Generally, when a Ted Kennedy, a Christopher Dodd, a Nancy Pelosi, a Governor Quinnochio of Illinois, a Rosa DeLauro, a Richard Durbin, a John (did you know he served in Vietnam?) Kerry, a Tom Harkin, (where, oh where to stop listing all of the pro-abort, pro-homosexual apostates from Catholicism?) quite publicly spit upon their obligations as people who have, however long ago, been Catholic, it is their individual failures and those of the Roman Catholic clerical and lay leadership which are responsible and not our Reformed Christian brothers and sisters.
The chief Catholic complaints should be such things as the Protestants who were welcomed into the specifically Catholic colony of Maryland, taking control of same, razing the colonial capitol at St. Mary's and moving the Capitol to Annapolis to show there was no going back (the USA was not a country then), the Ku Klux Klan activity against Catholics which cannot fairly be blamed upon Protestantism as such, and a few murders over interdenominational marriages, and the Blaine Amendments (which denied public funding to Catholic primary and secondary schools but also took away most government control of same).
We Catholics differ from Protestants and vice versa in theology. We need not be enemies and, if we want to prevail on social issues or even on maintaining our republic, we had better not be enemies. Our points of agreement as Christians far exceed our points of difference.
As to Reagan's divorce from Jane Wyman, it is generally conceded that their marriage had been arranged by their movie studio, that she was more liberal in youth than he although she was less overtly political. Her career in Hollywood was waxing as his was waning. She divorced him. Many years later, the leftist busybodies of the LSM came to call on Wyman to get her to dump dirt on Ronaldus Maximus since their divorce was rumored not to have been very pleasant. Wyman, then starring on TV's Falconcrest, replied with class: The country would be very fortunate to have a fine man like Ronnie as president. That ended the LSM interest in Jane Wyman. Wyman, incidentally, not only converted to Catholicism in later years but also became a Third Order Dominican and was buried in a habit when she died at 90 years of age in 2007. She had been divorced four times which had nothing apparently to do with her conversion.
Catholic Church annulments which must be based on the facts existing at the time of the marriage (not on subsequent facts or faults) and which have nothing whatever to do with legitimacy of children (unlike civil annulments) are not granted in Rome. They are granted by diocesan marriage tribunals. If appealed, the annulment can be affirmed or reversed in Rome, but it is still a matter for the diocese, in Newt's cast that would apparently be the Archdiocese of Washington, DC. It is also Church policy NOT to allow Church authorities or functionaries to discuss the granting or denying of annulments in public or to release records to the public. If one or both parties wish to discuss their annulments in public, they may do so. The Church will not enter that conversation. Not only could Newt not defer to Rome on the question, he cannot even defer to Donald Cardinal Wuerl (the ordinary of the archdiocese) or even to his pastor.
Gentlemen: why are these interdenominational hassles necessary here? It is to be hoped that FReepers have a strong attachment to their respective faiths, are proud of their respective attachments and live them in their lives. Somehow, I have difficulty seeing how these arguments among ourselves benefit the conservative movement or our country. Far more importantly, I have difficulty imagining that Jesus Christ, Who wept in the Garden of Gethsemane over the realization the His flock would not be as one, would be pleased with the interdenominational squabbling, one upsmanship and refusal of charity.
“Gentlemen: why are these interdenominational hassles necessary here?”
I’m not arguing for or against Catholicism. It’s politics. I’m saying that Newt converted to get annulments so he could have a better chance of getting the GOP nomination, and being elected President.
However the paper shuffles within the Catholic Church to get Newt his necessary annulments is immaterial to me - if anyone had a lick of sense in the Catholic administrative bureaucracy, they’d have seen this one from a mile away. Let him finish with his political ambitions, then talk conversion. That’s what happened with Tony Blair in the UK. Nobody claimed “politics” in that case. There was no reason to.
There are no coincidences in politics. Many Catholics have legitimate concerns over Newt. I am concerned only with the politics of the matter.
**Gentlemen: why are these interdenominational hassles necessary here? It is to be hoped that FReepers have a strong attachment to their respective faiths, are proud of their respective attachments and live them in their lives. Somehow, I have difficulty seeing how these arguments among ourselves benefit the conservative movement or our country. Far more importantly, I have difficulty imagining that Jesus Christ, Who wept in the Garden of Gethsemane over the realization the His flock would not be as one, would be pleased with the interdenominational squabbling, one upsmanship and refusal of charity.**
Well said — and repeated! Thanks.
Bravo! Hear Hear!
“No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the LORD,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the LORD.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.” Jerimiah 31:34
AMEN to what you have said. We have a nation to rescue.