Last Updated: Friday - 09/24/2010

Author's opting out from Church gives a heads up

"In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of . . .Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen."

So it was that novelist Anne Rice announced last month that she has left the Catholic Church and Christianity.

The quick response to Rice's declaration, not without value, is that she has put her allegiance to feminism, birth control, the Democratic Party, etc., above her call to follow Jesus and to be part of his body, the Church. One treads on shaky ground when one says in effect, "The Church founded by Christ is wrong; I am right."

Leave that concern aside for the moment. Rice has her own story. An atheist for years, she returned to the Catholic Church in 1998, is knowledgeable about Church teachings and has proclaimed the faith through her writings. She has not made a career out of hating Christianity; she has had a genuine love for the faith.

What bugs her and what she came to find intolerable is the public face of Christianity- its seeming intolerance toward gays, feminists and suffering people, its Neanderthal attitudes toward modern science. "My experience of going to church week after week was largely pleasant until the public persona of Christians began to conflict with what I experienced at church. I couldn't hide out in the pew anymore," she told Christianity Today.

Rice needs to be heard on this point. The public persona of the Church is a negative one and that is undermining her ability to spread the Gospel. Moreover, for some who have a genuine allegiance to the Christian faith, this public image of intolerance and ignorance has become increasingly hard to bear.

To some extent, the media can be blamed for presenting a distorted picture. Reporters often have little knowledge of the Church and sometimes reinforce images that have only a loose connection with reality.

But the Church also needs to be more aware of how its actions will be seen in the public eye. The recent classic example of failure in this area - though not the only one - was the decision to lift the excommunications of four traditionalist bishops, blithely unaware that one of them was a Holocaust denier.

The Church cannot stuff a sock in the mouth of every wing nut preacher who claims that the latest hurricane was God's wrath on a sinful people. But it can take due diligence to ensure that its public pronouncements are seen in the light in which they are intended. In a culture that is typically ignorant of and sometimes hostile to the Church, this has become essential to proclaiming the Gospel.

Glen Argan

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