During the Catholic bishops’ quarterly meeting last week in Florida, the Catholic News Agency reported on Francis Cardinal George’s criticism of the Catholic Health Association for the dangerous role it played in the health-care debate earlier this year. The Catholic News Agency reported George’s saying: “The Catholic Health Association and other so-called Catholic groups provided cover for those on the fence to support Obama and the administration.” It reported that he also said that “Sr. Carol [of the Catholic Health Association] is mistaken in thinking that this is pro-life legislation.” CNA was not in the room for the off-the-record meeting but reports that it had multiple bishops as sources.

The well-respected John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter (he’s a true reporter, and a good one, at a left-leaning magazine) interviewed Cardinal George on the day the CNA story was published. He recounts that George offered similarly adamant, scolding criticism of the Catholic groups that played a role in making sure Obamacare passed — without life protections but, thanks to them, with plenty of cover.

George also told Allen:

I know this comparison may seem dramatic, but a few years ago Cardinal von Galen of Munster [Germany] was beatified. Under the Nazis, von Galen not only condemned euthanasia as an unethical procedure, but he also condemned the laws which permitted it. Today we think of him as a hero, and rightly so. This is the question that has to be raised: Are we to offer moral teaching solely about actions, or also the laws which permit and foster them?

I think it’s fair to say his is not a nuanced view of CHA’s role in the Obamacare debate.

A blogging bureaucrat has a very different view of what Cardinal George had to say at the bishops’ meeting and so, from her perch at the communications shop at the bishops’ conference, she is attacking the Catholic News Agency’s reporting.

Cardinal George can speak for himself. But there is a great power that comes with being a voice — no less a communications voice — at the bishops’ conference. It seems that this blogger appears to be affording Cardinal George about the same respect Sister Keehan and the Catholic Health Association did during the final days of the health-care debate, when they chose left-wing ideology over protecting innocent life — and chose to speak loudly and often via media that were all too happy to embrace their “Catholic” message.

I’m guessing the blogging bureaucrat heard what she wanted to hear from Cardinal George. But it’s hard to argue that he didn’t say what the news report said he did when there is no evidence to the contrary and when he said much of the same in Allen’s on-the-record interview. (You can read the full transcript of the interview here.) Clearly he is unabashedly critical of the Catholic Health Association, which should come as no surprise. The CHA did undercut the moral authority of the bishops (not to mention the natural and moral law) in the health-care debate, even as the bishops were unambiguously working to defend innocent human life, a clear obligation of the Catholic when it comes to public policy. The Catholic Health Association did a lot of damage. And that the bishops took on the left-wing policymakers within is a significant event that is going to be hard for the Left to spin itself out of, especially as it becomes increasingly obvious that the executive order for which Stupak bargained away his political capital was a lie.