The excerpt below from a column by Francis Cardinal George is an indication of why, although he has often been a disappointment as an administrator, I will miss him when he is no longer at the helm of the Chicago Archdiocese:
Go here to read the rest. Contemporary liberalism has morphed into a substitute religion and it is a jealous faith and woe betide those who do not worship at its altars of gender, race and identity politics. Cardinal George has seen what is coming quite clearly, hence what I fear may be regarded as prophecy by him:
Sometimes being prophetic mostly involves taking off the wishful thinking glasses that too many of us have permanently affixed to our faces.
John 15:18-27
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18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. 20 Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. 21 But all this they will do to you on my account, because they do not know him who sent me. 22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. 23 He who hates me hates my Father also. 24 If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would not have sin; but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. 25 It is to fulfil the word that is written in their law, ‘They hated me without a cause.’ 26 But when the Counselor comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness to me; 27 and you also are witnesses, because you have been with me from the beginning.
Actually, the second paragraph explains my disappointment with Cardinal George. He, like many Catholics, sees America as a misguided, Enlightenment project. In his book, he can find nothing good to say about America for the first 60 pages or so. Then, we find that the only good thing he can make out is that it is multicultural. So the only good thing about America is that it is something else.
He was also hook, line and sinker for Obamacare with the usual USCCB caveats. Now he finds that big government is not so nice. Hmmmm.
Love him are hate him, Limbaugh often talks about the “Marketplace of Ideas.” We have freedom of speech in this country, and what has the bishops chosen to talk about?
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Well, in the 20 years I’ve been Catholic, it hasn’t been contraception, abortion, marriage or any non-negotiable. It’s been “the rich are bad,” “sexism is bad,” “discrimination against homosexuals and undocumented workers is bad,” and “Government support for this or that is good.”
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There is so much they could have done many moons ago to promote NFP, marriage, and real health care, but they choose instead to do Al Smith dinners, “pass the trash”, and look the other way as Georgetown, Fordham, and ND lost their way.
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Even now it is not too late to jump into that Marketplace and try to make the case for Christ. The US, for all her assaults on religious freedom, is not the Middle East, with Islam on the march.
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I have no confidence our bishops will engage that Marketplace with the “Non-Negotiable ideas” with any fervor.
In modern American discourse, the ruling class knows it is “imposing its own form of morality,” but won’t own up to being a religion. Which is one reason why I’m skeptical that appeals to religious freedom will succeed, when only one side comes clean about its religious intent to form consciences, especially the consciences of children. And so it may be more useful to frame more of our arguments in terms of freedom of conscience, and conscience rights, appealing to all who dissent from the state religion.
Here you go, Don.
With all of their plethora of faults & nauseating abandonment of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the peddling of government influence as a way to better society, the USCCB is the only current source of such writings/religious thought addressing the current shredding of our society’s fabric that I can find in the realm of American “Christianity.” In my experience, the Protestants leadership does not even understand the battle.