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At home with Caesar

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The superb columnist of the Boston Globe James Carroll writes perhaps every third of his columns about some aspect of Catholicism. The sins of, and reformation of, his church have long been a focus of his, as they were of his book Constantine’s Sword, the Church and the Jews. His most recent book is Toward a New Catholic Church: The Promise of Reform.

Usually I don’t send his Catholic columns around. But I thought today I might make an exception, not just because we’re approaching the Christmas season, not just because it’s always important when any imperial structure begins to shake, but because, as I read this, I couldn’t help thinking that some of us who love America find ourselves in a situation not so unlike his. Somewhere in us are the American ideals we grew up, yet we face imperious rulers, filled with arrogance, luxuriating in “palaces,” mouthing familiar words of a (democratic) faith, while organizing an imperial world. Unfortunately for us, no one yet is considering auctioning off the Vice-president’s house, now under mysterious “national security” reconstruction, as a penance to feed the hungry, or turning in an aircraft carrier task force or two to fund health care reform. Still, it is the Christmas season, so one can dream. Tom

The sadness of a Catholic
By James Carroll
December 17, 2002
The Boston Globe

CARDINAL LAW’s resignation is a relief in a dozen ways, yet your overwhelming reaction, even as a Catholic devoted to church reform, is one of sadness. Throughout this crisis you have been forced into an intimate relationship with the power structure of the church – something from which, for many years, you kept your distance. You long found it possible to practice the essentials of your religion – belief in God’s real presence, reception of the sacraments, a way to think of death, obedience to the hope of justice – without caring much about the increasingly arcane proscriptions coming from the chancery and Rome. But once the fate of vulnerable children became the issue, you had no choice but to confront directly the neurotic mechanisms of abuse, control, and denial that had wrecked lives and poisoned the priesthood.

To read more Carroll click here

CARDINAL LAW’s resignation is a relief in a dozen ways, yet your overwhelming reaction, even as a Catholic devoted to church reform, is one of sadness. Throughout this crisis you have been forced into an intimate relationship with the power structure of the church – something from which, for many years, you kept your distance. You long found it possible to practice the essentials of your religion – belief in God’s real presence, reception of the sacraments, a way to think of death, obedience to the hope of justice – without caring much about the increasingly arcane proscriptions coming from the chancery and Rome. But once the fate of vulnerable children became the issue, you had no choice but to confront directly the neurotic mechanisms of abuse, control, and denial that had wrecked lives and poisoned the priesthood.

To read more Carroll click here