The Catholic Church revised

I am not a fan of the New York Times. As a conservative I see bias in most MSM. But as stumbled upon this article by Nicholas Kristof, I have to agree with his logic about the Catholic Church.

He describes the church he met in Sudan.
It may be easy at a New York cocktail party to sniff derisively at a church whose apex is male chauvinist, homophobic and so out of touch that it bars the use of condoms even to curb AIDS. But what about Father Michael Barton, a Catholic priest from Indianapolis? I met Father Michael in the remote village of Nyamlell, 150 miles from any paved road here in southern Sudan. He runs four schools for children who would otherwise go without an education, and his graduates score at the top of statewide examinations.



Father Michael came to southern Sudan in 1978 and chatters fluently in Dinka and other local languages. To keep his schools alive, he persevered through civil war, imprisonment and beatings, and a smorgasbord of disease. “It’s very normal to have malaria,” he said. “Intestinal parasites — that’s just normal.”
Father Michael may be the worst-dressed priest I’ve ever seen — and the noblest.
Anybody scorn him? Anybody think he’s a self-righteous hypocrite?


On the contrary, he would make a great pope.
Sister Cathy would like to see more decentralization in the church, a greater role for women, and more emphasis on public service. She says she worries sometimes that if Jesus returned he would say, “Oh, they got it all wrong!”


She would make a great pope, too.

And unless we’re willing to endure beatings alongside Father Michael, unless we’re willing to stand up to warlords with Sister Cathy, we have no right to disparage them or their true church.

My daughter just had her First Holy Communion and I want her to love the church I love. The servant church that reaches out to the poor and oppressed. The church that faith and covenant remains the same. The church that traces it's line back to Christ. Good or Bad; the church remains a constant. The people may corrupt it by their sins, but it is the people, not the church. More and more, those people are the hierarchy or the church. After the priest scandal was revelled, I was angry with my church. I wanted them to do more than say sorry. I wanted them to sell everything and start over as a poor church, a beggars church and grow by faith alone. Of course this will never happen.

But I can hope.