Views
Myers has been both praised and criticized because of his strong conservative views and management style. Many praise his leadership and say he champions authentic Catholic doctrine at a time when many feel Catholics are drifting from strict observance. But his critics describe a domineering bishop who places undue emphasis on the letter of the law at the expense of compassion. Myers defended his actions stating: "We live our faith in communion with the church in Rome...It's sometimes difficult for us as Catholics to follow a way that appears to be different from what others in our society practice or believe. This can, understandably, cause confusion or frustration in some people." While Bishop of Peoria, Myers:
- Prevented former Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit from meeting with a progressive group in a church in the Peoria diocese.
- Admonished priests who give Holy Communion to pro-choice parishioners and divorced Catholics who remarry without getting an annulment.
- Refused to let diocesan teachers attend a national meeting for Catholic educators because one of the speakers was known to favor ordination of women and fired a parochial school teacher for permitting a debate on ordination of women.
- Supported the Cardinal Newman Society, whose bishops are among the most conservative in the United States. Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Neb., one of its stalwarts, has threatened to excommunicate Catholics who belong to liberal church organizations such as Call to Action.
On April 30, 2010, the Archbishop expressed concern about a planned offering of a course on same-sex marriage by his diocese's Catholic university, Seton Hall University, saying it "troubles me greatly".
Read more about this topic: John J. Myers
Famous quotes containing the word views:
“It is surely a matter of common observation that a man who knows no one thing intimately has no views worth hearing on things in general. The farmer philosophizes in terms of crops, soils, markets, and implements, the mechanic generalizes his experiences of wood and iron, the seaman reaches similar conclusions by his own special road; and if the scholar keeps pace with these it must be by an equally virile productivity.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“A foreign minister, I will maintain it, can never be a good man of business if he is not an agreeable man of pleasure too. Half his business is done by the help of his pleasures: his views are carried on, and perhaps best, and most unsuspectedly, at balls, suppers, assemblies, and parties of pleasure; by intrigues with women, and connections insensibly formed with men, at those unguarded hours of amusement.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“The absolute things, the last things, the overlapping things, are the truly philosophic concerns; all superior minds feel seriously about them, and the mind with the shortest views is simply the mind of the more shallow man.”
—William James (1842–1910)