Editorial | Louisville Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz: Heed Pope's Welcoming Calls

The Courier-Journal
November 17, 2013

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20131117/OPINION01/311180001/Editorial-Louisville-Archbishop-Joseph-E-Kurtz-Heed-pope-s-welcoming-calls?nclick_check=1

Louisville's Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz is the newly elected president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

[with video]

Congratulations to Louisville Roman Catholic Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz on his election as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Archbishop Kurtz takes over during a time of great change in the church, brought about mainly by the election earlier this year of Pope Francis, who has called for the church to turn away from what he has said are “small-minded rules” and to be “ministers of mercy.”

We hope Archbishop Kurtz will take that to heart.

Since arriving in Louisville in 2007, Archbishop Kurtz has pushed the type of doctrinal issues that Pope Francis’ two most recent predecessors — Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI — stood for.

Archbishop Kurtz supported state legislation that would remove civil rights protections from some people, all in the name of “religious freedom,” and has spoken out against federal health care mandates that would provide insurance coverage for millions of people, all because they included a requirement that insurance plans pay for artificial contraception.

He sided with those in the Vatican who sought to crack down on nuns who dared suggest that women should take a greater role in the church and were involved in other forms of “dissent.”

He has taken money that could have gone to help the needy in the Louisville and given it instead to a campaign in Maine to overturn legislative approval of gay marriage.

While all those positions fit well into the world views of the dogmatic popes before him, they seem to be anathema to Pope Francis, who has spent the first months of his tenure urging the church to be more pastoral than judgmental.

“We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible,” he told an Italian Jesuit journal in September.

“The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently,” he went on to say.

More specifically, Pope Francis has talked about the importance of women in the church and said of gay people: “If they accept the Lord and have goodwill, who am I to judge them? They shouldn’t be marginalized. The tendency [to be gay] is not the problem ... they’re our brothers.”

At the recent meeting of Catholic bishops, it appeared the pope’s words are being heeded. Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, Archbishop Kurtz’s predecessor, told the bishops that the battle over religious liberty isn’t as important as the persecution of Christians around the world.

The Rev. Thomas J. Reese, an analyst for the National Catholic Reporter, told the New York Times that it appears the bishops will still be interested in religious freedom issues; “they’re just not obsessing.”

What is Archbishop Kurtz to do? Continue down the same path that made him one of the most powerful Catholics in the nation or follow the new pope, who who each week seems to say or do something to create a more welcoming church that encourages lapsed Catholics to return?