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Posted on 05/19/2007 2:57:54 PM PDT by presidio9
IN A RECENT STORY, the Washington Post recognized there is revitalization and renewal within the Catholic Church after years of scandal and turmoil. Amid this renewal, however, is a disturbing trend among some of the most influential Catholics in the media - I like to call them the "three blind mice." By name, they are FOX news channel's Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, and MSNBC's Chris Matthews. In each of their cases, Catholic teaching has taken a beating and factual reporting on Catholic matters is a joke. I first exposed these maverick Catholics in my new book, "Saving Those Damned Catholics."
Recently, Sean Hannity invited a priest, someone he should revere as a representative of Christ on earth, but condescendingly treated him as he does a left-winger.
Father Tom Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, criticized Mr. Hannity for his "cafeteria Catholicism," picking and choosing which doctrines he prefers as you pick broccoli over beets at the salad bar.
These men have no idea how much damage they are doing by denying Catholic truth, nor do many of the Catholic bishops. Catholic bishops have an obligation to set the record straight when dealing with public figures who persist in supporting moral evils while claiming to be Catholic.
Each of these "three blind mice" should be instructed by his bishop to either stop misrepresenting church teaching or stop calling themselves Catholic.
Their audiences will not realize there is error coming out of their mouths unless they understand basic Church teaching; which cannot be contradicted. In the absence of such clear teaching, which must emanate from the bishops and their priests, there exists a vacuum into which Hannity, Matthews and O'Reilly are spewing garbage. It's a sort of Catholic spin zone.
Hannity has no problem with contraception. He extols the virtues of pro-abortion Catholics such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rudy Giuliani.
Although, he claims he is against abortion. One has to wonder when and what circumstance is his partisan alliance more important than Catholic teaching?
Matthews makes no such duplicitous claim. He is soundly in the pro-abortion camp and never apologizes for being there. He derides his Catholic education and went so far to rant about what he thought was brainwashing when learning about the saints and martyrs of the Church as a kid!
And Mr. "O"? Well, there's a guy who constantly warns his viewers that he will do the bloviating. O'Reilly is "looking out for you," or so he says, while at the same time dealing in half truth and innuendo when it comes to matters Catholic. He insists that nobody really knows when human life begins, and has suggested that a fetus is a "potential" human being rather than a human being with potential.
Their power in the media should demand a higher level of accountability and responsibility. If there truly were a "no spin zone," one would expect that a public figure who claims to be Catholic would avoid spinning Catholic teaching, even for the sake of personal ego.
Just as surely as those mice who chased the farmer's wife lost part of their bodily structure, Catholic public figures who misrepresent basic moral principles by denying their immutability are very likely to lose something as well; but in their cases, it is not a simple body part at risk but rather their immortal souls. *
Editor's note: To contact Judie Brown or learn more about the American Life League visit their Web site at www.ALL.org.
Each Saturday the Daily News offers men and women of faith the opportunity to share their words of life and comfort with our readers.
“Catholic’s in Name Only,” doofus.
Bill O’Reilly is Catholic, and espouses many Christian views and strongly defends religious traditionalism in this country. But he’s more of a religious “culturist”, believing in something because that’s the way it’s always been done in America.
When I hear him talk on religious matters, it’s obvious he does not understand basic doctrine. For instance, he thinks much of the bible is parables instead of actual truth. This leads him into error.
O’Reilly is against the death penalty. He believes people should instead be sentenced to hard labor as true punishment.
Actually, moral gravity matters a great deal. Some practices like abortion/murder are incompatible with the central tennets of Catholicism. i.e, you can’t practice Catholicism, if you also believe in abortion. Others, are merely sins. If you use cotraception while practicing Catholicism, you are sinning. Did Galileo stop being a Catholic when he disagreed with the Pope?
Abortion isn’t the only issue on which the church has a position, after all.
Do you know what the Church's position on capital punishment even is?
Abortion and Capitol Punishment are two entirely diffent things. Abortion is murder and is always wrong and a mortal sin. Capital punishment is not sinful or always even wrong. The Pope just thinks that in highly developed countries it is probably not necessary. It is not sinful or wrong. Do not believe what you hear on TV or even all hiearchy. They mislead. The Bible does not teach aganist capital punishment. That should be obvious to anyone who reads it.
Ahh, so they are rejecting Catholicism because, in O’Reily’s case, he did not show defference to a CP that he was interviewing?
I’ve seen the same thing about Bill as you have. He’s done a lot for kids who are molested in trying to get judges to give them the sentences they deserve and to arrest people who help them. He’s pro life and I think he’s homo tolerant. He’s been nasty to born again Christians when they’re on there as well. He’s not born again himself and sometimes what BAC’s have to say bothers his theology. Oh well, he ain’t the first guy....
Wonder what percentage of the democrat party are Roman Catholics? / Eastern Orthodox?..
The death penalty isn’t the same ,, the commandment “thou shalt not murder” is (most of the time) incorrectly translated as “thou shalt not kill” ,, there are hundreds upon hundreds of justifiable homicides in the bible itself and no-one should forget that when given the “gotcha” question by the pharisees about paying homage to Cesar; Jesus acknowledged that mans laws and Gods laws can and do co-exist and both should be honored for the good of society,, the Romans had the death penalty for many crimes and regularly killed prisoners for their crimes, I can’t recall any passages where the penalty was questioned as inappropriate.
When cornered, Matthews will always pull out the “My aunt’s a nun” line and launch into how poorly nuns were treated over the years, etc. etc. etc. My guess is his aunt is a 100 year old Sister of Mercy in a housecoat and slippers who hasn’t been forced to cut altar breads or starch purificators since Novitiate . . . and who lives in an apartment and celebrates the connectedness among women who are working toward reconciliation and the abolition of unjust societal structures in solidarity with women around the planet . . . you get the idea.
Hannity always pulls out the line: “I was in the Seminary and studied both theology and Latin.” Then you Google the background and you find that he was in the high school seminary of the Diocese of Rockville Center, where the theology texts were probably from the “Let’s-Make-a-Jesus-Collage” Series from Sadlier, circa 1976, and the Latin was the chorus to Immaculate Mary sung twice a year. Please, Sean. Very impressive background.
O’R I haven’t heard say that much about Catholicism, though he occasionally makes reference to having taught in a Catholic high school run by Brothers in the Boston area: something that would put almost anyone in alcohol rehab after just a few weeks . . . especially if you had dinner at the Brothers’ residence. Will have to listen more closely to him: I do like his relentless hassling of the bulls****er of the day almost every night.
I’m not defending Kennedy, Pelosi, and Guiliani, but none of them are questioning the faith of others the way the journalists do. Jesus specifically instructed us not to do this.
Jesus said we should judge them by their fruit.
What chapter and verse teaches against abortion?
“The Bible does not teach aganist capital punishment.”
Oddly enough, the Bible does not teach against slavery, either.
2267 The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor. "If, instead, bloodless means are sufficient to defend against the aggressor and to protect the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.
"Today, in fact, given the means at the State's disposal to effectively repress crime by rendering inoffensive the one who has committed it, without depriving him definitively of the possibility of redeeming himself, cases of absolute necessity for suppression of the offender 'today ... are very rare, if not practically non-existent.'[John Paul II, Evangelium vitae 56.]
Copied and pasted straight from the catechism as found at vatican.va.
Yes. Specifically, that it doesn't match her opinion, in precisely the way she way dictates.
It's always good to place a picture in our minds when discussing a total boob:
Including a particularly noteworthy convict, a Jew who was crucified during Passover on a hilltop with two thieves.
Given that Jesus was executed by the Romans, citing the Roman use of capital punishment as precedent for a Christian position on the question is pretty much surreal.
Is that your photograph? I pictured you as a man, given your screen name.
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