The Kremlin, the Vatican, the White House, the Crown, the Forbidden City, Mecca, the Syndicate. Among other uses, those terms are a sort of journalistic shorthand for something impenetrable, confusing, vaguely hostile and nefarious. To these, it seems, we as Catholics can now add the Bishops. Let me explain.

On Good Friday, April 6, Msgr. William McDonnell, the Pastor of St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Freeport and Dean of the Freeport Deanery, wrote an excellent article in a regional newssheet answering three scurrilous columns printed there perhaps as a series by readers from another part of the Freeport Deanery. Those writers appear to share with many in the lame stream press an absolute lack of any accurate information about the Roman Catholic Church or any of its institutions, though they pontificate as if they “wrote the book” on the Church.

The writers blame Catholic people because those Catholic people allow the bishops to speak on their behalf; bishops who are out of step with the faithful, they declare. The bishops do this because of the Church’s sexism, they assert, and her desire to exert power in the secular sphere. 

At this point you may laugh. The Roman Catholic Church has been scrupulously faithful to her mission and loyal to Christ her founder when, and only when, she has had no power in the secular sphere at all, as is the case today. Most of the horror stories about the Church stem from the time of the 13th to the 16th centuries, when various popes, priests and prelates mucked around in secular politics and caused trouble beyond belief.

The writers obviously know more than the bishops. They assert that those meanies, the bishops, are sexist and power hungry in their desire to control all women. And so they say: “What the bishops mean is no sex before marriage, no matter how old individuals are, and no sex even outside of marriage.” That is the first lie which Msgr. McDonnell refutes by noting that the bishops are simply passing on the Gospel message of Jesus Christ, and he cites more biblical texts than the writers have ever seen and concludes that the writers are ignorant of the Christian view of chastity.

Then the bishops are excoriated for being against divorce and second marriages and all that. Again, the writers cannot have heard of Jesus Christ. Msgr. McDonnell notes a plethora of passages in the New Testament which recount in various ways the Lord’s teaching and the Apostles’ teaching that what God has joined together, no one may separate.

And then, of course, the writers advance a third canard: that only the rich and powerful can have a marriage annulled. Msgr. McDonnell points out that the service of the Church’s matrimonial courts are available to anyone. Those able are asked to pay a maximum of $400.00; for those who cannot do this, the fee is waived. Unfortunately, the annulment process is vexing; it takes the better part of a year, in most cases, as Msgr. McDonnell carefully explains.

I repeat all of this, first of all, to commend Msgr. McDonnell for his care and thoroughness in debunking these charges which were made up out of whole cloth by people who have little remote knowledge of the Catholic Church and no proximate knowledge whatever.

Secondly, well informed Catholics would be able to make those same arguments, perhaps not as eloquently as Msgr., but certainly as effectively.

Thirdly, I find it disappointing that our priests, who have much to do and little time or help to do it,  must take valuable time to beat down the ignorant prejudices of those who could easily be refuted by anyone who was well familiar with the Baltimore Catechism.

All religious Americans, Catholics and others are slowly being deprived of their religious freedom because of their unwillingness to defend Christ and Christianity.  Well instructed Catholics are even more at fault because they have access to the living tradition of the Church in the Scriptures, in the teachings of the Magisterium and of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that provide them with short and apodictic answers to all this drivel. We can consider ourselves fortunate to have priests, as Msgr. McDonnell, who will take the time to instruct the woefully ignorant. Thank God for our good priests! May their number increase!