by upyernoz
Catholic bishops to scrutinize Girl Scouts –
[Via The Washington Post]
The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops are reviewing the church’s long-standing ties to the Girl Scouts of the USA after complaints that some of that venerable organization’s programs might contradict church teachings on contraception and abortion.
The inquiry by the Catholic bishops has been ongoing for two years and was prompted by persistent reports, circulated on the Internet and by some social conservatives, that the Girl Scouts of the USA has ties to Planned Parenthood or, for example, endorses material on sexuality that the church would not approve.
Girl Scout leaders have denied the claims, but the bishops decided to continue their inquiry. In a March 28 letter to his fellow bishops, Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades, chairman of the Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, wrote that “important questions still remain and need to be examined.”
[More]
Apparently if you are friends with people who work with other people that the Bishops don’t like, they can cut you off. Almost 20% of the Girl Scouts are Catholic. Are they going to expell them if they stay in the group?
But there is a strong push among the bishops to ensure that no church organization has even remote connections to doctrinally problematic groups.
They ignored child abuse of boys and girls for decades but they have the moral authority to investigate the Girl Scouts to make sure they are not working with the those who are disreputable? They want to create a purity barrier that prevents any interactions with “doctrinally problematic groups” even as they protected child molesters?
When a group like the Girl Scouts is to be investigated because they are not pure enough and may have connections with “doctrinally problematic groups,” I have to wonder how the Bishops would have felt about a certain great teacher from 2000 years ago – one who ate, drank and worked with the very sort of people the Bishops wish to purify themselves from?
The founder of their religion consorted with the disreputable His whole adult life. He preached the benefits of doing just that rather than creating a purity barrier. He chided the Pharisees for using doctrine and dogma to cut off the “doctrinally problematic groups”.
Perhaps the Bishops should reread Luke 18:9-14. Or perhaps Matthew 9:10-13. Jesus consorted with sinners in order to save them. He did not cast them away and remain ‘pure’ by separating himself from them. That is what the Pharisees did.
Perhaps the Bishops should reread the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5, 6 and 7; Luke 6), particularly the part about motes, beams and eyes. Or reread the two Great Commandments, with the second one being restated many, many times in the gospels in order to drive the point home.
“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Whether Christ was the Son of God or not is an unfathomable question to prove. But he was one of the greatest teachers in human history. He provided a way around the revenge-oriented approaches so many religions take, especially the Abrahamic ones. They project a harsh world – an eye for an eye – one where everyone is constantly at each other’s throats and strong efforts must be made to show the outward purity of each group, the righteousness of its cause. One can only kill one’s enemies if one is wholly separate from them.
And the warfare can never stop until all of one’s enemies are dead. The entire religion becomes one of separating people into bucket : those like us – the pure, the righteous; and all the rest – the sinners. Purity and righteousness become a public display to demonstrate which group one belongs to.
But Jesus taught a way to short circuit that by using the approach of the Golden Rule to eventually suck out the poison that the other religions had. The world is a reciprocal place, where my actions produce actions in others. If I treat others as myself, they will eventually treat me the same way.
We are all one.
We are not separate. Instead we are the same. The lack of purity is something we all share, a recognition that we are all humans trying to survive in the real world and worry about what happens next. Jesus taught that the only way to make it through is not so separate into a bunch of pure buckets – all fighting over who is most pure and who is not – but to coalesce into one group of all humanity that recognizes our faults and tries to do better – to ourselves and to others.
I think the Bishops are falling away from the path Jesus taught. They are creating a purity approach, where they separate themselves wholly from those who are not as pure as they and then destroy those enemies as quickly as possible. Anyone who is not with them 100% becomes an other. They seek a small Church of pure, righteous followers rather than a larger Church of believers and sinners. They seem to be following the Old Testament teachings more than they are following teachings of the Gospels.
I think they will fail in their efforts. I think Jesus would approve of that failure.
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