A Holocaust of Corned Beef

There will be no ceremonial flinging of the corned beef at
Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley of Boston
this year. The Cardinal has learned on
the job. He may pick fights with gay
folks, womenpriests,
and the relatives of his
poodle-owning predecessor William Cardinal O’Connell (more on O’Connell in
my forthcoming book Since My
Last Confession), but God forbid he should get between an Irishman and his
beer. This year, Saint Patrick’s Day
falls during Holy Week. By Vatican decree, no celebrations of saints are permitted
during Holy Week. The Vatican
therefore moved Saint Patrick’s Day back to Friday, March 14.

Cardinal O’Malley wasn’t about to fall for that trap. Back in 2000, when he was Bishop of the
Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, March 17 fell on a Friday in Lent. In honor of the holiday, other bishops gave
the flock dispensation from the prohibition against meat eating during Fridays
in Lent, so that the Irish Americans could enjoy their traditional corned beef
and cabbage. Not O’Malley. O’Malley stood firm. He was sheriff and their would be no
consumption of the other pink meat on his turf.
A national sh*tstorm
ensued in the press. Irishmen like nothing more than playing the
oppressed rebel, a fact one would have thought a guy named O’Malley would
know. In any event, O’Malley choked on
his corned beef. He caved to the
pressure and ultimately permitted corned beef on the Lenten table.

This year, O’Malley rejected any notion of another Friday
Saint Patrick’s Day. He refused to
condemn South Boston holding its Saint
Patrick’s Day parade on Palm Sunday, March 16. (I imagine the O’Malley and the
parade organizers thinking, “Isn’t Palm Sunday the day Jesus paraded into Jerusalem on a donkey? Good enough for me to parade my
Guinness-sodden hindquarters through the streets of Southie with a
shamrock-shaped beer helmet on and corned beef in my belly. It’s all about asses.”)

Instead, O’Malley diplomatically promised to preach a homily at March
17, Holy Tuesday Mass addressing the life of the patron saint of the Olde
Sod. Very Solomonic, indeed. Or
timid. Whatever.

Truth is, some part of me shares the Cardinal’s frustration
– Lent should include sacrifice. And one
would think a beer-drinking celebration based on an actual saint would be the
first to give way. Is that so little to ask
of people? After all, the Friday
prohibition against meat is one of the few shared communal sacrifices Catholics
have left. Ultimately, however, it’s not
my place to judge a person choosing between a little green beer and corned beef
and the Friday Fast. I trust each of
these people has made some other suitable arrangement with God.

***

In other news of Catholic kookery, The Right Rev Joseph
Devine, Catholic Bishop of Motherwell,
Scotland, accused
gay people of attending Holocaust Memorial events each year in order to align
themselves with Jews and other persecuted minorities. According to Bishop Devine, “The homosexual lobby . . . is ever-present at the service each
year for the Holocaust memorial - as if to create for themselves the image of a
group of people under persecution.”
Bishop Devine seems to need a history lesson: Jews were not the only
victims of Nazi persecution. Gays were
sent to the camps as well. Hence the
symbolism of the pink
triangle.

This type of unreasoned rant is why people conclude that the
antipathy of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church to gay people is born
not from theology but from bigotry.
Sigh. As if to confirm the
comparison, Bishop Devine even went on to compare himself to famed anti-Semite
(at least while he is intoxicated) Mel Gibson.