Why We Keep on “Keeping On!”

Dolores M. Klein

Peoria, IL

A Texas southerner, Lyndon Johnson, was the President who said “We shall overcome!” on national television – most surely influenced by the Civil Rights Movement. It was President Ronald Reagan who appointed the first woman to the Supreme Court. He was surely influenced by the Women’s Liberation Movement, even though he had turned against the Equal Rights Amendment at the behest of Jerry Falwell supporters, but had actually as Governor of California, supported its ratification!

Women across the country began running seriously for public office and taking on jobs they had been conditioned to believe were “men’s jobs,” as they fought that “internalized oppression.”

I remember when it was unthinkable that women would be national news commentators, but today they are everywhere. No longer is it true that women columnists limit themselves to writing about cooking and children, etc. (They may now have to deal with the “unexpected consequences” like unequal pay, etc.)

When Catholics saw a representative of The Nuns on the Bus, cheered on at the Democratic Convention, they saw validation of their belief that Catholic social philosophy was nothing like that of Ayn Rand, as proposed by Paul Ryan.

Families everywhere are becoming aware that members of families are gay, and are re-examining their pre-conceived assumptions, giving more success to the Gay Rights Movement.

When we wonder sometimes why we continue to support and participate in Movement organizations, this is why … because we can look back to successes over a period of time. Keep on keeping on!!!

When Will They Ever Learn?

Ed. Klein

Peoria, IL

Those of you who are interested, or more to the point, concerned, about the politicization of the Catholic Church, will discover that our local bishop, the Rev. Daniel Jenky, is only one of the many members of the hierarchy raising loud and extreme voices in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

An editorial in the National Catholic Reporter points out that not one Episcopal voice was raised in objection to the slanderous and absurd claims of Bishop Jenky, who compared President Obama to Hitler and Stalin. Not one openly questioned the wisdom of the extreme partisan fight against health care reform, a fight as it turns out, that was waged on the false claim that the reform would lead to federal dollars used to procure abortions.”

Those members of the hierarchy who by all accounts are in the majority, who are disturbed when the conference is characterized by its most extreme elements need to overcome their reticence – and the unspoken rule that bishops don’t argue in public. They need to let their brother bishops know that outlandish pronouncements and empty threats only diminishes the hierarchy’s already compromised authority.

“The bishops,” the editorial continues, “are so beholden to the huge sums of money dumped on them by the Knights of Columbus that they can’t imagine resisting the political agenda of an organization led by a longtime, high-level Republican operative.”

Bishop Jenky, as I said, is not the only one to voice absurd claims about what will happen with the President’s re-election. Bishop Thomas Paprocki threatens “the eternal salvation” of a person’s soul over the decision to vote for a candidate who may not conform to all of the church’s positions. And Bishop David Ricken is another who has a non-negotiable position, making a similar threat that a vote for the wrong candidate could put your soul in jeopardy.”

Abortion, of course, in one of their primary issues. How, reasonable people ask, can the culture leap from the reality that science has established – that nature itself dispenses with a large number of fertilized eggs – “a loss that is not sacramentalized,” the editorial states, “or given any official status – to criminalizing a similar act when done by humans?”

At this point, the bishops can’t begin to address that larger groups of the population who may wonder if we know the mind of god so well as to be convinced beyond doubt that such a God would require a rape victim to carry a pregnancy to term, or not allow an abortion where mother and child would both dies as a result of continuing the pregnancy.

The NCR cites recent data gathered in the U.S. showing increasing numbers of people walking away from organized religion and asks if it is at all instructive. “It seems quite clear that fewer and fewer people are listening to religious leaders in general, and the bishops in particular.”

We may ask, in the refrain of that old fold song, Long Time Passing, “When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?”