Catholics in the News: Cardinal Newman Society Hyperactive after 2012 Elections

And in Catholic news as this Thanksgiving (in America) week ends--a series of consecutive postings  focusing on particular issues, beginning with news about the shadowy but exceptionally well-heeled right-wing Catholic academic watchdog group, the Cardinal Newman Society, about which I've written frequently in the past (click on the label beneath this posting for my previous statements about the Cardinal Newman Society):

Maryland Priest Denies Communion to Lesbian at Mother's Funeral

Father Marcel Guarnizo

I mentioned yesterday (in passing) the recent story of a priest denying communion to a woman at the funeral of her mother.  The priest in this story is Fr. Marcel Guarnizo of Saint John Neumann Catholic church in Gaithersburg, Maryland.  When she approached him for communion at her mother's funeral, he told her, she says, that he could not give her communion because she lives with another woman and this is a sin. 

Bishop Joseph Martino Resigns: David Gibson on the Backstory and Health Care Reform

I last wrote (as well as I can ascertain) about Archbishop Joseph Martino of Scranton towards the end of March, when I discussed his attack on Vice-President Biden in a posting which notes that we had just begun to see the first shots in a “bitter war that theocratic right-wing Catholics who are more Republican than Catholic intend to wage against the new administration.”

In that posting, I argued that, as a body, the American Catholic bishops have—with notable exceptions—willingly permitted theocratic extremists to capture the center of the American church. I noted that the politico-religious agenda of these extremists is a mishmash of ill-digested Catholic theology and American evangelicalism, and that most U.S. Catholic bishops know this, just as they know that many of those promoting a right-wing theocratic agenda are badly educated Catholics. They know that traditional Catholic values are incompatible with many of the values of right-wing evangelicalism.

But they have allowed this mentality to grow, to represent itself as authentic Catholicism, as the only possible Catholicism, and have done next to nothing to correct it. They have allowed the American Catholic church to become captive to ideological operatives who promote political goals antithetical to Catholic values.

And not much has changed since I wrote that analysis in late March. If anything, things are growing worse, with open attacks on health care reform by right-wing Catholics (more on that in a moment) and the disgraceful sideshow out of Bedlam we’ve seen in recent days, as the self-professed guardians of orthodoxy have fumed over the choice of the Catholic church to give Christian burial to Senator Kennedy (for a sample of this discussion at its lurid extreme, see Christopher Nowak's recent thread of statements about the Kennedys and the funeral at the Grand Rapids Catholic Examiner).

For readers who want to follow what I’ve written about Martino, I suggest clicking the label with his name at the posting to which I link at the start of this piece. The “search blog” feature at the head of Bilgrimage is not working properly, by the way. It yields partial results for some search terms, but misses others entirely. If you’re relying on it to search the blog thoroughly, I’m afraid whatever is awry with it may cause you to miss information.

And now I want to update the Martino story. Both Martino and his auxiliary bishop, John M. Dougherty, have just resigned. David Gibson has a good summary of the Martino story (and of the possible backstory of this resignation) at Politics Daily yesterday.

Gibson reports that there are suggestions that the polarizing, extremely partisan behavior of Martino and some other bishops may have caused the powers that be to nudge the Scranton bishop to step down. As he notes, that polarizing, partisan behavior has been on full display in the response of a few U.S. Catholic bishops to health care reform, and of a handful of U.S. Catholics of the fringe right to the choice to give Ted Kennedy a Christian burial.

Gibson writes,

Whatever the ins and outs of the internal church maneuvering, the upshot is that a leading voice in the anti-Obama wing of the church hierarchy has been silenced while both Obama and Biden continue to take center stage.

At Edward Kennedy's funeral on Saturday, for example, Biden received communion while Obama gave a moving eulogy. Obama also spoke quietly before the service with Boston's Cardinal Sean O'Malley, who himself rejected lobbying from the Catholic right that he not allow the pro-choice Kennedy a public funeral or at least not to appear if there was a public funeral. Some reports say O'Malley sought to open a channel of communication with Obama via their brief chat, which lasted just 2-3 minutes.

Moreover, the lionizing of Kennedy in the wake of his death arguably showed him to be a far more prominent and beloved Catholic figure than most any bishop.

In addition, there are signs that some bishops are growing uneasy with the more strident and even partisan tone of many church leaders, especially in the wake of the shooting of Kansas abortionist George Tiller. The opposition of some bishops to health care reform -- which the pope has declared a fundamental human right -- as well as fallout from the fierce opposition by some to Obama's appearance at Notre Dame in May has also given some bishops pause.

“[There are signs that some bishops are growing uneasy with the more strident and even partisan tone of many church leaders”: if that’s true, I have to wonder what has taken many bishops so long to see the bitter fruits being borne now after several decades of carefully cultivated moral imbecility in American Catholicism around the single issue of abortion.

I’ve been noting this over and over on Bilgrimage from the last campaign period forward: mobs ranting and raving about baby-killing at McCain-Palin rallies, posturing as pro-life when they advocate for unlimited rights to carry guns, for capital punishment, against health care coverage for all citizens, and for draconian measures against immigrants. The real motives of these groups have about as much to do with respect for life as oil has to do with water.

And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see this. How has it taken so long for many of the bishops to see what is right before their eyes, as the self-professed guardians of orthodoxy scream about liberals and socialists and the culture of death (and bashing gays and killing baby killers and denying communion and Christian burial to fellow Catholics)? Bitter fruits. And fruits that have been growing apace for years now, carefully cultivated by many of those who appear suddenly to recognize their incompatibility with the gospel—now that it may be too late to do much about them.

And as Frank Cocozzelli notes in a good article yesterday at Talk to Action about the Catholic right’s attempt to block health care reform, it’s not really about abortion all in the final analysis. No matter how loudly the guardians of orthodoxy shout about baby killing, it's impossible to disguise what their opposition to health care reform is really about, in the final analysis.

It’s about money. It’s about protecting the interests of wealthy economic elites, the same wealthy elites that fund the right-wing Catholic think tanks like the Cardinal Newman Society (on this group, see, e.g., here and here) and the Catholic colleges that such think tanks anoint as more Catholic than the rest, like Patrick Madrid’s Belmont Abbey College (see here and here).

It’s about serving the interests of wealthy elites whose primary concerns seem to have more to do with profit than the common good, with free enterprise than the gospel. Cocozzelli writes,

For the likes of Deal Hudson, Brent Bozell III and Bill Donohue would resort to mendacious means to protect the interests of their benefactors who provide funding to Heritage, MRC or the Morley Institute is not surprising. In doing so they camouflage the considerable corporate opposition to necessary forms of health insurance and for a fair and vigorous public option.

As for Archbishop Chaput, Bishop Nickless and Cardinal Rigali, such recklessness sets a new low. Perhaps these three princes of my faith are genuinely worried about issues of abortion and euthanasia. But to react in such a reactionary manner tells us that they are so obsessed with these what are in reality, peripheral issues that would gladly leave 46 million plus Americans without health care coverage.

So obsessed with peripheral issues that they would gladly leave 46 million-plus Americans without health care coverage. As they try to convince us that they are motivated by respect for life. And that they represent the Catholic tradition in its truest, purest form. When they are, in reality, nothing more than shameless shills for corporate economic interest groups that are bitterly hostile to the Catholic tradition of respect for life and human rights. No matter how much they scream about baby killers and liberals and the culture of death.

The Attack on Harry Knox Now Full-Fledged: Test of Obama Administration's Moral Foundations

Sometimes I don’t enjoy being right. It’s painful to look down a road and see what lies ahead, to realize that what lies ahead might be avoided if others saw and cared, and then to recognize that the pain will be inflicted, regardless. Seeing—and even speaking loudly and clearly—won’t change anything, until those with real power to change things decide to act. And I certainly do not have that power or anything approximating it.

Last Saturday, I posted here about the attempt of a particularly nasty group of right-wing Catholic political operatives to attack one of President Obama’s appointees to his President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Harry Knox is in the sights of this right-wing group seeking to embarrass and undermine the new president in any way possible. Simply because he is a Democrat and they are Republicans, and have had the blessing of the U.S. Catholic bishops for some years now, as they proclaim the Republican party as the party anointed by God, the only legitimate political option for Catholics.

As my posting noted, this attack began with a 7 May Cybercast News Service article by Fred Lucas that accuses Lucas of being anti-Catholic. Cybercast News was founded by L. Brent Bozell III, who happens to sit on the board of the Cardinal Newman Society, the organization mounting the protest against Notre Dame’s invitation of President Obama to its upcoming commencement.

In other words, the attack on Harry Knox is one facet of a broader political plan of a group of hardcore right-wing Catholics to drive wedges between Obama and the Catholic church in the U.S.—to smear the majority of Catholics who voted for Obama and continue to support him as unfaithful Catholics, and to continue to (mis)represent the Catholic church in the U.S. as solidly Republican.

I’m sorry to have to report today that the smear campaign continues and, after I posted on Saturday, has become open and even more vicious. Yesterday U.S. News and World Report carries an open letter of the right-wing Catholic group to President Obama, calling on Obama to fire Harry Knox and threatening him if he doesn’t do so. The threat? The group will vilify Obama as anti-Catholic if he does not get rid of Harry Knox.

The name at the head of the list of signatories? L. Brent Bozell III. Also on the list: Patrick J. Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society. As the Good as You website notes today, Concerned Women of America has gotten in on the act, and has just issued a news flash lambasting Harry Knox for his purported anti-Catholic views and calling on Obama to remove Knox from his current position.

The position Concerned Women is taking would seem, on the face of it, to be a curious and even dangerous one for an organization founded and chaired by Beverly LaHaye to take, given the well-documented anti-Catholicism of her husband Tim LaHaye. The right-wing Catholics with whom LaHaye’s Concerned Women are allying themselves accuse Harry Knox of criticizing several of Pope Benedict’s statements.

But to my knowledge nothing Knox has said equals Rev. Tim LaHaye’s claim that Catholicism is a “false religion” and the pope a “false prophet”—claims well-researched in the Catholic.org article to which I have linked. In the 1970s, LaHaye pastored a church which sponsored an anti-Catholic group called Mission to Catholics which distributed pamphlets claiming that Pope Paul VI was the antichrist and the archpriest of Satan.

Strange, indeed, to find the anti-Catholic LaHayes now attacking President Obama for appointing an openly gay man to his Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and threatening to out that gay man and the president as anti-Catholic unless Obama removes the gay man from his advisory council! Do truth and consistency matter at all to these right-wing types, one wonders?

But, then, this attack on Harry Knox is clearly not about anti-Catholicism at all. It’s first and foremost about attacking Obama—by any means these folks can find, whether those means be fair or foul, based on truth or based on lies. And it’s about the usefulness of gays as political weapons.

Bozell et al. know that the new administration wants to tread very carefully in the area of gay rights. They know full well that gay people and gay causes are an embarrassment to the new administration, something that the administration wants to sweep under the rug as it pursues its "important" business. They understand that the verbal, but not-yet-demonstrated, commitment of the new administration to gay rights is the soft underbelly of the Obama administration and of its claim to stand for moral commitments that neoconservatives have trashed.

Bozell et al. also know that, though things are rapidly changing in the America of the Obama administration, a significant percentage of Americans—and a large percentage in churched circles—continue to resist the claims of their gay brothers and sisters to equal treatment under the law, and to full human status in the human community. Bozell et al. know that they can count on these Americans to view their resistance to gay persons as a moral enterprise, a moral obligation even, and to ignore the compelling moral claims of gay human beings to be treated as fully human.

And Bozell et al. are also counting on Mr. Obama’s willingness to compromise in this area, in order to appease these churched Americans who wish to justify oppression of a persecuted minority as a moral obligation, just as they wish to see torture as a moral act when the one being tortured has a face different from the one these churchgoers see every Sunday in their churches.

Bozell et al. want to undermine the new administration’s claim to stand on moral foundations with its agenda of change. And, with its silence and prevarication about gay issues and gay lives, the Obama administration has, unfortunately, done everything in its power to open itself to this ugly attack. As the new administration continues to cave in to the hard right in this area, I do not believe that a majority of American Catholics of the center—or of Americans of the center, in general—will speak out about this case, and will call on Mr. Obama to resist. Many Americans of the center are as willing as the new president is to choose silence rather than the moral thing to do, when it comes to gay issues and gay human beings.

Ultimately, they would prefer that we just go away, with our inconvenient questions and our inopportune expectations of justice and civility and our inconvenient gay lives.

My prediction? Sadly, I believe Mr. Obama will likely cave in on Harry Knox. I hope that this will not be the case. But as I have noted in previous postings on this blog, in my view, though things are getting better for gay Americans and are likely to continue to get better under the new administration (because the election of our first African-American president has released energies for progresssive change), the price gay Americans will in all likelihood pay for small cultural steps in the right direction is going to be one of several steps backward with each step forward.

Things will in all likelihood often get worse even as they are getting better. We are in a period of whiplash reaction now in which every victory for gay rights in our culture will be followed by one or more defeats at the hands of those who know they can continue to use gay people as objects in ugly political games, and that the majority will not speak out as this happens, will not grant the moral legitimacy of gay lives and gay rights, and will not definitively and decisively reject the claims of the hard right to be pursuing moral goals by bashing gay human beings.

And through it all, silence at the top. Silence in the one place where even the softest word of support would make a world of difference. Silence that translates into consent—consent for the most draconian and immoral uses of power against gay human beings by those representing themselves as moral agents even as they engage in patently immoral behavior.

And a willingness to compromise, which, even through the silence, speaks volumes about how the new administration really regards the moral claims—and the lives—of gay human beings. Because Bozell et al. are watching carefully, they know precisely where to strike now. Because they have, to a certain extent, been checked in their attempt to blow the Notre Dame commencement into a full-blown embarrassment for the new administration, they are out for blood now. They know where to strike to draw that blood—and they know full well whose human lives are dispensable, in their atrocious political games.

I predict they will succeed, in the case of Harry Knox. I predict he will be unseated, and will be the first in a string of gay martyrs produced by the new administration, as the administration continues to do what it regards as expedient, even if not right, in the case of gay human lives.

Conundrum for a Rainy Saturday: Links Tying Some Catholic Activists to Rhetoric of Hate

These are the people bringing you this, which includes this and this.

This man sits on the governing board of the people bringing you the spectacles mentioned above. Keith Olbermann has called this rabid right-wing Catholic political operative the worst person in the world.

This same political operative founded the news service that is bringing you this story, which is appearing on blogs with headlines like this one.

When one reads this headline and the article connected to it, one wonders what this and this have to do with this, and why this lets its name be hijacked by partisan purveyors of hate.

A Reader Writes: Thugs?! The Cardinal Newman Society? Really?

In response to yesterday's posting about the Cardinal Newman Society and Notre Dame's invitation of President Obama as its commencement speaker (here), a reader posted a response, asking what I meant by the term "thugs" and to whom I was applying it. I replied, and a dialogue ensued.

That dialogue seems significant to me. Since blog comments are notoriously under-read, I'm lifting yesterday's comments to a posting. Here's the discussion:

John: Why call them 'thugs'? If it was some Soros-funded outfit trying to influence the culture, you'd laud them as 'activists' or 'community organizers'. But right-wingers are always 'operatives' and 'thugs', simply because you disagree with them?

Bill: Thanks for your reply and question, John.

The term "thug" is Joan Walsh's, in reference to Randall Terry.

And I completely agree with that term, as applied to Mr. Terry.

John: OK, glad to know you don't think the Newman Society is a bunch of thugs. The title of your post made me think you did. In any event, I would say that the more conservative bishops are 'allying' themselves with groups like Newman (accepting your notion that they are) for the purpose of rallying resources in order to respond to 'scandal'. What is more pastoral than wishing to protect your flock from the danger of moral confusion?

Bill: John, I do actually view the Cardinal Newman Society folks as thugs. It's not a word I use often. I've been blogging here for, well, quite a while, and if you do a search of the blog using its search engine, you'll see that I have never used the word until today.

But I do agree with Joan Walsh's use of it in this context, and I would extend that word to Cardinal Newman Society. I agree with the assessment of Bishop John G. Vlazny, when he wrote (as he ended his tenure as chair of the U.S. Bishops' committee on higher education), that Cardinal Newman Society often employs tactics that are "aggressive, inaccurate, or lacking in balance," as well as "objectionable in substance and in tone."

Both leaders of American Catholic higher education and bishops have noted that Cardinal Newman Society engages in bullying tactics. In my view, if our position on life issues is right, it will be compelling and morally persuasive and will not require coercion or hardball tactics that include fudging the truth and playing partisan politics. The fact that we keep resorting to those tactics undermines the message on life that we hope to present to the culture at large.

As for the bishops' concern to protect the flock from scandal, many of us are already scandalized, and by the bishops themselves. As a lay Catholic, if I were asked by the bishops how I'd like them to exercise pastoral leadership, I'd point them to the Catechism, which states, ''The whole concern of doctrine and its teaching must be directed to the love that never ends. Whether something is proposed for belief, for hope or for action, the love of our Lord must always be made accessible, so that anyone can see that all the works of perfect Christian virtue spring from love and have no other objective than to arrive at love'' [Catechism, para 25].''

"The love of our Lord must always be made accessible": the actions of Terry and Cardinal Newman Society, and of many bishops who ally themselves with those folks, do not make the love of the Lord accessible to many of us or to the culture at large, I believe. We will persuade others with our message when we live it--in love--rather than trying to beat others up and shout them down.

John: OK, fair enough. I like +Vlazny (my own shepherd, here in W Oregon) so that's persuasive testimony. If the Newman Society is being deceptive, shame on them. I support their mission, though, as long as it's conducted charitably. The letter-writing campaign and such is, in my opinion, a completely legitimate expression of dissent and concern.

Bill: John, Vlazny is a good bishop. I spent a semester in Oregon doing sabbatical research on the work of Martin Luther King, and was impressed with him (and with many members of the local Catholic community I met out there) during that period.

It's not the letter-writing campaign of the Cardinal Newman Society I object to. It's the bullying tactics and the shilling for one party--while the Society totally ignores the considerable moral shortcomings of the positions and leaders of that party, focusing exclusively on the party it opposes.

Thugs Are Thugs Are Thugs: Joan Walsh and Tim Rutten on Cardinal Newman Society

Meanwhile, the Cardinal Newman Society (here) remains the gift that keeps on giving—for bloggers like me, at least; for those of us interested in the interface between religion and politics in the U.S., who think it’s important to track the efforts of right-wing pressure groups to keep American churches in a little box owned exclusively by the right.

Two recent articles comment on the connections between the Cardinal Newman Society and the Republican party—connections I have teased out in my own postings about the Cardinal Newman Society. As Joan Walsh notes in a 1 April Salon article entitled “Right-Wing Catholics vs. Obama” (here), what we’re seeing in the attempt of Cardinal Newman Society to force Notre Dame University to rescind its invitation to President Obama next month is not just any old media scrap, but a well-organized and highly-funded right-wing attempt to punish Catholics who voted Democratic in the past election, and to force Catholic voters back into the Republican fold:

But the growing movement to stop Obama's visit isn't your ho-hum sort of Catholic League media dust-up, where Bill Donohue harumphs on television and then goes away. It's part of a well-funded lobbying effort by a group of right-wing Catholics to run liberal Catholics, and dissenting doctrine, out of the church, and to recruit the remainder of the faithful for the GOP.

This is a group of rabid right-wingers who came together to make sure Catholic universities enforce Catholic doctrine. They publish the work of ultra-right Opus Dei member Rev. C. John McCloskey, who has argued that "for a university to be truly Catholic," its faculty must be "exclusively" Catholic. Operation Rescue fanatic Randall Terry, who converted to Catholicism recently, is bringing his special kind of crazy to the movement. "The faithful Catholic world is justly enraged at the treachery of Notre Dame's leadership," Terry rants. "Notre Dame will rue the day they invited this agent of death to speak." Once a thug, always a thug.

Tim Rutten offers a similar analysis in an op-ed piece on 28 March in the Los Angeles Times (here). In Rutten’s view, what Cardinal Newman Society and its allies are trying to do with this protest is “fresh and consequential”:

There are a couple of things about this culture-warfare-as-usual controversy that are fresh and consequential enough to be of interest. The first is the protesters and their connections. Many are part of a vocal, Internet-savvy lobby that has been agitating to coerce the church's prelates into denying Communion to Catholic officeholders who deviate from a rigidly "pro-life" line. Made up of a number of smaller groups, this lobby has campaigned to keep other pro-choice officeholders (of any religion) from speaking at Catholic schools. Its supporters also have been vociferously active in the movement to use abortion as a wedge to lever Catholics into the religious right.

The effort turns on convincing Catholics -- for decades now, the principal swing voters in presidential elections -- that they're obliged to vote on the basis of moral issues important to the right wing of the church, such as abortion, stem cell research and, more recently, marriage equality.

As Rutten notes, this is an effort that has a clear partisan political objective—to convince Catholics and the culture at large that being Catholic and voting Republican are synonymous:

The Newman Society is linked to two organizations -- CatholicVote.org and the Fidelis Center -- whose programs are clearly geared toward bringing Catholics into the Republican Party.

Both Rutten and Walsh note that the Cardinal Newman Society (and the U.S. Catholic bishops who buy into this partisan political agenda) are working against certain odds. Polls indicate a majority of American Catholics satisfied with Obama’s leadership, and they also indicate that on the hot-button issues of abortion, same-sex marriage, and sexual ethics, American Catholics may even be to the left of the American mainstream. The response of Notre Dame students to the attempt to force their school to disinvite the president is also running heavily in favor or the decision to bring President Obama to the campus.

By allying themselves with groups who are using the church for partisan political purposes, some bishops are turning their backs on the majority of American Catholics and the culture in which those Catholics live. One wonders how those bishops justify such a decision on pastoral grounds.

I note one other interesting point in Walsh’s and Rutten’s articles. Both note that, in inviting the new president as its commencement speaker this year, Notre Dame is carrying on a long tradition of inviting the newly elected president to its graduation the spring following each election. Notre Dame invited Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush to speak following their elections, and there was not a whisper of protest—even though Bush opposes abolition of the death penalty, a position contrary to Catholic teaching about the sanctity of life.

I’m interested in this tidbit of news, because several bloggers at centrist Catholic websites that have recently held discussions of the Obama invitation have speculated that Mr. Obama deliberately accepted the Notre Dame invitation in order to consolidate Catholic support. I wonder why that malicious motive would be attributed to him if he is following in the footsteps of predecessors who accepted Notre Dame’s invitation because Notre Dame has a longstanding practice of inviting the new president to its commencement?

Clearly, there is, in some Catholic minds, a Catholic exceptionalism regarding President Obama. I wonder why that is the case? I wonder on what basis we are to conclude that, say, George W. Bush clearly represents Catholic values, whereas Mr. Obama does not do so?

Something about the new president seems to strike fear into the hearts of Catholics of the right and of many Catholic bishops, who appear to have thought that the Republican party had locked up the Catholic vote in perpetuity. What is that something, I wonder?

More on Strategies to Support Notre Dame Against Assault of Right-Wing Bullies

I apologize for trying readers' patience with yet another posting today.

But, since a posting by Tom Mattzie on Huffington Post today dovetails with mine earlier today calling for readers to support Notre Dame against its assault by Cardinal Newman Society and other right-wing pressure groups trying to undermine President Obama (here), I want to link to that post now (here).

Tom Mattzie makes several points I made in my posting earlier today:

1. This is a right-wing political attack masquerading as a Catholic theological one: "This is an effort by a small cabal of ultra-conservative partisans to separate Catholicism from its calling for social and economic justice and peace. A Republican operative who has simultaneous roles at other Right-Wing groups founded the group attacking Notre Dame."

2. A minority of right-wing Catholic political operatives continue to try to represent themselves as "the" voice of American Catholicism, though a majority of American Catholics reject this right-wing political agenda: "These Obama and Notre Dame critics are not speaking for a serious number of the tens of millions of American Catholics who voted for Barack Obama--nor even probably most of those who voted for John McCain."

3. We need to rally behind Notre Dame because the right-wing groups spearheading such efforts are loud, well-organized, and well-funded. Mattzie notes that the right-wing Catholics involved in this effort have now gotten right-wing evangelicals involved: "They have a tremendous organizing capacity that is matched on the other side only by secular groups who won't instinctively weigh into a debate like this."

As a practicing Catholic, Tom Mattzie concludes, "They should be dismissed for what they are--a radical ultra-conservative cabal driving a political agenda through Catholicism."

And he calls for action. His posting includes the following address for Notre Dame's president:

Contact:

Rev. John Jenkins,
CSC400 Main Building
Notre Dame, IN 46556
(574) 631-8261
president@nd.edu

A Reader Writes: Academic Freedom in Catholic Universities? More on Supporting Notre Dame

A good reader responded to my posting yesterday about Cardinal Newman Society’s attempt to bully Notre Dame University for inviting President Obama as its commencement speaker. She asked what those who support academic freedom in Catholic universities can do to make their voices heard.

I replied with a set of top-of-the-head suggestions. I said that those concerned about the Notre Dame situation, in particular, might send letters to any publications discussing the issue (in fact, on Google’s news page this morning, the Notre Dame story was one of the top stories of the day).

I also suggested letters to the local bishop and the university president, both of whom are being bombarded by letters and emails from the Cardinal Newman Society and other right-wing Catholic pressure groups who are using this situation to try to mount Catholic opposition to President Obama. That is what this is all about, after all: the attempt of some Catholics to subvert the new president, for reasons that are political, though these are decked out in moral rhetoric.

Since I offered that suggestion to my reader, I see that Bishop John D’Arcy of Fort Wayne-South Bend has announced he will boycott the Notre Dame commencement exercises in protest of the president’s appearance. I am not surprised. Nor am I even disappointed. I have come to expect far too little from the bishops, by way of courageous pastoral leadership. Nothing most bishops can do these days really surprises me. When I think I've seen the lowest possible point to which a bishop might go, I remind myself that sometime down the road, another bishop will show me that there was a lower point than I had imagined.

(Note: bishops may well have an obligation to speak out about the ethic of respect for life. But they also have an obligation to speak out about all the ways in which political leaders contravene that ethic. It is a double standard, and a particularly reprehensible one, when bishops speak out about the lapses in respect for life on the part of only one set of politicians, those of only one party. Many of us have lost confidence in the pastoral leadership of our bishops in large part because they have been totally partisan in their approach to the political involvement of the church—and totally blind to the serious betrayal of an ethic of life by members of the party they defend.

And that is not to mention my dismay when any bishop allows himself to be bullied by a Catholic fascist group like the Cardinal Newman Society . . . .)

Meanwhile, the pressure on Notre Dame’s President Rev. John John I. Jenkins is intense. For that reason, I continue to encourage readers interested in doing something in support of Notre Dame to speak out.

Today, I noticed on a thread at one of the Catholic news site blogs a link to an online petition at the Petition Spot website supporting Notre Dame for its decision to invite President Obama to its commencement. I am not being coy in failing to mention the thread in which I found the link—I did not record the source, and have been unable to locate it again.*

In any case, the link is as follows: here. If you are interested in offering support to Notre Dame as it receives intense pressure from right-wing Catholic political activist groups to rescind its invitation to President Obama, please sign this petition and circulate this information to your friends.

For years now, the Catholic right in the U.S. has succeeded in making its voice heard, by well-organized (and well-funded) letter-writing campaigns. The Catholic right has made itself appear as the only voice in American Catholicism by adroit letter-writing campaigns to the Vatican and to bishops.

Catholics who endorse the views of groups like the Cardinal Newman Society are a minority—a small minority. Yet they succeed in influencing the direction of the American Catholic church out of all proportion to their numbers, because they are organized, have wealthy backers, and know how to threaten—and to bully and threaten very effectively.

It is possible for Catholics of more moderate political views, and for Catholics who support Vatican II and its call for positive engagement of the church with the world, to make our voices heard, too. If that is going to happen, we need to organize, to out-maneuver the well-funded and powerful right, and to let our voices be heard.

I offer the preceding petition as one way in which those concerned to counter the influence of groups like the Cardinal Newman Society can speak out.

* Found it: H/T to blogger Historyman at the following Commonweal thread: here.

Cardinal Newman Society Strikes Again: Notre Dame in Sights of Catholic Political Activist Group

Early in March, I published a number of postings examining the right-wing political ties and agenda of the Cardinal Newman Society, a watchdog group that claims to be concerned about safeguarding the orthodoxy of American Catholic colleges and universities (here and here and here).

My postings on the Cardinal Newman Society documented its ties to right-wing political activists such as L. Brent Bozell III. I also noted the concern that a number of American Catholic bishops and leaders of American Catholic education have expressed in recent years regarding the political activities of this group. These critics have noted the Society's penchant for misrepresenting the positions of universities it targets. In the view of some bishops and many Catholic educational leaders, the Cardinal Newman Society is divisive, destructive to the unity of the American Catholic church, and more concerned about promoting a right-wing political agenda (and gaining money for its political causes in the process) than defending the faith.

I’m delighted to note that others—including journalists with far more clout than I have—are also tracking the activities of this right-wing political group masquerading as watchdogs for Catholic orthodoxy. Yesterday, Joe Feuerherd, publisher and editor in chief of the National Catholic Reporter, published an article entitled “Catholic Academic Ayatollah Shows True Colors” (here).

Feuerherd is responding to a jihad recently proclaimed by Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society. When it was announced recently that Notre Dame University has invited President Obama to be its commencement speaker in May, Reilly went ballistic. He is now spearheading a campaign to flood Notre Dame with letters and email messages calling for the university to rescind its invitation.*

For those interested in pursuing the analysis of Cardinal Newman Society I began earlier in March with the postings cited above, I highly recommend Joe Feuerherd’s article. He notes that the Cardinal Newman Society “promote[s] the idea of university as Catholic madrassa.” It runs roughshod over academic freedom to assure an exceptionally narrow “orthodoxy” that is ultimately political rather than religious in its nature.

Feuerherd also notes Cardinal Newman Society's well-documented strategy of focusing on hot-button issues in Catholic universities as a way of energizing the Society’s donor base:

Here’s what is really going on. Ayatollah Reilly searches for hot button issues on Catholic campuses -- anything that has to do with gays gets them excited, as do performances of “The Vagina Monologues” and, of course, pro-choice speakers (few of whom actually even discuss abortion in their presentations) – that will energize their base of donors and activists. Then they highlight these offenses on the Web and through direct mail to generate revenue.

It is good work if you can get it: for his efforts Reilly (according to a 2007 financial disclosure report) drew a nearly six-figure salary.

Feuerherd also notes the strange selectivity of the Cardinal Newman Society regarding which commencement speakers it chooses to target. In May 2005, the Society made a huge stink when Belmont University, a school sponsored by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in California, invited Sister Helen Prejean to give its commencement address.

Prejean’s damning fault? She supports abolition of the death penalty. She opposes abortion but makes solidarity with poor women in crisis pregnancies and questions whether we actually give those women a choice between abortion and another viable option that would make it possible for them to carry a child to term and raise it.

On the other hand, when the Benedictine St. Vincent College in Pennsylvania invited President Bush to give its commencement address two years later, not a peep from the Cardinal Newman Society.

It appears that Sister Helen Prejean, with her prophetic witness against capital punishment, betrays Catholic values regarding life, while George W. Bush exemplifies those values. And that speaks volumes about the Cardinal Newman Society and the political—as opposed to Catholic—agenda it promotes.

*For an outstanding analysis of the campaign against Notre Dame being spearheaded by Cardinal Newman Society, see Colleen Kochivar-Baker’s posting about this topic at Enlightened Catholicism yesterday (here).

Ave Watch: Direct Ties between Tom Monaghan and Martino's Cardinal Newman Society

One final tidbit to tie up the story of the Catholic right's captivity to the political right and the big money funding the political right (here): I wrote two days ago about the links between Tom Monaghan and his Ave Maria University, and publishers of the Catholic right such as Ignatius Press.

I'd like to note here another link, a direct link that joins Bishop Martino in a public, easily tracked financial way to Monaghan and Ave Maria. As the AveWatch website notes, Monaghan's financial records show him contributing directly and largely ($10,000--the year is not clear; 2005 is implied) to the Cardinal Newman Society (here).

Who, in return, greased Monaghan's palm in 2007 by naming Ave Maria University "one of the best Catholic schools in America for undergraduate students," with a promise to high-profile Ave Maria students in its upcoming guide to "true" Catholic colleges . . . .

This shows one direct tie, a financial one, at that, between Martino and Monaghan, via the Cardinal Newman Society. But of course it's just a big old conspiracy theory to imagine that the thick, intertwining, incestuous ties between the big funders of the Catholic and Republican right really signify any connection or collusion . . . .

For those interested in knowing more about Monaghan and Ave Maria, I highly recommend the Ave Watch website (here). As its header notes, it engages in ongoing investigative journalism regarding Monaghan and Ave Maria.

Watchdog Activities of Cardinal Newman Society: The Response of American Catholic Bishops

And, since the Cardinal Newman Society, on whose episcopal advisory board Bishop Martino of Scranton sits (here), sought to plant a second defamatory story about Catholic universities on the same day it trumpeted its story about Martino's attack on Misericordia University, I'd like to draw attention to an editorial in America magazine two years ago (here).

This editorial is still pertinent. America published it at a moment in which the American Catholic bishops and American Catholic universities were being hounded by Cardinal Newman Society over the implementation of the Vatican document Ex corde ecclesiae. That document, which calls on Catholic institutions of higher learning to assess their Catholic identity and consider how they transmit Catholic values to students, precipitated an ongoing discussion among bishops and presidents of Catholic universities. As the America editorial notes, Ex corde ecclesiae was itself written in this dialogic fashion, as the outcome of a process of discussion.

Cardinal Newman Society would have nothing of the discussion. The Society and the bishops who advise it preferred, instead, to attack, to plant misleading stories in the media about the purported decline in the Catholicity of American universities.

As the America editorial notes, in January 2006, the outgoing chair of the bishops' committee dealing with Catholic higher education, Archbishop John G. Vlazny, wrote Martino and other bishops identified as episcopal advisors for the Cardinal Newman Society. Archbishop Vlazny's letter notes that his committee and the American bishops had been monitoring the actions of Cardinal Newman society, and found them "often aggressive, inaccurate, or lacking in balance," as well as "often objectionable in substance and in tone."

What, in particular, have brother bishops found objectionable about the behavior of Cardinal Newman Society and its episcopal advisors? Here's America's observation:

What have been the methods of the Cardinal Newman Society that the Bishops and Presidents Committee find so objectionable? The Cardinal Newman Society keeps a close watch on how Catholic campuses observe the society’s self-defined and rather narrow view of what constitutes Catholic orthodoxy. Their litmus tests include: whether any campus group has sponsored a presentation of “The Vagina Monologues”; whether any politician who does not favor criminalizing abortion is invited to speak at a campus event; whether the institution has sponsored a support group for gay and lesbian students; and, most recently, whether faculty or staff at a Catholic institution supported John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate in the 2004 elections.

In pursuit of its skewed view of orthodox Catholicism, the Cardinal Newman Society has been reckless in its caricature of opposing viewpoints, misrepresenting the positions of those with whom they disagree. Even sadder, however, is the assumption behind their watchdog tactics. The test of a Catholic institution implicit in those tactics is a negative one.

As America notes, Cardinal Newman Society wants to impose an entirely negative test on Catholic universities, as it judges their catholicity. It does not focus on the positive ways in which a Catholic institution transmits Catholic ideas and values. It establishes a narrow (and--my assessment--fundamentally political) standard by which to judge most Catholic colleges as "out" and a select, sectarian, highly politicized and right-leaning few, as "in."

The approach of Cardinal Newman Society has, America thinks, little understanding of or regard for one of the central functions of a Catholic university, which is to engage contemporary culture in a dialogic way. It, and its episcopal leaders, would prefer to dictate to culture, to create a bastion of like-minded believers and hurl down invectives against contemporary culture, insofar as it does not toe the party line of these sectarians.

And they're still at it. On the same day that Cardinal Newman Society sought to create a media frenzy around the Martino-Misericordia story, the Society issued a press release attacking Georgetown University, Loyola of Chicago, and Seattle University (here). Their infraction?

According to Cardinal Newman Society, these three Jesuit institutions have permitted dialogue about LGBT issues. As Misericordia University did, incurring Martino's ire: the similarity in these stories is not accidental. Both stories are attempts to create media frenzies in which "orthodox" Catholics will get up in arms about the (totally manufactured) "decline" in Catholicity of American Catholic schools.

And will donate money. To the Cardinal Newman Society. And to the Republican party.

And will vote Republican. And will (the real objective of the Martino story, with its pointers back to Mr. Biden and Scranton) participate in the crusade of the Catholic right to undermine the new administration in every way possible.

While our economic institutions fall apart, while millions of Americans are struggling to pay mortgages and rent, to feed their families, to find work, these political partisans wearing Catholic garb are gleefully engaged in divisive attacks, in attempts to undermine and destroy, in ongoing efforts to seize theocratic control of the political process. And in behavior that tears apart the unity of the American Catholic church.

If they do not succeed--and they may well do so; they have powerful people with deep pockets behind them, people whose willingness to disseminate disinformation in the name of their "good" is well-demonstrated--there may come a day when historians look back at such behavior and ask how those engaged in it ever thought they were faithfully Catholic. Or grounded in the gospels and example of Jesus, in any shape, form, or fashion.

(As an aside: note the web editor's comment that follows the America editorial. As it suggests, when America published the editorial, the right-wing Catholic noise machine did something it routinely does, when its actions are criticized: it encouraged its partisans to flood America with invective about its betrayal of Catholic values. It is clearly not about dialogue, for the political and religious right. It's about control, and the shutting down of dialogue and destruction of opponents that are required to gain such control.)

Right-Wing Catholicism, Right-Wing Politics: Thick Ties in the Martino and Misericordia Story

I’m always happy when something I write attracts the attention of bloggers of the religious-political right. I take it as a sign that I’m on the right track when this happens. The hot replies that often come forth from those sites, full of outraged (and outrageous) claims that their positions have been distorted, suggest to me that I’ve hit the bull’s eye.

And then there’s the free publicity for Bilgrimage. That’s no small consideration when one’s stats counter suddenly shoots up after a bit of calumny from our brothers and sisters of the right.

Friday, Carl Olson attacked me on his Insight Scoop blog (here). For those who don’t follow the intricate, incestuous connections of the Catholic right (and the intricate, incestuous connections between the Catholic right and the political right), Insight Scoop is attached to Ignatius Press.

Ignatius Press was founded by Joseph Fessio, a Jesuit whom an online history of Ignatius describes as “a longtime personal friend of Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI” (here). Fessio founded St. Ignatius Institute at San Francisco University in 1976 “in reaction to liberalizing influences of the Second Vatican Council (1963-65) and curriculum changes at the university,” and is a “celebrated figure in right-wing Catholic circles” closely associated with the EWTN network of Mother Angelica (here).

Fessio is now Theologian-in-Residence at Ave Maria University. Ave Maria is the dreamchild of pizza magnate and right-wing Catholic political activist Tom Monaghan, whom reporter Liam Dillon identified last November as a “national power broker for GOP political candidates” (here).

Dillon’s article notes that Monaghan’s confidantes include Deal Hudson, “a prominent Catholic Republican operative,” and that the politicians and political action groups he has supported with major funding include Sam Brownback (R, Kansas), Mitt Romney (R, Massachusetts), Bob Schaffer (R, Colorado), and the Republican National Committee. As Dillon notes, Monaghan has chosen to exert influence on the American political process by use of his wealth to fund and create organizations for political activism.

Monaghan has a particular interest in trying to keep the Catholic vote in the Republican pocket. As Dillon states,

The combination of Monaghan’s staunch anti-abortion stance and pro-free market capitalism make him a natural fit for the Republican Party. His willingness to spend his fortune promoting these ideas makes him a power broker, especially as the bloc of 47 million Catholic voters nationwide continues to fragment.

Monaghan and Ave Maria have strong ties to Judge Robert Bork, Nixon’s attorney general and solicitor general, later appointed by Reagan to the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C.; Antonin Scalia, a Supreme Court justice appointed by Reagan; and Clarence Thomas, another Supreme Court justice appointed by George H.W. Bush. Under the Reagan administration, Monaghan was actively involved in the attempt to undermine liberation theology in Latin America (here and here).

As Michael Genovese notes in his study Catholics and Politics, Monaghan’s influence extends through the multiple right-wing political organizations he helps to fund and/or has set up through an interlocking network of ties that geometrically increase the influence of these groups on our political process (cited in Dillon). Dillon refers to this interlocking network as the “Ave Maria nexus.” I stress the word “nexus” here, because it’s central to Olson’s attempt to attack my analysis of what’s taking place with Bishop Martino of Scranton, on Olson’s Insight Scoop blog—an attack to which I will return in a moment.

Through his ties to Deal Hudson, whom Bill Berkowitz at Media Transparency characterizes as “the point man for the Bush administration in all matters Catholic,” Monagahan and his allies exerted strong influence in that administration (here). Berkowitz notes that Hudson was in regular contact with Karl Rove and advised Rove and his associates how to tailor their message for Catholic audiences. Berkowitz notes as well that

[Hudson] was also a major player in the organized effort by conservative Catholics to demonize liberal Catholics, and remake the church in their own ideological image; turn it away from concerns about economic and social justice missions and towards embracing narrow social issues.

Hudson fell on hard times, unfortunately, when it came out in 2004 that he had left Fordham University a decade before as a result of a sexual liaison with an 18-year old coed (here). He has now bounced back to a position of influence in D.C. at the Morley Institute, sponsor of the Inside Catholic blog, which describes itself as “a voice for authentic Catholicism in the public square” (here).

The preceding is a short overview of the intricate and incestuous nexus of right-wing Catholic and political ties within which the analysis of Mr. Olson’s Insight Scoop blog is situated. As anyone reading the preceding account of the thick connections between Mr. Olson’s right-wing Catholic cronies and right-wing Republican leaders immediately recognizes, there is absolutely no way that one can separate such right-wing Catholics from Republican causes.

It is with bad faith, indeed, then, that they try to play the conspiracy-theory card when others point out what is right in front of our eyes: the clear and plain intertwining and interlocking of religious and political objectives and affiliation in their "theological" analysis. Their religious analysis is also political analysis. They are moved as much (or more) by their political commitments and ideas, as by their religious ideas.

Their attack on Catholics who do not toe their right-wing Republican line is a political attack. It is designed to serve the interests of the Republican party. It reflects the judgment of a nasty nexus of right-wing political operatives and right-wing Catholics that the Republican party is the sole option for faithful Catholics today.

In promoting such analysis, I am engaging, Mr. Olson maintains, in conspiracy mongering. Olson implies that there is not, as I claimed in my Friday posting on Bishop Martino and the Misericordia story, a "nasty nexus of right-wing Catholics and their well-funded, powerfully placed political allies" involved in promoting stories like the Martino story, in an attempt to gain political traction for the Republican party (here).

When one looks at the abundant—the clear and patent—evidence for such a nasty nexus in the brief sketch with which I began this posting, one wonders why Olson seeks to deny what is evident to anyone who does even the scantest research on the organization for which he himself writes. The ties are obvious, and they are exceptionally thick. From Nixon, Reagan, and Bush, to Bork, Scalia, and Thomas, through right-wing Catholic activists including Monaghan, Hudson, and Fessio, to Republican congressional members funded by this nexus: the ties I’ve described in my analysis of Martino are everywhere.

And there’s more. Martino is not merely a bishop. He is a political activist, a member of a nasty nexus of several U.S. Catholic bishops and Republican leaders, who have done and continue to do everything but stand on their heads to convince American Catholics that we will lose our souls if we do not vote Republican.

Consider, for instance, Martino’s ties to the Cardinal Newman Society. Martino’s biography on the Diocese of Scranton website notes these ties: it states that he is a member of the Ecclesiastical Advisory Committee of that society (here). Other members of that committee include such outspoken advocates of right-wing Catholicism and politics as Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Nebraska, and Vatican official Raymond Burke. Its spiritual advisor Benedict Groeschel is a close associate of EWTN, and its board chaplain Paul Scalia is a son of Justice Antonin Scalia (here).

And what exactly is the Cardinal Newman Society, whose name suggests that it is a Catholic confraternity or theological organization? Dig into the organization’s history, affiliations, and activities, and the fun begins—along with a growing recognition that this is not a theological confraternity at all, but a front for the Republican party wearing Catholic disguise.

In 2005, Michael Kranish did a valuable analysis of the Cardinal Newman Society for Boston Globe readers (here). Kranish notes that the group, whose headquarters are in an unmarked building in a mall in northern Virginia outside D.C., routinely “pores over statements by professors at the nation's Catholic colleges in an effort to find ''heretics and dissidents . . . ."

Give us syllabi. Quote course numbers. Prove to us you are no longer beating your wife. Right now (here).

And why this lavish devotion to the attempt to prove that American Catholic colleges are heretic-infested? As Kramish notes, the allegations that the Cardinal Newman Society makes about the purported decline in Catholicity of Catholic colleges “help the group raise hundreds of thousands of dollars, mostly from small contributors.” Money that goes towards political causes—Republican political causes; and allegations that keep Catholic money flowing in that direction . . . .

Kranish wrote his exposé at a time in which the Cardinal Newman Society had decided to target Boston College. Unfortunately, the attempt of the Society to depict that Jesuit university as defectively Catholic backfired, as leading figures in American Catholic academic life denounced the tactics and not-too-hidden political agenda of the Cardinal Newman Society.

In the view of Rev. John Beal, a canon law professor at Catholic University of America, the Society’s behavior is “red-baiting in ecclesiastical garb." Charles L. Currie, president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities in 2005, told Kramish that the ''attacks [of the Cardinal Newman Society] can no longer go unchallenged." He noted that the Society’s activities at Boston College ''follow a long trail of distorted, inaccurate, and often untrue attacks on scholars addressing complex issues."

According to Michael James, vice president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities in 2005, the Cardinal Newman Society is ''destructive and antithetical to a spirit of unity in our commitment to serve society and the church." In the view of Rev. John Paris, a member of Boston College’s faculty attacked by the Society, he was targeted to help the Cardinal Newman Society raise money. Paris questioned the political agenda of the Cardinal Newman Society.

Karnish notes the widespread conclusion of many of those observing this quasi-Catholic political activist organization that its high-profile attacks on Catholic colleges are primarily about raising funds for Republican causes. As he also notes, a number of its board members have strong ties to politically conservative groups.

These include L. Brent Bozell III, director of the Media Research Center, which Karnish characterizes as “a self-described watchdog for liberal bias.” Karnish notes that Bozell's website says he is executive director of the Conservative Victory Fund, a political action committee that has raised money for congressional candidates.

As Media Transparency’s webpage tracking Brent Bozell notes, Bozell is “a zealot of impeccable right-wing pedigree,” who is a nephew of William F. Buckley and whose father L. Brent Bozell, Jr., assisted Barry Goldwater with writing The Conscience of a Conservative (here). The webpage also notes that Bozell was a close associate of Terry Dolan, the closeted gay founder of the National Conservative Political Action Committee, on which Bozell has served as finance chairman and president.

In the view of Media Transparency, Bozell’s Media Research Center is all about right-wing political activism—“a platform from which to bash the arts and popular culture.” Keith Olbermann named Bozell “Worst Person in the World” in November 2006 when Bozell claimed that "100 generals ... would disagree" with NBC's characterization of Iraq as "a civil war" (here).

This is the kind of company that Bishop Joseph Martino of Scranton keeps. These are the sort of right-wing Republican fingerprints that are all over Martino’s ostensibly religious, ostensibly Catholic, crusade to shut down the Diversity Institute at Misericordia University. These are the right-wing players and right-wing motives lying behind Martino’s attempt—and the attempt of his allies—to work the charge that Misericordia is not adequately Catholic into a media frenzy.

This is the nexus that acolytes such as Carl Olson do not want to have exposed, because it demonstrates the essentially political, rather than religious, motives of Martino and his allies as they bash Misericordia University and threaten the denial of communion to Democratic politicians.

Bozell has been posturing to get media attention for stories like Martino's ever since it became clear that Mr. Obama would win the presidency. In October last year, he snorted,

As CBS and other networks touted Biden’s "working-class Catholic roots" growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, they refused even to note that the Bishop of Scranton had announced it wrong to give Holy Communion to pro-abortion politicians like Biden (here).

As Eric Boehlert notes at Media Matters, even before Democrats had officially won the Senate, Bozell was whining last November, "In 25 years of looking at the national media, I have never in my life seen a more one-sided, distorted, vicious presentation of news -- and non-news -- by the national media" (here).

What is going on now with Martino and those promoting his story is part and parcel of an ongoing strategy of right-wing political activists and right-wing Catholics to use the media in a nationwide campaign to portray Catholics critical of the capitulation of some bishops to the Republican party as unfaithful Catholics, Catholics defective in their faith. As Steve Benen reported in the Washington Monthly in July 2004, in June of that year, Bozell, “a conservative activist, launched a $2.8 million advertising and talk-radio campaign to discredit the ‘liberal news media’” (here).

And they’re still at it. The cooked-up story of the defective Catholicity of Misericordia University and its Diversity Institute is part of this national campaign, which is all about undermining those who critique neonconservative political and religious ideology. It is all about trying to gain legs for an old story of which the media are growing somewhat tired, to the outrage of Martino, Bozell, and all their right-wing Catholic cronies around the nation: the manufactured fable of the decline in “authentic” Catholicism as increasing numbers of American Catholics turn away from the unholy alliance with one political party.

It is no accident that the story is now being spun out of Scranton by these powerful, wealthy right-wing political elites determined to keep the American Catholic church captive to their economic interests and viewpoints. Scranton is the home diocese of Obama’s vice-president Joe Biden. These attempts to shake the episcopal fist, to threaten withholding of communion from Biden and other Democratic politicians: they are attempts to threaten, embarrass, and undermine the new administration.

Republican attempts. Shameful, dirty attempts. By Catholic pastoral leaders in the pocket of shameful, dirty economic interest groups and their political mouthpieces. Who should have pastoral goals like healing, unifying, engaging, gathering in, speaking the truth, and critiquing the overweening powerful in mind, as they follow their callings—not goals like dividing, attacking, threatening, maiming, and distorting the truth.

And fundamentally stupid attempts, since the playbook does not shift at all even as the culture addressed by these bozart leaders shifts dramatically: while increasing numbers of American Catholics shrug their shoulders at the episcopal fist-shaking and saber rattling, their right-wing advocates continue to manufacture more shaking and rattling, as if this is effective and will influence us. As if we don't have eyes to see and minds to think, and consciences with which to weigh such behavior.

These are people—these are bozarts—who have not given a great deal of thought to the Catholic tradition they claim to be saving for the rest of us. They are not, sadly, people who read a great deal—really read, beyond soundbytes, or who think about the rich variety and nuance of the tradition they claim to be saving with their wild laments of waning Catholicity. They are not people who think carefully or who anguish over what they learn as they struggle with new ideas. They are not people who value dialogue and expanding of mental horizons.

They are people who want to dumb down, to make others as dumb as they have made themselves while they swallow their next dose of neocon kool aid. They are people who simply cannot see the glaring inconsistency between the economic worldview they keep defending, and the papal teachings they have so carefully sifted to remove from them their critique of rapacious American-style neocon capitalism. And sadly, they have anointed themselves the saviors of the intellectual life of American Catholicism!

And in doing so, and going about their business as they do, they are hurting the American Catholic church. As Rev. James Keenan told Michael Kranish in 2005, while Kranish researched the Cardinal Newman Society’s attacks on Boston College,

There is something terribly indicative here of the degree of contentiousness in the United States Roman Catholic Church today. Hopefully, someday our bishops will call us to end this awful conduct, which hurts not only those of us targeted, but more importantly, the unity of the church itself.

If Carl Olson were interested in hearing my opinion, I’d suggest that if he and his cronies love the church as much as they claim to do, they stop denying the patent (and thick) connections between their “religious” causes and their overarching political concerns. And as they do so, that they perhaps begin to subject the latter to critique, in light of central preoccupations of the former . . . .

If Mr. Olson needs any pointers about what those central preoccupations might be, I’m happy to share.