Still More on Why The Catholic Church will Deserve what it Gets

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which forced Real Catholic TV to drop the "Catholic" from its name, still tolerates the use of "Catholic" by the pro-aborts at Catholic Relief Services:

Yvonne Craig as Batgirl

One CRS employee lists the pro-abortion Pro-Choice Resources and Institute of Women and Ethnic Studies as former employers on her LinkedIn resume, while another was hired by the Catholic aid organization directly from the pro-abortion Population Services International.

Another former employee was convicted of assault last fall after ramming her car into a crowd at the DC March for Life in January 2011 as the pro-lifers traversed a crosswalk.

The latter employee, Charisse Espy Glassman, was a Democrat candidate for the DC school board as well as a legislative assistant with CRS-Haiti. Despite assault charges, she remained at CRS until August 4th, 2011. In a statement on Facebook responding to queries, CRS said they had “operated on the principle that people are innocent until proven guilty.” A victim of the assault, who suffered two herniated disks, reported that Glassman had seemed to laugh as she drove into the crowd.

These people still get to raise money in Catholic Churches.  The U.S. Catholic hierarchy has made a deal with the devil, and until they get their own house in order, they will have no credibility to teach, exhort, or sue anyone else.  There are no heroes on the horizon who seem likely to accomplish this feat.

Cardinal George on How the Culture is Changed

But will he figure out how to do it himself?

Chicago Archbishop Francis Cardinal George revisits the Chick-fil-A issue, and observes how the left has moved the culture by excluding entire vistas of context (H/T:  BackyardConservative):

An argument is always made in a context that determines what can be considered sensible, and it seems to me that some of us are arguing out of different contexts. 

There are three contexts for discussing “gay marriage”: 1) the arena of individual rights and their protection in civil law, 2) the field of activities defined by nature and its laws, and 3) the realm of faith as a response to God’s self-revelation in history.  Unfortunately, when the only permissible context for discussing public values is that of individual rights protected by civil law, then it is the government alone that determines how it is acceptable to act.  Every public actor (including faith communities) then becomes the government’s agent.  This is a formula for tyranny.

We can see how appeals to pluralism and toleration gradually become tyrannical in the development of how we are now expected to regard the killing of unborn children.  When the individual civil right to abort a living child was discovered in the Constitution, its justification began as a “necessary evil” for the sake of a woman’s health; it was then applauded in nobler terms as a positive symbol of a woman’s freedom; it is now part of the value system of our society and everyone must be involved in paying for it, either through taxes or insurance.  It is mainstream medicine and settled social policy.  Its opponents are relegated to a quirky fringe, outside of the American consensus not only on what it is legal to do but also on what it is good to support.  When the government, the media and the entertainment industries agree to agree on how to use words and shape the argument, society itself is deliberately transformed in ways that bring academics, judges, legislators, lawyers, law enforcement officers, newspaper editors, actors, psychiatrists, doctors and every other public professional into public agreement, all portraying themselves as original thinkers.  Anyone opposed to the new consensus, no matter the reason, is dismissed as a throwback to an earlier age, to be tolerated, perhaps, but removed from public life and, eventually, punished.  It’s a very old story.

The Cardinal is exactly right.  But he's been standing on the sidelines watching it happen his entire life.  Now what's he going to do about it?  People on the wrong side of these issues go to communion every Sunday, every day, some of them, in the Chicago Archdiocese.  Evidently, it's OK with Cardinal George for someone to stand up in his territory and say "I'm Catholic and gay is OK!  Abortion is OK!"  There are no consequences for this, even for the most famous and power Catholics.  Until the Church starts flexing its muscle, and getting into the game, it's going to be relegated to a seat on the 50-yard line to watch as western culture completes its slide into the gutter, taking the economy with it.

More on Why The Catholic Church will Deserve what it Gets

Regarding the invitation from New York Archbishop Timothy Cardinal Dolan to President Obama to speak at the annual Al Smith Dinner, Matthew at Creative Minority Report writes:

Why is this invitation different than Notre Dame or Georgetown's invitations? You can say that it has nothing to do with politics and that it's a fundraiser for children but didn't Georgetown and Notre Dame say that it wasn't about politics and that it was all about the students?

I've been to two religious freedom rallies with my kids in Philadelphia. I traveled down to Baltimore for the kickoff Mass of The Fortnight for Freedom with Archbishop Lori. And yeah, this ticks me off.

When millions of Catholics who prayed and protested for religious freedom see the pictures that will surely surface from the event with Cardinal Dolan and Obama how will they feel? Pray tell what will that do to the morale of millions of Catholics? What will that do to the pit of their stomachs?

It's just unserious. We can say it's all for a good cause. But its just unserious. Either those 50 million babies count as human beings or they don't. Either marriage is worth fighting for or it's not. Either religious freedom must be preserved or not. To say we're taking a "time out" from politics a few weeks before election day is just unserious. And it says to millions of Catholics that we can take a time out from those important issues to yuck it up.

 President Obama is the enemy of orthodox Christianity.  And, to the extent that the Catholic Church represents orthodox Christianity, President Obama is the enemy of the Catholic Church.  I had thought that Cardinal Dolan had a clue about what was at stake.  Evidently, he hasn't.