Notebook

...But we too get invitations from the media...

...Quindlen goes on to characterize John Paul II's Veritatis splendor as...

...The statement concludes: "Because of its opposition to the human rights of some of the most defenseless members of the human race, and because its purposes and activities deliberately contradict essential teachings of the Catholic faith, we state once again that Catholics for a Free Choice merits no recognition or support as a Catholic organization...

...Step back a minute...

...And not because the journal's dissenting positions were products of "baptized, confirmed" writers...

...Quindlen, nonetheless, remains an influential voice who, for better or worse, shapes a portion of the public discussion about Catholicism...

...CFFC makes occasional, highly selective bows to the tradition in its literature, and virtually no references, except querulous ones, in its many media forays...

...Those who count themselves in that tradition must always attend to the possibility that at some point they are more dissenter than they are Catholic...

...Last spring we ran a review (May 21, 1993) by Kenneth Woodward of Ms...

...Commonweal, of course, has had to face this question...

...The bishops' statement is careful...

...it complains that the CFFC "shares an address and funding sources with the National Abortion Federation...

...It is the independent effort of its editors, who are Roman Catholic lay people...

...the one Times voice on family life not in thrall to Anna Freud or Planned Parenthood...

...This past November, the administrative committee of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement saying that Catholics for a Free Choice, a Washington prochoice advocacy group, "has no affiliation, formal or otherwise, with the Catholic church...

...As Cardinal Roger Mahony comments on the letters page of the Times: "Without [the word Catholic in their title], they would be a tiny element in the pro-abortion lobby...

...That seems to be all the bishops are saying about Catholics for a Free Choice...

...And when she returned to the op-ed page from a leave of absence this last fall, there was a sprinkling of new ideas, a sense of new energy, even a hint that her brand of liberalism needed a little rethinking...

...Now they are more apt to be rushed into print or taped for the evening news...

...But Anna Quindlen will have none of this...

...and "can in no way speak for the Catholic church and its 59 million members in the United States...

...Did "we guys" have a love/hate relationship with Anna Quindlen...

...Some readers took indecent pleasure in it and others found it mean...

...In fact, the pope had a good deal to say about conscience and how it relates to an objective moral order...

...There is a neat division of labor in this ecclesiology—parish priests are in charge of the Good News and the bishops in charge of the Bad...

...But two columns a week take their toll...

...It simply says CFFC isn't an authentic Catholic organization...

...But the sources of CFFC's funding do raise a legitimate question: Isn't the word "Catholic" in CFFC's title key to its successful fund-raising efforts with the the Ford and Mac Arthur foundations...

...Catholics for a Free Choice and its executive director, Frances Kissling, had been given a lot of sound-bite time during the pope's Denver visit, representing (as the media like to say) the vast majority of faithful but dissenting Catholics...

...But does saying "baptized, confirmed, Catholic woman" confer legitimacy in speaking on things Catholic...

...a certain predictability set in...

...Alex Santora' s friendly, almost pastoral, conversation with the New York Times's premiere woman columnist (February 14,1992) led to accusations of soft-ball questions and several canceled subscriptions...

...This happens...

...Happily [the bishops' attack on dissidents] is not a crisis in many individual parishes...

...The bishops objected...

...For her, Kissling's position on church teaching is legitimate because conscience is something individuals make up all by themselves...

...a learned explication of the concept that Catholics will know what's right when bishops tell them...

...We could name names...

...Quindlen's essays, Thinking Out Loud...

...The statement does not even say that CFFC had to stop using the word "Catholic" in its title...

...When she wrote her weekly "In the Thirties" column, Anna Quindlen had sensible and witty views of husbands, children, and the domestic environs...

...I am a Catholic woman.'" "Catholic" may not be a registered trademark, regardless of the provisions about its use in Canon Law...

...asked one of our remaining readers...

...She subsequently moved to her present perch, "Public and Private" on the op-ed page, where her somnambulant colleagues needed a dusting up...

...In ages past, Catholics knew when they had crossed the line because they could have been burned at the stake...

...so do a lot of faithful, dissenting Catholics...

...But, as is her tendency, Quindlen refers only fleetingly to factual matters while sprinting to another point...

...Or did her fellow Catholics, our readers...

...It is serious engagement with that tradition that is neglected by Catholics for a Free Choice—and by Anna Quindlen's defense of CFFC...

...Several more cancellations followed...

...Sharing an address doesn't seem proof of much...

...But the statement isn't perfect either...

...It does not condemn CFFC nor excommunicate Kissling...

...Ultimately those positions had to be shown to be faithful to the Catholic Christian tradition of understanding and living the Good News of Jesus Christ...

...She sees the bishops' statement as "an unusual, almost unparalleled attack" on the CFFC...

...And as Frances Kissling describes herself, "she fits the description...

...What is this love/hate relationship you guys have with Anna Quindlen...

...A lot of unsavory and ill-informed people have been baptized, confirmed, even ordained in the Catholic church...

...MARGARET O'BRIEN STEINFELS 6...

...She did the job...

...Naturally the editors disagreed with these judgments, but not with the principle that bishops sometimes have to draw lines...

...The 5 NOTEBOOK magazine does not blazon itself Catholic nor pretend to represent dissent, the laity, or any other large category...

...I was baptized, I was confirmed,' she says...

...But then she went and wrote one of her totally predictable columns: she attacked the Catholic bishops for drawing a line (New York Times, November 18, 1993...

...Catholics for a Free Choice 'R' not us...

...If the bishops finally say that Catholics for a Free Choice is not an "authentic Catholic organization," their judgment deserves at least a careful hearing and a reasoned response, even from Anna Quindlen...

...I came to think of Anna Quindlen as a sister mouth...

...Somewhere along the line they forsook the description and stopped being authentically Catholic...

...Quindlen unfortunately displays little knowledge of her tradition beyond, at best, that of a high school senior...

...IBM could say as much about the knock-offs that pass for its hallmark personal computers...

...And Commonweal too, in its long history, has been labeled "not Catholic," banned from seminaries by individual bishops, etc., etc...

...Priests still go about the business of inclusion, saying Mass alongside women deacons [!], placing Communion in the cupped hands of divorced parishioners, developing spiritual relationships...

...Quindlen also informs us that the word Catholic is a description, not a registered trademark...

...One of the prices the church pays for its past intolerance is reflexive rejection of its attempts to draw lines...

...It is "associated with the pro-abortion lobby in Washington...

...Not everything we do or say is "Catholic," even when Catholics do and say it...

...No more, no less...

...This is a widely held view in our society, but not a Catholic one...

...Dissent from church teaching, at least on some matters, is a long, noble, and battered, tradition in the Catholic church starting with Paul of Tarsus...