Posted in category "Politics"
Fr. Michael McGivney, the founder of the Knights of Columbus, must be spinning around in his grave! His Knights have gotten into politics, publicly fighting one another over supporting a party whose discrimination and distain for Irish and Italian immigrants caused the Knights to come into being 120 years ago. 
In the late 1800s, discrimination against American Catholics was widespread. Many Catholics struggled to find work and ended up in inferno-like mills. An injury or the death of the wage earner would leave a family penniless. The grim threat of chronic homelessness and even starvation could fast become realities. Called to action in 1882 by his sympathy for these suffering people, Father McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus, an organization that has helped to save countless families from the indignity of destitution.
The current Supreme Knight in the KofC is Carl Anderson. He is also the author of A Civilization of Love. 
Carl Anderson’s partisan remarks about Catholic vice presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Delware) ignited a revolt inside the Knights, and lead to the creation of Knights for Obama. Knights for Obama objected to Anderson’s attempt to deliver the Knights and their families en masse into the Republican camp. They are also speaking out forcefully for the Knights to address all the issues under Catholic social teaching – not just cherry-picked to align with the Republican party.
Up until this election, I always had a rather benign but fond view of “the Knights”– a fraternal association of Catholic men who did a number of things together from their storefront meeting places: raise money for mentally and physically challenged children through solicitation at stoplights; sponsor spaghetti dinners and breakfasts for charity, and provide an escort to the bishop in some very fancy costumes. In short, men getting together to drink and play cards, and also protect and provide for the most defenseless among us: children.
I visited the Knights of Columbus website. The only initiatives they mention on their home page have to do with abortion and same-sex marriage. They also prominently market their insurance policies, and Carl Anderson photo-ops with bishops and the Pope.
What is not on the Knights’ home page are charitable giving options for children.
There is no mention of the millions of children without health care. The children that are hungry. The children that are homeless. Or in foster care. Or neglected. Or have drug problems. Or coping alone with stress in the home. Or boys and girls on their own, and making a livelihood via prostitition.
Why is that? Where is the voice and the clout of the national organization for these children?
The Knights can and should speak out against abortion. But the Knights are a Catholic organization, not a marketing auxilliary of the Republican party or just those social concerns that don’t cost money.
The Knights need to have the guts and fortitude to challenge all politicians and parties on behalf of all children – born as well as unborn. Children that are here…not just egg and embryo.
For example, a year ago, President Bush vetoed at $35 billion expansion of the current State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
Under the vetoed plan, government-sponsored health coverage would have been expanded from 6.6 million people, mostly children, to include an additional 4 million kids and 700,000 adults. Currently, 9 percent, or 6 million, of the 43 million uninsured Americans are children under 18. SCHIP is available to people who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, but are not able to afford private insurance.
Contrast that funding against the $150 billion annually for the Iraqi war. And the billions more in energy company profits the government doesn’t even make a feeble attempt to tax.
The Knights don’t mention human costs of the Iraqi war, and all the children it has helped to turn into refugees–in particular, Christian Iraqis. They don’t rise to defend the Iraqi children that have been killed, wounded, and maimed in this military venture; the casualties to pregnant women somehow weren’t noted in the Defense of Life materials and ads.
There is also no mention of the 18, 19, 20 year old conscripts from America, mostly poor or working class, that have died in Iraqi or been wounded in this conflict. A lot of them enlisted to get money for college or training for a better life.
Many of these young men and women are immigrants, just like the people who inspired Father McGivney a long time ago.
When he’s not serving as a chaplain to a monastery of contemplative nuns in the heart of Hollywood, Dominican Fr. Dominic DeLay is making films. 
His latest, Inside Darkness, is a 35-minute political suspense thriller that has its origins in the last presidential election, when DeLay said he was left with the question of how good and smart people could think so differently from himself about politics.
Inside Darkness is about three presidential candidates–the female evangelical incumbent, a black Catholic and former Marine colonel, and white agnostic religious studies professor–who awaken in a dark cell. 
“I thought I’d just put three very different people in this room together and see how they treat one another. Forget why they believe what they do. Can they at least respect each other and have a conversation?”
But can they?
“It’s very difficult for them,” said DeLay. “Fear and suspicion really kick in. After awhile, their suspicion turns from the people they think are outside the room to each other.”
A conversation with his sister gave him some insights why people react to candidates and politics they way they do.
“I understood she just had a couple of really strong beliefs and she was looking at the candidates through that prism. I think we must have certain fundamental beliefs that we look at the world with, and so we hear everything in relationship to that.”
DeLay went on: “If people aren’t talking about the poor, one kind of person is going to say, ‘Well, what’s going on here?’ And for others, if people aren’t talking about what they call traditional family values, then they can’t hear that candidate.”
The film, which is available on DVD, was released by Mud Puddle Films, a non-profit ministry of the Dominican friars of the Western United States.
Starting October 13, the film will be released in free seven-minute webisodes with the last installment the day before the election on November 4th.
DeLay is starting a new film on the seven deadly sins. When asked which one he thought was the worst sin, he said he would go with the “traditional assessment of pride as the ‘deadliest’ sin and perhaps even the root of the others.”
The sin of pride with politics makes for a natural sequel.
The 2008 presidential election isn’t as much fun for Catholic conservatives as 2004.
This year, Catholic conservatives are having to hear two dreaded phrases over and over again: informed conscience and Catholic social teaching.
The people behind these phrases–moderate and progessive Catholics–have made an impact on Catholic voters in swing states like Pennslyvania, and will help to carry Catholics in Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey, and Texas.
Catholic voters determine the election this year; and even though it will be a small margin, they will carry the election for the Democratic party.
The last four years have brought us an Iraq war with no end to the killing, carnage and financial cost of over 150 billion a year to underwrite. It’s seen the U.S. mortgage debacle and world financial meltdown; a rising unemployment rate and poverty, economic abuses of immigrants and environmental impacts from global warming.
I haven’t heard our conservative brothers and sisters issue so much as a peep at Catholic voters about the moral choices involved in these life and death issues. Where have they been?
This year the USCCB has issued their own (and the definitive!) guide for Catholic voters: Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship. This basically dumped partisan politics out of the parish, and added a whole host of social justice concerns appealing to liberal and moderate voters. 
Moderate and liberal Catholics, under the leadership of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholic Democrats are stressing Jesus’ message of care and justice for the poor, the helpless, and the marginalized.
In 2004, armed with little pamphlets from Catholic Answers, conservatives trumpeted their narrow interests in the “Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics.” The guide discussed five “nonnegotiables” that the authors opinioned, and a few bishops agreed, that Catholics had to follow as their sole moral compass in voting.
“These five issues are called non-negotiable because they concern actions that are always morally wrong and must never be promoted by the law. It is a serious sin to endorse or promote any of these actions, and no candidate who really wants to advance the common good will support any of the five non-negotiables.”
Their five issues specified included: 1) Abortion; 2) Euthanasia; 3) Fetal Stem Cell Research; 4) Human Cloning; and 5) Homosexual “Marriage”.
In reality, this meant total alignment with the Republican party. Their politics of death: war, the death penalty, pollution, hunger, shelter, high energy costs, health care–were conveniently left off the table as a lesser moral evils.
The life of those born was of less concern then those unborn.
But this year, Catholic conservatives wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing act as been up-ended.
When Carl Anderson, the national head of the Knights of Columbus, attacked Sen. Joseph Biden’s Catholicism in full page advertisements in several major U.S. daily newspapers, he was forcefully countered by Dr. Patrick Whelan, president of Catholic Democrats.
“It is sacrilegious for Mr. Anderson, someone who holds himself up as a flag bearer for the values and the virtues of our faith, to use his shared Catholic identity with Sen. Biden as a foil to attack him for blatantly political purposes.”
“The (Anderson) letter ignores Sen. Biden’s strong commitment to Catholic social teaching, reflected in legislation he was instrumental in passing, including: the United States Commission on Civil Rights Act of 1983, the Global Climate Change Act in 1987, Stopping Genocide in Bosnia, Kosovo and Darfur in 1993 and 2004 respectively, …among many others during his 25 years of service as U.S. Senator.”
Anderson said he wrote the letter “on behalf of 1.28 million members of the Knights of Columbus and their families in the United States.”
As least one Knight disagreed.
Thomas P. O’Neill, former lieutenant governor of Massachusett spoke up. “As a member of the Knights of Columbus, I want to make it clear that Carl Anderson does not speak for me. For 125 years, the Knights have stood for solidarity and for aiding those in need.”
“These statements, transparently promoting the McCain candidacy and by extention all the moral failures of the Bush years, do not reflect our Catholic tradition. Instead they risk making the Knights a tool of political partisanship at a time when the Knights can, and should, be focusing on the church’s greatest gift to our country, the rich tradition of Catholic social teaching.”
Father Geoffrey Farrow of the Saint Paul Newman Center in northeast Fresno shocked parishioners Sunday morning when he came out against Proposition 8, an initiative that would eliminate the right for same-sex couples to marry in California. He was prompted to speak out because so many of his parishioners asked him for direction on how to vote on the initiative.
“In directing the faithful to vote “Yes” on Proposition 8, the California bishops are not only entering the political area, they are ignoring the advances and insights of neurology, psychology and the very statements of the church itself that homosexuality is innate,” he said.
Fr. Geoff decided to go with with he feels is right.
His homily on “Respect Life Sunday” taught of acceptance, love and rejection. His closing remarks left some parishioners stunned. “What most Catholics hear about being gay or lesbian at their parish is silence.”
“I know that these words of truth will cost me dearly. But to withhold them would be far more costly and I would become an accomplice to a moral evil that strips gay and lesbian couples, not only of their civil rights but of their human dignity as well.”
Fr. Geoff was asked if he was gay. “It’s a secondary issue. But yes, I am. And when I was a boy I asked God to please make me normal and that prayer never got answered and I realized why. Because God would’ve made somebody else he wouldn’t have made me.”
Mass ended with about half the congregation giving Fr. Geoff a standing ovation. Outside, parishioners had a mixed reaction.
Esmeralda Gonzalez told a reporter “I believe that as the body of Christ and as being Catholic we are made to follow the commandments. And God made it to be Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve.”
Joshua De La Cerda, another parishioner, had an entirely different reaction: “This is something Jesus would have done, or Christ would have done, spoke out for the truth.”
Fr. Geoff said after months of struggling with what to do, in the end he followed his heart.
“In any event regardless of what I or anyone else does in their life, one day you die, and on that day were you true to your conscience, were you true to what you believe. And I think that’s the question each of us has to answer. If the answer is no, hell already began before you died.”
My thanks to Thom from Ad Dominum who pointed me in the direction of this story.
Read the full text of Fr. Geoff’s homily here.
Fortunate Families provided a link to the video.
Priests at three Hamtramck, Michigan Catholic churches are urging voters to reject an antidiscrimination ordinance that includes legal protection for gay people. 
“We have to keep the morals and have the regular families and bring up children according to God’s law,” said Rev. Miroslaw Frankowski, pastor of St. Florian Catholic Church. “Keep it the way it was from the beginning.” 
The Rev. Bogdan Milosz, pastor of Our Lady Queen of Apostles Catholic Church is also against the ordinance.
In a joint written statement, the priests said, “the proposed ordinance does not provide new protection for anyone in Hamtramck, except that it gives new rights that would protect homosexual and lesbian behavior, expression and attire.”
Supporters have said the ordinance simply ensures all residents are protected under the law and demonstrates compassionate governance.
It states that in the “City of Hamtramck that no person be denied the equal protection of the laws; nor shall any person be denied the enjoyment of his or her civil or political rights or be discriminated against because of actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, height, weight, condition of pregancy, marital status, physical or mental limitation, source of income, family responsibilities or status, educational association, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or handicap.”
Simply stated, it is not lawful in Hamtramck to discriminate against any person because they’re gay, or because you think they might be.
The Hamtramck City Council passed the ordinance in June, but opponents gathered enough signatures to place it on the November 4th ballot in hopes of repealing it.
The ordinance prohibits discrimination in housing, employment and city contracting by several groups, but its inclusion of gays and transgendered people stirred up a hornet’s nest of controversy in several of the Polish parishes.
“We feel that this proposal goes against the rights of straight people,” the Rev. Andrew Wesley, pastor of St. Ladislaus Catholic Church stated.
Wesley has written about the issue in the parish bulletin, and spoke with members after Mass. “Nobody’s under any obligation to vote one way or another.”
A group Fr. Wesley co-founded – Hamtramck Citizens Voting No to “Special Rights” Discrimination - will host a rally on October 12 at the Knights of Columbus Hall.
France has withdrawn its nomination of an openly gay man as ambassador to the Holy See following objections from the Vatican.
The diplomat in question is Jean-Loup Kuhn-Delforge, former ambassador to Bulgaria, head of the Consular Affairs Directorate, and an outspoken critic of the Iraq war. 
According to the Italian daily La Repubblica, not only is Kuhn-Delforge out, he is “stably united with an official companion.”
I’m not *suprised* the Vatican said no. I am also not surprised the French couldn’t resist giving the Vatican at little tweak I hope it was not at Mr. Kuhn-Delforge’s expense…
Jean-Loup Kuhn-Delforge is ostensibly qualified for this diplomatic post. He is a cultural if not practicing Catholic. Why did the Holy See reject his appointment? Because he’s out; or because he’s in a committed relationship with a man? Either one would probably have gotten him blackballed.
Compare his situation to the pomp accused sex abuser Fr. Marcial Marciel, founder of the Legionaires of Christ, was accustomed to receive in Rome!
I guess the moral of the story is – be in the closet, and stick to forcing yourself on boys and young men. That’s ok. But don’t walk into a diplomatic function with a man on your arm—if you’re a man. That presents a moral infraction the Church cannot possibly accept.
Defying a federal ban on clergy endorsing political candidates from the pulpit, an evangelical Christian minister told his congregation last Sunday that voting for Barack Obama would be evidence of “severe moral schizophrenia.”
The Rev. Ron Johnson told worshippers in Crown Point, Indiana that the Democratic candidate’s position on abortion and gay partnerships are in “direct opposition to God’s truth as He has revealed it in the scriptures.” 
Another protester, the Rev. Fran Pultro, also shrugged off federal laws restricting his role in partisan politics by telling 45 people at the Calvary Chapel in Philadelphia that John McCain “is the only candidate I believe a Christian can vote for.”
“Pulpit Freedom Sunday,” was a day of protest organized by the Alliance Defense Fund, a consortium of Christian lawyers that fight for ultra conservative religious and social causes.
The ADF is hoping a crackdown by the IRS on participating preachers will spark a court fight over the tax law prohibiting political endorsements from the pulpit. They are pushing to “restore” pastors’ rights “to speak Biblical truth from the pulpit.”
The protest drew a paltry amount of even rabid social conservatives–only 33 Protestant ministers nationwide participated, and most of those from small or tiny evangelical congregations.
The ADF is known for publishing tracts like The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today.
Mr. Pultro and the other ministers focused on the candidates’ positions on gay marriage and abortion, although the candidates and much of the nation and focused on the financial crisis and economic worries.
The Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United said the of the Sunday protest: “They act like this is a massive act of civil disobedience, but this is not like sitting at a lunch counter. This is trying to change the law to give certain conservative churches even more political clout.”
In a letter sent to Congressional leaders on September 26, 2008, Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre, NY, chairman of the episcopal conference’s Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, urged a consideration of five key principles when considering how to bail out the nation’s failing economy. 
The first key Bishop Murphy encouraged was taking into account the “human and moral dimensions” of the crisis.
“Economic arrangements, structures and remedies should have as a fundamental purpose safeguarding human life and dignity,” he affirmed. Murphy said a “scandalous search for excessive economic rewards,” is an example of “an economic ethic that places economic gain above all other values.”
“This ignores the impact of economic decisions on the lives of real people as well as the ethical dimension of the choices we make and the moral responsibility we have for their effect on people,” Bishop Murphy wrote.
He called for responsibility and accountability.
“Clearly, effective measures are required which address and alter the behaviors, practices and misjudgements that led to this crisis…Those who directly contributed tothis crisis or have profited from it should not be rewarded or escape accountability for the harm they have done,” he said.
“There are human needs which find no place on the market,” Murphy stressed. “It is a strict duty of justice and truth not to allow fundamental human needs to remain unsatisfied.” In this regard, he called for a “renewal of instruments of monitoring and corection within economic institutions and the financial industry as well as effective public regulation and protection to the extent this may be clearly necessary.”
Bishop Murphy’s Diocese of Rockville Centre is based on Long Island. Many of his flock, myself included, work in New York or for people who commute there. Long Islanders have been particularly walloped by the Wall Street meltdown.
It’s stunning just how fast and how deep this collapse is, racing around the world to batter everyone’s economy.
This crisis has created a teachable moment for the bishops – what can happen in an ethics vacuum, and how we are all interconnected.
Any decline in the financial industry has ripple effects across the region, said Jesuit Fr. James Martin, associate editor of America magazine. Before his ordination, Fr. Martin worked in corporate finance with General Electric.
“It’s more a symptom of environments where people seem much more interested in making money than in making sensible decisions,” he said. Senior executives made “obscene amounts of money making bad investments,” he said, and there were no incentives not to continue.
“They were carried away by greed and that trumped rational responsibility. They should have known better.”
Miami Archbishop John C. Favalora snuffed out an attempt by the Alliance Defense Fund, a consortium of conservative Christian groups, to encourage pastors in his diocese ”to join their Pulpit Freedom Initiative by preaching a sermon ‘that addresses the candidates for government office in light of the truth of Scripture.’”
Issued on September 12 in the form of a letter, Archbishop Favalora’s statement to his flock is titled, Why we don’t take sides on candidates. His words are measured and calm.
Favalora said the group, which advocates for what it terms “Christian legal issues,” is attempting to challenge the Internal Revenue Services’s rules restricting non-profit organizations from advocating for particular political parties or candidates.
Favalora opined that scriptural truth “is not that easy to attain. What is more “true” in terms of scripture: The Old Testament passage that says ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’ or Jesus’ admonition to ‘turn the other cheek’?”
He added that the Catholic church not only values Scripture, but also “2,000 years of oral and written tradition.”
He said the church cannot be compared to a “party boss” and will not tell people how to vote.
“When church leaders speak on issues such as immigration, poverty, health care, abortion, war or embryonic stem cell research, we are not telling people how to vote. We are reminding them of the moral teachings that should inform their lives, and as a result, their votes,” he wrote.
Favalora said the church “will speak in support of legislation that we consider to be morally sound and beneficial to the whole community” regardless of party or candidate. “That is our duty as teachers and successors of the apostles.” 
“Your duty as Catholics,” Favalora wrote, “is to listen to those teachings before making rational, informed, conscientious decisions regarding whom or what to vote for.”
Cartoons are wonderful venues for religious satire. One of the best is Slap Upside the Head by “Mark,” a 28-year-old Canadian.
Mark’s August 20th post was about a story reported by LifeSite, conservative website that oozes sex in the same type of sensational reporting as the average supermarket tabloid.
One of their recent stories had all the elements guaranteed to whip their readers up into a frenzy: sexual perversion and demonic possession!
The article quoted an English Roman Catholic priest who is also a self-styled exorcist. He completed a 4 month course of training offered at the Vatican (details were a little fuzzy).
“Promiscuity, as well as homosexuality and pornography, says 73 year old Fr. Jeremy Davis, is a form of sexual perversion and can lead to demonic possession. Offering what may be an explanation for the explosion of homosexuality in recent years, Fr. Davis said, ‘Among the causes of homosexuality is a contagious demonic factor.’”
“Fr. Davis’ comments come in conjunction with the publication of his new book, Exorcism: Understanding Exorcism in Scripture and Practice published earlier this year by the Catholic Truth Society (CTS).”
“He also said that Satan is responsible for having blinded most secular humanists to the ‘dehumanising effects of contraception and abortion and IVF, of homosexual ‘marriages’, of human cloning and the vivisection of human embryos in scientific research.”
“Fr. Davis also warns in his book against so-called New Age and occult practices, as well as trendy exercise and ’spiritual healing’ regimens derived from eastern religions.”
“‘The thin end of the wedge (soft drugs, yoga for relaxation, horoscopes just for fun and so on) is more dangerous than the thick end because it is more deceptive–an evil spirit tries to make his entry as unobtrusively as possible.’”
