U.S. Catholic Bishops came away with three big winners in this weeks culture wars.
First – Bishops slammed U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Chairman Martin R. Castro, a Democrat and Obama appointee for anti-religious anti Catholic statements. Chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Martin R. Castro, a Democrat and Obama appointee, issued a particularly strong statement against many (Catholic) appeals to religious freedom today. (His report recommends “religious freedom” defined by law be minimalized and the secular definition of “Civil Liberties” be pushed on the culture.) Full article at Catholicnewsagency.com
“The phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia or any form of intolerance,” he said. Castro added that “today, as in past, religion is being used as both a weapon and a shield by those seeking to deny others equality. In our nation’s past religion has been used to justify slavery and later, Jim Crow laws.”
Catholic Bishops responded. “He (Martin R. Castro) makes the shocking suggestion that Catholic, evangelical, orthodox Jewish, Mormon, and Muslim communities are comparable to fringe segregationists from the civil rights era,” the Archbishop Lori said.
Faith leaders have a proud tradition of supporting the cause of civil rights in the U.S., Archbishop Lori insisted. “Can we imagine the civil rights movement without Rev. Martin Luther King, Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel?” he asked.
That tradition continues today, he added. “Today, Catholic priests, religious and laity can be found walking the neighborhood streets of our most struggling communities in places abandoned by a ‘throwaway culture’ that has too often determined that quick profits matter more than communities,” he said. “We are there offering education, health care, social services, and hope, working to serve as the ‘field hospital’ Pope Francis has called us to be.”
“Rest assured, if people of faith continue to be marginalized, it is the poor and vulnerable, not the Chairman and his friends, who will suffer,” Archbishop Lori maintained.
Second – Bishops shot down fake Catholics (Catholics for Choice, a Washington-based group funded by wealthy donors and million-dollar investments), funding a national advertising campaign promoting abortion as social-justice in a full-page ad blitz with the words “Public funding of abortion is a Catholic social-justice value” has made a splash in major newspapers across the United States. Full story NCRegister.com
The use of the name ‘Catholic’ as a platform to promote the taking of innocent human life is offensive not only to Catholics, but to all who expect honesty and forthrightness in public discourse,” said Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York. He stated that Catholics for Choice had no affiliation with the Church and indicated the organization was a front group for wealthy foundations dedicated to advancing abortion as population control. Full Statement
Catholics for Choice is not affiliated with the Catholic Church in any way. It has no membership, and clearly does not speak for the faithful. It is funded by powerful private foundations to promote abortion as a method of population control.
Third – Archbishop Charles J. Chaput challenged us to acknowledge the forces which now shake the foundations of our republic and seek to rob us of our liberty. Full article Sex, family and the liberty of the Church
If Christians leave the public square, other people with much worse intentions won’t. The surest way to make the country suffer is to not contest them in public debate and in the voting booth. Christians are not of the world, but we’re most definitely in it. Augustine would say that our home is the City of God, but we get there by passing through the City of Man. In other words, elections do matter. They matter a lot.
The truth about our sexuality is that infidelity, promiscuity, sexual confusion and mass pornography create human wreckage. Multiply that wreckage by tens of millions of persons over five decades. Then compound it with media nonsense about the innocence of casual sex and the “happy” children of friendly divorces. What you get is what we have now: a dysfunctional culture of frustrated and wounded people increasingly incapable of permanent commitments, self-sacrifice and sustained intimacy, and unwilling to face the reality of their own problems.
This has political consequences. People unwilling to rule their appetites will inevitably be ruled by them — and eventually, they’ll be ruled by someone else. People too weak to sustain faithful relationships are also too weak to be free. Sooner or later they surrender themselves to a state that compensates for their narcissism and immaturity with its own forms of social control.