by The Cowl Editor on November 12, 2020
Letters to the Editor
by Rev’d Dr. David Lewis Stokes
Assistant Professor of Theology
Dear Editors,
I would like to expand a bit upon my words quoted (quite correctly!) by Savannah Plaisted’s well-reasoned op-ed, “A Call to Action” (Oct. 30). When I spoke of the inbred and rancid clericalism that contributes to the dry rot in the Catholic Church, my words referred primarily to the scandals, squabbles, silliness of the Church at large. The dust-up between Bishop Tobin and Pope Francis is quite peripheral to my comments’ much more serious concerns.
Both conservative and liberal Catholics have come to seem to me like exotically plumed birds squawking over who’s allowed (or not allowed) inside the cage of the ecclesiastical bureaucracy. At issue is power—sheer raw power tricked out in the multicolored plumage of vestments. At issue is certainly not the gospel of Jesus Christ.