Memo?

Who's On First?

The Vatican?  Freedom of conscience has been in the forefront of the US Catholic Bishops’ engagement with the broader national discourse since the Obama Administration issued a regulation under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act forcing most employers, including Catholic institutions, to provide coverage - at no cost to employees - for sterilizations, contraceptives, and abortion-inducing drugs.

.... Catholic bishops, together with other religious leaders and several prominent experts in United   States Constitutional law believe to be a grave threat against religious liberty.

Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport, responded ...by saying the bishops “will continue [their] strong defense of conscience rights through all available legal means.” Bishop Lori add... “Religious freedom is at the heart of democracy and rooted in the dignity of every human person.” He promised that the bishops, “will not rest until the protection of conscience rights is restored and the First Amendment is returned to its place of respect in the Bill of Rights.”

...[i]t is imperative that the entire Catholic community in the United States come to realize the grave threats to the Church’s public moral witness presented by a radical secularism which finds increasing expression in the political and cultural spheres. The seriousness of these threats needs to be clearly appreciated at every level of ecclesial life. Of particular concern are certain attempts being made to limit that most cherished of American freedoms, the freedom of religion.

www.oecumene.radiovaticana.org/en1/Artic...

or our bishops?

Morlino asserted that the nation's new health reform law is Satanic and pretty much suggested Roman Catholic women are, too.

"The devil, the ancient serpent, has taken a new form. He has attacked us from a new front and we all know that. In our own time, there is a secular, Godless attack on the freedom of religion. We know what the church teaches about abortion and we know what the church teaches on contraception. That's not the issue, here," Morlino suggested

..."And though it may well be a fact that most Catholics accept artificial contraception, the reality is that, as Cardinal George recently pointed out, the bishops do not speak for individual baptized Catholics who may no longer have a clear conscience. The bishops speak for Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit and the church and it can be that a majority of Catholics are simply not in tune with Jesus Christ and his church for lots of reasons that one can understand, but nonetheless we cannot allow those reasons to mislead us.” www.channel3000.com/news/30606533/detail...

Mar 7, 2012 -- 8:19AM, cove52 wrote:

mo, I second your "propaganda" and raise you a Fr. Barron.   ;)

'Media expert Robert Barron says the sexual abuse crisis has ''undermined the church in almost every aspect of its life'', but because ''the wrong people are telling the story'' (the secular media) only the negative side emerges.

www.theage.com.au/national/dark-time-for...

His Catholicism series is actually pretty good, but you find yourself being lulled into thinking all is fine and dandy.  Just forget about all those awful things the institution has done, just look at the bright side.  duh!

gilg, frightening!

Cove

I can't help but wonder just who these "Right people" are to tell the other side of the story for the abuse scandal.  He says it's only been the media. But if I stretch my memory REALLY far, I can kinda hear really faint echoes of all of the stuff the bishops have said about it, over, and over, and over, and over again.  So that tells me that he thinks the bishops are not the right guys to be telling this story either...

He says we should be looking for saints to rise up during this period.  I submit to you that a few have, in the persons of people like Fr. Tom Doyle, or Abp. Duramed Martin of Ireland.  The rest of the bishops appear to be warmly embracing these modern day saints, don't they?

This guy has simply jumped on that emerging bandwagon wherein Catholics begin to paint the mythology that it is THEY who are under attack, it is THEY who have been wronged by the abuse scandal, that society is out to get Catholics, and (conveniently) that we should simply dismiss as greed, those tens of thousands of stories of abuse, because they are "inconvenient" to the internal story line of the church.

Sorry, but it seems to me that if the church thinks the wrong people are telling the story, they have AMPLE opportunities to tell it the way they see fit.  And they have.  The problem is, most of us, even those who wish to defend the church, cannot stomach the idea that it was the children who "tempted" the priests, it was greed that drove the families and victims to approach their bishops, and then when stonewalled, turned to the courts...

This guy might be well intended, but I think he's pretty far out in left field.

Mar 7, 2012 -- 11:10AM, woodmanx wrote:

If the "wrong" people had not told the story, no story would have been told.  Does Barron really think the "right" people would have self-reported the abuse story?  Just ask Cherubino about the grief that the Boston reporter who broke the Bernard Law story had to endure for going against the RCC machine, incluing from the reporter's own family.

Wood

I think that's the whole point: these guys had DECADES to do the right thing.  All of these programs to protect children: what stopped them from putting them in place in 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991, 2001?  What suddenly changed in 2002 in the minds of the entire USCCB, not to mention each and every bishop in the US, to trigger the educational programs, the fingerprinting, etc.?  Was there a letter from the pope that caused all of these good men to suddenly decide to adopt gospel values?  Was there some collective wave of guilt that ran through their ranks, perhaps after a victim spoke to one of their USCCB meetings?  Surely good, "right" people would have self reported this story, right?

I think what we're seeing now is the start of the process wherein the church does (as it has many times before) a rewrite of history, designed to position itself as the victim here, designed to position the abuse victims as perhaps sympathetic, but nevertheless misguided people intending to tear down the church through their lack of trust in their bishops, and of course, tying all manner of media, societal and legal actions as being part of a program of persecution aimed at the good men who lead (or who ARE) the church.

Mar 7, 2012 -- 12:45PM, gilg wrote:

I think what we're seeing now is the start of the process wherein the church does (as it has many times before) a rewrite of history, designed to position itself as the victim here,

It ain't going to work this tiime,  at least it will not be as effective as when news took months to travel acrosss the globe..... they can fool some Catholics all of the time but that number keeps getting smaller and smaller....

 

 

That number does indeed keep getting smaller and smaller......

Mark,

They don't think they are lying, they are using Mental Reservation!

I know, Mental Reservation is deception hence against the spirit of Truth, but according to the theologogy deception is not really lyingl;, one is simply tricking the listner into believing what we want them to believe; the theology says this ain't lying:  somehting is inherently wrong when an Institution that is supossed to reflect Christ needs a theology for deception; I guess they "unbinded" Christ's commandment to say yes or no and speak the truth.