Biology and cosmogony have my vote!
(And, no doubt, His...)
Posted on 06/11/2013 6:30:36 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
(CNSNews.com) - Cardinal Francis George, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Chicago, asked in a column published Sunday whether faithful Catholics are now to be excluded from working in the newspaper industry because of their beliefs.
"Are Catholics to be unwelcome in the editorial offices of major newspapers?" he asked.
In the same column, Cardinal George said that President John F. Kennedy started the problem of Catholics who act according to their faith being shunted out of the public life of the nation when he told a group of ministers during his 1960 presidential campaign that they did not need "to worry about his acting like a Catholic" if he was elected president.
"Catholic politicians are complicit in secularizing our society when they reduce their religious beliefs to private opinions and promise that their religious faith will not influence their public life," wrote Cardinal George. "This false dichotomy began when John Kennedy, fighting anti-Catholic prejudice in his campaign to be elected president, told Protestant ministers in Houston not to worry about his acting like a Catholic."
Cardinal George's column in its entirety:
The Public Discussion on 'Same-Sex Marriage'
By Cardinal Francis George
Contributing to the discussion of “marriage” between persons of the same sex is as challenging as the subject is complicated. The first word right now should be one of gratitude to the many citizens of Illinois who have said to our legislators what we know to be true from nature itself: two persons of the same sex cannot be physically joined in a marital union.
A word of special thanks is due the Protestant pastors from the African American community, for whom the Word of God in the Bible is a sure and absolute guide to life, in public and in private. The words of Jesus are as true today as when he spoke them to the Pharisees: “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one’? So they are no longer two but one” (Mt 19: 4-6).
For many, the concern most often expressed in the public debate is for the family, for recognizing the ties between a child and his or her mother and father, together in marriage for the sake of protecting and forming the next generation of the human race.
The opposite voice in the discussion speaks from a different base. The plausibility of the legislative proposal to create a marriage based on sexual relations between people of the same sex comes from a cultural shift regarding marriage. Many, unfortunately, now see marriage only as a private, two-person relationship based on love and sexual attraction rather than as a public social institution governing family life.
Further, the claim that one is not equal under law is powerful in our society; it makes one a victim. And the claim that one is being demeaned and personally wounded is even more powerful evidence of victimization.
Finally, in a post-Freudian culture one should be free to act on every sexual desire, provided there is no coercion in the relationship.
Nonetheless, the legal creation of what is naturally impossible is not inevitable. Cultural change can be redirected so that the long road to obtain respect that has been traveled by many homosexually oriented persons can be maintained without destroying the institution of natural marriage. Since the difference between men and women is different from racial difference, same-sex marriage is not a civil rights issue. A newly invented civil right cannot be used to destroy a moral good, lest society itself go into decline.
What comes next in this public discussion? Concern for strengthening family life was a topic for the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council recently. The results of their excellent deliberations and suggestions for help on this issue can be found by going into the “Archive” section of the archdiocesan blog on our website, www.archchicago.org/blog.
The upcoming celebration of Fathers’ Day might serve as the occasion to appreciate anew the distinctive role of men in family and society. We all know that parents are not interchangeable. Fatherless families contribute to the violence that plagues us. An honest discussion of violence would take us beyond laws on gun control, important though that discussion is, to the disappearance of men from the institutions that develop their sense of responsibility and their desire to protect rather than destroy women and children.
We should be concerned as well about the State overreaching its proper authority, which is limited to the civil order. Neither the church nor the state “own” the institution of marriage. The state has a right to supervise but not to redefine an institution it did not create. This tendency for the government to claim for itself authority over all areas of human experience flows from the secularization of our culture. If God cannot be part of public life, then the state itself plays God. There are many paths to total state control of life — fascism, totalitarianism, communism. In the United States, the path is labeled “protection of individual rights.”
We should be concerned about the role of Catholics in public life. Catholic politicians are complicit in secularizing our society when they reduce their religious beliefs to private opinions and promise that their religious faith will not influence their public life. This false dichotomy began when John Kennedy, fighting anti-Catholic prejudice in his campaign to be elected president, told Protestant ministers in Houston not to worry about his acting like a Catholic. Political figures who still claim to be Catholic but who systematically ignore Catholic moral and social teaching in public life cut themselves off from the communities that once nurtured them. How should faithful Catholics distinguish political pragmatism from betrayal?
Are we to have a religious test for public office that excludes Catholics serious about their faith from appointment to federal judgeships? Are Catholics who will not perform abortions to be excluded from medical school? Are Catholics to be unwelcome in the editorial offices of major newspapers, in the entertainment world, or on university faculties unless they put their faith aside? In short, what began as a political device to get elected to office in a Protestant society can be used more broadly to exclude Catholics from any position of influence in public life. If Catholics are to be closeted and marginalized in a secularized society, Catholic parents should prepare their children to be farmers, carpenters and craftsmen, small business people and workers in service industries, honorable occupations that do not, however, immediately impact public opinion. Is this the future? That’s a concern.
And there’s a last concern, even more fundamental. We are now remembering Pope John XXIII 50 years after his death. Pope John was a good man who experienced a conversion of mind and heart because he talked to a rabbi from France. The rabbi explained to the pope the consequences of “the teaching of contempt” for the Jewish people. While official doctrine condemned overt persecution, Jews had suffered terribly from a contempt embedded for many generations in much of European culture. Its full consequence was the exclusion of Jews from public life in Germany and then their extermination in the Holocaust. The pope understood what the rabbi told him, and the relation between Catholics and Jews was given a new start. Today, listening to the public discussion on talk shows, watching television series and movies, overhearing influential conversations in offices and universities, which groups are most often discussed with open contempt? That, too, is a concern.
Pray for the public conversation in our state as the debate on “same-sex marriage” continues.
I'm glad he brought up the abject complicity of Catholic politicians themselves, starting with John F. Kennedy.
One can also add the abject complicity of "Catholic" Universities, "Catholic" Hospitals and healthcare systems, "Catholic" Charities, even "Catholic" theologians, largely because of the feeble or nonexistent oversight and discipline by capon "Catholic" bishops.
Cardinal George is generally and rightly considered a "good guy," , plus Cardinal Cordileone and Bishop Aquila and a few others. But the rest?
As for Catholics in government, law, healthcare, journalism and the other professions: there will always be plenty of opportunities, red-carpet treatment and rewards varying inversely with their fidelity to the Faith.
The powers-that-be in these professions have the same slogan as Mammon, Moloch and Mephistopheles:
The only good Catholic is a bad Catholic.
Uh... I don’t want to burst your bubble, Cardinal, but they already are unwelcome.
Catholic ping.
The real question is...when will Catholic churches be closed by order of the POTUS? How long til Catholics are imprisoned for their beliefs?
Within twenty years?
The Bishops failed in their sacred duty to formally and publicly excommunicate heretics. So called self described “Catholic” politicians who actively promoted the wholesale killing of innocent human life, were not only guilty of crimes against humanity but were in clear ongoing violation of Church law and teaching. The failure to excommunicate gave these lowlifes invaluable cover and confused the faithful. The Church has suffered as have faithful Catholics because of the temerity of the Bishops.
Get off your holy duff, your Excellency, gather a few more Cardinals and publicly excommunicate abortion-supporting politicians. Have them publicly escorted away from the communion rail.
Publicly. You want to write? Write an open letter to every pastor publicly excommunicating the pols, to be read from the pulpit every Sunday for a month. Start with Joey Plugs, Sebelius, The Idiot Cuomo. Public Excommunication. Got it?
Amen brother.
Most American Catholics apparently think the Democrat Party is the same party that ran Harry Truman.
One can simply no longer be a Christian nor a Patriot and vote for the Democrat candidate for anything. Furthermore, IMNVHO, this explains the disgustingly low turnout among otherwise good people. They cannot bring themselves to vote for Dear Old Dad's Democrat Party, but neither can they bring themselves to vote any other way. Result? They stay home. They are the "Reagan Democrats." Unfortunately, they have found no one else to overcome the inertia.
As far as I am able to tell, the Catholic clergy itself tends Democrat. 53% of Catholics voted for a late term abortion supporter for President. What % stayed home?
He seems to have left out commandos.
Don’t worry. They still have biology and cosmogony.
Its also a failure of clear teaching. The Bishops failed to excommunicate but Catholic institutions have also failed. In the 1980’s Cardinal O’Connor was fighting a heroic fight against the abortionists and was dueling with Mario Cuome ( who he failed to excommunicte). The Jesuits historically had been the intellectual sword of the Church and were expected to give O’Connor tactical support. Sadly the Jesuits at Fordham did virtually nothing to help him and in fact undercut his efforts. The Jesuits have devolved into an unspeakable lot. The biggest scam going is when Catholic parents pay $60,000 per year sending their kids to a Jesuit college for “a Catholic education”.
This 4% doesn't translate directly into Obama's 4% margin of victory in 2012, but better poll-crunchers than I are also scratching their heads. A friend remarked that Evangelical contacts who voted for McCain in 2008 stunned him in 2012 with announcements that they were not voting. He says a dozen Christian leaders were touting a new found “Christian Ethic” of not voting. “Not Voting, is a vote for Jesus!” to quote just one guy's Facebook page.
Am I blaming white Evangelicals for Obama's 2012 electoral success? No, it was fully a product of Evangelicals, Mainline Protestants, Catholic, Jews, secular-agnostics and aheists, of all ages, both sexes and all races, acting or failing to act more or less as expected.
There really weren't any big switches between 2008 and 2012... except that confounded increase in non-voters.
But we are talking Catholics here. I am not blaming Obama's victory on Catholics alone, just pointing out that over half of them who did vote, voted for the Communist Baby Killer.
That is incomprehensible, not to mention reprehensible. Ditto, the American Cardinals who cannot seem to hitch up their purple drawers and do the right thing.
And there was a time back when immigrants from Italy, Ireland, etc. flocked to the United States where a sign would appear in windows about Catholics not being welcome.
Is this coming back? It would seem so.
First They Came for the Jews
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.~Pastor Martin Niemöller
Community and individuality are not opposites. People cannot survive on their own. When the odds are stacked against you, you must rally with the oppressed and hated.
When a growing oppressive regime is taking hold, you must act, otherwise you will soon face your enemy alone and hopeless.
Strength of community is a strength as much as individualism, as long you are willing to face weaknesses in your own community. Ignoring slacking values will mean that you will be rallied against by those you oppress.
Niemöller affirms we must rally against unhealthy organized regimes. We must also stay vigilant with those that appear to be good natured, as all organisation attracts corruption. Niemöller also warns us that if it is you who are corrupt, then you will face a stronger combined force of foe!
~Vexen Crabtree
Biology and cosmogony have my vote!
(And, no doubt, His...)
It makes sense to not blame Christian denominations who vote 80% against democrats, for democrat victories, it does make sense for conservative political activists to point out Christian denominations that do vote democrat, like the catholic denomination for instance, especially on threads that imply that the Catholics are the Christians resisting the left and their agenda.
This is especially appropriate on a thread where no one named or blamed ANY Evangelical denomination --- neither in the article nor in the comments --- and the subject was what's going to happen to faithful Catholics.
Because this is exactly what' s going to happen to faithful Evangelicals, too: exclusion from the institutions and professions where our convictions clash directly with the Culture of Moloch.
Keep the tagline in mind...
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