The spirituality of civil disobedience lives on

The new religion is that claims of victimization trump everything. Here’s more evidence: Judge Declines To Sentence 3 Catholic Gay Activists. Three members of an activist group protesting at the annual Conference of Catholic Bishops were denied communion at one of the masses there. The next day they went to the conference site, made a theatrical plea for communion in front of a crowd of reporters, refused to leave on request, and were arrested. At trial they testified they had been emotionally shattered by the refusal of Communion and went to the hotel to “find healing among the people who caused [them] so much suffering.” The judge, a Roman Catholic herself, found them guilty of unlawful entry but refused to sentence them, saying “Tremendous violence was done to you … when the Body of Christ was denied to you … As a member of your church, I ask you to forgive the church.”

Some things are beneath analysis. Still, a few points are worth noting:

• The self-righteousness, oily hypocrisy, and transparent bad faith of the protestors.
• The readiness of the judge, a presumably intelligent, well-informed and well-connected laywoman, to see those qualities as the distinguishing marks of holiness.
• The judge’s presumption. Also, her grossly unjudicial conduct in treating the trial as an opportunity to pursue what truly were her private goals. Among other things, she was more generous to the defendants than even their own lawyer had requested.
• The reluctance of the Church to defend itself. The priest said nothing, the official spokewoman said it was all a big mistake, and the one person in a responsible position who got involved was Bishop Gumbleton, who flew in to help defend the protestors.

All in all, it was business as usual in what passes today for religious life and the law.
Posted by Jim Kalb at January 31, 2003 04:55 PM | Send