Cardinal George: "is it Catholic?"

David Gibson muses at Politics Daily about the recent decision of USCCB head Cardinal George's setting up of committees to determine if voices in education, media and lay groups represent Catholicism. In doing so he sets up the Bishops to be the arbiters of "all things Catholic."

In my opinion, this is something that needs to be done because, simply put, any moron can have a blog (including this moron!) and that doesn't make the moron a Catholic moron. Many people from different facets of the Catholic spectrum indeed attempt to speak with a Catholic voice but really fail miserably at representing themselves as legitimate voices. This includes not only those who would say that they support abortion rights for women but also those who would support, say capital punishment in clearly unjustifiable situations.

So why the sudden hankering from Cardinal George on the need for the watchdog group? David Gibson has some ideas:

Church officials said George's decision to establish the certifying committees reflected his frustration with the many differing Catholic voices and organizations that sprouted up during last year's presidential campaign and claimed to be representing Catholic positions, some of them in support of Barack Obama.

Many of the most prominent bishops were vocal opponents of Obama, who nonetheless won 53 percent of the key Catholic vote despite espousing pro-choice positions on abortion, which is the overriding issue for the bishops. And many of those outspoken bishops -- perhaps still a minority of the entire hierarchy, but an influential one with close ties to Rome -- were also incensed at the University of Notre Dame for inviting Obama to give its commencement address last May. The anger over that invitation, which was issued despite the opposition of the local bishop, John D'Arcy, and the rifts it exposed among the bishops and lay Catholics, still bother George, church officials said. Hence his effort to establish clear parameters on who speaks for the church and what it means to be Catholic.

But several bishops and church officials I spoke with doubted whether George's desire to implement the certifying committees would gain any traction among the bishops. For one thing, beneath the surface of civility, the bishops are as divided on many of these issues as the rest of the American church.

In addition, George played it so close to the vest in setting up the committees -- he launched the initiative over the summer -- that up until the first day of these meetings many bishops didn't know who was on the committees or how many there were. There are, it turns out, three such committees: on Catholic universities, Catholic media, and other Catholic organizations, reportedly those involved in lobbying.

I wonder if the question is really nt "Is this Catholic?" but rather "Is this Catholic ENOUGH?" and that will lead to all kinds of divisions that indeed, may need to be hashed out in some kind of forum.

Ordinarily I would agree with Gibson in that I would have doubts about how much traction this might have. But in a world where there are far too many sources, especially for unchurched seekers and the theologically uninformed, discerning truth from suggestion is indeed difficult. Is this site a Catholic one indeed is an interesting question worth looking at.

However, there's a huge issue that goes far beyond the simplicity of legitimate Catholic source material. That issue is simply media literacy. After all, there are news programs on radio but then there are opinion programs. When I was in radio for years I noticed that there was almost no discernable difference between how listeners viewed journalistic types of programs with the more opinion based meanderings of a Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, John Stewart or Keith Olbermann. The same is true in catholic circles. There's a huge difference between magazines like America or First Things, which serves to raise the level of debate and interesting conversation and catechetical resources that proclaim church teaching definitively. Those are resources that need some review as well. New Advent for example claims that the 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia is the definitive source that all Catholics should use, and it's the one most used by people online. Will the Bishops' committee talk about those differences? Or will they simply focus on external debates in the blogosphere which they clearly have no chance of curtailing. The internet will continue to have opinion blogs with or without the blessing of the hierarchy and they will continue to entertain and inform.

But they don't necessarily teach. That indeed may be where the Bishops might want to regain some control.


Well at least we know one thing: My book Googling God will make the cut. After all, Cardinal George is holding it here with me.

Quote of the Day and One That Shows True Leadership

"As Archbishop of Boston, I considered it appropriate to represent the Church at this liturgy out of respect for the Senator, his family, those who attended the Mass and all those who were praying for the Senator and his family at this difficult time. We are people of faith and we believe in a loving and forgiving God from whom we seek mercy."

-- Cardinal Sean O'Malley, Archbishop of Boston, on why he attended Senator Ted Kennedy's funeral.

A h/t to the Good Deacon.

Why I Love Archbishop Michael Sheehan

As previously reported here, Archbishop Michael Sheehan is one of the major voices in the church's hierarchy for forging collaboration with politicians that don't always agree with the church's teaching. Governor Bill Richardson was influenced by Sheehan to oppose the death penalty and that helped abolish the practice in their great state of New Mexico.

In a very measured and thoughtful interview with NCR's Tom Roberts, Archbishop Michael Sheehan of Santa Fe, New Mexico had this to say about his fellow Bishops regardling relations with pro-choice politicians.

Sheehan said that in June he told his fellow bishops, “I don’t feel so badly about Obama going [to Notre Dame] because he’s our president. I said we’ve gotten more done on the pro-life issue in New Mexico by talking to people that don’t agree with us on everything. We got Governor Richardson to sign off on the abolition of the death penalty for New Mexico, which he was in favor of.”
Gov. Bill Richardson, in explaining why he reversed his long-standing support for the death penalty, said he was persuaded in part by discussions with church activists and with Sheehan.
“We talked to him, and we got him on board and got the support in the legislature,” Sheehan said. “But you know, he’s pro-abortion. So? It doesn’t mean we sit and wait, that we sit on the sides and not talk to him. We’ve done so much more by consultation and by building bridges in those areas. And then to make a big scene about Obama – I think a lot of the enemies of the church are delighted to see all that. And I said that I think we don’t want to isolate ourselves from the rest of America by our strong views on abortion and the other things. We need to be building bridges, not burning them.”
Asked if there were any other bishops who agreed with him, he said, “Of course, the majority.”
He was asked why none of the bishops who disagreed with the protests that dominated the news for weeks had spoken up.
“The bishops don’t want to have a battle in public with each other, but I think the majority of bishops in the country didn’t join in with that, would not be in agreement with that approach. It’s well intentioned, but we don’t lose our dignity by being strong in the belief that we have but also talking to others that don’t have our belief. We don’t lose our dignity by that,” he said.
“We’d be like the Amish, you know, kind of isolated from society, if we kept pulling back because of a single issue.”
He acknowledged the loudest voices were creating what appeared to be the Catholic position for the general public.
“Of course. I mean that’s always been the case,” he said. “That’s news, you know.”
He said that in speaking to the other bishops he wondered aloud what was so bad about inviting Obama and giving him a degree. “Last month,” said Sheehan, “the pope made the president of France an honorary canon of St. John Lateran’s -- and he [President Nicolas Sarkozy] is pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, married invalidly to an actress, and the pope did that. It doesn’t seem that [the Vatican] had quite as big a concern about this matter of Obama and Notre Dame as some of us.”
Noting that the Vatican has consistently been more positive about Obama than some of the leading critics among the U.S. bishops, Sheehan said, “The Vatican is a little more diplomatically sensitive. But you’ve got to have the big picture.”
He also said given Obama’s association as a young man with priests and nuns during his time as a community organizer on Chicago’s South Side that the “issues of social justice that we teach and preach would resonate in his own work and in his own mind.”
If Sheehan disagreed with the tactics of some of his fellow bishops, he believes at least that Obama may have “a greater awareness now of how passionately and how deeply the church people feel” about abortion. “I think he probably had to come to grips with it in a way that, I suspect, has had a positive effect.”
He said the bishops might revisit a controversial statement on Catholic politicians but he said he opposes withholding communion based partly on the church’s own historic experience. Making reference to Giuseppi Garibaldi, who campaigned to unify Italy in the mid 1800s and who advocated abolition of the papacy, Sheehan said the church then said Catholics would be excommunicated or refused communion if they voted for him. “Well, it didn’t work.”

Excellent points and exactly my own perspective. I wish they had done this interview in April or May though.

Archbishop Sheehan is simply the man. And he had the coolest looking Pectoral Cross that I've ever seen.