With a title like that, you know it ain’t gonna be pretty.
From the Catholic League:
HUFFINGTON POST BLOGGER DEFAMES CATHOLICISM
Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a Huffington Post blog post by Michele Somerville about New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo:
Michele Somerville is not just another professed Catholic who has a pathological hatred of the Catholic Church: she is a liar. Regarding the first point, she says she likes Andrew Cuomo because he is just like his father—he’s a “protest Catholic.” By that she means someone who identifies himself as a Catholic, yet defies the teachings of the Church. In the case of Cuomo the elder, she cites his pro-abortion position. What she likes about Andrew Cuomo is more chic: “I love that my new governor stepped up to the altar of the Lord [last Sunday] with confidence and received the Sacrament of the Eucharist with his beloved [an unmarried woman with whom he lives] and three daughters in tow.”
Speaking of the two Cuomos, Somerville says, “there is no other morally responsible way to be Roman Catholic.” That’s because she hates their religion, which she says is “propped up by corruption and tyranny,” and was partly built by “hegemony and brutality.”
Somerville also says the Catholic League “classifies men like Andrew Cuomo (who divorce and continue to receive the sacraments) ‘self-excommunicated Catholics.'” Thus does she lie. On January 1, in a New York Daily News story, Frank Lombardi correctly said, “Even outspoken Catholic activist Bill Donohue of the Catholic League passed on a chance to decry what some religious conservatives would deem ‘living in sin.’ Donohue declined to be interviewed, saying through a spokesman, ‘We’re not one to pass judgment’ on how people conduct their personal life ‘or how people celebrate their religion.'” Somerville provided a link to this article in her piece, thus proving she is a liar.
Contact Huffington Post Managing Editor, Jai Singh: jai@huffingtonpost.com
There it is.
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Vile.
Please, let us pray for some bishop, preferably Cuomo’s own, to step up to the plate on this one. Scandal leads to more scandal and apostasy…These dissenters treat the Church as if it were a political party or some type of group one can protest. Ridiculous and sad.
Not to go down a rabbit hole here – the good Fr. Z can delete or expunge if he so deems that I am – but it does bear noting that the problem is not those Cath0lics “who divorce and continue to receive the sacraments” since the problem is not that Cuomo is divorced, but that he has publicly taken up living with another woman after doing so without marrying her – and having received a proper annulment of the first marriage, assuming it qualifies for such status – and then proceeds to receive the Eucharist. Catholics who have merely legally separated or civilly divorced are not barred from receiving communion per se.
And I imagine that Biill Donohue is aware of this distinction, even if Michele Somerville is not.
Keep in mind that the Church is indifferent on civil divorce. It is ALLOWED when there are severe reasons: Physical Abuse, Gambling, etc. Civil divorce is just that CIVIL. It prevents one of the spouses from harming the other or the family as a whole. The two people are STILL married in the eyes of God and this can never be broken.
People, please keep this in mind. If the new governor is publically commiting adultry, and as a consequence scandalizing other Catholics, THEN he should be PUBLICALLY reprimanded by his Bishop. This DOES appear to be the case.
She is imagining that the Governor and his gf are “protesting” all these atrocities she lists. If it was just a protest stunt, then by all means let’s hear from him on it. She hasn’t any basis, and it is pure speculation on her part, to tie it to his ex-wife’s statements made after her divorce, and somehow conjure up this mythical “protest communion” or whatever it is she is thinking. If he did intend to receive merely as protest, then, the grace she alludes to can’t amount to much in the end. Politicians have no problem speaking for themselves when they want publicity for their actions; I assume that he can and will as well if he wants to say that he goes to Mass as protest. I would much rather hear it from the source than from another sophisticated yokel with an ax to grind and a (albeit limited) platform on HuffPo. It seems like the Governor’s attendance at Mass was an excuse for this columnist to attack the Catholic League generally. Would she specify what exactly it is that he is protesting? Is it the right to cohabitate, or commit adultery, to forego an annulment, which even in liberal circles of the Church these days are regularly granted, or is it once again just about abortion? I guess to her it must be all of that and “more”…Still the fact remains that there are a great many “liberal” Catholics, in very liberal dioceses and locales, not at all interested in or hooked up with the Catholic League, who forego reception of communion because they are still regarded as legally married in the eyes of the very Church she professes to love. I’m not the gambling sort however if pressed I would wager that their spiritual communion in abstaining amounts to a lot more of this “grace” she hints at than the haughty insistence to have it of the elite and politically “evolved”.
Even the NY Times seems to be coming to grips with the harsh hypocrisy in the elite classes of the abortion genocide. I think that if this woman loves this Church as much as she says she does in her articles then it’s only a matter of time for her as well to start to face the what has been inflicted on the poor of this country in the name of rights for some women…
Read what Thomas and Ed Peters have to say about public concubinage, starting here.
Is the bishop of Albany in suffrage to the archbishop of New York? Could an appeal be made to Archbishop Dolan?
Not a complete surprise, given the complete ignorance from which most American Catholics suffer with regard to the Eucharist.
Most of what the Catholic populace believes is cobbled together from weak catechetical instruction and vaguely remembered family traditions/rumors. Heaven forbid they should look to Scripture – say, 1st Corinthians.
Again, this is a symptom of years of Church leaders & educators willfully encouraging ignorance of the faith. These teachers knew that they couldn’t change the Church into an institution that would endorse their licentiousness unless they made the Faithful ignorant of what the Church teaches.
They succeeded all too well.
Don’t assume anything anymore. The Mass was, per some accounts, celebrated by Cuomo’s bishop. Two other pro abortion governors were also “feted” by their respective bishops. Canon 915 has been emptied of meaning by the USCCB and Obama collaborators, individual bishops have lost thier way along with their moral authority, and the magisterium of nuns led by popette Keehan has captured the “imagination” of the popular culture. Absent a “schism” in the USCCB, the American church is headed for one and the lines are being reinforced. Time for some “New Zouaves”?
Just a reminder, that one cannot receive sanctifying grace when one is in mortal sin. In fact, there is sin added to sin, as an unworthy reception of Communion, that is, one receiving Communion while in mortal sin, constitutes another sin, the sin of sacrilege. This is not taught from the pulpit as often as it should be, for the sake of those souls who present themselves for Communion.
Michael Voris for the next Bishop of Albany.
I’m wondering if Mr. Donohue declined comment initially because there likely wasn’t any reason for doing so? I’ve rarely heard Mr. Donohue raise a ruckus over something as (commonplace) trivial as a governor living in sin. In my–admittedly limited–experience, Mr. Donohue doesn’t raise a ruckus over typical sinful behaviors; he only gets prickly when someone implies that Catholics don’t have the RIGHT to complain.
THEN he gets fussy!
Bill, I hope to meet you someday! Keep up the good work!
I’m sure Mr. Donohue was being circumspect, as is proper. For all he knows, Cuomo and the woman are living as brother and sister while pursuing an annulment. (And if they were, and Donohue had said anything, there would probably have been oeople coming down on him like a ton of bricks for not knowing it.)
This is a shame.
@Marc:
“Michael Voris for the next Bishop of Albany.”
NO!!!
The thing which bugs me is that so many cradle Caatholics are so casual about recieving Our Lord in Holy Communion – nearly the entire congregation went up to recieve Holy Communion at the Evening Mass today and only two (including myself) had been to confession prior to Mass; knowing that daily confession is offered at a neighboring Church and that the Cathedral offered Confession for an hour and a half today gives me some hope but I’m knowing how often I fall………….