Pole dancing

The Catholic bishop of Detroit just put out a letter advising Catholics who publicly* support same-sex marriage to stay away from Communion. The news story described his action as polarizing.

Oooh. Bad.

It seems that when someone from the Other Side puts his foot down about the latest Civil Rights Struggle, he is polarizing. Forcing people to, like, take sides. OMG. Rather than to continue to engage in the robust, intelligent and civil public debates we've been having about that issue...

Oh. Right. There haven't been many. Sorry. Now it's just The Nice Good OpenMinded People vs the H8ful Ignorant Bigots.

I keep coming back to the image of the teenager who sees every less-than-overwhelmingly-approving nod, gesture, word or deed of the parents as an attack and a betrayal. And blames the parents for their tyranny and hatefulness and "making a big deal out of nothing" aka polarizing. But refuses either to leave home or stop asking for money and the car keys. A recurring paradigm in Amurrican life these days.
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*This is an important point and one that teenagers of all ages often don't get. Disagree with a lot of it as I may, Catholicism's moral world can be quite sophisticated. And at the same time, quite down to earth. It's been milennia in the building, not something thought up in the last ten minutes. (Well, some of it, anyway.)  Sin, for Catholicism, is inevitable, universal, grubby and daily. As unremarkable as dust. It is not a Church of the pure elect. The same Pope who can speak ex cathedra when need be also goes to confession frequently. Scandal and heresy are of another order: social acts in the public sphere. They are dealt with differently. That's how real life works.
And it's not only realistic but merciful. Imagine if, to avoid hypocrisy, a moral regime were to attempt to police all transgressions equally, be they public or private. You'd have an invasive and totalitarian Orwellian nightmare. Or Liberalism. Or Islam.

It's funny that teenagers (of all ages) are particularly sensitive to hypocrisy. I guess it's because the puberty years are all about the huge gulf between the inside and the outside and the dominant role played by persona and social hierarchy. Grownups get used to the differences and have a longer view of what's important. Plus, hypocrisy is virtually unavoidable.

That's why, to the astonishment of teenagers everywhere, priests who break their vows in sins of the flesh get to got to confession but nice blue-haired White ladies who get ordained as Roman Catholic WomenPriests get excommunicated.
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