Pious Irrelevancies

It appears hatred and the pulpit are long-time friends. Preachers, ministers, priests, bishops and the like aren't enlightened folk simply because they have a title. They're imperfect human beings just like the rest of us. Some may be wiser than others, but in general, I wouldn't trust their leadership nor their proclamations regarding current events any more than I would the nonsensical ramblings of a mentally ill homeless person on the streets of NYC.

Catholic and white Protestant church leadership was conspicuously absent during most of the civil-rights struggle with its marches, bus boycotts, voter-registration drives, state-university enrollment, and housing protests.

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote his famous "Letter from Birmingham City Jail" in response to a public statement by eight prominent local church leaders (including the bishops of the Catholic, Episcopal, and Methodist churches), who had denounced him as an "extremist" and "outsider."

In the letter, King expressed his deep disappointment with the white church and its leadership. He accused it of being content "to stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities."

During the weekend, Massachusetts' four Catholic bishops condemned a ruling by the state high court in favor of gay marriage, calling it a "national tragedy" -- language gay Catholics said amounts to "preaching hate" from the pulpit. The letter, read at liturgies this past weekend, said the court's decision on gay civil marriage is a "sure formula for chaos" that could "erode even further the institution of marriage."

Now consider the following passage...

...One wastes time and money in ministering to blacks ... What reason can there be that you are so solicitous for the Negro? -- a priest, cited in The Miserable Condition of Black Catholics in America, 1903...

As I said, hatred and the pulpit are long-time friends. For a closer look at the power of the pulpit, ignorance, fear, and the role church leaders played, see Racism and religion: partners in crime?