The episcopate, corporately, isn't especially pro-life. At least, not when it conflicts with other purposes, goals, and desires.
As a Knight of Columbus, I can tell you that our order is officially pro-life, and we try our best to put our money where our mouth is. Corporately, we engage in the political arena, the social arena, and we just try our best to help women in crisis pregnancies. We help do the logistics for various marches for life around the country, we engage in letter-writing campaigns, we provide the manpower to drive parish-level, diocese-wide pro-life efforts.
We tax each member a small bit of money to raise millions of dollars per year to provide for pro-life and pro-family activities and advertising in the wider society, to try to influence people generally to acknowledge the right to life. Some folks in the wider society have criticized us for these efforts, seeing us as little more than a propaganda arm for the Republican Party.
Local councils have built housing for women in crisis pregnancies, have conducted campaigns to collect money, food, clothing for these women. Local councils in conjunction with Supreme have bought numerous ultrasound machines to give to crisis pregnancy centers so that women can see their unborn child before making any decision to have him or her killed.
Yet, we have “men” within our ranks who are pro-abort. Some of these men are Democrat politicians. At the grassroots level, many councils have tried to remedy the scandal of publicly pro-abort K of C politicians by relieving these vermin of their membership within the order.
I have spoken with officials as high as State Deputy (the top Knight in each state), and essentially, it is the bishops who stay our hand. Some folks criticize us, and perhaps some day, we will have to break with the evil bishops on this, and just do the right thing and hang the pro-abort bastards out to dry. But that would be a radical and sad step, as the Knights have always tried to be in step with the hierarchy, not off doing our own “Catholic” thing against the hierarchy. If we were to break with the bishops on this, part of the purpose of our order would be vitiated.
The bishops have higher priorities than unborn babies. They have presidents to meet and see, to wine and dine. They have to entertain and maintain their political viability. They don't want to be seen as too partisan. The closeted homos among them would like to remain in the closet. They like their French cuffs and their beautiful cufflinks and other finery. They have their thug union brothers to consider, their neo-Marxist agendas, their mansions, hot tubs, and swimming pools.
And for those who ostentatiously live "humbly" and "simply," they have their reputations for simple living to keep intact.
sitetest
Thanks for weighing in on this. I know that a lot of bishops are politicians first, pastors second. The one we have here in Eastern Washington is a conservative and I am grateful of that.
Speaking of the Knights of Columbus, rumor has it that the republican hold-outs in the NY State assembly (that would not vote for homosexual “marriage”), were also members of the KofC. Apparently Cuomo made them a deal that couldn’t refuse, they flipped, now homosexual “marriage” is the law in NY State, without the people voting it in. If this is true, it’s absolutely outrageous that these Catholic men could support this kind of evil. In the end they will have to answer to the master and he’s not going to be too happy. The KofC donated big bucks to defeat the homosexual “marriage” amendment a couple of years ago. But in the end they could not compete with the liberal billionares like Bill Gates and others, so now Washington State has homosexual “marriage”. I too know some fellow Knights that vote democrat. The council that I am a member of is mostly conservative Catholics, despising Obama and everything about him. Thanks for being a Knight. Vivat Jesus