Surprising to see a column by conservative Catholic writer George Weigel in the Boston Globe today. "Menino's Catholic fallacies" fleshes out the points we made a few days ago. Weigel is a little kinder to Menino, simply saying "cartoon Catholicism and the crudest caricatures of Catholic belief are often promoted today by Catholic political leaders. Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino is a case in point." (Now MassResistance basically called Menino himself the cartoon.) Weigel writes:
So it seems that Menino knows neither the Bible, nor the catechism, nor the teaching of popes and bishops. Why should anyone beyond Catholics care? Because Americans will continue to debate the role of religiously informed moral reason in public life. That debate can be intelligent or dumb; it can strengthen democracy or weaken it; it can build bridges of understanding through serious conversation or fracture communities and stoke animosities. If political leaders like Mayor Menino continue to promote caricatures and cartoons of Catholic conviction, the debate will be unintelligible and fractious. And American democracy will be the weaker for it.
In yesterday's Globe, we had another example of their advocacy journalism, calling dissenting protesters of Catholic doctrine "advocates". (D0 they ever refer to abortion protesters as "pro-life advocates"?)
The Dec. 12 headline blares, "Advocates protest ban on gay priests; Rallies denounce Vatican policy." The group calling itself "Voice of the Faithful" held a protest on the steps of Boston's Cathedral of the Holy Cross on Sunday. U.S. Rep. William Delahunt took part.
"We're going to stand for what we consider great priests. Gay or not gay, who cares?" said a spokesman. These people are simply dissenters. If they want to be advocates for gay priests, women priests, married priests or whatever, they should leave the Catholic church and join the Metropolitan Community Church -- established by queer activists and their allies especially to promote such nonsense.
Fr. Bob Carr addresses the demonstration on his blog, Catholicism Anew. He writes of the complicity of the Massachusetts Democrat Party apparatus and leaders in this all-out attack on the Catholic church. (For more on Carr, see Carol McKinley's blog Dec. 14.) Here's part of his letter to Rep. Delahunt:
I see that you were outside the Cathedral during the latest Voice of the Faithful attack on Catholics claiming to show your acceptance for all priests. Give me a break!
Mr. Delahunt, your party worked to take down our church, period! Barney Frank and friends declared war on Catholics in 2003 and you and the rest of the Massachusetts delegation, et. al. are part of that war.
You stood last night with people who were previously part of a protest against faithful laypersons inside the Roman Catholic Church in June of 2003. These protesters disturbed innocent faithful people seeking only to worship at their parish church. They have been actively involved in harassing faithful innocent Catholics for several years. Yet, on that day, they with the full blessing of the media who supported you so well on Sunday night, were even more intimidated. That is a felony in this country, sir. Would you be so comfortable and happy standing next to the convicted felons you put in prison as DA of Norfolk County Now you stand up for all priests? No you don't.
It took us a while to figure out who was behind this attack on the Church. We eventually did and we know that one of the groups out trying to silence us was the Massachusetts wing of the Democratic party and their friends from Vermont, headed up by ex-Catholic Howard Dean and his strategists over at the JFK School of Government.
The DNC lost the Catholic vote in 2004 and can assume most of it is gone forever. Nice try on the damage control, but your ship already sunk. ...
