The Children of the Dawn

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Jan 09, 2004

Perhaps no step has been as remarkable or courageous as that taken by 23 Chicago priests who signed a letter strongly objecting to "the increase in the use of violent and abusive language" in Vatican declarations directed at gays and lesbians. ... [I]t is impossible to find even that ecclesiastical vacuum where language is scrubbed entirely of psychological and political meaning. The language of recent Vatican decrees on homosexuality arrives dripping with political and cultural baggage, a linguistic Molotov cocktail thrown into the circle of civil discourse.

Pity the gang at the National Catholic Reporter. At the beginning of the 1970s they were bursting with enthusiasm to share the Gaudium and spread the Spes. Then Roe vs Wade came down and they spent the next 30 years ignoring the central moral crisis of their lifetime -- as if progressive Catholics in Germany in 1943 had insisted the principal social justice issue of the hour was flex-time for Bavarian waitresses.

Now, having contracepted themselves into oblivion, they stare at a mantlepiece crowded with pictures of dead pets, and try to fire up some of the old revolutionary fervor on behalf of, on behalf of ... "Hey Rosemary, what was our letter to the Nuncio about yesterday?"

Right. On behalf of gay priests.