Anne Rice and the "plight of the liberal Catholic"

Yikes!  I go away to climb in Wyoming, and come back to MOJ to find it in the grip of vampires!  (I kid, I kid.)  Seriously, though:  Unlike Steve, I find not much to particularly admire, and quite a bit that seems ignorant and bizarre, in the much-remarked Anne Rice Facebook post.  Her "I refuse" litany is misdirected, and says more about her misunderstandings of Christianity ("I refuse to be anti-life"?) than it does about Christianity.  Steve suggests that the "impetus for Rice's decision" is understandable to most "Christian liberal[s]", but I'm going to persist in thinking better of my friends and colleagues who are Christians-who-are-political-liberals, and in thinking that they (unlike Rice) are able to distinguish between fundamentalist distortions of Christianity and New York Times-type attacks on and caricatures of Christianity, on the one hand, and orthodox Christianity, on the other.

Steve also linked to a post by David Sylvester, in which he explains "why he stays in the Church."  (See John 6:  "Lord, to whom shall we go?").  I will put aside, for now, my regret over the use of "liberal Catholic" and "conservative Catholic" in Steve's and Mr. Sylvester's posts, because I am increasingly of the view that these labels are not very helpful in understanding reality, and are too often used as epithets. 

Obviously, if someone like Mr. Sylvester feels caught in a "plight" of some kind, then it is not likely to be helpful to tell him that, in fact, that plight is more imagined than real.  Instead, all I can say is that my own impressions and experiences make it hard for me to see how it is that a Catholic in America today -- living in a typical parish, in a typical diocese -- could really think that Catholics-who-are-liberals are really so put upon.  On almost every issue, those supposedly reactionary "Church leaders" (here and abroad) lend their support to the "liberal" side of political debates.  (In many cases, they are -- in my view -- correct to do so.)  In most chanceries, and in the halls of the USCCB, the politically "liberal" view is (at the very least) welcome.  It is not clear what is all that "conservative" about the life, business, activity, and liturgy of most Catholic parishes.  I suspect that few Catholics (contrary to what some seem to think) actually hear many homilies espousing "conservative" positions on live political questions.  Certainly, one does not want to be perceived as "conservative" at any but a few of our Catholic universities and colleges.  Maybe there are a few thousand hard-core types who, as Steve says, want a smaller, purer Church without fellow-Catholics-who-vote-liberal, but I feel sure that their number is not larger than the number of "liberals" who wish all of the "conservatives", with their abortion-obsession and stubborn refusals to embrace Dan Schutte and Bernadette Farrell, would either leave or get with the program.

True, there are some bishops and clergy who, now and again, insist on making Catholics-who-are-political-liberals feel a bit uncomfortable about the abortion-related agenda and activities of today's political left (and many more who, quite appropriately, insist on making Catholics generally feel uncomfortable about American consumerism, nationalism, and non-abortion-related individualism.)  So, it seems to me that the "plight" of the liberal Catholic is that they are, as Catholics, sometimes made to feel uncomfortable as American political liberals, just as Americans generally are sometimes made, as Catholics, to feel uncomfortable about their sins, faults, and failures.  And, American Catholics-who-are-political-liberals should feel uncomfortable (Anne Rice notwithstanding) with the American left's abortion-related positions (just as American Catholics-who-are-political-conservatives should -- and, in my experience, do -- feel uncomfortable with the often-excessively-individualistic economic views of American conservatives).

I'm glad Mr. Sylvester is "staying in the Church" -- it is, after all, the body of Christ, established by Him -- but I'm not sure he's blaming the right people for his "plight."