Washington's Archdiocesan Appeal - My Letter to the Cardinal

 Your Eminence (Wilton):

I cannot in good conscience contribute to the appeal while women are not admitted to seminary and ordained. While I have hopes for the Holy Father including them in the deaconate, I will need to see results before I change my stance. Given the actions of Ecumenical Patriarch Melios and the Great Synod in recognizing Anglican Orders, their ordination of women from the deaconate to the episcopacy, there is no longer reason to resist. 

Resistance is largely the result of the Hellenistic practice of Sacred Continence. It is not of Christ. No act of bigotry ever is. It is based on St. Augustine's misunderstanding of the creation story. It is an allegory on blame, not a historical description of events, The Church has doubled down on this mistake in its resistance to the evolutionary paradigm, which lasted through Humani Generis. While it has mostly ended, there are still those who cling to bad science.

The Church's opposition to homosexuality is also based on bad science. All of God's children are wonderfully made, whether they are gay men who were born after epigenesis in the womb altered their sexual development to non-Africans whose DNA includes neanderthal code, thus lacking the ability to produce adequate melanin (leading to melanoma). There is much biological differentiation in the human species, especially including sexuality. The clergy has more than it's share of gay priests, who are no danger to youth. 

More importantly, the clergy has much more than its share of asexuals. Those whose asexuality is well integrated are also no danger to youth. Those who believe that they are sacrificial heterosexuals can be a danger, especially if they have experienced their own childhood trauma. That Brother McCarrick was not sexually integrated is obvious due to his role as "Uncle Ted."

The Archdiocese has an exemplary record on child protection. Brother Ted (assuming he has taken vows) committed no bad acts while leading our flock. The risk, however, still remains unless the Church comes to grips with the fact that the asexual orientation is neither holy nor sinful, just different. We celebrate all who find solace in their vows, but must do so with our eyes wide open. 

This is a secondary reason for not supporting a fund that supports the seminary - although this ignorance is also behind what is toxic in Catholic sexual teaching. I will not contribute to its continuation. Too many youth have been scarred by counsel to confess the quite normal act of masturbation. The obsession over this in the "Golden Age" of American Catholicism (the 1950s) has to be part of the reason that so many have left the faith in adulthood - although many who attended in the golden age did so for social pressure - what Daniel C. Dennett calls the belief in the belief in God, rather than true faith. Forced faith is not faith at all. Facing these questions with clear eyes rather than calling them sins will give people freedom to return, or not return, as their consciences see fit

This brings us to my other major concern, which is support for the Office of Pro-Life Activities. While Cardinal Bernardin carved out a seamless garment of life to give breathing room to Catholic Democrats, the sad reality is that the pro-life movement - especially at the USCCB level - is a Republican Fifth Column in the Church. It is time to abandon the idea that the pro-life movement has become captured by the Republican Party and attempts to find unity within it are folly. The Church's position on the Affordable Care Act was shameful. It's desire to assert religious power over its employees in the name of religious freedom is a perversion of this concept.

It is unconscionable to support the overthrow of Roe v. Wade's use of federal supremacy. Should Roe be reversed, all federal supremacy on civil rights -from rights to Hispanics to being considered non-whites, to school desegregation to the recent overturn of the Blaine Amendments in Espinoza v. Montana. The existence of the Church in Alabama is entirely due to federal protection of religious rights. While there are those who would do without such protection because it also protects abortion rights, contraception, sodomy and gay marriage, they are, in essence, supporting the tyranny of the mob (when, as Republicans, they are part of the mob). 

On the federal level, abortion in the first trimester can never be banned either, although Congress does have the power under the 14th Amendment to declare the unborn members of the civil polity. The problem is that doing so would require that those recognized be registered. Registering every pregnancy will prevent some from seeking pre-natal care and would assume that women are potential criminals because of their sex. The right to privacy (the right to be left alone) makes the "protection of the unborn" through criminal law an impossibility. 

This does not mean that society is powerless to reduce abortions. The fact is that, until gastrulation, the blastocyst is made up of the chorion (which becomes the placenta) and undifferentiated stem cells. They are not yet an organism. Indeed, most will never be viable because it is only at gastrulation that it is known whether the genetic material makes life possible. Adult stem cells in a petri dish have the same moral status as stem cells at this stage. This being the case, there is nothing morally illicit about birth control itself. Nor is the excuse of Hellenistic sexuality valid, as I addressed above. Because using birth control reduces abortion, it is not only morally neutral, it is morally worthy when it works.

There is one moral problem with birth control, including use of natural family planning. Both are a surrender to the necessity to limit family size due to economic factors. Research also shows that, by far, abortions are sought for economic reasons - so it is true that when birth control fails, some resort to abortion. This is not because of animus for the child, but because they see no economic way out for their family or the child they cannot afford to have (nor do they want to cast the child into the adoption system - there are too many nightmare stories for many to see this as a reasonable alternative).

The solution to both birth control and abortion is economic. After a spike in 1973, the abortion rate has decreased. There are likely three reasons. One, aborted daughters cannot abort their own daughters - although this is a long-term evolutionary effect. Contraceptive use is related to the decline in abortion rates, but so are increases in subsidies to families, both the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit. Enactment of such subsidies is part of the economic (social) security system supported by Pope Benedict XVI in Caritas in Veritae and by Pope Pius IX in Casti Connubii. 

President Biden and Vice President Harris proposed, Speaker Pelosi passed and the Senate has supported this approach in raising the child tax credit to $3000 per year per child and making it refundable (but for only one year). This is progress - although the amount should be doubled, distributed with wages (as an offset to employer payment of quarterly tax payments to IRS) and made permanently refundable.

Supporting such an agenda must be considered an essential vote for a pro-life voting record. Indeed, it should be the only vote on the list. So far, no Republican in the Senate has voted the right way on this. House Republicans, including those who consider themselves pro-life, are also throwing the unborn under the bus - although they may never have supported such legislation in the first place.

Until the Office of Pro-Life Activities insist that support for this measure - and its improvement - is the most important pro-life issue - one can only conclude that it is entirely partisan. Unless the archdiocesan pro-life office (and your Eminence) publicly scold them for such behavior, I cannot, in good conscience, support such partisanship.

I am lowering the bar in my requests. I am willing to contribute beyond my means ($100) once women are trained for the deaconate (Moira would make an excellent Deacon) in our seminaries and the USCCB gives full-throated support to the President's approach to reducing abortion - both in the next 15 hours and on a permanent basis. Encouraging asexual clergy to confront their own status on the LGBTQIA spectrum would also encourage my participation - not for my sake, but for theirs.