And from the real world, as opposed to the upside-down world of unreality the USCCB's propagandist cheerleaders want us to inhabit (I'm building here on what I've just posted), a miscellany of real-life statements by real-life Catholics grounded in the real world, about real issues we lay Catholics have to confront because our pastoral leaders have long since unmoored our church from its gospel foundations and its foundations in Catholic social teaching, by their loud and clear endorsement of the Republican party:
1. As a response to the USCCB's recent indication that it will yank funding from Compañeros, a group assisting poor Hispanic immigrants in Colorado, the group With Charity for All is soliciting donations in support of Compañeros here.
2. At Huffington Post, Joseph Amodeo, an openly gay practicing Catholic, calls on American Catholics to sign a petition to the U.S. Catholic bishops asking them to begin practicing virtues of justice and inclusion in their treatment of gay Catholics. The petition is here.
3. At Salon, John Walsh reminds us why the group Planned Parenthood, which the U.S. Catholic bishops have done everything possible to attack and undermine, matters. As she argues, the assault of the rabid right (including the USCCB) on this organization working to meet women's health care needs has awoken people to the need for putting issues like abortion and contraception in the broader context of women's access to basic health care. And it's causing progressives to take back the language of morality the right has claimed unilaterally to own from the 70s forward.
4. The Philadelphia Inquirer's editorial statement two days ago notes that testimony in the trial of Msgr. Lynn indicates that the "cover-up [i.e., of clerical sexual abuse of minors in the Philadelphia archdiocese] seems to have been in full swing for decades." A cover-up that cries out for reform of the Catholic church and legal guidelines governing when and how abuse victims can seek justice--as the editorial notes, "Whatever the eventual verdicts, testimony likely will have removed all reasonable doubt as to the cover-up’s existence, and the need for reform."
5. And at Commonweal (yes, even Commonweal), the latest editorial statement of the journal warns that the USCCB's overt partisanship in the "religious freedom" battle threatens to undermine the very religious freedom the bishops claim to be trying to safeguard. It does so by threatening to drive more and more young Catholics from the church--and with empty churches, there is no religious freedom to cherish.
4. The Philadelphia Inquirer's editorial statement two days ago notes that testimony in the trial of Msgr. Lynn indicates that the "cover-up [i.e., of clerical sexual abuse of minors in the Philadelphia archdiocese] seems to have been in full swing for decades." A cover-up that cries out for reform of the Catholic church and legal guidelines governing when and how abuse victims can seek justice--as the editorial notes, "Whatever the eventual verdicts, testimony likely will have removed all reasonable doubt as to the cover-up’s existence, and the need for reform."
5. And at Commonweal (yes, even Commonweal), the latest editorial statement of the journal warns that the USCCB's overt partisanship in the "religious freedom" battle threatens to undermine the very religious freedom the bishops claim to be trying to safeguard. It does so by threatening to drive more and more young Catholics from the church--and with empty churches, there is no religious freedom to cherish.
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