Cardinal Dolan, Bishop Jenky and the Fiction of Non-Partisanship
From Our Daily Thread;
In a little more than a month, we have had some interesting initiatives from members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, especially its Chairman, His Eminence Cardinal Dolan.
On March 28, Dolan appeared with Bill O’Reilly on the Rupert Murdoch-owned FOX channel. There he launched the fiction that religious liberty is under attack. What an imaginative way to deflect attention from the USCCB’s silence at its conclave several months earlier on issues raised by Jesus regarding “the least among us”; or from Dolan’s own failure to denounce Congressman Paul Ryan’s draconian budget for fiscal 2012; or from the USCCB’s need to turn attention away from the on-going drama of its failures to protect children from pedophile priests. Dolan then appeared on MSNBC on May 2, and, while acknowledging that most Catholics do not accept the contraception teaching of the Church, repeated that he and his colleagues were fighting for religious liberty. To his credit, he did make a strong case for fairer treatment of immigrants. That merely shows that he understands the differences between the Fox and MSNBC audiences, and prefers to tell each what he thinks they want to hear.
Shortly after Dolan’s O’Reilly appearance, and as if to throw a bone to those who truly care about the most vulnerable in our society and the world, the USCCB issued a paper expressing opposition to Ryan’s 2013 budget. Nice. But it received nothing close to the coverage Dolan’s preposterous claim received from his O’Reilly appearance.
Next we learned of the malignant sermon preached by Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria to a group of 500 men in his diocese. His Eminence Dolan had told O’Reilly that he would never tell anyone how to vote because “…even very faithful Catholics, Bill, don’t like their bishops or priests telling them how to vote…” Evidently Jenky doesn’t agree, for he proceeded to excoriate the government of the State of Illinois and “…the current majority of the federal Senate”. But he saved his vilest invective for President Obama, comparing him to Hitler and Stalin. He then went on to say: “This fall, every practicing Catholic must vote….” After the insults tossed at Illinois’ Government, the Democratic majority of the U.S. Senate, and the Democratic President of the U.S., is there any doubt that this man was telling people how to vote? Dolan is either oblivious to his colleagues’ utterances or, what is worse, he knows and chooses instead to try to pull the wool over people’s eyes.
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