In "The Paranoid Style of Church Politics," the witty Wimpy Catholic Max Lindeman reviews some of the recent rhetoric out of the bishops' conference and wonders if too many members have been reaching for aluminum miters of late:
In 2010, InsideCatholic.com director Deal W. Hudson asked, “Is It Time for A Catholic Tea Party?” Whatever the answer might have been then, today it seems to be “Yes,” but on terms very different from those Hudson envisioned. Instead of a grassroots movement pressuring the Catholic bishops to marshal their authority in support of pro-life candidates, we now have the bishops themselves preaching to the faithful in the fearful, combative tones of grassroots right-wing activists.
Oh, come on. Yes they are. When Illinois legalized civil unions for same-sex couples, Cardinal George predicted: “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.” Last summer, Cardinal Dolan drew a broad comparison between gay marriage supporters and communist dictators. Just last month, Dolan accused the White House of “strangling” the Catholic Church, the silken cord being the Affordable Care Act. The Church’s official voice has come within a sound byte of death panels and birtherism...
Take a gander at the rest here.
That's how we live today. And when you point it out, you are immediately tu-quoqued by someone who thinks he is on the other side, even if you haven't indicated (except by implication) what side you are on or why you might be there. I wish the bishops would do better, but that is really a wish for heroic self-control in these disUnited States.
http://www.catholiccharitiesdc.org/
He and his Trad allies, forget that Google is available to us oldsters, so their promulgation of c-p is a no go.
Note the constant posting by Trads using ' we Catholic liberals and nuns' are so old we will soon be dying off.
At seventy we have a life expectancy of 17 years... With less hypertension than Trads we might be around for another 25 years. (-:
non requiestat in pace.
If religious liberty concerns you, Mr. Joyce, then of course you must agree that religious liberty must be respected for all. So if any individual church or religious denomination takes taxpayer money for its agencies or work, it must not impose its own beliefs and doctrines on others. Churches that wish to have absolute freedom in this regard should simply not seek to fund their work with the money that comes from all taxpayers - it's a matter of respecting their religious liberty. And if that means they must close an agency that is funded with public money, then that is what they must do. BTW, I can't vouch personally for all the states you say have closed Catholic Charities, but I do know that Catholic Charities in Washington DC is quite active. Perhaps you should check your sources before spreading misinformation.
The handful of young conservatives in my parish think they are a kind of Leninist vanguard. Please don't "get away" from the facts.
The DC Council didn't remove anyone from the public square. They refused to provide taxpayer money to groups that engaged in discrimination. Please do not confuse the two things.
Keven Clarke is exactly right: the hyperbole and hysteria is a discredit to the U.S. Catholic Church.
Bill Freeman asks why you keep posting on 'liberal' blogs. Well Bill. the Trad blogs want donations to post or in many cases have eliminated comments all together. The Trads are experiencing censorship and a lack of forums to express their 'insights'. They used to write letters to the Curia but that source has dried up and you heard about the leaks.. ???
Mr Joyce notes his cohorts are fiscally liberal? see above " but more fiscally liberal' WHY?
Try student debt..and living with grandpa and grandma. Mr Joyce...
It is obvious that you are young - that comes through loud and clear in your posts. I do not have the time to do your research for you, but there is a lot of data out there that indicate that your views do not represent the majority of younger Catholics. Of course, many have already left and many of those who have left aren't returning, unlike in previous generations. Also, the views of liberal Catholic young (the ones who not only don't go to Adoration, but skip mass now and then and don't think it's a mortal sin) don't count with you anyway because they are defined by the neo-conservatives as ''not Catholic'' anyway. Good riddance to them too, just like good riddance to all the grayhaired Vatican II lovers.
However, if you would like to study the real data instead of simply admiring your own impressions mirrored back to you, maybe start your research on this very web site, as America has reported the findings of many studies during the last few years. You might also look for the studies done by William D'Antonio, the late Dean Hoge and their team at Catholic University. You could also try the CARA web site. And then there are non-Catholic sources of information - Pew Research and even Gallup. You most likely hang around a lot with like-thinkers who regularly affirm one another one your collective ''rightness'' and believe that you are the majority. You are not. The information is out there - happy hunting.
DC Catholic Charities is still alive and kicking. Check it out.
- http://www.catholiccharitiesdc.org/
Catholic Charities in DC, operating with taxpayer money, was not ''forced'' to cut programs. Instead, it chose to change its health benefit coverages after DC legalized gay marriage. No new hires would have the option of including their spouse (hetero spouses also) on their health insurance. Another fine example of Roman Catholic christianity in action - cut off people who need health benefits and may not be able to get them on their own. Including the very straight parents of young children. Collateral damage I suppose.
You should do a little fact-checking before charging in, guns blazing, with misleading or downright wrong information. Just a suggestion.
Now, tell me, do you think that religious liberty should apply to all Americans? Or only to Catholics?
Do you believe that any agency of any particular religious group that is operating using taxpayer money - say a Muslim charity with employees who are not Muslim and a group of beneficiaries who are also not Muslim for the most part - should be permitted to demand that all employees and all beneficiaries follow Islamic laws? Should Catholic employees of this Muslim charity be required to fast during Ramadan? Should the women employees be forced to wear a head scarf, or veil their faces? Don't you think that instead the Muslim charity should simply decline tax funding for their programs if it does not want to recognize the religious freedom of its employees and clients who are not Muslim?
The key to all of this, Mr. Joyce, is the use of taxpayer money. The many branches of Catholic Charities in the US together receive billions of dollars of tax money in funding. Billions in TAX MONEY. If they don't want to extend religious liberty to ALL of their employees and to ALL of their clients then they can simply operate without tax monies. Then they are free to impose their own beliefs as part of their operating charter. When they operate with tax money - as does Catholic Charities in Washington DC - they have no right to impose their own beliefs on others if they really believe in the principle of religious freedom - it must be for all and not just for themselves. Catholic Charities DC found a work-around. It may not be a very moral resolution of their conundrum, but it's what they did. They would have shown far more chrisitan morality and integrity if they had simply announced that they would operate in the future without taxpayer money.