[PHOTO] Just eat

Hat on pay phone outside of a restaurant on Spadina in the early night seemed to cohere into a cool picture.

[LINK] "Church, Sect, the Ship of Peter, and GSA's"

jsburbidge has an interesting post up analyzing the response of the Roman Catholic Church in Ontario to the presence of gay-straight alliances in the context of a general shift in the Church's ethos, abandoning the idea of maintaining a presence throughout a diverse society and instead concentrating on a hard core of conservative believers. I've seen talk of this before, raised by some conservatives who hope that, after retreating to a durable base, the rump church could then reevangelize society.

Thoughts?

The Church of Rome has, for about a thousand years, give or take a few centuries identified itself as "the Church", with some vague accommodations regarding the Eastern Orthodox and a detailed theory of church-like bodies coming out of the Reformation. Since the days of Theodosius it has (until recently) also assumed itself (at least in theory) to be coterminous with society -- a church in Troeltsch's classification. There have been irregularities locally -- e.g. the situation in England prior to the "late Roman aggression" where there was no local hierarchy and where the C of E made the same assumptions but only locally -- but broadly speaking the two positions have coexisted hand in hand.

It continues to hold the first position: the relative thawing of oecumenical relations after Vatican II were accompanied by a clear delineation of the traditional view in the Council documents, restated in Dominus Iesus from the Sacred Congregation of the Faith in 2000. However, especially since the accession of Benedict to the papacy, it's possible to argue that it is moving deliberately in the direction of a remnant theology-driven view of the position of the church in (Western) society. It would like to be coterminous with society, and sees itself as the guardian of universal ethical values on which it has a duty to speak out, but much of Benedict's agenda can be seen as adjustments to make the distinction between inside and outside starker. Effectively, it is deliberately taking on more of the sociological shape of a sect and less that of a church.

Put simply, Benedict's approach involves a willingness to pay the price of losing adherents in favour of protecting its doctrine and structure. The upper hierarchy would like to eliminate "cafeteria Catholicism". Of course, the closer to the ground you get the priests and bishops also want to retain the resources which come from larger congregations, so there has been a lot of a sort of DADT attitude at the ground level towards dissenting views on women's orders, female participation in the liturgy as lay ministers, divorce, contraception, abortion, and homosexuality (all areas where the divergence between Catholic doctrine and popular practice is particularly marked) as long as they are kept relatively private. (This has been accompanied by a considerable relaxation in the principle that anyone receiving communion should go to confession immediately before the eucharist, and a tendency not to ask about certain areas of opinion which a penitent might not mention in the confessional.) There has been increasing pressure, however, to enforce greater conformity in all of these matters, as well as liturgical distinctiveness. Ecumenical dialogue has also become less fluid and more take-it-or-leave-it.

[LINK] "Catholic schools’ opposition to gay clubs revives public-funding debate"

National Post's Charles Lewis notes that the gay-straight alliance controversy may yet cost the Roman Catholic school system in Ontario public funding.

The note from John Tory, who as leader of the Progressive Conservatives lost the 2007 general election because of his suggestion to extend funding to schools belonging to other religions and denominations, strikes me as politically noteworthy.

The Ontario government’s decision forcing Catholic schools to host anti-bullying groups called “gay-straight alliances” has brought to the fore a deep divide between Roman Catholic teaching and secular society, even calling into question whether public funding for Catholic schools should continue.

At the root of the issue is a polarizing debate about whether public money should be used to support a religious education system that says homosexuals deserve love and respect but that gay sex is a mortal sin.

“The question as to whether Catholic schools should be required to support gay-straight alliances has been satisfactorily answered,” Justin Trottier, spokesman for the Toronto-based Centre for Inquiry, an atheist group, said. “The real question now is whether Ontario should be required to continue to support Catholic schools. The elephant in the room — public funding of Catholic schools — has become so destructive to fundamental rights and equality it’s impossible to ignore.”

For the Catholic Church and its supporters, it is now about the right to teach their own morality in a constitutionally protected school system without infringement from the government.

“It looks like they’re bullying the Catholic Church right now and the Catholic education system,” said Lisa MacLeod, the Conservative education critic, who is not a Catholic. “They have done this broad provocation against the Catholic Church … and really shifted focus away from bullying to a very divisive clause.”

John Tory, a Toronto broadcaster and community leader, advocated for public funding of denominational schools — not just Catholic schools — when he was Conservative leader in the 2007 provincial election. The idea of giving all religious groups public money, he said, was a way of ensuring all faith-based schools would be required to buy into Canadian values.

Mr. Tory said the church’s stand could turn public opinion against funding of its schools.

“I don’t understand how an institution can take this stand in the year 2012,” he said.

“The values of the Catholic Church do not match public policy. But if they take public money they can’t have it both ways. By looking like they’re not fully embracing acceptance [of gays] the Catholic hierarchy is starting to push public opinion against funding their schools.”

In January, Forum Research Inc. found that 49% of Ontario adults did not want public funding of Catholic schools while 45% supported it. Earlier this month it found 53% opposed pubic funding with only 40% in support.

The poll did not look for a causal link between the debate on GSAs and support for public funding. But Forum Research did say in January that 50% of Ontarians approved of GSAs in Catholic schools while 32% were opposed. In May, 51% said Catholic schools should have GSAs and 28% disagreed.

One passage from the article merits sharing.

Cardinal Thomas Collins, the head of the Archdiocese of Toronto and the leader of the provincial bishops, called the move “micromanagement” and said he was troubled that the province seemed to think there was a problem with Catholic teaching on morality. GSAs, he said, come with an agenda that would not fit with Catholic teaching.

He would not speculate about potential court challenges after the bill is passed, something expected to happen next week.

On Monday, Cardinal Collins was asked how he would defend Church teachings on homophobia. He said that it was too complicated an issue to discuss for a news story.

Too complicated? Or too revealing?