Dissent and Obedience in the Church

For the full debate, go to: https://www.ncronline.org/news/parish/church-reform-groups-support-call-year-laity#c-2882847
MGB: Revisiting the whole dissent thing. My dissent on LGBT matters and suggestion that doctrine should change has no impact on me, because I am not gay. While I hope my gay brother finds peace back in the Church, he did leave, largely because of the hateful tones. I will not back hate in my name. Whether hate was intended, it was received that way and when you are the Church, you are responsible for how communication lands.
My dissent on abortion is mostly on law, not doctrine. While I do dissent from the illogic of not having an abortion when a trisomic pregnancy that will assuredly kill the child before birth may also kill the mother as long as the child lives, this is a rare case that most doctors would ignore and most confessors would not even require a penance for. On law, whatever the motivation of the Brennan decision on Roe, the logic is correct. Further, it is obvious when some right wing bishop talks about the abortion law in America that they are ignorant and need not be obeyed. The sad thing is that Catholic politicians have not had the courage to correct these bishops on why Roe is not going away, at least not by repeal, that doing so would repeal most privacy law. While the bishops would love to return to rule by a Catholic mob at the state level, most of us would not.
This goes to the big dissent and obedience argument. It is not contraception and marital chastity, the sense of the faithful has already rejected that and we are not leaving. There will be no small faithful remnant that dotes on every word asexual Catholic bishops speak. Like any dysfunctional organization, we simply ignore the powers that be.
The big argument is about elections. The bishops long for the day that they can speak from the pulpit and be obeyed in the voting booth. Sadly, this happened this year and we got King Donald the Idiot. It did not happen with Obama, who wisely listened to those who said to attack the movement rather than debate the question. It was not made loudly, but it did work on all the Catholics for Obama sites. Catholics voted for Obama those years in the same proportion of the general population. We will see if we can revise this line of argument for the next election and make Catholics MORE likely to vote Democratic again.
In matters of electoral politics, if the Church really wants to have influence, it will ask us first. The bishops can no longer speak in our name without doing so (especially if the Johnson Amendment is repealed - for right now, the Church cannot speak as a group at all except sideways). Simply have a meeting where we can make our arguments and then vote, preferably by secret ballot, on whom to endorse. We used to elect bishops, so none of this Church not being a democracy thing is relevant. It started as one and did well. Of course, the arguments may change some minds, which is the last thing the bishops want, since Truth has a liberal bias.