Lead-off Batter

Having just called my 95 year-old cousin with COVID-19 in a rehab facility in New Jersey, I am especially appalled by this comment from Cardinal Timothy Dolan to President Donald Trump, described in Crux:

The New York cardinal said he was “honored to be the lead-off batter, and the feelings are mutual sir,” noting that the two had been on the phone often in recent months and joking that the cardinal’s 90-year-old mom in Missouri says “I call you more than I call her.”

What feelings might those be? The president said to Dolan he is “a ‘great gentleman’ and a ‘great friend of mine.’” “The feelings are mutual, sir.” Really?

All this occurred on an April 25 phone call between Catholic bishops and Trump first reported in the Crux article. Educators and cabinet members were also on the call, ostensibly to discuss federal aid to Catholic education. Trump wandered off into pro-life and a few other issues and suggested that he is the “best” president “in the history of the Catholic church.” Whatever that means.

Google “Dolan and Trump” if you want a small sample of the articles written about this, mostly in the Catholic press. Search for “Dolan” on NCRonline.org if you want even more.

I have been moved to write about this after all this time for two reasons. The first is to publicize the activities of Catholic Organizations for Renewal, of which WOC is a part.

On May 8, 80 people on a phone zap coordinated by Call to Action initiated 139 calls or emails to US bishops. The message? “A bishop’s responsibility in public is to speak truth to power on behalf of the poor and marginalized, not to make partisan alliances—especially not with a president who enables white supremacy.” They asked the bishops to join the many Catholic leaders who have spoken publicly to disavow any connection between the church and the Trump campaign. You can read the report—with a summary of bishop response—on the CTA website. You can also get involved in this or future actions.

The immediate future action is Pentecost evening, Sunday, May 31, on Zoom from 7 to 8 pm Eastern. Co-sponsored by Benincasa Community, Call To Action, Catholics for Choice, CORPUS, DignityUSA, FutureChurch, Quixote Center, Roman Catholic Womenpriests, Southeastern Pennsylvania Women’s Ordination Conference, WATER, and Women’s Ordination Conference, it’s a vesper service which shifts the focus to another social justice issue: immigration. The Bishops themselves have issued statements critical of the Trump administration’s policies, but that didn’t seem to come up on the call. To participate, register here.

The other reason I am writing now is new NCR executive editor Heidi Schlumpf’s opinion piece online Thursday. She writes about U.S. Catholic’s decision to “unpublish” two articles that the magazine had posted online: “President Trump cannot have the Catholic endorsement” by Stephen Schneck, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Franciscan Action Network, and “Cardinal Dolan’s public flattery of Trump forgets a few things” by Steven P. Millies, associate professor of public theology and director of the Bernardin Center at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Both articles treat the relationship or lack thereof between Catholic social justice teaching and Trump policies, and could be the platform for the COR campaign. They’re now on NCRonline.org. If you read only one thing because of this blog, read one of them. Or both.

Why is one Catholic publication able to put these articles out to the wide world and the other not?  Schlumpf writes, “The lay editors at U.S. Catholic had editorial independence — until they didn’t. The publication’s association with a religious order meant they were ultimately not free to make independent editorial decisions.” The Claretian Missionaries, like the Jesuits at America and many others, find it necessary sometimes to “toe the line.” In contrast, lay people edit and manage NCR, and Commonweal, The Tablet, and Le Croix International, so they are free to decide the positions they take and the stories they cover.

And somehow women’s ordination is always lurking when there are issues of truth and transparency. Schlumpf writes about her 2002 article, “Call Waiting: The stories of five women who want to be priests.” It made into the print edition of U.S. Catholic but then “the article [came] to the attention of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.” There were negotiations. “Since the article dealt with women’s experiences, not directly with church teaching, the Claretians (and the canon lawyer who assisted them) declined to retract.” Ultimately, they published – “in very small type” – John Paul II’s 1994 apostolic letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis and the CDF’s 1995 Responsum ad Propositum Dubium, the first forbidding women’s ordination and the second saying Catholics have to believe that.

I am thrilled that the woman who was part of these decisions at U.S. Catholic is now leading NCR. This is the real ball game for us. Schlumpf can hit it out of the park, or even just into the stands. We will know the score. Truth and transparency will be the criteria.