This week, Catholic Bishop David Laurin Ricken became the latest member of that church’s hierarchy to enter the political arena when he informed the over 300,000 members of the Diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin that voting for candidates whose positions contradict any so-called “non-negotiables” of Catholic teaching “could put [one's] soul in jeopardy.”
Ricken’s admonition came in the form of a letter posted on the diocesan website and emailed to the offices of every parish. The diocese is also ordering churches to include the letter in their bulletins this weekend or next.
Catholics are taught to believe that their bishops have the authority and duty to shepherd and teach them, and in Ricken’s letter, the prelate takes his flock to school. He writes:
I would like to review some of the principles to keep in mind as you approach the voting booth to complete your ballot. The first is the set of non-negotiables. These are areas that are “intrinsically evil” and cannot be supported by anyone who is a believer in God or the common good or the dignity of the human person.
They are:
- abortion
- euthanasia
- embryonic stem cell research
- human cloning
- homosexual “marriage”
These are intrinsically evil. “A well-formed Christian conscience does not permit one to vote for a political program that contradicts fundamental contents of faith and morals.” Intrinsically evil actions are those which have an evil object. In other words, an act is evil by its very nature and to choose an action of this type puts one in grave moral danger. [emphases added]
Translation (just in case the bishop’s repeated use of the phrase “intrinsically evil” didn’t make things sufficiently clear): according to Ricken, marriages like mine are thoroughly evil “by [their] very nature,” and anyone who either marries a person of the same gender or supports their fellow citizens’ right to do so is, ipso facto, a very bad person.
And, in order to make it as obvious as possible which party he wants you to support next month — without actually saying its name, of course — Bishop Ricken continues:
But what does this have to do with the election? Some candidates and one party have even chosen some of these as their party’s or their personal political platform. To vote for someone in favor of these positions means that you could be morally “complicit” with these choices which are intrinsically evil. This could put your own soul in jeopardy.
Hmmmmm, I wonder whether David Ricken wants the Catholics of Northeastern Wisconsin to vote Democratic or Republican? (Hint: three of the items on the bishop’s list — reproductive choice, stem cell research, and marriage equality — can be found in the official 2012 Democratic Party Platform.)
Ricken’s aggressively political, unabashedly anti-gay comments very closely mirror those made by several of his brother bishops. For example, in a video message released last month, Springfield, Illinois Bishop Thomas Paprocki pointed out the Democratic Party’s official support for marriage equality and reproductive choice, then called both positions “intrinsically evil and gravely sinful” and said that voting for candidates who support them places one’s “eternal salvation” in “serious jeopardy.” Also last month, John Myers, Archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, issued a pastoral statement in which he told Catholics not to vote for any candidate who does not endorse what he called “proper” marriage. He further declared that pro-equality Catholics — which account for nearly three out of every four Catholics in America — should refrain from receiving Communion. (Click here for an exhaustive list of anti-gay activities from leaders of the U.S. Catholic Church.)
This story hits close to home for me, as I was born and raised in Green Bay, Wisconsin and used to be very active in the Green Bay Catholic Diocese. I come from a family of liturgical musicians and was even a previous bishop’s favorite cantor (until I was unceremoniously dismissed for my “scandalous” marriage to another man); my parents — both fixtures of Green Bay’s Catholic community — are outspoken in their support of LGBT equality, as are many friends. According to all the reports I’ve heard so far from them and others, Bishop Ricken’s letter has outraged and divided local Catholics. There are even rumors that, inspired by Catholic communities in Washington State, some parishes might defy Ricken’s order and refuse to distribute his letter. For the sake of the Catholic LGBT youth in Northeastern Wisconsin — many of whom grow up, like I did, falsely believing that they’re “intrinsically evil” — I hope as many churches as possible do exactly that.
Read Bishop Ricken’s letter in full below.
To all Roman Catholics who Have.Had.Enough.:
“The Episcopal Church Welcomes You!”
Yet another zombie clone of “Caligula The Mad Emperor” in the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy! The good news, as always, is that the practicing Catholic laity themselves increasingly understand how whacko these guys have become, on issues such as non-abortive medical contraception and gender-equal CIVIL marriage rights. The People of the Church are waking up to the corruption (and in some cases to the outright insanity) of the honchos in the funny robes and silly hats. THIS IS NOT THE CHURCH that Jesus Himself envisioned to nurture those who believe in His Promises. It’s a perversion of His mandate to: “Love One Another, As I Have Loved You”.
I’ll tell you who is Evil, the Catholic Church! This is a pure raw power grab and I hope to HELL we win and they loose. We are not going to have Catholic Doctrine as the basis of our Civil Law. We all better be doing what we can to get Obama re-elected.
There is nothing wrong with gays, lesbains, bi-sexual and transgender people, Pope RATzinger I will NOT GENUFLECT TO YOU!
Does that mean my soul will be on a tv game show?
Father Geoff Farrow, who was kicked out of the RCC for openly defending full equality for lgbt people said that, ‘these prelates of the RCC are the modern day Pharisees’. Absolutely right!
Nothing at all. The Churchman is simply teing the world that there are some paople out there getting weird and they should be reminded
Here’s relief for my Sisters and Brothers who love the Catholic Faith, but cannot bear these modern Pharisees. The Ecumenical Catholic Communion is a movement of Catholics who maintain a Catholic witness of Justice and Peace and the primacy of an informed conscience, Catholic spirituality, the mass and sacraments. We do not subscribe to Roman canon law, nor to the institutional structures of Rome. Ahhh! The Ecumenical Catholic Communion! What a wonderful way to be Catholic!
THere is an intrinsic evil present. And those who are able to live without casting judgment can very clearly identify that evil.
Why does anyone even listen to allegedly celibate criminals droning on about marriage – something they clearly have no knowledge of.
Gee, I thought it was “homosexuality” that was intrinsically evil. Now it’s just marriage equality that is evil. Clever. I also must question the use of the word “evil”. This is a heavy word with a seriously vicious meaning. It is way beyond “bad” or “wrong”. Is he talking evil as in “Hitler” evil, or “Stalin” evil, or perhaps “Charles Manson” evil? Can human love of another of the same sex and the desire to be in a legally recognized and sanctioned relationship truly be considered evil?
That word speaks of depths of vicious desires to destroy lives, kill innocents, ruin lives on any plane of life as we know it. For what reason would any sane person use marriage to achieve anything resembling those ends?
So save your souls and be unfair, unjust, unkind, bigoted, and truly discriminatory in THIS life! Hey, Bishop, go to hell. My soul? Don’t believe in it and, at that cost, it wouldn’t be worth saving anyway.
My family left the Catholic Church 600 years ago, in the Hussite Wars — and now this Catholic prelate is come after me again — what is with those people? Won’t they leave anyone alone? He should tend to his flock, and leave non-Catholics alone.
And “intrinsically evil” is just so enraging —
not to mention that his Chicago buddy, Cardinal George says, two faced contradictory, that his gay nephew is a “fine man” but also “intrinsically evil” — and I wonder – do these people even think anymore?
David Laurin Ricken disgusts me. His behavior and his words are intrinsically evil. I left the Catholic Church and the priesthood years ago after Joseph Ratzinger wrote the document which John Paul II ordered promulgated. It was the document that declared us to be intrinsically disordered. The document condemned violence against gay people, but said that gay sexual relationships are unloving and said that no one, not even the church, should be surprised when people react violently against those who work to have laws criminalizing same sex sexual behavior legalized. I read the document thoroughly and found it so full of nonsense and bigotry and hatred that it was the final push I needed to walk out the door.
The only behaviors that this bishop, who supposedly is a following of Jesus of Nazareth, finds intrinsically evil are those that involve human sexuality. That was not the main message of Jesus. To this bishop apparently, letting hungry people starve, throwing people out into the cold, being greedy and being a warmonger, abusing children and spouses, oppressing people, being a hypocrite and liar are all not intrinsically evil. He is no disciple of Jesus. He is a republican operative.
“A well-formed Christian conscience does not permit one to vote for a political program that contradicts fundamental contents of faith and morals.”
I’ve been thinking about this a great deal, and then realized it wasn’t actually complicated at all. It’s more of the same old crap. The Catholic Church and the bishops and the Faux Queen of It All have always always had their holy knickers in a twist over sex and reproduction issues, theoretically, this issues that affect them the least. JPII could have stopped the first invasion of Iraq, which he condemned, simply by going there and landing in between the two armies, if he hated it so much. That would have been an act of courage. All he did was wring his holy hands to no effect.
Ricken is dancing on the outskirts of endorsing R-money and the Republican Party. His meaning could not possibly be clearer unless he were more explicit. So, he is in essence telling the faithful to vote for the Mormon– the Mormon whose theology stands in stark opposition to 2000 years of catholic teaching. In that theology, the pope is not god’s vicar on earth, the president of the church gets his revelations directly from god, Jesus is the brother of Satan, you don’t go to heaven, their is no resurrection of the dead, and Jesus needn’t have bothered to die for your sins. It’s a flat out contradiction of everything the RCC has taught for 2000 years as the essential nature of god’s created universe.
funny how your faith can contradict the totality of someone else’s faith, and that won’t trouble the well formed Christian conscience in the slightest. But woe be unto you if you contradict that well formed Christian conscience in the matter of morals! could there be any clearer indication that this isn’t about faith at all, but about dominion?
It doesn’t matter about Jesus and starving children. the pope needs his art collection and palaces. It doesn’t matter about divorce, one of the few things on the issues of family life that Jesus did speak about. (And besides, that might seriously inconvenience heterosexuals like Newtie and Frank Schubert). Divorce apparently did not make the list of things that are intrinsically evil, or even sorta bad.
And on and on and on.
what matters is whether Ben and Paul get married, whether every single sperm and egg get their heavenly reward, and ultimately, whether the RCC can reassert it’s dominion over the governance of this country, or any country. They lost it in Europe, they’re losing it in South America. And how did being gay become a sin of “intrinsic moral evil”? To the best of my knowledge, there is NO other sin that merits that particular classification, and it flies directly in the face of everything I have read bout sin for the past 45 years, since my nascent Christian days,
It all boils down to a question I have asked countless times, but never really receive an answer to. Why is it that as a Jew, or a Buddhist, perhaps even as a Mormon, I can reject the totality of conservative Christian belief, and this bothers no one but the most rabid of fundamentalists? But let me say that I am gay, and demand an end to this vicious prejudice, and Assert my right to live my life as I see fit as long as I am not harming others, as a full member of society,…
…And suddenly, faith, freedom, family, and western civilization are in danger of collapse from my intrinsic moral evil?
For a long time, I have believed that religion is not what has ennobled mankind, it’s what frequently keeps us from advancing as a species. Though I don’t share their faiths, I have nothing against people who merely choose to worship, and whose worship makes their lives better, and the world better. But this isn’t about that.
No, This isn’t about that. It’s about power and dominion, and ultimately, power and money. After reading this Holy Butthead’s remarks, his reiteration that my life represents evil, this tells me he not only doesn’t understand my life, he understands no one’s life, including the life of Jesus himself.
Oh ye scribes and Pharisees. Hypocrites! I have seen the face of intrinsic moral evil, and it isn’t mine.
I’m disgusted that this is how my home diocese makes news…and Id hate to break to them…my soul was in jeopardy long before this article was published!
Anything is said under the umbrella of religion is considered somehow to be above ridicule or disgust—when it’s not.
Stop writing foolish letters and do some good in the world, bishop; remember the sixties when Catholic leaders tackled real social issues?
[...] Bishop David Laurin Ricken entered the fray last week, informing the over 300,000 members of the Diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin that voting for candidates whose positions contradict any so-called “non-negotiables” of Catholic teaching (including abortion rights and marriage equality) “could put [one's] soul in jeopardy.” Like Jenky, Ricken ordered churches to distribute his message, but he arguably tiptoed even further towards an overt GOP endorsement. [...]