Six Months Ago Today, the U.S. Cardinals Issued a Statement

Frankly, I wonder if I am the only person on the Earth who remembers.

And I wonder, especially, if the cardinals remember.

This past Sunday, Amy Welborn posted a fascinating blog in response to the letter from Detroit's Gang of Four: This just might be the test we’ve been waiting for.

One of her readers asked what "test" she was talking about, and she replied, Monday: "Well, it's simple really — the test as to whether the American Catholic hierarchy means anything it says." After further explanation, she concluded:

.... We all know what would happen to a Catholic pastor who might support a candidate with racist, sexist or otherwise retrograde views. It just wouldn't be allowed, and any bishop, from Bruskewitz to Mahony, would step in and shut him up and use the opportunity to clarify the nature of Catholic teaching.

The test is — does this same standard to priests who say supporting the legally-sanctioned slaughter of the unborn is consistent with Catholic tradition and really folks, no big deal, cuz Jen Granholm is such a woman of conscience?

Six months ago, in response to the U.S. Cardinal's Statement (second item on page), I also noted that a test was being undertaken.

Specifically, I took up one facet of "certain basic principles" which the cardinals reaffirmed "in communion with the pope":

5) Given the doctrinal issues underlying the deplorable behavior in question, certain lines of response have been proposed: a) the pastors of the Church need clearly to promote the correct moral teaching of the Church and publicly to reprimand individuals who spread dissent and groups which advance ambiguous approaches to pastoral care....

Allow me to conclude this blog with a lengthy quotation from my column of April 29 — and with a reminder that the archbishop of Detroit, Adam Cardinal Maida, in particular, is indeed one of the cardinals in whose name the statement was issued, April 24.

Some Tests for the American Bishops:
How the Laity Can Score Them

Talking is all we got, so far. The bishops will have to show us that they can “walk the walk” as well as “talk the talk” — assuming some of them can manage to continue to do even that. Honesty and courage in action: they will be required, every day, every step of the way. Every national meeting, every diocesan meeting, every press conference and pastoral letter, will require honesty and, perhaps as never before in the USA, courage in action. Those who are falsely called “dissenters” — who are, in reality, quite happy assenters to any and every doctrine at odds with the Catholic faith — will scream in fury if the bishops actually take the steps necessary to regain their “moral authority” and restore the integrity of Catholic faith and life in the USA. And every syllable of every furious scream will be faithfully reported in a mainstream media that hates authentic Catholicism as much as “dissenters” do.

The next year will show us what future the bishops of the USA really have planned for Catholics in America. During and after the bishops’s semi-annual meeting in June, mainstream media, and perhaps the bishops in response, will want to talk only about what policy will be put into place to deal with “pedophile priests”. That will be, as logicians might say, necessary but insufficient.

We have the cardinals’ own words to show us how to judge the bishops’ response: “The pastors of the Church need clearly to promote the correct moral teaching of the Church and publicly to reprimand individuals who spread dissent and groups which advance ambiguous approaches to pastoral care.”

• How many theologians, who promote error if not outright heresy, will be publicly reprimanded in the next year? (Will the famous on-TV-a-lot-these-days Fr. Richard McBrien, a theologian at Notre Dame, be among them?)
• How many bishops will be publicly reprimanded in the next year for giving encouragement and support to homosexual behaviors that the Catholic Church condemns as sinful? (Will Thomas Gumbleton, auxiliary bishop of Detroit, be among them?)
• How many groups will be publicly reprimanded in the next year for the same reason? Or for some other reason connected with Catholic moral teaching on, say, pre-marital sex, extra-marital sex, divorce and remarriage, abortion, or artificial contraception. (Will Dignity, an organization of homosexual activists, be among them?)
• And how many of these reprimands, of whatever kind they may be, will actually contribute to clearly promoting the correct moral teaching of the Catholic Church?

I submit that, if the answers tally up to zero — as I suspect they will — we shall know that the U.S. Cardinals’ Statement was merely words.

Lest We Forget

“The pastors of the Church need clearly to promote the correct moral teaching of the Church and publicly to reprimand individuals who spread dissent and groups which advance ambiguous approaches to pastoral care.” (U.S. Cardinals, April 24, 2002)

(See also Four Subversive Traitors Step Into the Spotlight, More on Four Subversive Traitors in Detroit, and An Action Plan for Dealing with the Gang of Four.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 10/24/02 09:49:29 PM
Categorized as Religious.