Why Does Kim Davis Keep at It? The Resilience of the Anti-Gay Stance in American Culture on Eve of Pope's Visit

So why does Kim Davis keep at it? Why do she and her followers persist, though they have, to all intents and purposes, lost a culture-war battle that ended when the Supremes handed down the Obergefell decision? As Michelangelo Signorile has just pointed out, though media pundits love to tell us that the religious right is waning and the culture wars are over and done with — and that there's some mythic GOP "center" that's going to save the Republican party from anti-gay extremism — at this week's GOP debate, the mythic "moderate" candidate, Jeb Bush, told us that he stands with the extremist Mike Huckabee regarding Kim Davis and her "religious freedom" to deny rights to LGBT citizens.

Katie McDonough on the Pope and Rick Santorum: Why Is Rick Fighting with Frank When They Agree about Contraception?

At Salon, Katie McDonough notes that even though Pope Francis appears to be on his side about contraception, Rick Santorum can't stop grousing about the pope. She writes,

Gerald Slevin: Open Appeal To Philadelphia Inquirer Reporters II: The Philadelphia Archdiocese Priests Child Abuse Trial, the Pope, Secrecy, Santorum and the Upcoming Pennsylvania Primary

Jerry Slevin has now shared a supplement to his open letter to the Philadelphia Inquirer that I posted on his behalf two days ago.  As the trial of Philadelphia Catholic archdiocesan officials continues, Jerry continues to monitor the litigation and news about it, and this is his latest response to what's now unfolding in Philadelphia:

New York Times on NOM's "Poisonous Political Approach" (and Other Commentary)

Commentary continues about the hidden face that the National Organization for Marriage has just shown the world through the documents released in Maine recently.  As the New York Times says in an editorial statement today, NOM persists in asking permission to flout laws requiring full disclosure of its donors because it claims to be a social service organization.  But the documents released last week show beyond a shadow of a doubt that the organization is political to its core.

Santorum's Catholic Conundrum: Recent Commentary

I have an inkling that most readers of Bilgrimage read widely at various news sites, so I am probably carrying coals to Newcastle when I offer you the following summary of recent links discussing Rick Santorum's Catholicity--and how little solid support he has among Catholic voters as a whole.  Still, in case some of you may have missed some of these articles, here's a listing of recent links to pieces that, in my view, make valuable contributions to the discussion:

Santorum and the South: Think Education

Why did Santorum clean up in the South yesterday when so many media pundits--who never set foot in the South until an election cycle comes around--assured us that Romney had taken the lead over Santorum in Alabama and Mississippi?  As Randall J. Stephens and Karl Gibberson, authors of The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age, explain, it's all about that old-time religion.

Brother Dan Horan on Santorum's Distortion of Religious Liberty

Brother Daniel Horan at Dating God on how Rick Santorum's right-wing Catholicovangelical misreading of the foundational documents of the U.S. about religious freedom (and of John F. Kennedy and Catholic magisterial teaching) seriously distorts the concept of religious liberty: 

Joan Walsh on Rick Santorum as Disgrace to American Catholics

Joan Walsh at Salon on the embarrassment that Rick Santorum (and I'd add, the American bishops and their "liberal" co-belligerents in their phony "religious freedom" war) have become for American Catholics who remember how hard the previous generation worked to emerge from defensive, sectarian tribal, ghettoized Catholicism following the election of John F. Kennedy and Vatican II:

From the Blogs: Limits of Religious Liberty and Santorum's Surge Against Backdrop of Global Catholicism

From the blogsphere, very significant commentary in the past several days on issues about which I've previously blogged:

At Hepzibah, Alan McCornick hits the ball out of the park all over again with a powerful deconstruction of the claims of San Francisco archbishop George Niederauer that the Catholic hierarchy is throwing a new Boston tea party to defend your liberty when it seeks to snatch rights (access to contraceptives in health insurance, the right of civil marriage) away from you.

There's Throwing Up, and Then There's Throwing Up: Santorum on Religious Freedom and Catholicism

There's a great deal of valuable commentary online today after Catholic presidential contender Rick Santorum told George Stephanopoulos yesterday that John F. Kennedy's famous speech about separation of church and state made him want to throw up.  He also informed reporter David Gregory yesterday that separation of church and state was not in the founders' vision.  Alana Horowitz has a run-down of yesterday's events involving Santorum at Huffington Post (with video clips).

Mr. Santorum, the U.S. Catholic Bishops, and Pro-Life Politics: Keeping Conversation Honest

Meanwhile, there's Mr. Santorum, who is firmly with the U.S. Catholic bishops and their centrist allies in their "pro-life" stance against contraception and in their conscience-driven attack on the Obama administration.  Yesterday, I got an email from Catholics United with a statement by James Salt, the group's director, about the HHS controversy.  I haven't yet seen this statement show up on the Catholics United website or the site of their Daily Thread blog (or their Facebook page).  Perhaps it's at one of those sites and I'm just not seeing it.

Santorum the Über-Catholic: Survivors of Clerical Sexual Abuse not Buying It

I wrote last week that, while right-wing Catholics try to spin Rick Santorum as "the" Catholic candidate for 2012, the broad base of Catholics in the U.S. exhibits a much wider spectrum of viewpoints about Santorum and his Catholicity.  Here's one American Catholic who's not buying the Saint Rick argument:

Joan Walsh on GOP's Moralizing Analysis: Blaming the 99%, Shielding the 1%

At Salon, John Walsh wonders when all those white working-class voters Mr. Santorum is supposed to lock into the Republican voting columns will wake up and realize that what Republican leaders used to say about people of color (to gin up racial animosity among working-class whites), they now say about white working-class people.  The Republican dog whistles used to be about lazy, immoral "welfare queens" and "young bucks" living off the fat of the land while leading immoral, unproductive lives.

Thomas Ferguson on the Devil and Mr. Santorum: The Dilemma of the GOP

I wrote yesterday,

Mr. Santorum the Catholic: Really?

And speaking of circuses (I did so just now, didn't I?): with the spectacle that has just taken place in the cornfields of America's heartland, Mr. Santorum is back on the radar screen of Americans as a viable candidate for the highest office in the land.  And because he's a Catholic (and a self-avowed super-Catholic), his connection to his Catholic faith is getting a bit of media attention lately.

Dan Savage on Rick Santorum Paradox: Small Government, Big Role in Your Vagina

Dan Savage, on the paradox of Rick Santorum's claim that he's all for tiny government, except when it comes to controlling the reproductive choices of others:

Santorum's for a smaller federal government... because the smaller the federal government, the more of it Santorum can stuff in your vagina . . . .

Mark Silk on the Revival of the Crusades as 2012 Election Cycle Begins

As a follow-up to what I posted yesterday about Rick Santorum and his recent remarks about the crusades, I'd like to point to a very valuable posting on the same topic at Mark Silk's Spiritual Politics blog.  Mark kindly provided the link in a comment on my Santorum posting yesterday.

Rick Santorum on Crusades: The Left Hates Christendom

 

Yesterday, as I wrote about the presidential aspirations of Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee, and how both gentlemen are now doing everything in their power to position themselves as the candidate of choice of the religious right, I said,

Collusion of the Catholic and Political Right: The Martino Story Continues

Again, I’m using this blog space today to respond to a comment from a reader—to Colleen’s extremely valuable observations re: what I posted yesterday in response to Brian (here). Colleen recounts a shift she has seen happening in the Catholic college she and her daughter attended.

She took courses in Vatican II that were intellectually demanding and required real thought and engagement. Her daughter took courses—same university, same professor—in moral theology in the period in which the restorationist agenda began to roll through American Catholic theology departments. She was able to pass the course while hardly attending class. The syllabus spelled out in detail what the professor would teach. When Colleen asked about the shift in his pedagogical style—from challenging students to think, respond, and critique, to spoon-feeding them with “truth”—he told her he was being monitored in class and lived in fear of being reported to the authorities for saying anything that transgressed the restorationist canon of truths.

This is a significant testimony. Part of what I hoped to do with yesterday’s posting is to capture a “moment” in American Catholic theology, in which a decisive shift took place. That moment is not so distant in time. It took place decisively in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It had everything to do with pressure from the current pope, Benedict, when he headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as Cardinal Ratzinger.

As head of the CDF, the current pope deliberately created within the academic life of Catholic universities a chill that began to affect how and what theologians thought, and how and what they wrote. This shift moved Catholic intellectual life away from a post-Vatican II engagement with contemporary society in which Catholic thinkers listen to and learn from secular disciplines as they offer Catholic insights, values, and teachings in a process of dialogic give and take. Now the model for Catholic intellectual life—and for theologians in particular—became one of receiving “truths” from on high and handing these down to anyone who cared to listen.

And that model was attended by severe punishments for those who sought to be faithful to the Vatican II model of dialogic engagement and respect for the wisdom of secular traditions, or even of non-Catholic Christian traditions and the contributions of other world religions.

Why focus on this shift? Because it needs to be remembered. History is written by the victors, and to a great extent, the restorationist agenda (and its right-wing political counterpart) has “won.” It has succeeded in determining the dominant discourse to such an extent that the center has moved decisively right. Now forward movement is permitted now without engaging the stop-gap arguments of those intent on standing astride history and shouting no. And by forcing us to bow to their "centrist" arguments as we try to move forward, they are effectively keeping us from the forward movement they intend to resist at all costs.

We have to struggle to remember the history from which we have just come, or we will never be able to move beyond the stalemates the religious and political right wish to produce in our imaginations and our discourse. We also have to know this history, to tell it in all its gory detail, because if we ever do budge from the stalemate position in which the right has deliberately placed us, we will not know how to budge, where to go, without understanding where we come from.

As the preceding notes suggest, the move against Vatican II—the move to the right, the deliberate dumbing down of Catholic intellectual life and the punishment of thinkers—was not merely a religious phenomenon. It was allied to and tied to a thrust within our political life and culture to stop critical reflection and force us into a right-leaning ideological conformity. It is part of a broader (and very deliberate) dumbing-down process in our culture at large, which is intended to cause us to reduce complex discussions to simplistic soundbytes, and to view iconic figures (e.g., Reagan and John Paul II) as heroic assurances of the virtue of the right-wing soundbytes we're being fed as gospel truth.

The watchdog groups monitoring what Catholic theologians teach and write today are hardly confined to the Catholic right. The political right has a keen interest in suppressing critical thought in Catholic life and a continuation of the project of Vatican II because the dialogical engagement with the world and with secular intellectual traditions has the possibility of retrieving the many critical strands in Catholic tradition that stand against neoconservative political and economic positions. The right does not want this to happen, and will not tolerate it happening.

I’m interested to hear Colleen’s testimony on the heels of the latest developments with Bishop Joseph Martino in Scranton. The phenomenon she describes at her alma mater—the monitoring of syllabi, the reporting to bishops and other authorities about any lapse in the “truths” taught in theology classes—is still going on. And I suspect that those involved in current movements to attack open theological discussion in Catholic universities are that same nasty nexus of right-wing Catholics and their well-funded, powerfully placed political allies who have been doing this monitoring for years now, a nexus that has attracted the kind of converts Brian notes in his comment on this blog’s posting several days ago—which I highlighted in yesterday’s posting.

Clerical Whispers is reporting today that Martino is seeking to force Misericordia to shut down its highly regarded and very successful Diversity Institute (here). Martino and the Scranton diocese are asking that the school report in very specific terms about what is taught in its theology courses, particularly in the area of morality. Martino and the diocese are demanding course titles, catalogue numbers, precise statements about content (i.e., syllabi), etc.

Now. Hand it over now. Convince me now that you are truly Catholic. When did you stop beating your wife? The menacing approach of those mounting this purge has already found Misericordia guilty as charged. The heads of the Sisters of Mercy who own the school are already on the metaphoric chopping block. Those engaged in this hunt for heretics and witches will have blood.

And they clearly include not merely the Catholic right, but highly placed members of the political right who are interested in seeing this contest take place as a proof of their continued ability to stir Catholic ire around hot-button issues like homosexuality—to keep Catholics voting “right.” Rick Santorum (remember him? the defeated Republican senator of Pennsylvania who loved to try linking homosexuality and bestiality?) weighed in yesterday on the editorial pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer (here).

His angle? Martino is the teacher who enforces. The enforcer who teaches. Mind-boggling analysis, if you stop to think about it, because it speaks volumes about the intent of the right to force people to accept the “truth,” and to use force against them if they do not accept the “truth” of the right. The word “enforce” says it all.

Teaching that compels, that demonstrates its persuasiveness by its arguments and its sound reasoning, does not have to use force. Only teaching whose arguments do not stand up to careful inspection needs to use force to make us swallow its “truths.” Begin teaching by force, and you are really admitting that you have lost the battle: your truths aren’t compelling. They aren’t true.

Google Martino’s name along with Misericordia, and you’ll see that the right-wing blogs are all over the Martino story. This has the smell of a witch-hunt mounted by some of those powerful right-wing political groups, with right-wing Catholic allies, mentioned by Brian in his posting several days ago. Their dirty fingers are all over this story, especially with the grossly insulting demand that Misericordia hand over—right now!—details about what it teaches in its theology courses.

As if what is taught in a curriculum could ever be reduced to what appears in a course listing or syllabus. As if what happens in the classroom itself, through dialogue and the collaborative search for truth, is not at the very heart of the educational process. As if Catholic values aren’t embedded throughout the curriculum of a Catholic university in ways that can never be boiled down to words in a syllabus. As if students don't learn values and moral insights primarily by who the teacher is rather than what she says—by the life he lives in their plain view rather than by the words he utters in class.

JudiPhilly notes something extremely important to this whole saga on her Truth, Justice & Peace blog today (here). As a Scranton native with strong ties to the Catholic community there (though she’s had enough of Catholicism), she has an inside track to news about Misericordia. She says that Martino did not once contact Misericordia or the Diversity Institute to discuss his concerns with them before releasing his statement calling for a witch hunt.

Instead, he went to the media. He issued a press release demanding that the Institute respond to him. This smells. To high heaven.

And I suspect he will get away with it. The speed with which this story is burning through the blogs of the right tells me this is orchestrated, as does Martino’s choice to lambast Misericordia in a press release without seeking to talk to the university in advance.

As I say, the right has won in both culture and church, insofar as it has succeeded in normalizing its far-right presuppositions as centrist presuppositions we all must engage now when we put together religious, cultural, political, or economic arguments. What is going on with Martino and the right, vis-à-vis the Diversity Institute at Misericordia, is muscle-flexing to show us the continued power of the political and religious right.

The target is well-chosen. Mark my words, they will find a way to make Misercordia suffer for its choice to invite an openly gay speaker to its Diversity Institute. This is a well-chosen tempest in a teapot, because the right knows it can almost always win, when the topic is engaging the reality of gay lives within the academic framework of Catholic universities. This punishment of Misericordia is being developed by the right as a symbolic demonstration that it continues to have power in Obama’s America, particularly when it comes to gay human beings and the Catholic church.

The only thing that will effectively halt such tragic diversionary wastes of time and energy by faith communities being used as tools of the political and economic right will be the choice of members of those who resist the right-wing cultural captivity of their churches to stand up, stand together, and insist that it is our church, too. And that the captivity to the political and economic right is betraying all that we stand for and believe in, and have stood for and believed in for centuries, with the best of our tradition.

Selling Out Catholic Values: Archbishop Charles Chaput and the Republican Captivity of the Church

I recently challenged myself (and others) to pursue three information trails that have opened in this election. The public has a right to know 1) to what extent McCain campaign members pushed the Ashley Todd hoax before her story had been verified; 2) the names of secret donors to Florida Family Action, which is promoting a homophobic ballot initiative in that state; and 3) funding sources for the websites set up in recent weeks by the Colorado Catholic Conference to bring in the vote for Republican candidates in the coming election.

I’ve been pursuing the third question since Sunday. What I find is revelatory—and disgusting. It demonstrates that the institutional Catholic church in Colorado is so incestuously tied to the Republican party that Archbishop Chaput’s claim that he is not endorsing John McCain lacks all credibility. The story I am discovering regarding the connection of the Catholic church in Colorado to the Republican party is a parable of a church that has bargained away its soul.

Through its pastoral leaders—above all, Archbishop Charles Chaput—the Catholic church in Colorado has sold its soul. The pastoral leaders of the Colorado Catholic church have now placed themselves in the unenviable position of having mortgaged the church's future to one political party. As that party rises or falls, so does the Catholic church in Colorado.

This is a place churches should never choose to go. No political party ever deserves the endorsement of a church. The goals of all political parties fall short of the biblical vision of the reign of God. The church’s position vis-à-vis the public square should be one of constant critique of all political platforms, insofar as they do not move towards that normative vision of God's reign. The attempt to establish theocracy through one political party or a single political movement inevitably sells the church out, and places its soul in the hands of politicians and their monied backers—nonied backers who use the church as a shield for their sordid ends, and whom the church permits to buy and sell God.

As readers know, my interest in the Colorado story began with announcements on the Clerical Whisper blog last week of two new websites closely connected to the Colorado Catholic Conference—Formed Catholics in the Public Square and Voto Catolico (http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/10/talking-pro-life-or-acting-pro-life.html and http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/10/major-religious-and-cultural-shift.html).

An announcement for the Formed Catholics website appears on the Irish Catholic blog (widely read by Catholics around the world) on October 22 (http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-website-offers-intellectual-and.html). This announcement (which was obviously provided to Clerical Whispers by the website's promoters) presents the Formed Catholics website as a treasure trove of “intellectual and spiritual resources for voters.” It quotes Jill Reiff, a researcher for the Solidarity Institute sponsoring the website, as follows: “Unfortunately, not everyone has the time or access to the information necessary for voting responsibly. This website presents the most prominent information in an easy to use manner.”

Easy to use—you betcha! Information, resources: the website and its sponsors claim they are not endorsing any single party, but merely providing Catholics with the facts they need to become informed voters: “The Institute notes on their site that the facts that they present are objective and from reliable sources.”

These claims are reiterated two days later in the Clerical Whispers’ blog’s announcement of the Latino website Voto Catolico, a clone of Formed Catholics
(http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2008/10/website-promotes-hispanic-catholic-vote.html). Citing material provided by Voto Catolico’s sponsors (which are not ever identified on the blog itself, though the blog clearly links to the Colorado Catholic Conference), Clerical Whispers states, “The site does not endorse a particular candidate but rather reminds believers of the higher values that should be considered when casting their vote, such as the defense of life from the moment of conception and marriage as a union between one man and one woman.”

Facts, resources, information, objectivity, no endorsement of a particular candidate or party: here’s what I’ve found as I have pursued information trails about the involvement of the Colorado Catholic Conference in politics. It puts the lie to the claim that these websites are objective presentations of the “facts” to inform Catholic voters. They are, in fact, high-powered (and seemingly well-funded) commercials for the Republican party, designed to give voters the impression that this party has a privileged relationship with and the explicit endorsement of the Catholic church.

In my attempt to uncover answers to my questions about these websites, I’ve discovered I’m not the only blogger pursuing these information trails. In two postings last week to the Denver Westword blog, Michael Roberts reports that Bob Beauprez, previously a Republican representative from Colorado, has been bombarding Colorado voters with robo-calls on behalf of the current Republican candidate for Congress Bob Schaffer and against his Democratic opponent Mark Udall (http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2008/10/bob_beauprez_reemerges_as_a_pr.php and http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2008/10/the_bob_beauprez_robocalls_and.php).

Roberts reports that the robo-calls state that Schaffer stands with Catholic teaching on the “non-negotiable” issues of abortion, gay marriage, human cloning, etc., whereas Udall does not. And, in case those receiving the call are in doubt about this claim, Beauprez then helpfully directs listeners to that brand-new Catholic “resources” website, Formed Catholics in the Public Square—that same “Catholic” website that suddenly appeared last week just as the Beauprez robo-call campaign got underway.

A transcript of part of the Beauprez robo-call provided by Roberts indicates that Beauprez states the following, "I recently learned through the Solidarity Institute at ecatholichub.net that Bob Schaffer is in agreement with Catholic doctrine on all five of these issues, while Mark Udall is opposed to every single one . . . ."

Roberts asks, “What's the Solidarity Institute? Fascinating, for one thing.” He notes that, when one visits the Formed Catholics page sponsored by Solidarity Institute, the only issues about which it seeks to inform Catholic voters are “the five non-negotiables,” about which Solidarity expects all Catholics to agree: gay marriage, embryonic stem-cell research, human cloning, abortion, and euthanasia.

As Roberts notes, Formed Catholics rates McCain and Obama on these “non-negotiable” issues, with the following result: “Candidates are awarded red, yellow or green lights depending on their positions, and by this measure, McCain pummels Obama, as Republicans routinely trump Democrats throughout the site.”

Objective, factual information and resources? Hardly. This website and its Latino clone are shameless advertisements for the Republican party. They are Republican campaign promotional materials masquerading as Catholic resources. As I do, Roberts wants to know where the money for these ads is coming from. As he notes,

The “About Us” Page on ecatholichub.net doesn't specifically reference the Archdiocese of Denver or other Catholic church bodies in Colorado. Yet another section of the main site features “Moral Principles for Catholic Voters,” a guide endorsed by Archbishop of Denver Charles Chaput, Bishop of Pueblo Arthur Tafoya and Bishop of Colorado Springs Michael Sheridan; the text is included below.

The Solidarity Institute webpage at www.ecatholichub.net/si does link directly to the Colorado Catholic Conference, with a statement that Colorado Catholic Conference is “a state-level, public policy agency operated jointly by the Archdiocese of Denver, the Diocese of Pueblo and the Diocese of Colorado Springs” (www.cocatholicconference.org). Solidarity’s two links to the Colorado Catholic Conference would surely give most visitors to the website the distinct impression that Solidarity—and thus its promotion of Republican candidates—is directly sponsored by the Catholic church in Colorado.

The Archdiocese of Denver is denying any connection to Beauprez’s robo-call campaign, however. According to Jeremy Pelzer, Archbishop Chaput’s spokeswoman Jeanette DeMelo has informed the Denver Post that she had no knowledge of the robo-calls until her office began getting calls about them (www.politickerco.com/jeremypelzer/2631/beauprez-talks-values-issues-robocalls-behalf-schaffer-musgrave).

Pelzer notes that the funding source for Beauprez’s robo-calls is a “new group led by Beauprez called Informed Catholic Citizens.” Visit the website for that group at http://informedcatholics.org, and one finds that . . . it links directly to the website of Solidarity Institute. And thus to Colorado Catholic Conference, through Solidarity Institute. If one clicks on the “Know Your Vote” section of Informed Catholic Citizens’ website, one is brought immediately to the candidate-ranking page of Solidarity Institute’s Formed Catholics in the Public Square website, that is, to the pro-Republican ranking page of SI's website.

Yet nowhere on the Informed Catholic Citizens’ website is there any indication at all of its sponsorship or funding sources, or its ties to Colorado Catholic Republican interest groups. Its “About Us” link simply states that it’s a grassroots organization who [sic] wants to see Catholics and our Church treated fairly . . . .” The website is, in fact, actively misleading in several respects.

For instance, though Jeremy Pelzer reports that Bob Beauprez informed him that Informed Catholic Citizens is the funding source for his robo-calls campaign, the ICC website carries a disclaimer of sorts about this. Under the heading “Potential for Bias,” it has an unsigned statement suggesting that if Beauprez’s intent is simply to inform voters, he deserves support. But, “If this is just one more misuse of the Church structure and resources, I am offended.”

The statement notes that the ICC website itself appears to endorse only Republican candidates, and then suggests that the bishops’ aim in calling voters to be informed is to provide resources, not to endorse candidates. This is an exceedingly strange—an exceptionally mendacious—claim, when the website is directly linked to the Solidarity Institute website, itself linked to the Colorado Catholic Conference website, which explicitly ranks all Republican candidates as more in line with Catholic values than the Democratic candidates.

And then there’s the misleading link immediately below the “Potential for Bias” link on the ICC website, “Opposition to California Proposition 8: Hate in the Name of Love.” This leads to an op-ed piece by Dennis Prager headed by a picture of a smiling same-sex female couple. On the face of it, this piece initially appears to be a call to Catholics to choose love over hate in the assessment of the anti-gay marriage proposition 8 in California.

In fact, it is precisely the opposite. It is an attack on those who see the anti-gay marriage movement as anti-love, and thus all about hate. Prager’s argument stands reality on its head, thus suggesting that the use of the picture of the smiling couple is a kind of “hook” to get voters confused by the dynamics of love, hate, and religious teaching in the gay-marriage debate to explore resources on this website, where they will be set straight.

Noxious materials. Lies perched on lies. And all directly related, in some way, to the Colorado Catholic Conference—that is, to the institutional Catholic church in Colorado, and to its pastoral leaders, chief among them Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver.

The mess only stinks higher as one delves more carefully into the deep-pocket ties of Chaput to well-heeled Republican Catholic donors in and outside Colorado.

Though Solidarity Institute does not appear to have the official backing of the Colorado Catholic Conference, its website links to the latter entity, as I have stated. In fact, one of two links to the Colorado Catholic Conference on the website of Solidarity Institute advertises the Colorado Catholic Conference as “Other SI Work.”

As I’ve noted, the Colorado Catholic Conference is explicitly sponsored by the three Catholic dioceses of Colorado. As I indicated previously, its mission statement describes the organization as a public policy agency operated by the Denver archdiocese and the dioceses of Pueblo and Colorado Springs. Its “About Us” Statement declares that the Colorado Catholic Conference “interacts with the state legislature, U S Congress and elected officials at all levels in numerous ways.”

Given the mission and self-description of Colorado Catholic Conference, it’s interesting, indeed, that the Solidarity Institute website would characterize CCC—that is, an official arm of the Catholic church in Colorado—as part of the “other work” of Solidarity Institute. Solidarity Institute, whose “Catholic” voters’ guide shows McCain pummeling Obama on “non-negotiable” issues and Republicans routinely trumping Democrats throughout the site, as Jeremy Pelzer notes . . . .

It’s interesting that one cannot easily find a history of Solidarity Institute—a history of its founders, sponsors, members, past and present boards of trustees—online. The Solidarity Institute website itself has a vague “About Us” statement simply identifying the organization as a “Catholic effort” to promote pro-life political positions. The contact page has a phone number and email contact form, but no mailing address.

Financial donations are, of course, welcome, and the website actively solicits them—for instance, for the upkeep of the Denver Catholic cathedral. But nowhere on the website is a statement about current or past members of Solidarity Institute, its sponsoring or affiliated organizations, its board of trustees, its funding sources, its history, etc.

Solidarity Institute was in existence as early as 2002, per the Denver Catholic Register, the newspaper of the archdiocese of Denver. A 20 March 2002 article in the Register notes that its then executive director was Peter Droege, who had formerly edited the Catholic Register (www.archden.org/dcr/archive/20020320/2002032011ln.htm).

At the same time that he was heading Solidarity Institute, Droege was media representative for Medallion Enterprises, a Denver-based investment corporation that the Boulder Weekly described in 2002 as “a philanthropic pro-voucher organization founded by multi-millionaire cable magnate John Saeman” (http://archive.boulderweekly.com/111402/newsspin.html and ww.medallionllc.com). "Pro-voucher" refers to a movement sponsored by the U.S. Catholic bishops to have the government provide tax incentives to parents who send their children to Catholic schools.

Medallion’s chair John V. Saeman is a big-money player in Colorado (and nationwide) Republican politics, as well as an avid supporter of the Denver archdiocese. In 2006, he donated $10,000 to the Colorado Republican Campaign Committee and $25,000 to the Republican National Campaign Committee
(www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/john-saeman.asp?cycle=06).

In the same year, Saeman donated as well to the campaign of Bob Beauprez. He also gave repeated donations to the campaigns of embattled Pennsylvania Catholic Republican senator Rick Santorum and of embattled Virginia Republican senator George Allen, both of whom were defeated. Both men have drawn fire for remarks widely considered homophobic or racist: Santorum has implied that acceptance of homosexuality will lead to acceptance of bestiality (www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-04-23-santorum-excerpt_x.htm), and Allen once referred to an Indian-American photographer in his opponent’s campaign as a “macaca,” a racist term for people of color (www.forward.com/articles/alleged-slur-casts-spotlight-on-senator%E2%80%99s-jewis).

In this election cycle, John Saeman has given $50,000 to the Republican National Campaign Committee, $25,000 to the Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee, as well as repeated donations to the campaigns of Bob Schaffer and Marilyn Musgrave (www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/john-saeman.asp?cycle=08). Once again, in this election period, records show him giving to embattled prominent out-of-state Republican candidates such as Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Saeman and his wife Carol have thick ties to Archbishop Chaput of Denver. In 2005, Chaput finagled from the Vatican a distinguished award for the couple: they were named Knight and Dame Commander of the Order of St. Gregory the Great (www.archden.org/dcr//news.php?e=114&s=4&a=2617). John Saeman has chaired the board of the Denver archdiocese’s Catholic Foundation (www.archden.org/dcr//news.php?e=51&s=4&a=1143).

As his contributions to Republican politicians outside Colorado suggest, Saeman’s influence as a right-wing Catholic Republican operative go well beyond the boundaries of the state. For instance, in 1999 he collaborated with Domino’s Pizza magnate Thomas Monaghan and David "No Gays in My Papers" Weyrich, CEO of Martin Media, to found Catholic Family Radio (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9507E1DB1039F936A2575BC0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all). As commentator David Scott notes, this organization –which has strong ties to the right-wing Catholic EWTN affiliate—was founded to “gain a hearing for conservative Catholic political ideas” (www.davidscottwritings.com/newfrequency.html). Saeman is unapologetic about his attempt to influence political decisions in areas beyond his state boundaries: as the PA GOP Insider blog noted in 2006, Saeman gave to the Santorum campaign because he supports Santorum’s purported “pro-family, pro-life” values (http://pa-gop-insider.blogspot.com/2006/02/philadelphia-inquirer-02132006-casey.html).

Through the numerous organizations he funds or with which he is affiliated, John Saeman continues to pursue one overriding objective. That objective is described by the organization Colorado Conservative Voters, an initiative to which he has lavishly contributed, as the attempt “to educate Colorado citizens about issues, officeholders, and political candidates that further conservative values,” though, clearly, the concern to “educate” citizens goes far beyond the boundaries of a single state (www.campaignmoney.com/political/527/colorado_conservative_voters.asp).

Indeed, it does not require any stretch of the imagination to see that the influence of big-pocket Republican Catholic powerbrokers like John Saeman reaches the Vatican itself, particularly when John Saeman’s board biography on the Cable Center website states that he helped to support the educational and charitable efforts of the last pope, John Paul II (www.cablecenter.org/about/boardDetail.cfm?id=45). Is it any wonder that John Paul II chose Denver as the site of his 1993 World Youth Day Conference, an event twhose political underpinnings the right-wing Republican National Review trumpeted as follows:

The Pope's visit to Denver was a triumph, demonstrating that millions of people-not only Catholics, or even believers-respond with joy to uncompromising reaffirmations of the morality the modern West so sorely lacks. Even Bill Clinton and Al Gore felt obliged to pay their respects to a man who opposes everything they stand for.

Oh. And Mr. Saeman has long been closely associated with the Daniels Fund of Denver (www.danielsfund.org/About/Board%20Bios/John_Saeman.asp). Of which the current vice-president of communications is none other than Peter Droege (www.danielsfund.org/About/staff.asp?s=2).

Peter Droege, former editor of the Denver archdiocesan paper, the Catholic Register.

Peter Droege, who headed the Solidarity Institute at the same time he was media representative for John Saeman’s Medallion Enterprises.

The Solidarity Institute whose website links to that of the Colorado Catholic Conference.

The Colorado Catholic Conference which is sponsored by the three Catholic dioceses of Colorado.

The Solidarity Institute which is named as a resource for voters in the pro-Republican robo-calls Bob Beauprez has recently been making in Colorado.

The Republican robo-calls implying that the Catholic church supports Republican politicians, calls about which Archbishop Chaput’s spokeswoman Jeannette DeMelo disclaims any knowledge on behalf of the archbishop.

The Solidarity Institute whose website sponsors a "fact-based" "informational" resource guide to Catholic voters that consistently ranks McCain and other Republican politicians as embodiments of Catholic values.

The Denver archbishop Charles Chaput who has repeatedly attacked Mr. Obama in this election while professing that he does not endorse a particular candidate (http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/10/catholics-life-issues-and-elections.html).

The same Charles Chaput who had the pope name the Saemans Knight and Dame Commander of the Order of St. Gregory the Great, and who, two years ago, presented the Saemans with his prestigious Imago Dei award (www.archden.org/dcr//news.php?e=353&s=4&a=7418).

After following these information trails, I understand why Catholic theologian Rev. Richard McBrien has said of Charles Chaput that, of a bad crop of bishops appointed by the late pope, Chaput is “one of the worst” (www.ad2000.com.au/articles/2005/decjan2005p7_2121.html).

In the person of Charles Chaput, the Catholic church of Colorado has sold its soul to the Republican party, lock, stock, and barrel—and to the big-money donors that sustain that party in Colorado and elsewhere. Catholic values should not be for sale. In the case of Archbishop Chaput, they clearly have been, to the detriment of the church’s ability to proclaim those values—and the gospel itself.