Finally, a bishop takes on the Kennedys and Catholic pro-abortion politicians

FROM THE PEW – Finally, a bishop has taken on the arrogance of the Kennedy family and Catholic politicians as they flout the teachings of the Church to support the wanton, pre-medicated murder of innocent unborn children.  First, a reminder of what Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) said about the issue: “The fact that I disagree with the hierarchy on some issues does not make me any less of a Catholic.”

Below is the reply by Congressman Kennedy’s bishop, Thomas J. Tobin of the diocese of Providence:

Dear Congressman Kennedy:

Since our recent correspondence has been rather public, I hope you don’t mind if I share a few reflections about your practice of the faith in this public forum. I usually wouldn’t do that – that is speak about someone’s faith in a public setting – but in our well-documented exchange of letters about health care and abortion, it has emerged as an issue. I also share these words publicly with the thought that they might be instructive to other Catholics, including those in prominent positions of leadership.

For the moment I’d like to set aside the discussion of health care reform, as important and relevant as it is, and focus on one statement contained in your letter of October 29, 2009, in which you write, “The fact that I disagree with the hierarchy on some issues does not make me any less of a Catholic.” That sentence certainly caught my attention and deserves a public response, lest it go unchallenged and lead others to believe it’s true. And it raises an important question: What does it mean to be a Catholic?

“The fact that I disagree with the hierarchy on some issues does not make me any less of a Catholic.” Well, in fact, Congressman, in a way it does. Although I wouldn’t choose those particular words, when someone rejects the teachings of the Church, especially on a grave matter, a life-and-death issue like abortion, it certainly does diminish their ecclesial communion, their unity with the Church. This principle is based on the Sacred Scripture and Tradition of the Church and is made more explicit in recent documents.

For example, the “Code of Canon Law” says, “Lay persons are bound by an obligation and possess the right to acquire a knowledge of Christian doctrine adapted to their capacity and condition so that they can live in accord with that doctrine.” (Canon 229, #1)

The “Catechism of the Catholic Church” says this: “Mindful of Christ’s words to his apostles, ‘He who hears you, hears me,’ the faithful receive with docility the teaching and directives that their pastors give them in different forms.” (#87)

Or consider this statement of the Church: “It would be a mistake to confuse the proper autonomy exercised by Catholics in political life with the claim of a principle that prescinds from the moral and social teaching of the Church.” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 2002)

There’s lots of canonical and theological verbiage there, Congressman, but what it means is that if you don’t accept the teachings of the Church your communion with the Church is flawed, or in your own words, makes you “less of a Catholic.”

But let’s get down to a more practical question; let’s approach it this way: What does it mean, really, to be a Catholic? After all, being a Catholic has to mean something, right?

Well, in simple terms – and here I refer only to those more visible, structural elements of Church membership – being a Catholic means that you’re part of a faith community that possesses a clearly defined authority and doctrine, obligations and expectations. It means that you believe and accept the teachings of the Church, especially on essential matters of faith and morals; that you belong to a local Catholic community, a parish; that you attend Mass on Sundays and receive the sacraments regularly; that you support the Church, personally, publicly, spiritually and financially.

Congressman, I’m not sure whether or not you fulfill the basic requirements of being a Catholic, so let me ask: Do you accept the teachings of the Church on essential matters of faith and morals, including our stance on abortion? Do you belong to a local Catholic community, a parish? Do you attend Mass on Sundays and receive the sacraments regularly? Do you support the Church, personally, publicly, spiritually and financially?

In your letter you say that you “embrace your faith.” Terrific. But if you don’t fulfill the basic requirements of membership, what is it exactly that makes you a Catholic? Your baptism as an infant? Your family ties? Your cultural heritage?

Your letter also says that your faith “acknowledges the existence of an imperfect humanity.” Absolutely true. But in confronting your rejection of the Church’s teaching, we’re not dealing just with “an imperfect humanity” – as we do when we wrestle with sins such as anger, pride, greed, impurity or dishonesty. We all struggle with those things, and often fail.

Your rejection of the Church’s teaching on abortion falls into a different category – it’s a deliberate and obstinate act of the will; a conscious decision that you’ve re-affirmed on many occasions. Sorry, you can’t chalk it up to an “imperfect humanity.” Your position is unacceptable to the Church and scandalous to many of our members. It absolutely diminishes your communion with the Church.

Congressman Kennedy, I write these words not to embarrass you or to judge the state of your conscience or soul. That’s ultimately between you and God. But your description of your relationship with the Church is now a matter of public record, and it needs to be challenged. I invite you, as your bishop and brother in Christ, to enter into a sincere process of discernment, conversion and repentance. It’s not too late for you to repair your relationship with the Church, redeem your public image, and emerge as an authentic “profile in courage,” especially by defending the sanctity of human life for all people, including unborn children. And if I can ever be of assistance as you travel the road of faith, I would be honored and happy to do so.

Sincerely yours,

Thomas J. Tobin

Bishop of Providence

Archbishop responds to anti-catholic bias in NY Times

The following article was submitted in a slightly shorter form to the New York Times as an op-ed article. The Times declined to publish it. I thought you might be interested in reading it.

 
FOUL BALL!
By Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan
Archbishop of New York
 
October is the month we relish the highpoint of our national pastime, especially when one of our own New York teams is in the World Series!
 
Sadly, America has another national pastime, this one not pleasant at all: anti-catholicism. 
          
It is not hyperbole to call prejudice against the Catholic Church a national pastime. Scholars such as Arthur Schlesinger Sr. referred to it as “the deepest bias in the history of the American people,” while John Higham described it as “the most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in American history.” “The anti-semitism of the left,” is how Paul Viereck reads it, and Professor Philip Jenkins sub-titles his book on the topic “the last acceptable prejudice.”
          
If you want recent evidence of this unfairness against the Catholic Church, look no further than a few of these following examples of occurrences over the last couple weeks:
 

• On October 14, in the pages of the New York Times, reporter Paul Vitello exposed the sad extent of child sexual abuse in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community. According to the article, there were forty cases of such abuse in this tiny community last year alone. Yet the Times did not demand what it has called for incessantly when addressing the same kind of abuse by a tiny minority of priests: release of names of abusers, rollback of statute of limitations, external investigations, release of all records, and total transparency. Instead, an attorney is quoted urging law enforcement officials to recognize “religious sensitivities,” and no criticism was offered of the DA’s office for allowing Orthodox rabbis to settle these cases “internally.” Given the Catholic Church’s own recent horrible experience, I am hardly in any position to criticize our Orthodox Jewish neighbors, and have no wish to do so . . . but I can criticize this kind of “selective outrage.”

Of course, this selective outrage probably should not surprise us at all, as we have seen many other examples of the phenomenon in recent years when it comes to the issue of sexual abuse. To cite but two: In 2004, Professor Carol Shakeshaft documented the wide-spread problem of sexual abuse of minors in our nation’s public schools (the study can be found here). In 2007, the Associated Press issued a series of investigative reports that also showed the numerous examples of sexual abuse by educators against public school students. Both the Shakeshaft study and the AP reports were essentially ignored, as papers such as the New York Times only seem to have priests in their crosshairs.  

• On October 16, Laurie Goodstein of the Times offered a front page, above-the-fold story on the sad episode of a Franciscan priest who had fathered a child. Even taking into account that the relationship with the mother was consensual and between two adults, and that the Franciscans have attempted to deal justly with the errant priest’s responsibilities to his son, this action is still sinful, scandalous, and indefensible. However, one still has to wonder why a quarter-century old story of a sin by a priest is now suddenly more pressing and newsworthy than the war in Afghanistan, health care, and starvation–genocide in Sudan. No other cleric from religions other than Catholic ever seems to merit such attention.

• Five days later, October 21, the Times gave its major headline to the decision by the Vatican to welcome Anglicans who had requested union with Rome. Fair enough. Unfair, though, was the article’s observation that the Holy See lured and bid for the Anglicans. Of course, the reality is simply that for years thousands of Anglicans have been asking Rome to be accepted into the Catholic Church with a special sensitivity for their own tradition. As Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican’s chief ecumenist, observed, “We are not fishing in the Anglican pond.” Not enough for the Times; for them, this was another case of the conniving Vatican luring and bidding unsuspecting, good people, greedily capitalizing on the current internal tensions in Anglicanism.

• Finally, the most combustible example of all came Sunday with an intemperate and scurrilous piece by Maureen Dowd on the opinion pages of the Times. In a diatribe that rightly never would have passed muster with the editors had it so criticized an Islamic, Jewish, or African-American religious issue, she digs deep into the nativist handbook to use every anti-Catholic caricature possible, from the Inquisition to the Holocaust, condoms, obsession with sex, pedophile priests, and oppression of women, all the while slashing Pope Benedict XVI for his shoes, his forced conscription — along with every other German teenage boy — into the German army, his outreach to former Catholics, and his recent welcome to Anglicans.

True enough, the matter that triggered her spasm — the current visitation of women religious by Vatican representatives — is well-worth discussing, and hardly exempt from legitimate questioning. But her prejudice, while maybe appropriate for the Know-Nothing newspaper of the 1850’s, the Menace, has no place in a major publication today.

I do not mean to suggest that anti-catholicism is confined to the pages New York Times. Unfortunately, abundant examples can be found in many different venues. I will not even begin to try and list the many cases of anti-catholicism in the so-called entertainment media, as they are so prevalent they sometimes seem almost routine and obligatory. Elsewhere, last week, Representative Patrick Kennedy made some incredibly inaccurate and uncalled-for remarks concerning the Catholic bishops, as mentioned in this blog on Monday.   Also, the New York State Legislature has levied a special payroll tax to help the Metropolitan Transportation Authority fund its deficit. This legislation calls for the public schools to be reimbursed the cost of the tax; Catholic schools, and other private schools, will not receive the reimbursement, costing each of the schools thousands – in some cases tens of thousands – of dollars, money that the parents and schools can hardly afford. (Nor can the archdiocese, which already underwrites the schools by $30 million annually.) Is it not an issue of basic fairness for ALL school-children and their parents to be treated equally? 
 
The Catholic Church is not above criticism. We Catholics do a fair amount of it ourselves. We welcome and expect it. All we ask is that such critique be fair, rational, and accurate, what we would expect for anybody. The suspicion and bias against the Church is a national pastime that should be “rained out” for good.
 
I guess my own background in American history should caution me not to hold my breath.

Then again, yesterday was the Feast of Saint Jude, the patron saint of impossible causes.

 

Student president faces removal after allowing Pro-Life display

SACRAMENTO, California, October 30, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Christian student government president in California is facing a recall amidst anger from some administration and students after the student government permitted a pro-life demonstration during the college’s annual Constitution Day celebrations.

Constitution Day at Sacramento City College, which took place this year on September 16-17, is an annual celebration of the Constitution and free speech, which features external speakers and organizations who request an invitation from the Associated Student Government (ASG).

ASG president Steve Macias, 19, and student affairs commissioner Monica Guzman now risk losing their positions in a recall vote after the ASG welcomed the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP).  Run by the Sanctity of Human Life Network, GAP draws a comparison between abortion and past genocidal atrocities through graphic images.

While the ASG voted unanimously in favour of the GAP display on September 2nd, in response to a request from the pro-life group, some ASG officials have since denounced the event, admitting they were not aware of the nature of the group when they voted.

“The way the voting works is you get a proposal to read it the week before and you have a week to read it over before you vote on it at the board meeting,” Macias told WorldNetDaily. “I guess some of them hadn’t read it over and voted on it without knowing what it was. I guess they probably saw Genocide Awareness Project and thought, ‘That sounds fine.’ They didn’t really do their research or ask any questions.”

Critics say that hosting GAP without inviting an alternate viewpoint manifested a biased position from the ASG, but, in a September 17th statement, Macias insisted that “the ASG has not endorsed any one side of the debate on the constitutionality of abortion.”

Rather, they merely accepted the group’s request, he said.  “The ASG does not take into consideration the specific viewpoint of those who request to be a part of ASG events,” he explained.  “The determining factor in our Constitution Day events was based on whether or not they addressed constitutional issues that were relevant to students and stressed the importance of our nation’s founding documents.”

On the second day of the event, several pro-abortion groups came out in response to the GAP display.  Planned Parenthood, the Queer-Straight Alliance club, the Sac City Freethinkers club, and SCC Health Services put up their own booths and passed out flyers.

“They set up tables across from their exhibit and harassed them the entire time they were there, throwing condoms at them, yelling at them, putting signs up and saying, ‘A woman’s choice is a woman’s choice,’” Macias told WND.

Macias says that on the day of the event the administration took him out of class to demand that he shut down the GAP display, despite the fact that the campus is open to the public.

“I was in class,” he told WND. “The administration tried to call my phone a million times. Eventually, I walked out of the classroom and picked up the phone.”

Vice President of Student Services Michael Poindexter and ASG faculty adviser Lee Weathers-Miguel met him outside his classroom and demanded that he have the pro-life group leave right away.

“I said, ‘I can’t tell them to leave. They have every right to be here’,” said Macias, to which they responded, “Go out there and tell them to move their display somewhere off campus or turn their signs around. Tell them this isn’t OK.”

“I can’t tell them to do any of that,” Macias said. “They have every right to be here, and it’s not my place to tell them what to do with their display.”

“After I refused to tell the group to take it down, they said, ‘We’re pi–sed off about this. This is unacceptable,’” he said.

Poindexter and Weathers-Miguel told him that he should have invited a pro-abortion group as well.  “They said if I had invited people from the other side, this would have been OK,” he explained. “If I would have included Planned Parenthood in this, then it would be perfectly fine. But because I hadn’t, they needed to go.”

Poindexter left, but Weathers-Miguel remained.  “He said he was incredibly mad because I had ‘made him look like an a– in front of the administration’,” Macias said. “He also said he wouldn’t forget this.”

The recall election was called by Weathers-Miguel shortly afterward, through a violation of protocol, according to Macias.  The election took place October 27-28 and the results have not yet been released.

A week after the event, the Queer-Straight Alliance took up a petition for the new election, and then submitted it to Weathers-Miguel, who validated it and chose a date for the election.

The student government constitution, however, says Macias, dictates that the petition is to be submitted to and validated by the student justice board.  The petition is then given to the student affairs board, who establish election rules for the ASG board to vote on.

“The date [Weathers-Miguel] chose was less than six days away,” he said, though College President Kathryn E. Jeffery later pushed it back. “They gave us no information, no letters, phone calls or e-mails. I found out about it through the school newspaper.”

According to Macias, the university administration and students supported free-speech displays, so long as they as they were not pro-life.  “They are now saying that they don’t support this group, so it shouldn’t be allowed on campus – which is wrong,” he said. “They obviously don’t have a firm grasp of what free speech is if they feel that way.”

The extreme reaction to GAP at Sacramento City College sharply contrasts their reception (http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/oct/09102807.html) at the University of California-Berkeley earlier this week.  Despite strong protest from the campus pro-abortion groups, the university administrators of the strongly pro-abortion campus defended their right to be there.

“We don’t regulate content,” said Dean of Students Jonathan Poullard.

Contact Information:

Kathryn Jeffery, President
Sacramento City College
Phone:  (916) 558-2100
Email:  jefferk@scc.losrios.edu

Michael Poindexter, Vice President of Student Services
Sacramento City College
Phone: (916) 558-2142
Email:  PoindeM@scc.losrios.edu

Lee Weathers-Miguel, Student Affairs Specialist
Sacramento City College
Phone:  (916) 558-2382
Email:  miguell@scc.losrios.edu

 

Pro-life groups urge boycott of upcoming CCHD collections

By Patrick B. Craine

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 29, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A new coalition of Catholic pro-life organizations is calling for a massive reform of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) and urging Catholics to boycott the upcoming November collection.

The CCHD is the domestic social justice arm of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and focuses on supporting groups that work in community organizing.  They have been accused over many years of supporting radical left-wing groups who advocate a distorted un-Catholic view of social justice.  The organization primarily raises funds through an annual nationwide parish collection, this year scheduled for November 22nd.

Scandal erupted in the U.S. Church last year over the CCHD’s funding of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a liberal network of local community activism groups.  At least two dioceses, in fact, opted not to take up the collection last fall.  The CCHD, which has given ACORN millions of dollars in the last ten years, cut their funding last year based on reports of embezzlement within the organization. In recent weeks, several ACORN offices were caught condoning child prostitution and sex trafficking in a series of videotaped sting operations conducted by veteran pro-life investigators. 

The new pro-life coalition, which includes Human Life International (HLI), American Life League (ALL), and the new Bellarmine Veritas Ministry (BVM), was formed following a report released in August by BVM which revealed that the CCHD was funding at least four groups that promote abortion, contraception, same-sex ‘marriage’, and even legalized prostitution.  The report also listed numerous groups that are advocating the current proposal for health care reform without prejudice to its funding of abortion.

After LifeSiteNews.com presented the report to CCHD last month, Director Ralph McCloud responded that he was “shocked” and that they were taking “decisive action.”  He indicated that they had already defunded two groups and were still investigating the two others. 

On October 2nd, Bishop Roger P. Morin, CCHD Chairman, issued a memo to the U.S. bishops as a response to BVM’s report.  Morin says that CCHD had defunded the Chinese Progressive Association and Young Worker’s United (YWU), both San Francisco-based groups that advocate same-sex “marriage” and abortion. 

The two other groups – LACAN and the Women’s Community Revitalization Project – said Morin, “were investigated and, in consultation with the local dioceses, the charges proved to be inaccurate or a misunderstanding had occurred.”

“These firm actions are consistent with CCHD’s policies and practices, which deny funding to groups that take positions contrary to Catholic teaching,” he insisted.

BVM responded on October 8, saying that “After carefully and prayerfully considering Bishop Morin’s response to our campaign, we must respectfully state that this response does not satisfactorily address our primary concerns and is factually deficient in several areas.”

While Morin claims that the implicated groups had gone against Church teaching “after they were funded,” BVM insists that “Young Workers United acted in support of abortion prior to approval to funding,” and therefore should not have been funded in the first place.

“Also, the Chinese Progressive Association acted in support of homosexual marriage in 2006, yet still was cleared for funding in subsequent years,” they write.  “The CCHD must take responsibility for failure in properly screening these groups.”

“While we are pleased with the rapid response in defunding both these organizations, the CCHD has yet to address how such organizations made it through the grants process in the first place,” they continue.  “This is our primary concern.  Until the grants process is thoroughly investigated and reformed, the grave risk remains that organizations such as these may be funded in the future.”

They go on to challenge Morin to further explain why the other two groups are to still be funded.  “LA CAN explicitly promoted contraception and praised the work of its members in support of homosexual marriage in its own newsletter,” they write.  “Also, in regards to the Womens Community Revitalization Project our charge that this grantee was a coalition partner with the pro-abortion group WomenVote PA is not inaccurate.”

LifeSiteNews.com contacted CCHD for comment, but did not hear back by press time.

The coalition is calling the CCHD to a major reform, focused on ensuring grantees’ fidelity to Church teaching on social justice, family and life issues.  They launched a website yesterday called Reform CCHD Now where they are calling on faithful Catholics to download and print out special coupons to be put in collection baskets on November 22nd.

The coupon states that the person is allocating their CCHD donation to a different group that conforms to Catholic teaching on social justice and issues relating to life and family.  They have begun compiling a list of such groups on their website.  The coupon indicates further that the person will be willing to continue supporting CCHD only after being assured, through “substantial published research into the funded groups,” that these groups do not oppose Church teaching.

The coalition wants an explanation of the CCHD’s poor funding practices, “an independent audit of the CCHD grant process with the results published online,” and greater vigilance from the organization in evaluating grantees for Church teaching on social justice, life, and family issues.

They are proposing, further, that the CCHD require grantees to sign a statement indicating they will not oppose Church teaching.  BVM has said that such a statement should be posted to the websites of both CCHD and the grantee.

The coalition insists that “a complete reform of the CCHD” is needed, “not simply the occasional defunding of a problematic organization, followed by assurances that the problem has been solved, as has been the CCHD’s response until now.”

“We are trying to shed some light not only on the CCHD, but also on some wonderful organizations that actually serve the poor and disenfranchised in a way that is consistent with Catholic teaching” said Rob Gasper, president of BVM, in a press release. “We just think that faithful Catholics in the pews should be able to trust that the money they give to the CCHD is going to reputable organizations that in no way work against the Church.”

“We support without qualification our Catholic bishops,” said Stephen Phelan, Communications Manager for Human Life International. “We are confident that many of them will support this call for greater transparency in the CCHD, and to a deep reform in the organization. In this campaign we are asking that the CCHD reconsider its philosophy and practices.”
 
“We respectfully call the CCHD to respond to Pope Benedict’s call in his recent encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, when he challenged development professionals to work towards an authentic, integral human development based on a Catholic view of the human person and in the Love and Truth of Jesus Christ,” said Phelan.

Phelan told LSN that he thought CCHD’s response to the BVM report was “a real positive thing.”  “We think that there’s enough good potential there for [CCHD] to do great things,” he added.  “There should be such an arm in the Church, but it should be fixed.”

Phelan noted that they have already received requests from several groups to join the coalition, which may be done through the website.
Contact Information:
Catholic Campaign for Human Development
3211 Fourth St. NE
Washington DC 20017
v: 202-541-3210
f: 202-541-3329
cchdpromo@usccb.org

To visit the Reform CCHD Now website click here.

Too see the Bellarmine Veritas Ministry Report click here.

See Left-Wing Radicalism in the Church: CCHD and ACORN  (Human Events)

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

USCCB’s Social Justice Arm Caught Funding Pro-Abortion/Prostitution Groups: Takes “Decisive” Action in Response

To see more LifeSiteNews click here.

The apostate liar, Dr. (Fr?) John Jenkins, and Notre Dame are vindictively out to punish pro-life and anti-Obama protesters – and we call this a Catholic university?

FROM THE PEW – Will Laura Rohling, a Denver mother of three young children, become a victim of the apostate priest, Dr. John Jenkins and a known pro-abortion judge, Jenny Pitts Mainer?

LifeSiteNews is reporting that Rohling, a protester at the formerly Catholic University of Notre Dame during President Obama’s address, may decide to plead guilty to charges of trespass due to the financial costs of traveling from her home to South Bend for court proceedings.

As you may recall, Dr. Jenkins, who has been associated with a group promoting abortions in Africa, invited the very pro-abortion president to receive an honorary degree from Notre Dame during last spring’s commencement exercises. That decision sparked a wave of protests from nearly 80 bishops, scores of priests and thousands of lay faithful.  During the event several protesters, including Rohling, were arrested by Notre Dame Security for praying the rosary on campus in protest. 

With the assistance of volunteer lawyers, the protesters pleaded not guilty and their cases were assigned to Judge Jenny Pitts Mainer, the wife of an outspoken abortion advocate who ironically is on the faculty at Notre Dame.

Dr. Jenkins, who now claims to be pro-life (a laughable claim), has been besieged with requests to have the charges against the peaceful protesters dismissed.  He claims that the matter now rests with the local prosecutors and he has no say over the disposition of the charges.  HOWEVER, our check with legal authorities confirms the widely-held view that if the complaining witness – in this case the University – asks for a dismissal of misdemeanor charges of trespass, the prosecutor’s office will almost always comply.

So now we can add the title “liar” to our previously bestowed “apostate” to Dr. Jenkins.

By the way, if Ms. Rohling pleads guilty she will be fined $250, be ordered to pay another $160 in court costs, perform 20 hours of community service, receive a 20 day suspended jail sentence, and one year of probation.

“The primary reason for going to South Bend was to tell my story of choosing abortion years before and how it did not ‘fix’ my problem – it was not the right choice in the long term,” Rohling said.  “The vision that sticks most in my mind is that while were saying the rosary, I was holding my ‘I regret my Abortion’ sign, there were other groups with pro-Obama shirts on that were allowed to stand aside and watch us get arrested.”

On her decision to plead guilty, she said, “My job first is to raise my children. I cannot continue to travel to Notre Dame for hearings.  They [Judge Mainer] will not allow a proxy, so I have to go for every [court] appearance.” She adds, “All this for a rosary, a protest for Orthodox Catholicism, and my free speech rights.”

Contact Bishop John M. D’Arcy with your comments: South Bend Chancery Office, 114 West Wayne Street, South Bend, Indiana 46601, phone 574-234-0687, fax 574-232-8483.

Cardinal George: Prince of the Church or Prince of Fools?

FROM THE PEW – While we have often expressed our dissatisfaction with current Church leadership, we think we may on the way to a new all-time low with the archdiocese of Chicago and its archbishop, Francis Cardinal George.

First, he tolerates the radical priest Fr. Michael Pfleger, who, you might remember, frequently preaches at the side of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, President Obama’s former pastor.  Now comes word that a Dominican nun in Chicago, Sr. Donna Quinn, is working part-time as an escort for an abortion facility and calls Church teachings on abortion and many other issues “immoral.”  As archbishop, George has the power to silence or excommunicate both, but refuses to do so.

And as president of the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) he has failed to act to control the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) which has given millions of dollars to such community organizations as ACORN.  The latest scandal – just uncovered – involves the CCHD giving more money to pro-abortion and pro-homosexual groups, one of which was involved in campaigning against the California proposition to restore traditional marriage after the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage.  In short, the CCHD has given millions to groups whose goal is a major redistribution of wealth in the United States.

If that is not bad enough, the USCCB has now joined other left-leaning groups such as the Islamic Society of North America and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America to petition the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) to ban what they call “hate speech” on talk radio.  We know who that is directed at:  Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and other politically conservative talk show hosts. 

We wonder if it is too much for the American Catholic Church to articulate faithfully authentic Catholic teachings on moral issues and stay away from the left-wing new evangelism where the message of the Gospel is economic rather than spiritual and service to God can only be done by becoming the socialistic champions of the poor.  We must take care of the poor and disadvantaged, that is the message of Jesus, but supporting pro-abortion, pro-homosexual and the socialistic programs of the current national administration is the wrong way to go about it; as is allowing the likes of Fr. Pfleger and Sr. Quinn to carry on as Catholic religious.

Sadly, we are approaching the point where the faithful will need to decide whether to follow the True Church of Rome or the – for lack of a better term – Obama Catholic church.

So where does Cardinal George stand?  We’ll leave it to the reader to decide if this prince of the Church is, in fact, a prince of fools.

Sioux City Bishop Calls for “Exorcism” of “Spirit of Vatican II”

Says emphasis on “engagement with the world” has “wreaked havoc on the Church”

By Kathleen Gilbert

SIOUX CITY, Iowa, October 16, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Catholics must learn to “exorcise” the so-called “spirit of Vatican II” to end the secularization that has “wreaked havoc” on the Church since the Council, says Bishop R. Walker Nickless of Sioux City, Iowa.

In a pastoral letter issued Thursday to the lay and religious of his diocese, Nickless wrote that he has “no other desire” than to see the reforms of Vatican II implemented properly. However, he said, “It is crucial that we all grasp that the hermeneutic or interpretation of discontinuity or rupture, which many think is the settled and even official position, is not the true meaning of  the Council.”

The “hermeneutic of discontinuity,” under the guise of the “spirit of Vatican II,” sees “the Second Vatican Council as a radical break with the past,” explained the bishop. However, “There can be no split … between the Church and her faith before and after the Council.”

“We must stop speaking of the ‘Pre-Vatican II’ and ‘Post Vatican II’ Church,” continued Nickless, who agreed with Pope Benedict XVI that the Council’s meaning “must be found only in the letter of the documents themselves.”  “The so-called ’spirit’ of the Council has no authoritative interpretation,” Nickless said. 

“It is a ghost or demon that must be exorcised if we are to proceed with the Lord’s work.”

The bishop said the cultural upheaval of the 1960s and 70s precipitated a shift in perspective about the Church, and it began to seem that “nothing was certain or solid” in its teaching or liturgy. “Sometimes,” he said, “we set out to convert the world, but were instead converted by it. We have sometimes lost sight of who we are and what we believe, and therefore have little to offer the world that so desperately needs the Gospel.”

This “hermeneutic of discontinuity,” said Nickless, “emphasizes the ‘engagement with the world’ to the exclusion of the deposit of faith.” 

“This has wreaked havoc on the Church, systematically dismantling the Catholic Faith to please the world, watering down what is distinctively Catholic, and ironically becoming completely irrelevant and impotent for the mission of the Church in the world,” he said.  “The Church that seeks simply what works or is ‘useful’ in the end becomes useless.”

Nickless devoted a portion of the letter to defending the family against this relativistic mentality, re-emphasizing the nature of the family as the union between man and woman, established by God for the good of the spouses and the procreation of children. 

“This seems really basic, but it is worth repeating in our day and age when the family has sometimes lost its centrality and cohesiveness, and is under constant attack from cultural and ideological forces,” he said.  “Not only are its purposes sometimes unknown or ignored in practice, but God’s authorship of marriage and its nature (and hence its priority over arbitrary civil law) is flatly denied.  Therefore we must be attentive to protecting and strengthening family life.”

The bishop asserted that the Catholic community must therefore “give concrete help against” the breakdown of sexuality in society. In addition to extramarital promiscuity, easy divorce, contraception, abortion, and pornography, Nickless advised his flock to actively resist the breakdown of the family through “the domination of communication technologies and novelties, and the cult of fun and entertainment, to name just a few dangers.”

Nickless called himself “thoroughly a product” of the “exciting, almost intoxicating, time of the Second Vatican Council,” which he called “the greatest gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church in centuries.” 

“I have no other desire for my ministry than seeing the hopes and reforms of the Second Vatican Council fully implemented and brought to fruition,” said the bishop.  “Like Pope Benedict XVI, I know that, while we have worked hard, there is still much work to do.”

“Our urgent need at this time,” wrote Nickless, “is to reclaim and strengthen our understanding of the deposit of faith. 

“We must have a distinctive identity and culture as Catholics, if we would effectively communicate the Gospel to the people of this day and Diocese. This is our mission.”

Click here to view Bishop Nickless’ full letter. 

For more LifeSiteNews click here.

Brave young bishop banns goofy Bishop Thomas Gumbleton from Marquette diocese

By Peter J. Smith

MARQUETTE, Michigan, October 13, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A public controversy has erupted between two bishops of the Catholic Church in the United States, with one of the youngest bishops in the country publicly taking on one of his own colleagues in an effort to defend the Church’s teachings on homosexuality and other issues.

Marquette Bishop Alexander K. Sample, 49-years-old and one of the youngest US Catholic bishops, recently banned Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, 79, a retired auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Detroit and notorious promoter of homosexuality, contraception, and homosexual and women’s ordination, from entering and speaking in his diocese, citing his pastoral duty to defend the “faith and morals” of the Catholic Church. The controversial bishop was set to address the group Marquette Citizens for Peace and Justice.

“As the Bishop of the Diocese of Marquette, I am the chief shepherd and teacher of the Catholic faithful of the Upper Peninsula entrusted to my pastoral care,” said Bishop Sample in a public statement. “As such I am charged with the grave responsibility to keep clearly before my people the teachings of the Catholic Church on matters of faith and morals.”
 
“Given Bishop Gumbleton’s very public position on certain important matters of Catholic teaching, specifically with regard to homosexuality and the ordination of women to the priesthood, it was my judgment that his presence in Marquette would not be helpful to me in fulfilling my responsibility.”

The elder prelate, who once held the title of Vicar General of Detroit, counts himself as a member of radical heterodox groups such as New Ways Ministry and Call to Action, both of which have been censured by the Vatican for moral and doctrinal reasons, especially over the promotion of homosexual behavior as a valid normative lifestyle. Members of Call to Action are also excommunicated in one US diocese and the group agitates for contraception, abortion, divorce and remarriage, and change in the governmental structure of the Church.

Gumbleton’s career as an active and well-known “liberal” prelate came to an abrupt end in 2006, when the Vatican denied his request to continue on as Auxiliary Bishop to Detroit Cardinal Adam Maida upon reaching the mandatory retirement age of 75.

For his part, Sample made clear that banning Gumbleton had nothing to do with either Marquette Citizens for Peace and Justice or the topic of Gumbleton’s speech, which concerned the matter of peace and justice.

Instead, the deciding factor, said Sample, was the potential for Gumbleton to mislead members of his diocese on Church teachings through discussions and interactions either tangential or unrelated to the topic of Gumbleton’s speech.

“I was concerned about his well-known and public stature and position on these issues and my inability to keep these matters from coming up in discussion,” added Sample. “In order that no one becomes confused, everyone under my pastoral care must receive clear teaching on these important doctrines.”

Sample stated that he regretted the public controversy, but made clear that Gumbleton had put him in that position by neglecting “common courtesy” between bishops, which requires them to ask permission before entering the diocese of another bishop. Instead, Gumbleton had informed Sample of his intention to speak at the event organized by Marquette Citizens for Peace and Justice on October 9, after the upcoming event was made public.

However, this is not the first time that Gumbleton has been banned from a diocese in which informing the local ordinary of his presence was an afterthought.

In 2007, bishop Gerald F. Kicanas banned Gumbleton from entering his jurisdiction after he discovered that Call to Action had arranged for him to speak at Catholic churches and schools in the diocese.

For pro-life and pro-family leaders – both inside and outside the Catholic Church – Sample’s stand against Gumbleton is being interpreted as a sign of hope and a reminder of a generational changing of the guard within the Catholic Church.

Gumbleton is 30 years senior to Sample, and represents an aging and shrinking demographic of US bishops whose heterodox opinions were formed in seminaries during the 1950s and who were active in ministry during the cultural upheaval of the 1960s and 70s.

Sample, on the other hand, represents a younger class of bishops formed during the papacy of John Paul II that have trended toward taking up the challenge of defending orthodox teachings on morals, doctrine, and liturgy.
 
“The bishops aren’t sworn to each other, they are sworn to obey the gospels,” veteran pro-life leader Joe Scheidler of the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League told LifeSiteNews.com. Scheidler added that bishops nevertheless often do act like members of a “unique club” generally protecting each other and not talking about each other in public.

“But if a bishop is so bad” like Gumbleton, said Scheidler, “If they are doing something that is causing something that is causing scandal, it takes a strong bishop to call them on the carpet.”

Read Bishop Alexander Sample’s statement here.

See related coverage by LifeSiteNews.com:

No Catholic Venue in Tucson for Gay Activist Bishop Gumbleton
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jan/07013106.html

For more LifeSiteNews, click here.

OMG! Are the bishops stupid or what?

FROM THE PEW – LifesiteNews is reporting that at least one Canadian bishop has said he does not see a problem with funding groups promoting abortion as long as the bishops’ money is used for “beneficial projects.”

The controversy surrounds the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace (CCODP) which, like the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), has been found to be funding left-wing groups who advocate moral positions contrary to those espoused by the Church. 

The bishop, who LifesiteNews does not identify, said in an e-mail that he does not see a problem with funding such groups so long as the money is earmarked for specific projects that do not contradict Catholic principles.  One wonders if this bishop understands that money is a fungible commodity and that such “restrictions” only free other moneys to be used for anti-Catholic purposes.

Sometimes we wonder if priests, when appointed bishops, should be required to take and pass first year college courses on economics and political science.  We’ve read too much from other bishops to realize that some of them (too many for us!) don’t understand simple economic and political principles.

In a related matter, Bishop Roger P. Morin, chairman of the U. S. conference’s CCHD, has written his brother bishops to assure them that the CCHD has purged from list of groups funded numerous groups formerly funded by CCHD that supported positions contrary to Catholic teaching.  These groups include, besides ACORN, the Chinese Progressive Association and Young Workers United which had produced voter guides that supported same-sex marriage, and the Rebecca Project which supported abortions.

Of course this is all twaddle.  The bishops knew who they were funding, they just weren’t telling the truth to the faithful.  ACORN, remember, was de-funded ONLY after one of its top leaders was found to have embezzled funds even though it was well known that it was involved in suspicious voter registration drives as early as 2004 and was supporting dubious left-wing political causes long before that.

The moral of the story: When the second collection basket is passed for CCHD or CCOPD, just pass.  It’s too bad we can’t trust our own bishops to use our donations properly.

If you were tired of Notre Dame’s brand of Catholicism, read this

FROM THE PEW – In case you have not had your fill with the path the apostate priest, Dr. John Jenkins, has taken the now formerly Catholic University of Notre Dame, read this:

The Student Activities Office at Notre Dame has decided to pay the costs of five ND students who attended a national gay rights demonstration, the National Equality March in Washington, D. C. last weekend.  The march was to support homosexual marriage and the end of the military’s “don’t ask don’t tell” policy, among other things.

We’re sorry, but is it too much to ask that institutions that call themselves Catholic act like they really are Catholic?  Perhaps it is time for Bishop John D’Arcy to strip Notre Dame of its claim to be Catholic.  Bishop D’Arcy was a stalwart in support of Life when Dr. Jenkins honored the pro-abortion Barack Obama with an honorary degree.

Now is the time to take the next step.  Bishop D’Arcy can be reached by writing to him at PO Box 390, Ford Wayne, IN 46801.