Tim Padgett's (anti-Catholic) paper trail

The good folks at GetReligion do an excellent job of critiquing the media's coverage of religious news. One of the more entertaining topics which has lately fallen under their scrutiny is the obsession of several media outlets (most notably TIME magazine) with the alleged "ordination" of women "priests" in the "Roman Catholic Church." I have also taken a few jabs at journalists Dawn Reiss and Tim Padgett for their shoddy and shamelessly biased reporting. Greg Kandra, a Roman Catholic deacon, also took Reiss and her editors to task.

Thanks to Reiss's weak and self-serving response to Kandra's critique, we know a little bit about her background, but still very little about her motivation behind writing such a pathetic piece. Padgett, however, is a different story. One need only click the second link on the related "Stories" sidebar to his article to find a previous article entitled, "The Vatican and Women: Casting the First Stone." This story, unlike Padgett's more recent piece, is labeled "Viewpoint," and the author makes it very clear that he has a decidedly negative one about the Vatican.

What a rich coincidence we Roman Catholics got to experience at Mass on Sunday, July 18. The scheduled Gospel passage was Luke's story about Jesus visiting the sisters Martha and Mary of Bethany (who Catholic tradition says was Mary Magdalene). Many biblical scholars believe the narrative shows Jesus encouraging Mary to assume the role of a disciple, like Peter and the guys. That notion lent some cable-news significance to the reading — coming as it did just days after the Vatican issued an avowal, as obtuse as it was malicious, that ordaining women into the priesthood was a sin on par with pedophilia.

Rome's misogynous declaration, tossed into its new guidelines on reporting clerical sexual abuse, did more than just highlight the church's hoary horror at the idea of female priests — or its penchant of late for sticking its papal slippers in its mouth every chance it gets. It also pointed up an increasingly spiteful rhetoric of bigotry. When Argentina in mid-July legalized gay marriage, the country's Catholic bishops weren't content to simply denounce the legislation; they used the occasion to argue for the subhumanity of homosexual men and lesbians, the way many white Southern preachers weren't ashamed to degrade African Americans during the civil rights movement. Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio not only called the new law "a scheme to destroy God's plan"; he termed it "a real and dire anthropological throwback," as if homosexuality were evolutionarily inferior to heterosexuality.

What should be obvious to anyone who has ever been acquainted with self-identified "Roman Catholics" like Padgett is that something is bugging him and it has nothing to do with the Vatican's views on women. That is a veneer behind which he would like to hide, but his tone blows his cover. It is something more serious than a simple difference of opinion that is motivating Padgett to characterize the Vatican's declaration as "obtuse," "malicious," and "misogynous." His choice of words is intended, rather obviously, to convey the impression that Rome is behaving irrationally, but it is Padgett who is being irrational here. Whatever one's own opinion, the teaching of the Catholic Church (as well as the Eastern Orthodox Church and most confessional Protestant churches) on the ordination of women is rooted in 2,000 years of biblical and Apostolic tradition and has far more to do with an historical understanding of the priesthood than with an adverse opinion of women. It cannot be dismissed by a handful of twenty-first century revisionists simply because it is offensive to their post-modern notions of "equality" and "inclusiveness."

Padgett's cheap shot at Cardinal Bergoglio is also irrational and reflective of a profound lack of understanding of Christian teaching on human sexuality. It was the ancient pagans, regularly indulging in promiscuous and perverse sexual behavior, that Paul and other New Testament writers warned were imperiling their souls and in danger of losing out on their inheritance, namely, the kingdom of God. "And such were some of you," Paul writes to the Corinthians. "But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Corinthians 6.11-12). As difficult as it may be for post-modern "progressive" ears to hear, the move toward normalizing homosexual relationships is not a step forward, but a dramatic, and dangerous, step backward. Such relationships, reflective as they are of the brokenness of the present age, will not be a part of the age to come. They are a part of the past to which those who are looking toward God's glorious future cannot continue to cling.

But, as we read further into Padgett's screed, we find he has little interest in thoughtful consideration of historic Christian teaching on women, homosexuality, or any other subject. Instead, he is distressed that Benedict and company appear unwilling to bow at the altar of that most infallible of all authorities, the public opinion polls.

How did it come to this? The answer lies in why the Vatican felt compelled to throw its antifemale jab into the sexual-abuse directives. When any institution is as convinced of its own moral infallibility as the Catholic Church is, it tends to lash out at criticism — especially charges as serious as the priestly rape of children — with Dostoyevskian paranoia. And the church then fortifies its less popular stances, like an all-male priesthood or the condemnation of gays, in the process becoming even more uncompromising. Most Catholics, according to polls in the U.S. and abroad, support women's ordination, but the church peevishly views that trend as an insidious subagenda of its sexual-abuse accusers. Hence last week's astonishing aside from Rome that both the ordination of female priests and pedophilia are graviora delicta, or grave crimes 

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And it's sounding that way to Catholics as much as it is to non-Catholics. Many if not most of us Catholics remain Catholics today not because of the church's leadership but in spite of it. In a new Gallup poll, 62% of U.S. Catholics say gay relationships are morally acceptable. Which means we're not thrilled to have our religion represented by a bunch of homophobes wearing miters. Even those of us who sharply disagree with the church on a number of doctrinal issues still want to believe it can be a helpful, contemplative guide in matters spiritual and social. But if it keeps up the hateful discourse, it will lose whatever modicum of attention my generation of Catholics still pays it — and it can forget about my children's generation.

For someone who claims himself to be a Catholic, Padgett seems a little too willing to embrace so many popular caricatures of the institution to which he claims membership. Jack Chick couldn't have said it better. But, all caricature aside, there is something uniquely American, in the worst sense of the word, about Padgett's reference to opinion polls. To begin with, such polls are probably much like pre-election polls where numbers fluctuate considerably when the sampling is broken down between "adults," "registered voters," and "likely voters." The different categories into which "most Catholics" would fall are innumerable. Lapsed and disgruntled Catholics are a dime a dozen and, in all likelihood, vastly over-represented in polling samples.

Polling variances aside, however, only an American Catholic, who is far more American than Catholic, would assume that since "Most Catholics, according to polls in the U.S. and abroad, support women's ordination," the Vatican would simply yield to public opinion. It is not the duty of the pope or any of his subordinates to make or amend church policies based on the fickle opinions of "most Catholics." Their duty, under God, is to guard and defend the faith once delivered, and if the One who delivered that faith to them has not given them the authority to ordain women or bless homosexual relationships, they are not going to derive it from some innocuous public opinion poll or defy the Almighty for the sake of popular approval. Contra Padgett, the Church's moral authority cannot be "salvaged" by its abandonment of the eternal for the sake of the temporal. Rather, that authority is strengthened by its willingness to stand firm for what is right in the face of popular discontent.

Padgett's closing paragraph again underscores his lack of understanding of some pretty basic biblical teachings.

My daughter happened to be serving as an altar girl at Mass on Sunday. She was smart enough to sense that in the gospel reading, Jesus was relating to Mary as if she were a disciple. And she'll learn that the New Testament is full of other passages that indicate Jesus believed women could be alteri Christi, or "other Christs," as priests often call themselves. Real Catholicism encourages that kind of enlightened thinking — and it certainly doesn't call it, as the Catholic Church does, a crime.

This deserves fuller examination in a future post. For now, suffice it to say that Tim Padgett's paper trail leading up to his more recent article on the "ordination" of a female "priest" indicates that he has a decidedly anti-Catholic agenda (although he calls himself a Catholic) which calls into question his objectivity as a reporter.