There's been no shortage of commentary on the Saint Patrick's Day parade next year in New York. For decades, the leaders of that parade have resisted the temptation to allow gay and lesbian groups march under their own banner. But, facing the loss of sponsorships and media coverage, the parade organizers have decided that they will allow at least one gay and lesbian group to march with it's banner in the parade. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who is scheduled to be the grand marshall has supported the decision.
For an example of the reactions check here, here, here and here.
Part of me thinks this is normal New Yorker arrogance: ascribing international urgency to what is, after all, a local issue. Who cares if they have a parade or not? New Yorkers may not like to hear this, but I don't really care what they do and who they do it with.
However, this post resonates with me. I certainly understand the feeling of being hung out to dry when trying to uphold Church Teaching. You feel like you're doing your best to present a consistent, positive message that is logically airtight and irrefutable, and the Pope says "who am I to judge?" Or the Bishop undercuts you, or your parish priest contradicts you from the pulpit. So few people bother to explain the faith, especially the controversial bits. It seems the Church should be supporting the ones that do, and yet they are the ones that seem to get left out to dry.
But in this case I wonder if the angst isn't misplaced. As I said before, it's just a parade in New York. The parade committee is unknown to me: are they Catholic? Are they ONLY Catholic or mostly Catholic or normal-percentage-based-on-society Catholic? I am aware that the Archdiocese of New York does not control the parade, though I assume it has some influence over what happens at the parade. And a quick check of the Catechism of the Catholic Church reveals nothing about the composition of a St Patrick's Day parade. So it seems to me that if they previously did not include gays marching with a gay banner, it was because that's how the parade organizers felt the parade should be handled. And if the new parade organizers feel differently, then it's their call (I'll get to Cardinal Dolan in a bit).
That's called a "prudential judgement" and it comes down to (1) Who has the authority to make a decision and (2) what's his decision. If he doesn't chose wisely, well it's his decision. If we're talking about a politician then you can vote him out of office. If it's an employee, you can fire him. If it's a businessman, you can boycott him, but it's his decision. The trouble here is that I suspect people were reading too much into the decision in the past and (possibly) too much into the decision this year. It may be that the previous parade organizers felt that making sure no one marched under a political or activist banner was consistent with Church teaching. Or they may have felt it was just a prudent rule to prevent protests or riots or other distractions (can't have the Democrats throwing tampons at the Republicans). Or both or none of the above. They may have just thought it was tacky to have such a group in the parade. I don't know.
However, people will get called on this who have no say in the matter. Joe Catholic standing at the coffee pot gets approached by Rick Noncatholic who says "Hey! In NBC's New York News show that the broadcast nationally, as if New York is the only place in America, they said you catlix won't let gays march in the Paddy's Day parade? What's up with that?" And poor Joe will have to come up with an explanation. Since he was approached as a Catholic, he may feel the need to have a Catholic explanation. So he says it's Church teaching that gays can't be in the St Patricks Day Parade, and he may really believe it. But then years later when a new group takes over the parade and they let the NBC gay club in, he feels betrayed.
But it was never Church teaching. It just seemed like it. It was always a prudential decision.
In a way, I think that people are afraid of these decisions. If you can cite chapter and verse in the Catechism you can say "don't get mad at me! This is coming from Rome, what do you want me to do about it?" But if it's a prudential decision, then the buck stops here and you're judgement can be called into question much more easily (your judgement will be called into question no matter what, but you have nothing to hide behind if this is just your call).
So what about Cardinal Dolan's role in all this? Well, he's had a bad spell. First he cheers on the first openly gay NFL player, then he wants to shut down the only daily TLM in New York and merge the TLM parish with a LGBT parish, then he wants to let gays into the St Patrick's day parade, then he holds up the cause for Archbishop Sheen's sainthood. What happened to the most loved Bishop in America? It seems like the new Archdiocesan motto is "Gay is OK, Traddy is baddy". Some of it's probably vindictive reporting, but I think he could probably get better people to inform him of what's going on. It's hard to believe, for instance, that he didn't know about Michael Sam before he commented on Michael Sam. There was little else in the news at the time. He SHOULD know those things, especially when he's going to be interviewed. He needs to be ready to talk about what's on the interviewer's mind.
The other thing is he could probably explain himself better, or more. Perhaps he doesn't think he needs to, being a Cardinal and all. But it might help if he explained what a prudential judgement is, what sin is, what is not a sin. Left to their own, people will derive all kinds of motives for other's behavior. If someone decides that whether gays march in a parade is a matter of Catholic Dogma, then they'll be pretty upset when it changes on them. They either need to humbly climb down from the soapbox they created for themselves, or they will decide that they are the only TRUE Catholics and everyone else is caving in the zeitgeist (there may be a cave in, but it's not identical with a betrayal of Church teaching.) And the same with the other stuff.
Since you're probably wondering, for the record, I wish Cardinal Dolan would NOT be in the St Patrick's day parade, that he would keep the TLM Parish open, that he would cooperate with Archbishop Sheen's cause and he'd preach a bit more about the gay lifestyle and how it conflicts with Church teaching. But I don't think he's done anything to be considered a heretic or traitor. It's his decision.
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