In the age of Francis nothing surprises me any more. From A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics:
I’ve written on this subject before, though it’s been some time – basically, there has long existed a marked division among the Texas pro-life movement, the uncompromising, total ban on abortion and other forms of murder position represented by Texas Right to Life, and the much more accommodating stand taken by Texas Alliance for Life. There are many reasons to view Texas Alliance as weak on key issues, and indeed, most of the most dedicated, most successful pro-life advocates tend to support Texas Right to Life. During the 2014 legislative session, some acrimonious division developed between Texas Right to Life and the Texas Catholic Conference (TCC), which is the bureaucratic arm of the state’s bishops (like a mini-USCCB). Dominated by its lay staff and their preferences, including their relations with several prominent Texas lawmakers, TCC at various points supported end-of-life legislation that a number of pro-life advocates believed – I should say proved – actually worsened the status quo in Texas, and put elderly, the sick, and their families even more at the mercy of doctors and hospitals in making end of life decisions.
So why has Texas Catholic Conference taken the very unusual step of disavowing, or telling all Catholics in the state to disavow, this most effective pro-life group now? In a word, politics. Texas Right to Life, along with a number of other hardcore grass-roots conservatives groups like the Eagle Forum, Concerned Women for America, Texas homeschoolers, and others, have managed to fund a number of “insurgent” campaigns by true, hardcore conservatives against establishment candidates like Angela Paxton. Early voting is underway for the party primaries, so feeling their establishment buddies under threat, major Texas politicians like Joe Straus – the Speaker of the House, who has done more than anyone to block effective pro-life legislation in this state and who saw Texas’ pro-life ranking drop from #4 to #12 in his 10 year tenure as speaker – are pulling out the stops to try to break the backs of the conservative groups supporting the insurgent candidacies.
We’ve seen this before in this state, where the establishment always favors its own, but not to this degree, and not with a public disavowal of a group whose only “sin”, even by Texas Catholic Conference’s own admission, is to be “too pro-life.” In point of fact, the very minor pro-life “gains” we have seen in Texas are out of all proportion to the citizenry’s general abhorrence of abortion. In one of the most conservative states of the union, Texas’ pro-life legislation falls further and further behind, because of the super slow boil establishment approach.
Many Texas Catholics are incensed by what they see as a betrayal of THE most effective, most dedicated pro-life group in the state (which also happens to have the support of the best bishop this state has seen in 50+ years, Bishop Emeritus Rene Gracida of Corpus Christi, who now offers the TLM more or less exclusively).
Go here to read the rest. Yep, just after 14 Catholic Democrat Senators voted against a ban on the barely disguised infanticide that goes by the name of third trimester abortions, Texas Catholic bishops go to war against Texas Right to Life. We are led by fools, knaves and worse.
As I’ve always said, where would the secular Left be in America without the Catholic Church?
Prayers coming for Texas Right to Life.
Dominated by its lay staff and their preferences,
Because of episcopal indifference and episcopal incompetence. Nothing prevents the bishops from putting a proper supervisor in charge of the staff, provided they had one among their own. Nothing prevents an appalled bishop from leaving the conference. #fredobishops
Divide and conquer?
The fact that folks like mark shea are praising this move also tells us much.
Was it who supposedly said, “the floor of hell is paved with the skulls of bishops?”
@ MichaelPReady
“The road to Hell is paved with the bones of priests and monks, and the skulls of bishops are the lamp posts that light the path.”
– or –
“The road to hell is paved with the skulls of erring priests, with bishops as their signposts.” St. John Chrysostom attributed
Here’s some more. Very appropriate to this topic;
https://stpeterslist.com/the-path-to-hell-is-paved-with-the-skulls-of-bishops-8-quotes-and-sources
All of us must keep diligent watch over our own behaviors, however the Shepherds of the flock will be highly rewarded for their unending care, or extremely punished for their abandonment of duties.
Whatever happened to ‘when people are right, they’re right. We can stand by them in one case even if they are wrong in others’?
When i sae other catholics celebrating this i grew suspicious.
“Excommunicate” is a bit over the top, don’t you think?
Of course, I wouldn’t necessarily be surprised to learn that a certain type of bishop belonging to a certain type of bishops council was more than happy to outsource a purely clerical function to the laity. Spirit if Vatican II, lay involvement in the Church and all that.
After, all EMHCs have been with us for years!
““Excommunicate” is a bit over the top, don’t you think?”
Not nearly as over the top as the action of the Bishops. Dave Griffey at Daffey Thoughts says it well today:
“Sorry, I’m not buying it. Not that Texas Right for Life doesn’t do those things, or say the Bishops are wrong for supporting this or that legislation, or disagree on what this or that legislation will be, or that it doesn’t run afoul of the Church’s current baby steps approach to handling the issue that used to be the great crisis of our age. I’m just not buying it.
Why? Because every time I see some pro-immigration, pro-gun control, anti-death penalty or pro-government healthcare rally come by, I notice Catholics and Catholic leaders fall over themselves to be right in the mix, joining hands, singing songs, walking in solidarity. Even if there are forces behind such things that openly and proudly advocate for the wholesale elimination of entire generations for the sole promise of unlimited orgasmic delights in the age of 35 million AIDS deaths. Even if they pander to and promote forces that push blasphemy, heresy, and the sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance. Even if they openly flip the bird to the Church and anyone who dares fail to conform, promising a land in which their liberal values are mandated and anyone who doesn’t fall into line will be fired, fined or tossed in jail.
It matters not. Be it a murderous, brutal Communist dictator or proud advocate for exterminating people with Down Syndrome by abortion, we’re continually told that the Church meets people where they are when they are right, even if they be wrong a thousand times over in other ways. But Dave, they might advocate for the seven deadly sins, but they are right about socialized medicine, and that’s what matters!
Except, apparently, when people are wrong in such a way as to challenge the Left. Then it’s off to the cornfield you go. We can’t be hanging with people who aren’t straight on the up and up! As the Church becomes more and more the willing thrall of the emergent Left, it’s almost embarrassing to watch the excuses and insults to our intelligence that suggest we can’t see what is really going on.”
http://davidgriffey.blogspot.com/2018/02/catholic-bishops-in-texas-sever-ties.html
Not so long ago, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, was voted the Churchman of the Year, or something like that. Not long after, he let a Protestant group use the new cathedral there.
The San Antonio Bishop went after Fr. Christopher Phillips at Our Lady of Atonement. The Vatican moved the parish to the Ordinariate to keep it out of the Bishop’s hands.
I have read about Joe Strauss. He was a Democrat in all but name and ruled the Texas House with an iron fist.
“In the age of Francis nothing surprises me any more. ”
This kind of episcopal crappola long precedes the age of Francis. This pontificate is more the product of episcopal malfeasance than is the cause of it.
This Comment Also Posted Elsewhere-Still, bears repeating:
Beyond decades, for generations the Catholic bishops of Texas, saying they are obeying the law, but hiding behind the convenient cover of saying they are fearful of losing their tax exempt status, have said they must remain silent about those running for office.
Of course in many areas, this silence was a loud and pointed implicit endorsement of democrats, candidates of the Party Of Death. From pulpits around Texas, the faithful heard from their alleged shepherds “We are not single issue voters,” that unsaid single issue being the murders daily, weekly yearly in Texas of hundreds of thousands of Texas babies, the murders being the overt policy of the democrats of the Party Of Death. In many places on any given day, all the murdered babies, ten, twenty, thirty, 100%, were Hispanic-American babies. For years, the Texas Conference of bishops have been silent about this brown genocide. Since Roe, 60,000,000 murdered babies in the US, and astoundingly, half, 30,000,000, were the children of minority mamas. Half. The democrat Party of Death RETA policy was demonically successful in getting rid of Sanger’s brown and black “human weeds.” (RETA: racial eugenic targeted abortion).
Still the Catholic bishops of Texas have remained silent. Hand-in-glove with the democrats in their Texas alliance for death, they have not said from pulpits to vote for a prolife candidate instead of a party-of-death candidate, because the prolife candidate was – horror of horrors – a republican candidate. Never mind that the democrat candidate supported the murder of babies, and the RETA policy.
But this week, mirabile dictu, wonder of wonders, the bishops speak! What could have spurred them to finally speak out – since they have never had the moral courage to say, as Peter did to the leaders of the time, “We can obey you, or we can obey God” ? Why speak out now when Hispanic-Americans are beginning to see the light and are beginning to vote for prolilfe folks to help save babies in Texas? The bishops have become painfully aware that their Texas alliance for death with the democrats is in danger. They saw what happened in 2016 in the Texas Rio Grande Valley when the Hispanic-American Catholics were shown how the Democrat RETA policy had decimated their numbers right here in Texas. And then the final horror – these enlightened voters, who love their children and live and die for family, they voted for Republicans. You could hear the weeping and the gnashing of prelates’ teeth from Brownsville to McAllen to Austin to Fort Worth to Houston – and even in El Paso.
So the previously silent bishops, fearing that their Texas alliance for death partnership with the democrats would fail to deliver the once- rock-solid monolith of the Hispanic-American vote, in their desperation, loudly again proclaiming they must keep silent, have come out and condemned the quintessential Texas prolife organization, Texas Right To Life, because of its efforts – wildly successful efforts – to speak the truth about the brown genocide of Texas babies promoted by the Party Of Death democrats and Texas Right To Life’s support of non-democrat non-RETA-policy candidates; and Yes, most of them, hated non-RINO republicans.
Lastly gasping, the bishops speak now days before the upcoming elections. Coincidence? No way, Jose. If Texas Right To Life and others like minded are to be stopped, if the Texas alliance for death is to succeed as it has in the past to elect democrats and RINO prodeath GOP candidates, the bishops had to speak out now – and it will be no surprise when they forsake these little ones in Fall 2018 again silently proclaiming we cannot endorse anyone.
Didn’t Jesus say something about “woe” to those who hurt His children? Millstones, necks and drowning? And about hirelings, masquerading as shepherds, who run away, leaving the innocent sheep to the wolves?
Guy McClung, Texas
[…] these groups that is tied in with Empower Texans and Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, but you had the Catholic Church come out and say that they are misrepresenting the voting record of people in the Texas House of […]
Chris Manion writing in The Wanderer recently has been discussing the “deep Church” which is heavily involved in the bishops’ conferences from the national USCCB to the local state affiliates. Just like the federal bureaucracy is filled with liberals who control things while conservative appointments come and go, liberals are deeply rooted in the Church bureaucracies. Since all of the state groups echo the political liberalism of the national bureaucracy, what happened in Texas is not surprising. Texas Right to Life called them out and out came the hobnailed boot which is always reserved for those who are most zealous in defending the right to life from conception to natural death. The bishops tend to use the right to life as a bait and switch tactic while they spend most of their lobby efforts on DACA call-in days and getting more taxes for their liberal agenda. Remember that, Catholics, and don’t give to your bishops’ Lenten appeal. Plenty of your donation will go to support lobby efforts for liberal issues that you may disagree with. Exercise prudence in giving. Support a solid seminary or a solid bishop like Bishop Paprocki of Springfield, IL. You could even send a donation to that wonderful cleric, Bishop Athanasius Schneider. It’s time to stop feeding the sharks in the Church.
The mass slaughter of prenatal children is the most horrific and vile perversion ever conjured into existence by our species.
All five million unborn babies alive in America today can be killed tomorrow, legally and unstoppably, on the whim of their mothers.
Who can comprehend the depths of intolerable evil of this vicious slaughter in America today? The government approves it and funds it. One million mothers pay blood money to choose it every year. Medical professionals execute it. The mothers commit murder and the babies are murdered with little resistance from Americans.
STOP ABORTION NOW!
Chris Griffin, PO Box 481044, Charlotte NC 28269, chrisgriffin523@gmail.com
Good job Bishops. Now let’s hope their flocks listen to what they are saying and vote accordingly.