Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Cardinal Dolan: The culture war is over

In an interview with the Boston Globe:

Question: "Where are the American bishops today on the issue of Communion for pro-choice Catholic politicians?"

Cardinal Dolan: "In a way, I like to think it's an issue that served us well in focusing us to do a serious examination of conscience about how we can best teach our people about their political responsibilities, but by now that inflammatory issue is in the past. I don't hear too many bishops saying it's something that we need to debate nationally or that we have to decide collegially. I think most bishops have said, 'We trust individual bishops in individual cases.' Most don't think it's something for which we have to go to the mat."

Michal Voris comments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLSHaxfT_E0

13 comments:

JFM said...

I can no longer anymore listen to Dolan than I can read much of Pope Francis. Both men seem to inhabit a different universe than do I, and speak a with a different dialect if not another language. Exactly what that means, I do not know, except for the fact that I can far more easily focus on living out my faith by ignoring them.

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

Dolan knows the revolution has been reestablished in full force by the B of R and he is signaling he is on the winning side. That's all there really is to it for this politician.

Cardianl Dolan wins, Cardinal Burke loses.

O, and we flummoxed faithful still remain entirely on our own for as yet invisibilium within the Hierarchy is that Prelate possessing a sufficient amount of Tradition that it could be applied as a force against our Inertia Into Indifferentism.

Steve Dalton said...

Michael Voris says the bishops control the establishment Catholic media. Question for Michael Voris: Who controls the bishops who controls the establishment Catholic media? When Voris can honestly answer that question, his Vortex's might start doing some good, instead of keeping people in a state of helpless perpetual outrage that accomplishes nothing in the long run.

Anonymous said...

This is completely consistent with the reply he sent to me when I complained of communion being given to my wife, unrepentant for her 24 years of adultery, at the Cathedral in Raleigh!

I am both sad and elated that the Church is crumbling.

I have no respect left for the hierarchy.

The sooner the institution implodes, the better.

Karl

Son of Ya'Kov said...

Cardinal Dolan is saying the Culture war is over?

Seriously? Is that what he is really saying?

http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/206336?eng=y


Quote"But most of the bishops in the United States were against withholding communion from Catholic politicians who support abortion. There were even two authoritative cardinals from the conservative wing, Francis E. George of Chicago and the Jesuit theologian Avery Dulles, who said they were reluctant to "make the Eucharist a political battleground." In the end, the bishops' conference decided to "apply" the principles presented by Ratzinger on a case-by-case basis, leaving it "to each bishop to express prudent pastoral judgments in his own specific circumstances."

From Rome, Cardinal Ratzinger accepted this solution and said that it was "in harmony" with the general principles of his memorandum.

In this, Ratzinger adopted a practice typical of Catholic countries in Europe, where rigorous principles coexist with more flexible pastoral customs.

In Europe, in effect, the Catholic Church has never addressed or created cases similar to those of Kerry or Biden in the United States. In recent decades in Europe, bishops, cardinals, and popes have knowingly given communion to Catholic politicians who advance abortion laws. In 1989, the devoutly Catholic king Baudouin of Belgium temporarily abdicated his throne to avoid signing a law on abortion, but this was an entirely personal gesture: no one in the Church's hierarchy had asked him to do so."END QUOTE

Anybody?

Son of Ya'Kov said...

Mind you no Pro-abort should take communion & I would love a national policy of not giving it to the Pro-abort polititians but let's be fair to the Cardinal.

JM said...

Peter Kreeft wrote, "To win any war, the three most necessary things to know are: (1) that you are at war, (2) who your enemy is, and (3) what weapons or strategies can defeat him.You cannot win a war (1) if you simply sew peace banners on a battlefield..."

For years liberals guffawed at the idea of a culture war. Then they finished wining it, and conservatives and Catholic Bishops went on to act like there wasn't ever really one of significance. Dolan's Bravo was essentially a peace banner. If the mantra is all it has ever been about is God's love, and He hates wars and violence and conflict, then Hmmm... maybe the liberals have been right all along!

Ralph Roister-Doister said...

All any of this proves is that in the last several decades, dogma and teaching have become debating club topics (to be decided by the intensity of audience applause), and suggestions for normative "Catholic" behavior. Religious affiliation is now rather like social club affiliation, as with Fred Flintstone's membership in the Loyal Order of Water Buffalo.

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

Dispensing Communion to any man who publicly succors serious sin could be construed as an act of hatred and violence against that man in that when any man in such a state receives Communion he eats and drinks judgment unto himself and, thus, is intensifying the eternal punishment he will receive in Hell.

Doctrine is subverted when discipline is withheld and among the most violent are those most, putatively, kind.

Son of Ya'Kov said...

>(1) that you are at war,

Done!

> (2) who your enemy is,

My enemy is the ignorance gays have about Catholic teaching.

For decades we have told the gays they aren't banned from the parade just from marching under their own banner and that has not sunk in.

> and (3) what weapons or strategies can defeat him.

Honest Dialog. You have to get off your butts and talk to these people.
Merely spewing disapproval isn't going to cut it.

Yeh they get it. We believe it's wrong to have gay sex but have we ever entered a forum to explain it to them?

I think not.

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

All any of this proves is that in the last several decades, dogma and teaching have become debating club topics (to be decided by the intensity of audience applause

Ralph. Are you old enough to remember the TV show, Queen for a Day? The winner was decided according to the intensity of the audience's applause.

I know you have a have both a serious and a subtle sense of humor and so if this was an oblique reference to that show, kudos; it would be a perfect show to preview the St Patrick's Day Parade.

Steve Dalton said...

MJY, your mention of "Queen For A Day" was plum perfect, considering what we're talking about!

Ralph Roister-Doister said...

Yep I remember the show, although it wasn't on my mind when I wrote the comment. Nice catch.

In my city the extraordinary people in question throw their own parade, with themes and costumes and behavior calculated to outrage ordinary folks. No lollipops are flung to the kiddies: condoms, occasionally.