Help the Knights of Columbus Restore Civility to American Politics
. . . The timing of this movement couldn't be better. According to the website, the Knights of Columbus and the Marists co-sponsored a poll that clearly demonstrates that the majority of Americans - 78% - are frustrated with the tone of the political campaigns now in full swing leading up to the presidential election. 74% believe this negative campaigning is only going to get worse. 64% of Americans say that negative "attack ads” hurt the political process. Major candidates, their parties, and political action committees (PACS) are going to spend a record-setting $6.5 billion on television and cable TV ads in this election year, and that doesn't even include newspapers, magazines, and all those unsightly billboards. A rapidly growing percentage of those ads are negative. Political attack ads draw politics away from the notion of civil service and into the arena of winners and losers in which the former triumph while the latter feel disenfranchised. These attack ads stifle bi-partisan cooperation for the good of all for years to come. They reduce politics to the service of a party or a platform instead of to the service of America and its people. We need to send a strong message before this downward spiral of toxic rhetoric in the name of politics gets any worse. . . .
Honoring Father Norman Weslin as Light Finally Dawns Upon Notre Dame
. . . There is a lot at stake. Don't let the news media's exploitation of scandal sway you from the urgency of what this government is trying to sell you under the guise of health care. Perhaps it's time to stand finally with the faithful voices courageously telling us the truth, such as that of Cardinal Timothy Dolan who told CBS's “Face the Nation" on April 8:"We didn't ask for this fight, but we won't back away from it." Catholic fidelity would go a long way toward removing the real millstone of Catholic scandal, the one depicted in stark contrast around the necks of Father Norman Weslin and President Barak Obama on the campus of the University of Notre Dame in that 2009 photo. Long after that other Catholic scandal is forgotten, this one will endure for generations to come. . . .
The Beatification of Pope John Paul II: When the Wall Fell
. . . In his 1948 book, The Gathering Storm, Winston Churchill wrote of a 1935 proposal to Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin suggesting that the Soviet Union should not suppress Catholicism, but should rather encourage it in order to gain favor with the Pope. Stalin famously responded, "The Pope? How many divisions has he got?" Ironically, that conversation took place on May 13, 1935, forty-six years to the day before the Soviet Union tried to kill Pope John Paul II because he was the most feared man in all of Europe. The Pope survived. Stalin's successors in the Soviet Union learned the answer to his question far too late for their own survival. Karol Wojtyla has earned the place in history summarized by the title given to him by Father Richard John Neuhaus and other admirers. He helped rid the world of Satan's most earthly Evil Empire. Without doubt, he was - and is - Pope John Paul the Great. . . .
Sitting in Your Own Pew: Religious Liberty and Literacy in America
. . . I wrote of it in "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas 17 Times." Still, the apathy of many Catholics about the tenets of their faith has only furthered the atheist agenda, not to mention their relative score. Before we all sign up for remedial CCD classes, it might boost our Catholic spirits to know that American Protestants fared no better than Catholics on the Pew Center study. Their score was also a solid "F." Jews did better overall than Catholics and Protestants, but also flunked, and Mormon scores were just under the atheists’ barely passing "D." Americans as a whole averaged a score of 50%. There are no bragging rights anywhere. . . .
Breaking News: I Got Stoned with the Pope!
. . . Perhaps NBC sensed the line of decency was breached a few weeks ago when it apologized to The Catholic League and the world for a scandalous and libelous smear against Pope Benedict XVI on its affiliate news channel, MSNBC. We owe a debt of gratitude to Bill Donohue and The Catholic League for not letting this one pass. It is also no coincidence that the lurid stories of priestly sex abuse and papal complicity rose to a frenzy in the U.S. in the same weeks that tax-payer funded abortion was being argued in the Obama health care bill. Writer and art historian Elizabeth Lev made this same point in a brilliant essay on PoliticsDaily.com entitled "In Defense of Catholic Clergy (Or Do We Want Another Reign of Terror?)" Ms. Lev cited English statesman, Edmund Burke's 1790 commentary on Catholic witch hunts during the French Revolution: "What would Edmund Burke make of the headlines of the past few weeks …? In 1790, Burke answered ... 'It is not with much credulity I listen to any when they speak evil of those they are going to plunder.' What would he think of the insistent attempt to tie [a] sexual abuser to the Roman pontiff himself through the most tenuous of links … as the present sales of Church property to pay settlements swell the coffers of contingent-fee lawyers and real estate speculators …?" . . .
Prophets on the Path to Peace
. . . There is a natural abhorrence to such language today, and to such a decision from our Supreme Court. But in 1857 the Court went far beyond the simple ruling that Dred Scott did not possess the rights of a citizen to sue. The decision rendered the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional thereby throwing out the U.S. Congress’s right to make territory free of slavery. The decision held that the Missouri Compromise violated the Fifth Amendment by depriving Southerners of their right to private property, i.e., slaves. That decision sounds appalling to us, but it was cheered in its day by many. It caused some, however, to assert that there is a higher moral law than the Constitution, and a higher moral authority than the Supreme Court. These voices of conscience changed minds and hearts, and, in time, the Supreme Court’s decision. . . .
The Day the Earth Stood Still
. . . In the end, what was meant to be a sign of unity in the Church was transformed into an open battle in our seminary. The rector, a Sulpician, was a priest from my diocese. He was particularly incensed when I – the only seminarian from our diocese there – signed a petition challenging his authority to bar Catholic seminarians from attending a Mass with the Pope. On October 7, 1979, more than 200,000 people gathered on the National Mall in Washington, DC to welcome the Holy Father and celebrate the Eucharist with him. . . . I was horrified at the way they were singled out and ostracized, and I wasn't having it. On that day, I parted ways with the "trendy dissent" crowd. . . .