From CNA:
Washington D.C., Oct 14, 2009 / 12:04 pm (CNA).- Chris Korzen, Executive Director of Catholics United, a non-profit organization that has consistently supported President Obama’s policies, released a statement yesterday thanking Senator Olympia Snowe for being the only Republican to vote in favor of the Finance Committee health care bill. However, the U.S. Catholic bishops remain far from comfortable with the legislation.
There’s more…
This morning in a skype conversation a priest friend of mine… a very smart friend… asked "Are the bishops starting to get it?"
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“Are the bishops starting to get it?”
I certainly hope and pray that the bishops indeed “get it” before they learn the hard way as Cardinal Innitzer did when Hitler invaded Austria.
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Fall 2004: Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame. “A Flock of Shepherds”
Should members of the bishops conference be allowed to receive communion? Giving aid and comfort to their fellow Democrats is so ingrained a habit that it has fuzzed episcopal minds as to whether a soi-distant Catholic politician who champions abortion is rejecting Church doctrine and thereby qualifies as a public sinner who should be denied the Eucharist. Of course it could be argued that being a politician is already to be a public sinner, but that would be as facetious as my opening sentence, even if one can invoke the authority of Mark Twain for the identification.
Thomas Aquinas, in a quodlibetal question, asked if being a bishop outranks being a theologian. The question may seem quaint in a time when bishops have established a long track record of silence on dissenting theologians. It has become hard to tell the one from the other. Perhaps the episcopal conference fears being charged with inconsistency. After all, to act manfully in the case of dissenting politicians would be in stark contrast to their hands-off policy on theologians who deny the creed.
Father McBrien has advised Catholics to attend to the silence of the bishops on the matter of giving communion to Catholic politicians who are in the vanguard of the Culture of Death. But we have been hearing the silence of the bishops on important matters for decades now, so much so that when a few of them actually act like successors of the Apostles they cause one to check his hearing aid. One had come to think that they were all Trappists of the old observance.
The shambles of the post-conciliar Church is all around us. Most Catholics are unaware of what the Church–by which I mean the Holy Father, Vatican II, the Catholic Catechism-teaches or, if aware, have been led to think that their acceptance of it is optional. Now they have episcopal sanction for this heterodoxy. Who was the saint who wondered if bishops can go to heaven? Another quaint question when the fearful either/or of heaven or hell is also enveloped in episcopal silence.
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For a long time I have thought of the USCCB as, essentially, a collection of Common Grounders, Bill Buckners if you will, repeatedly booting the easy ones. (If only The Holy See sent The USCCB packing like The Red Sox got rid of Buckner).
I see no reason to think of them any differently than did Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame, Dr. Ralph McInerny, who wrote those accurate words I quoted.
The only hope for the future of a truely Catholic Church in the USA is if they do “get it”.
Are the Bishops starting to get it………….I want to see who voted for what. I know catholic’s united sure don’t speak for me. Please Holy Father, rid us of the USCCB, (collegeialty)??????
Catholics United is just a name for a group with no relation to what the words actually mean.