>On Behalf Of Carrol Cox
> Nathan Newman wrote:
>
> > Because for all its faults, the Catholic Church in the US has
> been an active
> > extremely loud opponent of anti-immigrant, anti-welfare and
> anti-affirmative
> > action legislation and initiatives.
>
> No. Many individual priests, nuns, and lay persons of the Catholic faith
> have been at the front in the struggle. "The Church," insofar as it can
> be so spoken of, has been almost uniformly on the side of imperialism
> and oppression.
On the issue of imperialism, the Church has a lot of sins of collaboration with colonial and neo-colonial oppression, and some shining examples of resistance- Archbishop Romero resistance in El Salvador is not typical but neither was he completely an aberration, so "uniformly on the side of imperialism" is just not accurate. Whether on balance, the Church should be considered an instrument of imperialism would take a pretty intensive evaluation- I might end up with folks that "on balance" the Church has been oppressive, but I also don't buy that the "Church" can be so neatly separated from the priests, nuns and lay persons running it throughout a country. (For the same reason, I won't reduce "Communism" in the United States merely to the Stalinist spying for and bowing to Moscow of many of the higher echelon officials of the CPUSA, but include the broad important work of Communist activists across the country.)
But my comment above very specifically cited the Catholic Church's recent political activism in the United States. On abortion, the Church has loudly lined up with conservative forces but have also, to their credit, refused political alliance with more uniformly rightwing groups like the Christain Coalition (much to the latter's frustration). But on a range of other issues- from the death penalty, welfare, affirmative action, immigrant rights, homelessness and so on - the "Church" from Cardinals on down have been outspoken in support of very progressive political campaigns. THe Church funding arm for social services and activism, the Campaign for Human Development, has been very supportive of numerous social justice endeavors - a large chunk going to Alinsky-style organizations, some Church-allied but a large chunk going to various ACORN chapters - along with other groups like the Korean Immigrant Workers Association (KIWA) in LA, Asian Immigrants Women Activists in San Jose, and so on. These funds amount to millions of dollars yearly that is supplemented by the good work of the "individual priests, nuns and lay persons" that Carroll praises. This progressive politically-oriented work is all in addition to the more standard welfare work of Catholic Charities and other affiliated programs serving those in need.
When money from national coffers are supplemented by such local activism, the "Church" seems to deserve some credit here. (I would note that the home page of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops begins with a baner headline calling for the suspension of the death penalty nationwide.)
There is a lot to criticize in organized religion in general, but there is an odd hostility to the Catholic Church specifically that I can't but help chalk up to anti-Catholic prejudice that is historically linked to the anti-immigrant, racist Right in this country (the KKK saw Catholics as a bigger threat than blacks in the 1920s). The Church was no doubt more rightwing at points historically in the US, but post-Vatican II (even with John Paul II's retrenchment on sex and gender issues), it is far more progressive on most economic and racial justice issues than the Protestant denominations that approach it in size.
-- Nathan Newman