The vicious cycle of failure. And me.

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Oct 14, 2003

Andrew Sullivan provides us with a suitable companion piece to Bishop Reynolds's rant blogged below:

The combination of the cover-up of sexual abuse and the extremity of the language used against gay people by the Vatican has made it impossible for me to go back inside a church. I do believe that something is rotten in the heart of the hierarchy, that it is bound up in sexual panic and a conflicted homosexual subculture that is a deep part of the Catholic Church. Until that is dealt with, until a new dynamic of hope and honesty replaces denial and authoritarianism, I cannot go on. Am I still a Catholic? I don't think I can call myself such publicly any more. Privately, I think I always will be in some place in my heart. But I cannot enable the vicious cycle of failure and scapegoating that now animates what amounts to the leadership.

Just don't get it. If the Church were wrong now, but per impossibile changed into what Sullivan would have her be, would she then be worthy of respect? Wouldn't he harbor a doubt that, having erred in the past, she might well err in the future -- and indeed be erring in the present about things to which Sullivan has devoted less of his scholarly attention? If so, who needs her?

The post contains one minor masterpiece of self-parody, though. Were Sullivan writing on any other subject, we might think the humor was deliberate:

[There's] A worthwhile piece in the Boston Globe yesterday on how gay Catholics are struggling with a Church hierarchy that has declared war on gay lives and, especially, gay loves and relationships. Since the summer, I haven't written about this much, because it felt increasingly inappropriate to bring such deeply private issues into the public arena.

Quite.