UNITED STATES
Catholic Moral Theology
Posted by Julie Rubio on Apr 17, 2014
Christians see themselves as people of compassion, but often others see us as something else. Today, Holy Thursday, many of us will gather to recall and enact the story of the foot washing recounted in the Gospel of John. Near the end of that story, Jesus says:
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for another.” (John 13: 34-35)
And yet Christians are not known for their love.
In a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times, Thomas Edsall claims that when he consulted a disparate group of academics to help explain the endurance of the pro-life movement, they were unanimous. “All see the anti-abortion movement as driven in part by the determined effort to control the reproductive rights of women.” Concern for the lives of unborn children does not merit a mention. Instead, Edsall worries that new restrictions on abortion will be enacted, because despite change sexual mores, “there are still a sizeable number of Americans who want to put the women’s rights genie back in the bottle.”
The sexual abuse scandal is another case in point. The pope impressed some by appointing a survivor of sexual abuse, along with other experts, to a commission to advise him on how to protect children and counsel those victimized by priests. He made news last week be becoming the first pope to take “personal responsibility for the harm done by priests who sexually abused children.” Yet, victims advocates like Barbara Dorris of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, are not convinced:
“It’s talk,” said Barbara Dorris of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP. “When it comes to finances, or how bishops should live and set an example, he acts. But when it’s about the rape of children, he talks.”
The severed link between faith and compassion is driving people away from religion. Young adults do not identify as religious because they believe in compassion, but they do not see it in churches. In their book American Grace: How Religion Unites and Divides Us, Robert Putnam and David Campbell report that “nones” are on the rise “because they think of religious people as hypocritical, judgmental or insincere.” Putnam and Campbell raise questions about this perception, presenting data showing that frequent church goers are more likely to: volunteer, give money to charity, give money to a homeless person, donate blood, and help a stranger. But this is not what people see.
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