Offer the World an Alternative Culture
Volume 35 Issue 1, 2 & 3 | Posted: April 4, 2021
The Editor:
A couple of topics that have been on my mind for some time: I believe our Catholic leadership has to be more vocal about “ungospeled” policies of so many of our elected officials today. I am thinking especially thinking of Trump’s tenure. And yet the American hierarchy remained silent. In fact, I have read many articles about how the Catholic Church was a strong supporter of Trump’s presidency. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, for example, is a close friend of Trump, and reported that he speaks more often with Trump than he does with his own mother. I understand that the Catholic hierarchy has to be guarded about partisan politics, but the baptized are called to be counter-cultural, or as Mary Jo Leddy once said, we must not condemn the beliefs and actions of our sisters and brothers, but rather, to offer the world an alternative culture. It seems to me that the Western Catholic Church is not doing that.
Secondly, our church has to expand its understanding of pro-life. Again, our Catholic leadership is consistently vocal about the evils of abortion, but I hear too little in homilies and diocesan initiatives about the many more faces of anti-life: the marginalized, the addicted, the sexually, emotionally, and physically abused, people fleeing horrific circumstances in their homeland, racism, gender bias, elder abuse, etc. Catholics must demand more from their governments than a one-issue platform such as abortion. Trump was supposedly anti-abortion, to the delight of a majority of Catholics, but there was little else in his leadership that affirmed that he is pro-life.
Be well and be happy.
Jerry Zimmer, Devon, AB