[NYer]

Ping!

[Norm Lenhart]

Not at all. they are doing it openly, ‘wittingly’ and to push more liberalism on the faithful. Straight out of the 1936 Communist Goals.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

Any church that buys into the “the only rule is to love everyone” happy talk BS is promoting a secular agenda and they aren’t really churches. Religion isn’t just about God loving you and wanting to give you things. Its about obligation too. Any idiot who thinks he or she can pray to get material things, or that he or she shouldn’t judge others, doesn’t really believe in anything.

[Alex Murphy]

Why is this all happening?

• One reason is a striking lack of political sophistication on the part of some Catholic leaders. They have not grasped how the left will use their actions and statements to further an agenda hostile to Church teaching—and then claim that the Church now agrees with them.
• Second, they seem to have an inadequate understanding of crucial public issues. They need to investigate and study them more and consider their many dimensions before making public statements.
• Third, they seem concerned that hitting the adversary too hard is uncharitable. They seem to confuse true Christian charity with false compassion. They don’t understand the crying need to go on the offensive against the secular left. I recall a small prayer book I once had that stated that Christianity to be sure involved charity, patience, and help for those in need, but also resistance to those who were evil.
• Fourth, in the desire to be “pastoral”—that is, able to reach people, even some Catholics, who they fear might tune them out—they don’t want to emphasize or be clear enough about Church teachings that are unpopular in the secular culture. Catholic writer Deal W. Hudson called this “blurring the boundaries.”
• Fifth, there may simply be a lack of courage, and of the toughness needed to mount a sustained attack on the secular culture. Further, Catholic agencies getting government grants may simply be afraid of offending government decision-makers.

Even if the political challenges are recent developments in history, the Bible isn't. You'd think that, if these spiritual leaders had any trust in it, the bishops would have gone to God's Word for help and advice. Rather, these bishops prove themselves ignorant and inexperienced with the Bible.

[Faithful Departed author Philip] Lawler points out that while less than five percent of American priests have been accused of sexual abuse, some two-thirds of our bishops were apparently complicit in cover-ups. The real scandal isn't the sick excesses of a few dozen pedophiles, or even the hundreds of priests who had affairs with teenage boys -- the bulk of abuse cases. No, according to Lawler, it is the malfeasance of wealthy, powerful, and evidently worldly men who fill the thrones -- but not the shoes -- of the apostles. In case after case, we read in their correspondence, in the records of their soulless, bureaucratic responses to victims of psychic torture and spiritual betrayal, these bishops' prime concern was to save the infrastructure, the bricks and mortar and mortgages. Ironically, their lack of a supernatural concern for souls is precisely what cost them so much money in the end.
-- from the thread Kneeling Before the World

[trisham]

Good article, except that I’m not sure that it’s “unwitting”.

[all the best]

Unwittingly? They are leaders in the movement of envy, jealousy and coveting your neighbors’ stuff. That’s why they won’t excommunicate their pro-abortion comrades.

[Gerish]

I cannot fault the clergymen or Catholic agencies for their concern, but I will fault them for their course of action. Caesar is their answer and in doing so they have belittled God.

[MamaB]

My SBC is not doing that. Our minister teaches the Bible verse by verse. A church which does that is not very Christ like.

[Arthur McGowan]

No. They are KNOWINGLY destroying the Church. They hate it.

O’Malley, Dolan, and Wuerl are the main enemies of the Catholic Church in the U.S. They hate pro-lifers. They hate the Eucharist. They hate the Church’s teaching on marriage.

They insist on giving Communion to pro-aborts, even though it is manifestly a mortal sin. http://tinyurl.com/canon915

They are campaigning tirelessly to import a tidal wave of pro-abortion voters, to swamp the pro-life movement once and for all. And help Obama bring the United States to an end.