New book traces history of extreme Catholic conservatism

Writes Tom Roberts in NCR, "The greatest motivating issue of the Catholic extreme right, its bishops and organizational leaders, is money, not religion. The prime ambition is protecting the market and essentially working against the bulk of traditional Catholic social teaching, which gives special place to society's margins, not its gatherers of wealth. Catholics today, still recovering from the deep betrayal by bishops in the ongoing sexual abuse scandal, may be reluctant to consider that their church is being further distorted and turned inside out by unseemly forces in their midst. But Catholicism in America is metastasizing into a thoroughly American Catholicism, subservient to the culture's most rapacious instincts." more »


Cardinal McElroy explains EWTN missteps

In an interview published March 24, San Diego Cardinal Robert McElroy sharply criticized the Eternal Word Television Network, the conservative Catholic U.S. media conglomerate. "EWTN worries me because it represents a giant of economic and cultural power connected to a religious viewpoint that is fundamentally critical of the pope." McElroy said that Francis has encountered so much opposition because of his "intention of completing the work of the Second Vatican Council," as well as his "constant inclusion of the experiences and spiritual points of view of the Global South at the center of the life of the church." more »
As Trump faces criminal prosecution, his bishop supporters wander in a political wilderness

Writes Prof Steven Millies, today’s bishops found themselves the object of widespread puzzlement when they were unable to revise their current document for Catholic voters, “Faithful Citizenship,” ahead of the 2020 election -- or indeed any elections since 2007. "Answers should be quite clear to anyone observing the Catholic Church in the United States closely. To revise the document would expose the divisions among U.S. Catholic bishops in a public way — and also reveal how estranged most of the bishops are from the mainstream of American life. A new document would depend on consensus, even just to draft it. No such consensus exists in 2023. And anything the majority would support on its own would incite embarrassing conversations about whether the Catholic Church really is able to participate in U.S. public life at all." more »

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Please Read: US Catholic Bishops' "Faithful Citizenship"

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"He gave us strength in time of trouble, wisdom in time of uncertainty, and sharing in time of happiness. He will always be by our side...[May he] be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it. Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him:

Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not."

Sen Edward M. Kennedy (1932-2009)

Monday, March 18, 2024

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"My idea of self, of family, of community, of the wider world comes straight from my religion."

Joe Biden, "Promises to Keep" (2007)


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