A Sore Loser?
William A. Dinges, a professor of religious studies at The Catholic University of America, is steamed. Addressing a national gathering of 100 or so diocesan social-action leaders in Washington, D.C., Dinges says that “polarization” in the Catholic Church has reached a new peak with the 2004 presidential election (according to a Catholic News Service report, Feb. 22).
Who’s to blame? It’s largely the right-wing Catholics, who insisted that the election hinged on abortion and embryonic stem-cell research. Dinges says the rhetoric has been “vitriolic” and the behavior “uncivil,” being characterized by “confrontation, harassment and attempts at intimidation.”
Dinges deplores all this “rancor,” “incivility,” and “name-calling.”
You May Also Enjoy
Ed. Note: During the 1985-1986 academic year, Henri J.M. Nouwen was a priest-in-residence at the…
At their annual meeting in November 1999, after an entire decade of at times contentious…
Discipline the seminarian who sways when he walks, who has limp wrists, who acts like a drama queen or who lisps.