation with oppressive oligarchies responsible for the suffering of the poor. By doing this they knew they put themselves at risk. While saying Mass, Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated for his outspoken criticism of the junta. He is now in the process of canonization. His friend, Father Rutilio Grande, had been executed for the same kind of courage.
Three religious sisters and a laywoman there were raped and murdered for their activism for the poor. Six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter were massacred by a crack Salvadoran military unit for the priests’ conscience-raising. In Argentina, three Pallottine priests were slain. This is the country from which Pope Francis came. He was then known as Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio when the cardinals in 2013 decided it was time for a new kind of leader.
The saintly Pedro Arrupe as worldwide head of the Society of Jesus appointed Jorge Bergoglio to head the Argentine Jesuits. He coined the term “preferential option for the poor.” The well quoted expression says that God puts the poor first in his love and concern. What does that tell us non-poor?
Pope Francis has been a one-man public-relations giant by engaging millions outside the church, even some who used to belong. Time and Rolling Stone spoke for global secularity in hyping a Christ-like pope who lives in a guesthouse suite of three rooms. He generates not only personal praise. He is succeeding in his objective of restoring alienated Catholics back to membership.
Studies have established that millions left in disgust at the twin disasters of priest pedophilia and bishop cover-up. The former is the sin and crime of 4 percent of priests, a number comparable to married ministers and rabbis, scout masters and school teachers. The latter is the sin and crime of deciding that, as atrocious as the sexual abuse of children and teens was conceded to be, worse would be the publicizing of it by arrest and financial settlement. This was a huge error in judgment and after well over $2 billion has been paid out, we are learning what it means to be a poor church, like it or not.
In the unlikely event that anyone reading this is one such alienated ex-Catholic, I will not simply console. At the risk of antagonizing, let me challenge that person by asking how many abandoned their citizenship as Americans after outrages like Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Roe vs. Wade’s million-plus legal abortions a year, non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the Great Recession with no arrests made yet and mega-bonuses for corporate buccaneers, a greedy obstructionist Congress, 85 handgun deaths each day – and any number of other national-level catastrophes. Not too many, right?
Allowing incompetent or criminal leadership in church or state to convince me to leave my country or my church is shooting myself in the foot. I need and I value my membership in both. I cannot imagine my surrendering either because of some criminality of strangers as sin-prone as me. I would have to have an ulterior motive and perhaps a hidden agenda for me to throw away my membership because of some other church member or citizen.
I conclude by observing that each year Catholics worldwide are martyred for their faith. No other religion or civil government spends as much to help the poor of all faiths worldwide. So we must be doing something right despite our many sins.
Because these things are so, the Second Amendment must be repealed.