CARDINAL DOLAN: MORE DANGEROUS THAN THE PRESIDENT

This is a response to just a few of the things Cardinal Dolan said in his interview on FACE THE NATION with Bob Schieffer on April 8, 2012.

Forgive me, but I find Archbishop Dolan absolutely frightening, in fact, because he dresses in red, a much more dangerous man that the President.

Allow me a few examples from just this interview (or please ignore if you prefer)

DOLAN: “I think religion is vibrant. It's growing, the stats show us...” 

ME: This is an example of why our Church is in trouble: this mad infatuation with the “positive” that just isn’t there instead of dealing with the very ugly reality that has been gnawing away the innards of our Church for the last five decades. A 2012 CARA poll shows Dolan’s “vibrant” growth is an increase of 1% of those who attend Mass at least once a week over the last 7 years: 2005 = 23%, 2012 = 24%. And 24% in itself is a scandal.

DOLAN: “...we got a slight increase in-- in vocations to the priesthood...”

ME: Yes we did, 34 more. In 2005 there were 454 vocations. In 2012, 480. While his statement is not untrue, the increase is so small that it should not be trumpeted - at least not to the secular press. (BTW, in 1965 there were 995.)

DOLAN: “...recent scholarship has shown that John Kennedy was very inspired by vision, by character, by virtue, let's call that faith, let's call that morals.”

ME: This one REALLY SCARES ME. Kennedy? Morals? WTH? And then he says that Kennedy didn’t mean to say what he did?? Is there anything in the history of any of the Kennedy’s, then or now, that shows that JFK did not mean precisely what he said. Then he goes on to throw Santorum - the only Catholic in the room - under the bus. ABSOLUTELY FRIGHTENING!

DOLAN: “...although I appreciate very much the Vice President. He has been helpful and I-- I-- I have benefitted from his counsel and I look forward to talking to him again.

ME: OMG! OMG! OMG! HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM - no further comment.

DOLAN: I am a little confused, because the President told me his convict--- his position, his conviction is that the government would do nothing to impede religion. And he-- he was very gracious, and especially complimenting the Catholic family.

ME: UMMMMMMMMMM. GEEZ! Can anyone say “Neville Chamberlain”?

SHIEFFER: “...new Pew poll out that says sixty percent of Catholics say that churches and other houses of worship should just totally steer clear of politics.

DOLAN: Yeah. I do worry about that, Bob.

ME: Total contradiction to his belief in a vibrant, growing Church. (BTW, a Kaiser Family poll shows that the same % of Catholics support Obama’s mandate.)

DOLAN: You've got a dramatic, radical intrusion of a government bureaucracy into the internal life of the church that bothers me. So hear me say, hey, I'd like to back away from this, I got other things to worry about and bigger fish to fry than this.

ME: Dolan says it “bothers me”. Two problems. It’s not about him, and NEWS FLASH, this is a little bit bigger than a “bother”! And he’d “like to back away”. Yes, Cardinal, the President knows that, which is why he is riding you out on this. And you have “bigger fish to fry”? Yes, that’s because you only see this as a religious freedom issue and not the result of the radical rejection of Humanae Vitae for the past 40 plus years, a rejection strategically designed by your predecessor Bernardin and dutifully carried forward over the decades by your colleagues (save for a few). 

DOLAN: “I said there-- there may be reasons not to vote for Mitt Romney as President of the United States that he is a Mormon cannot be one of them.”

ME: At first I thought that this comment was praiseworthy. But upon another look, it is consistent with his other dangerous statements. We have before us two candidates: one, imperfect, the other, perfect. Obama is perfect, perfectly aligned with the Culture of Death. There has never been a president or a candidate with as perfect a pro-abortion rating as Barack Obama. He has 100% across the board. He even beats Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy who at least supported the Born Alive Act (the only pro-life credits to their names). For a Catholic, especially Dolan, there are NO reasons not to vote for Mitt Romney given the alternative (of course that presupposes that you even know or care about the moral gravity of abortion - something the Cardinal seems loath to illustrate given the confused, meandering, squeamish, and vacuous documents - life Faithful Citizenship - that emanate from his office.) 

And BTW, Dolan says the contraception debate is not over. This an interview from April 2012. The mandate went into effect on August 1. Most groups have renewed their insurance coverage by now which means that most of America is now under the mandate and paying for abortifacients. Have you heard any protest from Dolan or anyone else since? Are any hospitals or schools closing as threatened? As far as I know, the Archdiocese of Guam is the only diocese in America that has told Obama to screw himself. We have claimed the religious exemption for all of our institutions and told the government to come and get us - prove that we do not exist to inculcate Catholic values, prove that we do not “primarily” employ and serve those who subscribe to our religious tenets. Of course we serve everyone of all faiths or no faith, but a religious test is unconstitutional and we know we would win if the government ever tried to administer one. BTW, guess whose idea it was?

Other articles on the Danger of Dolan:

NOT A PARTICULARLY WWJD MOMENT
DOLAN, CHAMBERLAIN, & CHURCHILL

The Wall of Separation

Published in the Umatuna 7/5/2011

In a previous column, we noted the three most common arguments used by those who prefer to use a selective morality to absolve themselves from taking a public stand on sticky issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage:

1) the “separation of church and state”,

2) “We have no right to impose our religious beliefs”, and

3) “If you don’t want (fill in the blank) then don’t” (e.g. “if you don’t want an abortion don’t have one”).

Working backwards, we have already discussed the 2 and 3 in previous columns, so this week we will examine the concept of the “separation of church and state”.

***

If you have been following the local versions of the debates over abortion and the legalization of same-sex unions, you are familiar with shouts for the Church to “stay out of politics”.

There are many good reasons for the Church to insert its authority into public affairs, not the least of which is the salvation of souls, ALL souls. But for our present purposes, we will address the relationship between church and state from a secular and legal perspective.

The phrase “separation of church and state” does not appear in the U.S. Constitution as many suppose. The First Amendment simply reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ...."

The intent of the Founders was NOT to keep religion out of government but to keep government out of religion. Had it been the other way around, our founding documents and institutions would not have been so imbued with religious references (e.g. All 50 states reference “God” in their state constitutions.)

The phrase makes its first major appearance almost a century after the U.S. Constitution was penned in a case involving the Mormon Church: Reynolds v. The United States (1892).

Reynolds, a Mormon, who, in accordance with the doctrine of his religion, had two wives. Polygamy had been outlawed thirty years earlier, so Reynolds brought his case for multiple wives to the Supreme Court.

It appears that the Court was subject to some consternation because it first made a strange appeal to English law, and then, perhaps sensing the weak linkage, settled on the fact that the word “religion” was not defined in the Constitution and a definition would therefore have to be provided.

After some digging, the Court unearthed a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to a Baptist church wherein he referred to “a wall of separation of church and state”, a phrase which was not his own, but an echo of similar words penned in 1644 by the founder of that same church, Roger Williams.

The Court, seemingly anxious to put the Mormon, Reynolds, in jail, latched on to another part of the letter wherein Jefferson had opined that though government could not tell citizens what to think about their religion, it could tell them what they could or could not do when religious actions were judged to be “subversive of good order.”

The Court adjudged that polygamy was “subversive of good order”, and deduced that since Jefferson had written both the First Amendment and the obscure letter to said "Baptists," Jefferson’s note was thus a clarification of the First Amendment. In other words, the Court, in effect, said, “because Jefferson said so!”

Curiously, the “evidence” found by the Court in Jefferson’s letter did not provide a definition for “religion” as the Court had sought, but, provided a basis, after some judicial contortions, for a redefinition of the words “free exercise thereof...” since it essentially declared that while the state could not regulate religious belief, it could in fact regulate the “exercise thereof...” if that exercise was adjudged to be “subversive”.

What made things even stranger was that while the case gave rise to the concept of “separation of church and state”, the Court itself appealed - through a reference to a previous case (Holy Trinity Church v. U.S., 1892) - to the Christian basis of “common law” and in so many words, condemns polygamy upon the basis that the United States is a Christian nation:

“No free government now exists in the world unless where Christianity is acknowledged and is the religion of the country . . . . Christianity is part of the common law . . . . Its foundations are broad and strong and deep . . . . It is the purest system of morality . . . and only stable support of all human laws”. (Updegraph v. The Commonwealth, 1824 - as referenced in the Holy Trinity case.)

The debate over the relationship between church and state came to a head in 1947 in Everson v. Board of Education wherein the words “the wall of separation of church and state” were further invoked and cemented into the legal lexicon.

The Everson decision paved the path for the disestablishment of all things religious in the public sphere, and the “separation” phrase has henceforth served as a battering ram to beat down moral opinions of every sort, but particularly those involving sexual mores.

It’s a fascinating history of a jerky sort of connect-the-dots from an obscure phrase used by a Baptist minister in 1644 to its current contrived legitimacy wherein it serves as a platform to shout down those who would dare challenge the legal rush to embrace state-sanctioned sexual freedoms.

However, there is still no constitutional basis to deny a public hearing of religious opinion in matters of state. In fact, the very next phrase in the First Amendment (freedom of speech) guarantees that right for everyone, including (members of) the Church, to speak freely in the public square on any matter.

Universally, the Church has the right and the authority to speak to all issues of human consequence. In the United States, it has the additional protection of the First Amendment and cannot be legally silenced.

Elected officials who hide from tough moral positions behind the “wall of separation” either do not understand the Constitution they are elected to uphold or simply find the shadow of “the wall” a convenient place to cower.

Sadly, (or predictably) they often have the company of many Christians.