There was a rally outside at Sunday services of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in Boulder, Colorado on March 7, 2010 to protest the exclusion of a student from the church's school because the child's parents are a same-sex couple.
This kind of institutional homophobic discrimination is one of the reasons that I have moved from Roman Catholicism to Unitarian Universalism.
There was a very good article about this situation published on March 15, 2010 in the National Catholic Reporter. To read it, click here.
If there are other Roman Catholics who are repulsed by the RC's homophobic discrimination, maybe, like me, they could find a home in Unitarian Universalism.
This is article #9 in a series on Unitarian Universalist Roman Catholicism.
I think that you will find that there actually already are a fair number of former Roman Catholics who have joined the Unitarian*Universalist religious community David. That being said, I know of plenty of Roman Catholics who have chosen to remain Roman Catholics and try to work for reform from within the church. I have said it before but it bears repeating. . . I know Roman Catholics who are much more worthy of the description "religious liberal" than a good number of the U*Us I know.
ReplyDeleteI agree that many good people remain Roman Catholics with the intention of working for reform from within the church. And for a lot of Catholics, being part of a parish is more about community than doctrine.
ReplyDeleteI was Catholic many years ago, so I get all that. But at the same time, I wonder what it would take for these good people to say, "Enough already! This is crazy!" I mean, let's say you can get beyond the overt discrimination against women and gays. Let's say you can get beyond ridiculous rules (in my view) about birth control, sex and divorce. Let's say you've made your peace with the obscene handling of pedophile priests. At what point do people of conscience have to get angry and say, "This is not acceptable and I refuse to be a part of it"?
I'm not asking rhetorically. I'm really curious. Where's the tipping point for liberal Roman Catholics? From the outside, remaining part of an institution that practices discrimination looks a helluva lot like participation in (and approval of) a corrupt value system.