The Archbishop's Blog

[The following comment by Leonard Swidler, editor of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies and author of Toward a Catholic Constitution, among many others, is in reply to a piece in the November 8 New York Times by Clark Hoyt, “The Archbishop’s Blog.”]

Clark Hoyt notes that the American Catholic Church is "a spiritual home to a quarter of the American population." True, there are, according to the Pew survey on religion in America last year, 65 million U.S. Catholics. However, it also reports that there are 30 million FORMER Catholics! Archbishop Dolan and the rest of the bishops and the Vatican should focus much more on that disastrous figure than on some (appropriate) criticism of public flaws of the Catholic leadership.

The archbishop said, "“We welcome criticism of the Catholic Church,” but is that true? Not only does his very blog give the lie to that astonishing claim, but since the beginning of the pontificate of Pope John Paul II there has been a veritable drum-beat of silencing, firings, and excommunications precisely because Catholics have voiced opinions other than those blessed by the hierarchy. For example, according to the Vatican, Catholics are forbidden even to speak in favor of the ordination of women to the priesthood; Catholic church workers have been fired for doing so!

In the first issue of the "Journal of Ecumenical Studies," which my wife Arlene Anderson Swidler and I (dialogue@temple.edu)founded in 1964, there appears an article - painstakingly translated from the German by us - in favor of ecumenism by one Professor Joseph Ratzinger. This is the same Professor Ratzinger, then Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Holy Office ("of the Sacred Inquisition" part of the name dropped earlier in the 20th century), who wrote the vehement attack on ecumenism "Dominus Jesus," and continues in that vein as Pope Benedict XVI.

Sadly, totally gone is the open spirit of Vatican Council II (1962-65), which led to this startling Vatican statement: "Doctrinal discussion requires recognizing the truth everywhere, even if truth demolishes one so that one is forced to reconsider one’s own position, in theory and in practice, at least in part....in discussion the truth will prevail by no other means than by the truth itself. Therefore the liberty of the participants must be ensured by law and reverenced in practice."
But that was before Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. I never thought I would be hankering for "the good old days"!