New study: Millennials are spiritually hungry and socially conscious

I always enjoy the comments of Michael Sean Winters at America‘s blog — though he did annoy me once or twice. His latest, a response to my thoughts about the possibility of a Catholic Tea Party, is insightful, but it avoids the substance of my argument.

Winters attributes my agitated state of mind to the palace of snow surrounding us here in northern Virginia and D.C.  I’d be lying if I didn’t admit this enforced monasticism is getting to me a bit, even to the point where I am cataloging my DVDs!  (As you can see above, the snow is reaching toward the top of my gaslight.)

But, as I explained in the article, the core of the discontent I described is with the USCCB’s non-response to the hard evidence of its moral and financial support of organizations advocating abortion and same-sex marriage. 

The USCCB’s dismissive attitude is exemplified by the fact that its spokeswoman rejected the findings while admitting she had only read one of the two reports!  I doubt very much if any of the bishops who criticized the reports had actually read them either, much less the many links they contained.

I appreciated Winters’ history lesson on the origins of the USCCB reaching back to the first Plenary Council (1852 ) in Baltimore, and I explored the same in my book Onward Christian Soldiers.  However, Winters must admit, none of the earlier incarnations of episcopal cooperation had the scope, and particularly the poltical intentions, of the present-day USCCB.

This brings us back to the purpose and authority of the bishops’ conference as described in Christus Dominus (Vatican II), the Code of Canon Law,  and John Paul II’s motu proprio on episcopal conferences, Apostolos suos (1998).

Here is a clue to Winters’ perspective:

He [Hudson] says it has ‘no canonical authority of its own’ which is true in a narrow sense, but misses the larger point that the USCCB is the bishops acting together.

Yes, that is the “larger point,” but it’s also a complicated one, given that the “collegial” activity of the USCCB never trumps the authority of an individual bishop over his diocese. When Bishop Martino famously declared in Scranton, “The USCCB does not speak for me,” he was merely stating what is a first principle of Catholic ecclesiology. 

I completely agree with what Winters had to say about the tea party mentality going against the grain of the Catholic sensibility:

I would humbly submit that the revolutionary temperament is not a Catholic one, that the ‘elites’ in our Church are bishops who have not “enslaved” us but freed us by bringing us into the sacramental life of the Church, and that within the Church, the idea that one group of the faithful can assert rights against another group posits an antagonistic culture that may serve to protect freedom in civil society but is not, alas, a facsimile of the love that should bind Christians.

But Winters ignored my attempt in my column to distinguish between individual bishops and the discontent I sense is brewing towards the USCCB.  Catholics in America have not lost their respect and reverance towards the authority of their ordinary, but more are realizing that the bishops’ conference does not require the same deference and is not essential to their sacramental lives. 

I’m sure Winters knows I’m aware of the wackos that inhabit the Tea Party movement, just as I am sure he cringes at the antics of some activists whose causes he espouses. No slice of the political pie is exempt from a few distasteful ingredients.

I appreciate that Winters is looking after my well-being, and I am going to accept one of his recommendations:

So, I invite Mr. Hudson to reconsider his idea, dig out his car, and get some fresh air. The last thing the Church needs is the spirit of the Tea Party folk within the Church.

I’m going to trudge about a mile through the icy streets of Fairfax to the Cinema Arts movie theater to watch The Last Station, with Christopher Plummer as an aged Leo Tolstoy and Helen Mirren as his wife Sofya.  Perhaps I will emerge with a whole new attiude on the Tea Party thing!