Who among us has never asked for help? Who among us is so self-sufficient that they have never relied on the kindness of strangers? And when we ask for help, or lean on our friends, family or even strangers for support, have we given up our dignity, or are we simply demonstrating our humanity? What, after all, is more human than relying on our greatest strength, each other?

“There is nothing dignified about standing on street corners, or venturing into the middle of the street, dressed in dirty, shabby clothes, in all sorts of weather, with a crude cardboard sign, begging passersby for help,” wrote Bishop Thomas Tobin in a letter to the Providence Journal last week, but he was wrong. Dignity, the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect, is, by Catholic principle, “inherent and inviolable.” Human dignity has been called the “cornerstone of all Catholic social teaching.”

Humanists affirm the dignity of every human being. A cornerstone Humanist document is the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 1 states, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” No distinction is made in the declaration based on class or property.

I’ll avoid the sexist term “brotherhood” (the Declaration was written in 1948 after all) and call it our “spirit of kinship.” This idea, that we are one large human family, reminds us to rely on each other when things go wrong in our lives. Our kinship is a fundamental part of what makes us human, and without it, our society and our lives fracture.

Through this fracturing, people end up on the street, homeless, hungry and alone with their demons. The truth of human dignity means that it should not be the responsibility of the downtrodden to ask for our help. Our own human dignity requires us to offer it.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights also affirms the human right to expression, the human right to freely move within our cities and as a consequence, affirms our right to ask for assistance.

“The problems [associated with panhandling] have spread since Mayor Jorge Elorza, responding to the threat of action from the American Civil Liberties Union and others, directed that the police should no longer enforce ordinances dealing with panhandling and loitering,” said Tobin in his letter. “The ACLU, while presumably well-intentioned, has done no one a favor.”

In defending the human and constitutional rights of panhandlers, the ACLU respected human dignity in a way Bishop Tobin seems unprepared to do. The “favor” the ACLU did was to remind us that rather than sweeping people in need out of sight, it is far better to provide the things they need to live their lives comfortably.

Some religious leaders understand this, but many others don’t get it, even as they wonder why their moral authority is crumbling.

Tobin hasn’t denied Democratic nominee Gina Raimondo communion, but the Republican bishop did offer a passive rebuke to the Catholic candidate for governor after she won the endorsement of Planned Parenthood. He didn’t mention her by name, but the timing left little doubt.

The very reason Catholics were distrusted in this country in the 1800s and the early 1900s is because Catholics were presumed to be anti-democratic in their allegiance to a foreign king (the Pope) and it was assumed that they would attempt to impose their Catholic values on everyone in the event that they achieved political power. As a result, Catholic politicians invariably hit a ceiling in their careers a few steps before the presidency, unable to convince a majority of Americans nation wide that they could be trusted.

It was John Kennedy who broke this trend, when he gave his famous speech to a meeting of Texas Baptists in which he said that his allegiance was to America, and that the wall of separation between church and state must be high and strong. In bucking the tradition established by JFK, Tobin seeks to take Catholicism back to a time when it was politically irrelevant.

We do not live in a Catholic theocratic state. Most Rhode Islanders, by a factor of 8 to 1, support a woman’s right to make her own decisions regarding her reproductive health care, including abortion. Many religious traditions are not in agreement with the Catholic Church on reproductive rights issues. It would be unconstitutional for government to favor the Catholic heirarchy’s position on this issue, and foolish of us to pay Tobin’s declarations much mind when we can’t be sure if he is expressing himself religiously or politically.

Adherents and non-adherents alike manage to ignore a major contradiction at the heart of modern Catholicism: The church functions as a patriarchal medieval organization within and alongside our secular social democracy. Unlike protestant churches that democratically decide on organizational structure and call or dismiss pastors as needed, Catholics have their leaders thrust upon them without their say or consent. Certainly the laity have a voice within the church, but that voice is only consul, and the final word rests always and exclusively with the hierarchy.

For the most part people politely ignore the odder aspects of modern Catholicism. We tend to put out of our minds the images we have seen of powerful community and business leaders, as well as elected Senators and Representatives, genuflecting before robed bishops and cardinals to deferentially kiss their rings. We dismiss this submissive medievalism as simply an expression of cultural identity, like the Scottish kilt or Canadian politeness. Only occasionally are we confronted with the full force of the true anti-democratic, anti-Enlightenment values espoused by the Catholic hierarchy, and even then we only seem to really get it when there are kids involved.

When Father Rocky Hoffman took the stage at Prout School as part of a Relevant Radio program to answer kid’s questions about Catholic doctrine, medievalism clashed with our modern values as regards our children’s wellbeing. Catholic teachings around divorce, adoption and LGBTQ issues openly clashed with the real world sensibilities of Catholic parents who do not agree with the totality of the Church’s teachings. Perhaps even more put out by Father Hoffman’s appearance were those non-Catholic parents who send their kids to Catholic schools for reasons that are not religious. Catholic teachings, it turns out, are not as innocuous as they were lead to believe.

Hoffman explained the current church teachings on such things as divorce and homosexuality. It turns out, surprise! that the conservative Catholic Church is against these things. They are also opposed to woman being ordained as priests, birth control, abortion under any circumstance, and masturbation.

A lot is being made of the fact that Hoffman is a member of Opus Dei, the secretive ultra-conservative branch of the Church featured as villains in Dan Brown potboilers, complete with Albino assassins and personal torture devices. Though it would be convenient to say that Hoffman is an extremist and that his views are far to the right of what the church believes, the truth is that Hoffman’s views are only extreme when compared to those of modern Americans. His answers to students seem doctrinally correct. As one Catholic blogger noted, “Another ‘c’atholic High School blows up when they hear the truth about Catholic teaching.”

The real truth, however, is that most Catholics are better than the teachings of their church and better than the views that are expressed by the Catholic hierarchy. Most Catholics are accepting of their LGBTQ brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. They know that prejudice and ignorance have destroyed families and ruined lives. Most Catholics not only believe that birth control should be legal and available, well over 95% of Catholics have used it. Most Catholics also believe that abortion is a decision best left to the woman dealing with pregnancy.

I understand when Catholics with more traditional mindsets dispute the validity of Catholics who deviate from the church’s official teachings. I sometimes hear such people referred to as CINOs (Catholics in Name Only). I prefer to call such people Cultural Catholics. They usually have deep family histories in and appreciation for the trappings of the Catholic Church. They attend mass every Easter, and mark important life events, such as birth through baptism, coming of age through confirmation, the beginning of a family through weddings, and the end of life through funerals via the traditions and liturgy of the church.

Cultural Catholics might openly dispute the entire mythology of the church. They may doubt the divinity or even the existence of Jesus, and they may well be atheists. It might be difficult for those who, like me, left Catholicism long ago to understand why those who dispute the church’s teachings and reason for existence continue to support their local Catholic Church financially and socially. Likely, there is no one reason, but a stew of the following by no means exhaustive list: the concerns of immediate and extended family, a sense of tradition, a sense of hewing to public perceptions and shared community and experience.

On the other side are the more traditional and conservative Catholics who have no problem with the church’s teachings and would prefer those who only attend mass sporadically and do not really agree with some of Catholicism’s social teachings to either get with the program or get out.

Caught in the middle of these two extremes are the cafeteria Catholics who muddle through, picking and choosing what they want and leaving the rest. This works for some, but for others this situation becomes impossible when it involves children. Few parents want to raise their children as anti-LGBTQ bigots. Few people want to throw away a lifelong friendship because a friend or family member is engaged in an LGBTQ relationship or lifestyle. Few of us want our children to be bullied, or become bullies.

So when Rocky Hoffman brought his doctrinally sound message that LGBTQ people are sinful and that divorce destroys not only a family but the love of a parent for a child, he is attacking a set of values that run deeper than those the church wants to represent. These are the values that link us to our family and friends in ways that are deeper than any relationship to some distant God. These values are humanistic: the love of a parent for a child, the bond between friends that cannot be broken based on how we pursue our sexual attractions, and our commitment to having the right amount of children for our family, properly spacing pregnancies and limiting the total number of children we seek to have.

Deep down, when it really counts, the vast majority of us are better than our church, better than our faith and better than our Gods. It sometimes takes an event like the one at Prout to make us realize that.

Dorothy Day is a woman on her way to sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church, a title she never desired. “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily,” she said, and many believe that “she would rather have any money spent on her canonization given to the poor.”

Whatever Dorothy Day was, she was not a tool of the rich and powerful. She advocated for the economic idea of distributism, an economic theory in opposition to both capitalism and socialism based on principles of Catholic social teachings. Pope Francis touched on distributism in his recent statements on what he called the “economy of exclusion and inequality” in his Evangelii Gaudium, taking to task those who avoid paying their fair share in taxes.

Given the historical, rhetorical and theological power of Catholics in opposition, why do some Catholics so strongly identify with libertarian ideas such as unfettered free markets and small government?

Catholic author John Zmirak provides interesting insight into this question. It has to do with the Catholic Church’s inability to overcome the protections of the First Amendment and the separation of church and state:

In an American context, given our constitutional heritage and the large body of legal decisions solidifying its interpretation, on nearly any issue, Christians of any denomination should reject the assistance of the State. [italics in original] Our efforts to capture it, the courts have made it clear, will always fail. Any attempt to infuse the activity of the government with the moral content of a revealed religion will be rejected, in the end.

If libertarian leaning Catholics cannot control the government, then Zmirak wants to minimize state power to negligible levels.

It seems clear that the public sphere in America is irretrievably secular. So the only logical response of Christians must be to try to shrink it. Instead of attempting to baptize a Leviathan which turned on us long ago, we’d do much better to cage and starve the beast. We should favor low taxes—period, regardless of the “good” use to which politicians promise to put it. We should oppose nearly every government program intended to achieve any aim whatsoever.

Perhaps this provides an insight into why Justin Katz can say “on the issue of legalizing marijuana I personally don’t have an issue with it” yet then argue against legalization. Money made through taxing marijuana will help to fund the government, not starve it. Remember that Christians, according to Zmirak, “…should oppose nearly every government program intended to achieve any aim whatsoever.”

What should be worrisome is the anti-American, anti-Constitutional at the core of this argument. Zmirak ends his piece with, “In many cultural contexts, the State can fruitfully employ its power to promote the faith and morals held in common by a community. But that can’t happen here. Not in America. Several of our Founders, and generations of our lawyers, have seen to that.”

A secular state that protects the right of conscience, freedom of (and from) religion and  separation of church and state does not serve those who seek to impose their theocratic ideas on others. Those in opposition to such freed seek to diminish the government, and in turn weaken the protections such a government provides.

In his December 5th “Statement of Bishop Tobin on the Death of Nelson Mandela” Tobin showered the great human rights leader with false praise before calling the deceased leader to task for “his shameful promotion of abortion in South Africa.” Mandela earned Tobin’s admonishment by promoting and signing into law a bill that “replaced one of the world’s toughest abortion laws with one of the most liberal.”

It has long been known that Tobin’s anti-abortion ideology has blinded him to the fact that good and decent people can come to different conclusions as to the morality of abortion. That is why most Americans see the issue as a decision best made by the pregnant woman, in consultation with her doctor, and want to live in a society where abortion and birth control are safe, legal and available.

Further, most Americans recognize that if we as a society really want to decrease the number of abortions performed in this country, then we ought to be working to promote the economic well being of women and investing resources into women’s health initiatives. Instead of championing these common sense ideas, Bishop Tobin and his RI Right to Life puppet show work on reducing the public’s ability to access health care by attempting to tear down HealthsourceRI or engaging in silly and unconstitutional theatrics involving license plates.

A while back, the monomaniacal Christian attitude towards issues like abortion was diagnosed as an “illness.”

The faith becomes ideology and ideology frightens, ideology chases away the people, distances, distances the people and distances… the Church of the people. But it is a serious illness, this of ideological Christians. It is an illness, but it is not new, eh?

The person making this diagnosis was Pope Francis, talking about the extremes of right wing religious ideology. Francis opined that such attitudes are worse “when this Christian is a priest, a bishop or a Pope.”

Not that the Pope is above reproach. His recent statements on economic inequality, as welcome as they are in many ways, still ignore one of the greatest obstacles towards the elimination of poverty in the developing world, which is women’s inability to access decent reproductive healthcare, including abortion. As long as women are shackled to the demands of unwanted childbirth, they are less free to pursue economic wellbeing for themselves and their families. Francis might want to take some of his own advice, and reevaluate the Church’s stand on important reproductive rights issues. Even a softening of the rules on condoms and other forms of birth control would have amazing and positive repercussions world wide.

No human is perfect, even a person as universally revered as Nelson Mandela has faults, failings, misdeeds and wrongs easily attached to their legacy. But Mandela’s support for abortion rights in South Africa is not one of them. Guaranteeing South African women access to reproductive healthcare has freed countless families from the kind of crushing poverty large families might face and saved the lives of thousands of women who might have died accessing illegal abortions.

The South African law, according to the NY Times, assures that, “women and girls will be entitled to a state-financed abortion on demand during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy if they have no private medical insurance, and, subject to widely defined conditions, for a further eight weeks.” Even minors are allowed to access abortion under this law, without being mandated to gain consent from their families or, as is the case in Rhode Island, from a judge.

In South Africa, because of Nelson Mandela’s forward thinking respect for the rights of all persons, the decision as to whether or not to have an abortion lies solely with the pregnant woman (or girl).

This is as it should be.

Todd Flowerday, writing on the blog Catholic Sensibility, thinks that Tobin might be thinking locally while the Pope thinks globally:

Perhaps Bishop Tobin, recent Republican convert, is thinking too much in terms of American politics. US Catholics make up a single-digit percentage of the flock Francis now pastors. Is it realistic to expect that the man will conform to the American values of the political pro-life movement: confrontation, contention, fundraising, deception, and the striving to yell louder than the other side?

Supporting Tobin, Fr. Z’s Blog goes after the National Catholic Reporter writer Michael Sean Winters saying that “you don’t have to protect Popes from criticism” and “were the Michael Sean Winters types in charge, the college of bishops around Pope Francis would look like a meeting of North Korea’s Communist Party.”

David Cruz-Uribe, writing for Vox Nova, runs down some of this and also notes that some conservative Catholic blogs are seeing Tobin’s statements as a sort of conservative backlash against the current Pope.  However, the main point of the Vox Nova piece is that Tobin has essentially opened the floodgates for sending criticism up the Catholic hierarchy. Cruz-Uribe thinks this is an unintentional and positive development of Tobin’s comments, noting that not inviting open, constructive and respectful criticism smacks of obsequiousness, saying “we can criticize someone even if we love and respect him/her.”

The Vox Nova piece ends with “Let us pray that all bishops have both the courage to speak openly and respectfully, and that they have the humility and openness to listen and reflect when they are on the receiving end of similar critiques.”

Will Tobin be open to such criticism from the priests under his leadership? Tobin, in some way, seems to consider himself a prophet, and prophets historically are good at giving criticism, not taking it. Responding to a question about the heat he took in the aftermath of the passage of marriage equality on the opening episode of Dan Yorke’s State of Mind Tobin said,

Yeah, I did take a lot of heat but that’s part of the challenge of being a prophet. In some ways that is the prophetic role of the church to challenge evil where we find it, where we see it, to challenge those in positions of political leadership. The church has a long history even going back to the Old testament where prophets challenge the kings of Israel, and John the Baptist and Thomas More and many of the great apostles and prophets and saints throughout history have played that role of challenging evil where we think it exists.

I’m reminded of Second Kings, 2:23-24, when the Prophet Elisha was insulted by some children for being bald.

And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.

And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.

The lesson? Watch what you say about prophets or you might be targeted by wild bears.

On the apparent softening of the Roman Catholic Church’s message regarding LGBTQ issues due to recent statements by Pope Francis, Tobin said, “The message hasn’t changed, but the messenger has.” In other words, according to Tobin it’s the same old church with a shiny new boss.

There’s nothing explosive or game changing in the interview, but it does manage to provide a peek into the carefully worded worldview of one of Rhode Island’s most powerful and outspoken religious leaders.

“I am appalled that she is asking the Church to punish so many good Catholic people who support the civil rights of the gay community,” Handy, a Cranston Democrat, said in the release. “Unfortunately, her feelings are very symbolic of the Tea Party and right-wing thinking that is so prevalent within the state’s Republican Party Leadership.

“Although I obviously disagree, I respected the Church’s right to oppose my legislation,” Handy said. “However, it crosses the line for a party leader to call for active involvement of the Church in partisan politics.”

“Representative Costa needs to be reminded that her own Minority Leader, Brian Newberry, whom she supports, voted for marriage equality, as did the entire five-member Senate Republican delegation,” Handy said. “Is she looking for the Catholic Church to punish her own party members who voted in favor of this legislation?”

UPDATE: According to a story in the Providence Journal, Costa said her comments had nothing to do with marriage equality.

You can listen to him here:

After the service, I asked Sistare if he wanted to talk more about it. He declined, but said he felt it was inaccurate to suggest that he had denied gay married parishioners communion when he had simply told them they could not get communion until they were no longer married.

While many gay Rhode Islanders gained a new right last week, Lew Pryeor and Pierre Leveillee lost one yesterday.

The Catholic couple from Woonsocket was told by their priest, Rev. Brian Sistare of Sacred Heart, that he would  no longer give them communion at Sunday service.

“I have been a Catholic all my life,” Pryeor told me yesterday after he was informed of Sistare’s decision to deny them the sacrament. “I like to go to church and light a candle for my family. Now, I feel like I can’t do that anymore.”

Pryeor and Leveillee have been together for 34 years and were married in 2007. The couple moved to Woonsocket two years ago. He said they were always accepted at the other local Catholic churches they have attended in Warwick and West Warwick over the years.

His new church in Woonsocket, Pryor said, “is pushing people away when they should be reaching out. They may not agree with me, but they shouldn’t throw rocks at me.”

The couple will leave Sacred Heart and look for a more accepting Catholic church in Woonsocket.

Pryeor went to Sacred Heart on Monday to talk to Sistare about his politically conservative sermons. After suggesting that Sistare not alienate parishioners with the priest’s personal politics,  Pryeor said Sistare informed him that he would not give him communion anymore because his marriage to Leveillee is not recognized by the church.

Pryor said the priest told him he would give him communion if he ended his marriage to Laveilee.

Sistare, who could not immediately be reached for comment, is new at Sacred Heart, said Pryeor, who has been taking issue with his new priest’s politically-charged sermons.

Pryeor been posting on Facebook about Sistare’s sermons. From Sunday, July 28:

ok pierre and i went to church today .. new young priest at the Sacred heart church . Instead of saying how we all should follow the ways of the Pope, reaching out to everyone , He talked about the Governor again.. All right already not everyone likes Chafee but instead of showing negativity towards someone due to their beliefs try to reach out to those that are lost are needing help.

And this from Sunday, August 3:

mass was ok today but What political party was my priest refering to as a party that is wrong for thinking the rich should give up some of there money.

Pryeor and Leveillee have been congregants at Sacred Heart since moving to Woonsocket two years ago. Pryeor organized the annual church festival. They live one block from the church and bring their grandchildren to mass. Pryeor said he and Leveillee have been congregants at Catholic churches in both Warwick and West Warwick before moving to Woonsocket and their relationship and their love has always been accepted by other priests.

Other gay couple who attend Sacred Heart have posted on Pryeor’s Facebook posts that they, too, have been told they would not be offered communion.

Catholics believe that the Sacrament of Communion – eating unleavened bread blessed by a priest – is akin to eating the body of Jesus, who they believe is the son of god born of a virgin birth.  Devout Catholics believe communion should not be given to sinners until they repent.

The church has a legal right to deny anyone any part of their ritual it sees fit. But preaching politics from the pulpit may be another matter. As a tax-exempt organization, church’s have a legal obligation not to use their non-profit status to push its leaders’ personal politics on its parishioners.

Sistare is also a part of the campus ministry at Mount St. Charles Academy in Woonsocket. He’s also on Twitter, where he follows many conservative politicians and FOX News personalities. In January,  tweeted this to Gov. Chaffee:

@LincolnChafee Do RI a favor & go take a job w/ Abomination adm. in DC. Will have to answer to God w/ your support of abortion and sodomy!