Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is a good example of how the deadly 1964 Hyannisport Conclave and tragically catholic family infamously involved keep on giving and giving and giving… to the culture of death.
KKT has a relentlessly obtuse, 1300 word piece in The Atlantic with a few of the dopiest assertions I have read in a while. The premise, locked up on the title, captures the main point: the American bishops are out of step with Pres. Obama when it comes to contraception! The shock! Imagine!
Out of Step With the Flock: Bishops Far Behind on Birth Control Issues
DEC 9 2011, 9:57 AM ET 10
Even though 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women use birth control during their reproductive years, U.S. bishops are fighting it [Gosh… there’s a compelling reason to ignore natural law and the Church’s teaching.]
Last month, the Vatican issued a clarion call to all people of conscience. [Watch what she does with this. She will redefine what “conscience” is. Right? Can you sense it coming down the line?] It wasn’t about contraception or masturbation or gay marriage or any of the other aspects of peoples’ love lives have drawn religious ire through the ages. Instead, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace stepped forward to question the morality of a global economic system that relentlessly enriches a privileged few while the rest of humanity struggles to keep their heads above water. [Did you see how see conflates the Pont. Council for Justice and Peace with “the Vatican”? I suspect she does have the slightest clue what “the Vatican” is.]
The council reaffirmed the notion highlighted in Pope Benedict XVI’s 2009 encyclical on the economy, arguing that open markets — usually the engines of prosperity — can foster poverty and inequality when unscrupulously exploited for selfish ends. As a counterbalance, the council called for international standards and safeguards to stem the world’s worsening inequities in the concentration of wealth.
[Now we experience the ol’ switcheroo. She will suggest that, instead of paying attention to the important things, bishops are mired in little things. Liberals always do this. Since they can’t do more than one thing at a time, they assume that faithful Catholics or conservatives can’t either.] With millions of Americans looking for jobs and struggling in this economy, you might expect the nation’s Catholic bishops to join the Vatican’s quest to level the economic playing field. However, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) have other priorities. They are consumed just now with the subject of birth control. The bishops’ leadership is unhappy about a new national policy that includes birth control under preventive health care: a designation that requires new health plans to cover it in full, without the co-payments and deductibles that keep many women from using it effectively. This policy, which was adopted last summer and goes into effect next August, is both laudable and common-sense. [Thus she praises something in direct contradiction to what the bishops are trying to accomplish: defend the consciences of faithful Catholics.]
With yesterday, the 8th day of December, marking the Feast of the Immaculate Conception — which refers to Mary’s being conceived free of original sin, not the conception of Jesus [Pay attention, Your Excellencies! You are about to be schooled in morals by a Kennedy.] — it would be wise of the bishops to realize that [put your coffee cup down now! …] the conception of Mary by her human parents, Saint Joachim and Saint Anne, is a reminder that woman are people of conscience and can decide for themselves when it is best to conceive. In fact, birth control use is universal, even among Catholic women: 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women use birth control during their reproductive years.
[Did you just see what I saw? She is using the Immaculate Conception as an argument against the US bishops and in favor of taxpayer funding abortifacients. Did I get that right? But wait! There’s more!]
Yet the more conservative bishops don’t approve. So they’re working with congressional Republicans to undermine this new benefit. [“Benefit”… unless you are the newly conceived child being aborted by the taxpayer funding abortifacient.] If they succeed, millions of women — Catholic and non-Catholic alike — will miss out on the promise of the new health care law. [Pay no attention to the millions of children who will never will to grow up to be taxpayers to fund all these entitlements.]
[…]The bishops’ ploy is yet another indication of how out of step they are with their flock. In the mid-1960s, [the same period as the Hyannisport Conclave] Pope Paul VI authorized a commission to make recommendations about the use of birth control. The laypeople on the commission voted 60-4 for change, while the clerics voted 9 to 6. Despite the majority of both clerics and laypeople in favor of change, Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, argued that this change would undermine Church authority, because it would look like the Church could not discern eternal truths.
[…]
There is a lot more of this rubbish.
Here is the verse that popped into my mind as I read the last paragraph I cited: 2 Peter 2 with its memorable conclusion the memorable verse 2 Peter 2:22:
For, that of the true proverb has happened to them: The dog is returned to his vomit: and, The sow that was washed, to her wallowing in the mire.
Hardly a surprise that she would run back to her roots in the Hyannisport Conclave.
