It was not surprising that ill-educated Catholics in Congress rushed to embrace President Obama’s “accommodation” on the HHS mandate on sterilization and contraception (including possible abortifacients), or that the faux accommodation was defended, if risibly, by another embodiment of Catholic Lite, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. One does not look to Senator Patty Murray, or to Representative Rose DeLauro or Nancy Pelosi, or to Secretary Sebelius, to learn anything about Catholic doctrine or the history of the Church’s teaching on moral issues. Nemo dat quod non habet, as the scholastic philosophers used to say: No one gives what (s)he does not have.
The willingness of the Catholic Health Association and its president, Sister Carol Keehan, to embrace the Obama shell game was also unsurprising; CHA is a trade association far more concerned about a friendly relationship with HHS and access to federal largesse than about Catholic solidarity on a question of first principles. CHA’s role in helping to pass Obamacare clarified for all with eyes to see what the association understands to be its primary interests. These interests define its true loyalties, which were on full display when Sister Carol helped the White House roll out the Obama “accommodation” ruse and sell it to an eager-to-be-sold press.
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But what about the intellectuals? What about the insistence of self-identified “liberal Catholic” commentators, op-ed columnists, and journals that the HHS mandate had nothing to do with religious freedom, or, later, that the “accommodation” met any legitimate religious-freedom concerns? What is going on when these Catholics provide intellectual and political cover for the Sebeliuses, DeLauros, Murrays, and Pelosis in their insistence that this is all about “preventive services” necessary for “women’s health”? Many of these liberal Catholics had, of course, provided similar cover for Obama during the 2008 campaign, so in that sense it was less than startling that their partisanship trumped once again. Still, there was something different, something tragic, about this particular trahison des clercs. In throwing a robust concept of religious freedom over the side, liberal Catholics were betraying their own noblest heritage.
It took the Catholic Church the better part of the late 19th and early 20th centuries to develop a robust Catholic concept of religious freedom. In that process of doctrinal development, the key experience was that of the Church in the United States, and the key intellectual figure was an American Jesuit, Father John Courtney Murray. Murray embodied an older form of liberal Catholicism, and he deployed it with intellectual virtuosity to midwife a new Catholic understanding of the modern state and of the democratic project, which eventually reshaped the thinking and practices of the entire Church. At the intellectual center of that development was Murray’s work on religious freedom. And at the empirical center of this evolution of Catholic self-understanding was the Catholic experience in the United States.
The American arrangement on church-and-state relations was a novelty for the Catholic Church. When it was deemed appropriate to appoint a bishop for the new republic after its founding, the Holy See sent a representative to learn the U.S. government’s wishes through the American minister in Paris, Benjamin Franklin. Franklin replied that this was none of the government’s business, and that the Church could appoint whomever it liked — a response that caused astonishment along the Tiber, where the pope, in those days, had a free right of appointing bishops in, at best, 20 percent of the world’s dioceses.
Beyond this freedom of appointment, however, was the undeniable fact that the institutional separation of church and state, and the Constitution’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion, was good for Catholicism in America: an empirical refutation of the then-regnant assumption that religious freedom (meaning disentangling the church from “establishment” by the state or from some other form of state preference) would inevitably lead to religious indifferentism, and perhaps even to hostility to religious conviction. Yet here was this novus ordo seclorum, as America proclaimed itself, and unlike the Catholic Church in Europe, the Church in America was holding the loyalty of the working class and growing by leaps and bounds throughout the 19th century — by the time a Catholic girl born in Detroit in 1880 became an adult, the number of parishes around her had quintupled. Clearly, there was something here worth exploring.
Impressed by the American experience and tired of the ancient church–state quarrels of Europe, Pope Leo XIII began that exploration in the late 19th century. In a series of encyclicals on political modernity, Leo gingerly began to ease the Church away from its entanglement with the old regimes, and just as gingerly began to explore the foundations of a Catholic theory of religious freedom. Some 40 years after Leo’s death, John Courtney Murray began to analyze Leo’s writings with an eye to articulating a fully embodied Catholic theory of religious freedom.
Catholicism, like all other religions, is about belief. If so-called liberal Catholics don't believe in what the Catholic Church stands for, they are not Catholics at all.
Moreover, these are very the people responsible for the demographic disaster that has beset Western civilization. They have managed to convince a large percentage of the population that having children is evil. The result: Muslims (who obviously don't listen to individuals of this ilk) continue to have large families. They are taking over the empty homes and schools that are the result of the culture of death. Once these immigrants are the majority, Europe, and eventually America, will be just as regressive, just as poor, and just as backward as the countries they came from.
Well, George Weigel picks and chooses what Church teachings he believes in. The Catholic Church has long opposed pre-emptive war and torture, and supported universal healthcare and the provision of a strong social safety net to support the poor and infirm. Weigel is Catholic Lite by his own definition. The fact is that most correspondents on this blog are Americans first, Catholics second. Weigel and company are as anti-Catholic as Sibelius and Kerry.
There is a difference between prudential and doctrinal beliefs. Universal healthcare? Exactly where is that in the Canon Law, please? Abortion is front and center. You clearly need to go back to school. Catholic school. Relearn your catechism. That is the problem with Sibelius, Pelosi et al., they are socialists first, last and always who exploit the Catholic church and its useful idiots to promote a political agenda.
If my objection (vehement objection) to universal healthcare and other socialist planks denies me membership in the Church, then it clearly isn't much of a church at all.
Well, Alecto, you might study the Catechism more carefully on healthcare (2288), preemptive war (2307), torture (2313) and, above all, charity (1822) ("useful idiots?"). Unless, of course, this is just a cafeteria line-up from which to pick and choose what suits and supports your political positions.
You can puff and blow yourself into a self-righteous dither all you want but the plain truth is that you're either with the Church all the way or you're in no position to attack those who aren't. I'm not saying Sibelius et al are right on any of this. I'm saying George Weigel is a hypocrite to suggest that he's a better Catholic or Christian brother than they when he repeatedly defies the Church when it suits him.
Catholicism, like all other religions, is about belief. If so-called liberal Catholics don't believe in what the Catholic Church stands for, they are not Catholics at all.
Moreover, these are very the people responsible for the demographic disaster that has beset Western civilization. They have managed to convince a large percentage of the population that having children is evil. The result: Muslims (who obviously don't listen to individuals of this ilk) continue to have large families. They are taking over the empty homes and schools that are the result of the culture of death. Once these immigrants are the majority, Europe, and eventually America, will be just as regressive, just as poor, and just as backward as the countries they came from.
Well said Mr Weigel. The principle of subsidiarity embodied in the first and tenth amendments to the Constitution has been made nugatory by this assault by the étatisme and' those who do not know what they do'.
As Jonah Goldberg wrote in his book on Liberal Fascism, Progressives both covet and fear Christianity. They covet Christianity because of its historical influence; they fear it for the same reason. I think we now know they means which Progressives will eventually undermine and supplant Christianity - the regulatory state. They need not legislate it out of existence; they will simply kill Christianity through a 1000 and one regulations.
I'm no Catholic, but I can tell that these women and their followers are no more Christians than President Obama is. All we need is seven of Jesus' words: "You will know them by their fruits."
In this case, the stinking, rotton, poisonous, wretched fruit of the culture of death is served up by the stinking, rotton, poisonous, wretched Democratic Party and their allies--a large minority of influential Catholics.
If the Catholic Church leadership would save what is left of the Catholic Church in America, it must do its duty by following seven words of the Apostle Paul: "Remove the wicked man from among yourselves." --1 Cor 5:13. As any student of the Bible knows, this means wicked women as well.
Politically risky, yes. Effective, yes. Likely?
Pray for the bishops, that they will not "love the approval of men rather than God" as the Apostle John wrote.
You do realize that the Church is bigger and more powerful than any Protestant splinter denomination and that there aren't any more powerful Protestant churches outside of America? (If I were "Evangelical" I'd worry about my own dying churches and the shallowness of their guitar rock liturgy. If I see another "pastor" in an Ed Helms like t-shirt I'm gonna puke!)
Who are these hateful people who always hope against hope that the Catholic Church is dying when it clearly isn't? Less and less people watch the hack Academy Awards. Does this mean that America and all of western enlightenment and the very principle of secular progression are dying???
(Maybe we'd be better off if we held anti Catholic bigots to the same impossible standards that they hold us to!)
I'm not Catholic either, but it's evident to me that the women here have a pretty weak attachment to their church and a powerful attachment to the cause of the ever-expanding federal Leviathan. The mandate at issue affects a very small number of people who are in any event free to spend their own money on these "health issues." What is at stake is symbolic and these four insist that the symbol of government control over anything Obama and his minions want to control trumps the symbols of their religion.
You've got to wonder if there is anything that Obama supporters would say is going too far in subjugating individuals and voluntary institutions to the power of the state.
"You've got to wonder if there is anything that Obama supporters would say is going too far in subjugating individuals and voluntary institutions to the power of the state."
"...it's evident to me that the women here have a pretty weak attachment to their church and a powerful attachment to the cause of the ever-expanding federal Leviathan."
The church and the Leviathan are one in the same. Wake up
I'm awake and I see that in the Bible, St. Paul identified the Church as the Body of Christ. In the Hebrew Scriptures, Leviathan is identified as a coiled sea monster. Thos. Hobbes identified Leviathan as the State.
Leviathan is the ancient serpent, the personification in the Psalms and other Biblical texts of the primeval forces of chaos and death as typified by the sea (the "waters of the deep"). Psalm 93 depicts the constant threat these forces pose to God's creation, and the enduring victory God wins over them.
In the New Testament, Jesus wins the ultimate victory over chaos and death through his own death and resurrection. According to these texts, then, the Church can never be one and the same as Leviathan, because it is the deathless Body of Christ. The Church, by God's grace, is victorious over Leviathan.
To identify the Church with Leviathan is to engage in self-contradicting polemic that negates foundational Biblical principles. You are cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Besides that, you missed Weigel's metaphorical use of the term. He mentioned "the ever-expanding federal Leviathan," not the Biblical Leviathan.
Captcha: "Know your rights." To which I might add, know your Bible before you make yourself look ignorant in a public forum.
"You've got to wonder if there is anything that Obama supporters would say is going too far in subjugating individuals and voluntary institutions to the power of the state."
A lot of Obama supporters were up in arms about the NDAA and SOPA, both of which had strong support among Republican politicians. While the NDAA, it turns out, was just affirming a ridiculous potential abuse of power claimed by the Bush administration, SOPA would have greatly expanded the power of the state and reduced the freedoms of citizens.
Thank you, "Dean of Ohio," for your remarks. On matters that threaten American religious freedom, all Christians, regardless of denomination, must stand together and present a united front. As JPK posted, a liberal fascistic regime like the Obama Administration "will simply kill Christianity through a 1000 and one regulations." It is not just Catholicism and Catholic institutions that are threatened, but Christianity as a whole. The nomenklatura elites who currently rule Washington and who dominate the MSM, the political, cultural and entertainment scene are neo-pagan secularists who despise Christianity (and Catholicism in particular) for its teachings on abortion, sexual morality, and homosexuality. Those who still describe themselves as "Catholic," even as "liberal Catholics" are no such thing. They have long since broken communion with the Church and have gone their own way. We should pray fervently for their re-conversion or God help them on judgment day when all their fine rationalizations and excuses will be of no avail.
"Those who still describe themselves as "Catholic," even as "liberal Catholics" are no such thing. They have long since broken communion with the Church and have gone their own way. We should pray fervently for their re-conversion or God help them on judgment day when all their fine rationalizations and excuses will be of no avail."
Great comment. I echo the need to pray for these people. They are, by virtue of their position, responsible to serve God and the people. They will have much more to answer for at the judgment day than those who are not teachers or leaders. Scary, really, to have that responsibility and show such little faithfulness in fulfilling it.
About your phrase, "those who still describe themselves as 'Catholic'...." It is a mystery why people cling in hypocrisy to a faith that in reality they have rebelled against. It is apparently that they receive some perceived benefit from still associating with it. I would guess these are among the reasons:
-- a salve to a guilty conscience
-- a way to procrastinate actually facing who they have become and the wickedness they have committed (see "guilty conscience" above)
-- a way to reap the benefits of an association with their former faith (in a politician's case, votes are presumably the greatest benefit)
-- a way to please people, notably their family, and postpone eruption of conflicts; some of these people may even be dead, such as parents, grandparents, etc.
-- a way to shore up the self-conceit that "I didn't leave may faith; my faith left me"
-- a fear of abandoning ship without a liferaft of any kind
-- inertia
In addition to these, another reason must be counted, that of a failure of the leadership of their local expression of faith, in the Catholic case being the priest and/or bishop. If these leaders do not obey Christ in warning the members of their flock, there will be confusion. In this case, the straying sheep will not be the only ones to bear the anger of the Chief Shepherd when he appears.
Excellent comments, Dean. I would add the point that we are also witnessing the effects of primal evil in our time; whether directly in these women, I can't claim to know; but evil it is, and they are abetting it.
I can't fathom why the bishops haven't required these women to desist; and if they don't, refuse them Communion. Do we have to write our bishops to insist that they do their duty? I would love to know what is holding them back.
This is not about the bishops trying to impose their will on the United States, it's about asking the bishops to refuse to continue giving cover to these women who claim to be Catholic as they help dismantle religious freedom and actively encourage a debased, libertine view of women.
How is their behavior Catholic? Why let their scandal continue to undermine the bishops' position, and threaten Catholic unity? They have abandoned and damaged the fold of Christianity. Why pretend they are one of us?
Spot on....I belong to a conservative Lutheran church. I know in our congregation that there were some that voted for obama...they threw babies under the bus for so called social justice. I often wonder why they go to our church and how they can take communion but you touched on it...they feel that whatever they do at our church salves their conscience enough to allow for voting in opposite of what their conscience should be telling them. I even had a lady proudly tell me that she voted for al franken....how can she sleep at night.......truly God is their judge but makes me wonder if they are reading the same Bible I am.......
We too had our "purges". None of the Obama supporters reformed. They simply quit the faith.
I suppose they are all good ELCA members, Every Liberal Cause in America, you know? It's really strange seeing one of those churches run by a militant lesbian woman pastor. The tribulation is here before our eyes.
It's kind of a pity knowing they have lost their immortal souls.
