The Cerulean Cherub wants to know:
Thought about this post all day and haven't come up with a satisfactory (to me) thing to say...so I'll just put out a flawed thing. My impression based on my experience with (some) politically connected progressive Catholics is that... they disagree with the people in charge about birth control, they certainly don't personally disapprove of the use of birth control, yet... think public policy should still cater to the will of those in the hierarchy who they disagree with.
No I have not managed to make sense of this. Perhaps there is sense to be made, or perhaps I am just getting it wrong.
I grew up Catholic, went to the same Catholic high school as This Hippie, and have also for Professional Reasons read more official pronouncements from the Irish Catholic Hierarchy 1900-1960 than is sensible.
So I am an Expert.
I think the issue here may be with "politically connected Catholic progressives."
This may be a very small slice of "Catholic progressives." My mom was a way left Catholic, as is my FIL. Both of them sort of gave up on the political sort of thing, and instead devoted themselves to practical efforts like hospice social work and rural poor home construction.
In this new Catholic century, people like my mom said "nuts, who cares, I will just live out my life in service to the less fortunate, that should be cool." People like William Donohue yell a lot about bullshit. He'll die rich. Mom didn't!
So it's paradoxical because... it's paradoxical. My mom in her last months was distressed terribly because of her outrage against how Rome was treating leftist nuns, a lot of whom were her friends. She was torn up because she felt her religion was betraying her, as it indeed was. As it happens, you can't just do good for the poor without pissing someone off. Perhaps a bishop.
So, yeah. To be "Catholic" means to submit to the arbitrary moral judgments of a bunch of assholes. It just does. That Catholicism might be about anything else... have I mentioned that I've read 2/3 of a century's worth of the statements of the Irish hierarchy? Guess how much of a percentage of the bishops' wisdom is about "care for the poor" and how much is about "obey." Go on, guess. Hint: you're right.
The point is that "progressive Catholicism" is a contradiction not in terms but in lived politics. Great, wonderful people. But fucking confused.
Very different from everyone else.
Or not. If I could answer these contradictions, I would still be a Catholic. I can't. So I ain't.
MAS. The point is, that if the church wanted to be less authoritarian, it could be a powerful force for good, as it is now in some cases despite itself. But it doesn't. So fuck it.
