Regular readers of this blog might think I am on some sort of anti-Catholic crusade.  Quite the contrary.  I am very Catholic.  But upon the Pope’s arrival today in Mexico before going on to Cuba, I am more concerned with what the Church does to hurt the development of the HispanicLatino community – and the country – than worrying about thoughts on paper that some might take as anti-Catholic.

This Pope’s Papacy has been such a disaster that his arrival in one of the most Catholic countries in the world is almost a non-event.  The media will cover it, of course, but so uninspired are Catholics today by this Pope and by the crop of bishops that he and his predecessor appointed that the planners of this papal trip would not dare take the Pope on a tour that would require large crowds to demonstrate the Church’s standing in Mexico – a once-effective tool in this age when image and impression are easy to manipulate.  The Church is so damaged and weaker now than at anytime in modern history that the Pope will hardly venture outside Guanajuato, the cradle of Mexican conservatism.

Throughout his travels since his election, this Pope has drawn fewer and fewer congregants than his successor, and now he comes to a country that had to decapitate the Church when it aspired to more secular rather than spiritual power.  In the years preceding the Mexican Revolution and after it, the Mexican government taught the Church a lesson that the Church in the United States has not yet learned:  To stay the heck out of politics.  Indeed, most Americans – including most Catholics – do not want the Church’s bishops anywhere other than in their churches, schools and chanceries.

We each have sins, and we all have histories and we all have shortcomings, but the Church’s and its bishops’ standing is so low that they cannot possibly convince anyone that their views are worth hardly more than consideration – which is precisely how the Constitution of the United States is written:  Everyone is free to practice their own form of worship, and, therein implied, is that everyone is thus free from having views imposed on them by others.

I remember years ago when a bishop threatened me with excommunication over my defense – in a newspaper column – of the reproductive rights of women.  The man was not even of my own diocese, and he did not know that even in his own diocese many there considered him something other than a bishop.

I, as a practicing Catholic, draw the line at Catholic bishops telling HispanicLatinos how to think or vote.  HispanicLatinos must find their own voice as they grow into a larger and essential part of the national population. The nation does not need a population group that does not know its own mind and that allows an undemocratic institution like the Church to undermine the country’s democratic foundational values and existential traditions.

Feel free to forward these blogs adapted from previous writings, with additional thoughts published invariably in between.