The local newspaper in Rockford, Illinois, picked up my favorable comments about Bishop Thomas Doran of Rockford and his recent diocesan newspaper column taking the “party of death” to task for advocating an alphabetical list of sinful conduct: “abortion, buggery, contraception, divorce, euthanasia, feminism of the radical type and genetic experimentation and mutilation.” (Thanks to Fr. Clark for pointing that out.) The newspaper takes the tack that Doran was specifically targeting Democrats and making a partisan political point, and as partial proof they quote me.
But most of the Web sites commenting on the matter have seen the column as an attack on the Democratic Party. For example, Bettnet.com, a Catholic blog written by Domenico Bettinelli Jr., approvingly refers to Doran’s “scathing rebuke against the Democrats.”
Of course, what I actually wrote was: “He launches a scathing rebuke against the Democrats, the culture of death, radical feminism, and homosexuals in his diocesan newspaper column dated August 10.” There’s no denying that the Democrats are part of the problem the bishop mentioned because they support all of those things. Of course, it should be said that there are many Republicans on the wrong side of those issues too. It’s just that they’re not part of the party’s platform ... yet.
Meanwhile, there’s Voice of the Faithful popping up on the side of liberal Democrats again. For an organization that supposedly embraces Catholics across the whole spectrum, they seem heavily weighted toward one end.
F. Patrick LaSalle, a Rockford Catholic and member of Voice of the Faithful, a group organized to speak out against sexual abuse by the clergy, said he disagrees with Doran’s effort “to classify an entire political party.”
A majority of Americans, LaSalle added, “feels more comfortable in the party they believe protects the disadvantaged, supports minorities, the elderly and the young, fosters equal rights for all, protests unjust wars and represents the thinking of middle-class America.”
Yep, the Republican Party. Oh wait, that’s not what he meant. Seriously, do all those supposed party attributes (which is a disputable list, I know) outweigh the party’s support for the abortion holocaust and all the rest?
Good for Bishop Doran, weathering the media firestorm and calling on all his Catholic faithful to consider whether their votes have a moral consequence.
Technorati Tags:abortion, bishops, Catholic, doctrine, homosexuality, politics, Rockford
Somebody from VOTF just had to get into the act. It just goes to show you, some people have something to say, while others just have to say something.
This year in Illinois, the Republican Party is an utter disaster with its gubernatorial candidate, Judy Barr Topinka, almost identical in trumpeting the same slimey immoral positions as her Democratic opponent, Gov. Rod Blagojevich. If one wishes to see what Moloch’s platform looks like either Ms. Topinka or Mr. Blagojevich can oblige. But, for the most part, the Democratic Party and its leadership made its almost universal pact with the Devil back in the 1970s and 1980s. One after another pro-life Democratic leader sold his or her soul for the dubious prize of a few brief years in public office.
And the toll of dead infants, slaughtered in the mothers’ wombs, is over 40 million children—how’s that, Heinrich Himmler, in comparison to your political party?
In addition, VOTF can bloviate all it wants—almost no one is fooled any longer by its disguise as an orthodox and truly faithful Catholic organization. It pretty much serves itself and the self-deluding media that feasts on scraps in the hope of getting a genuine meal.
Bishop Doran, God bless him, wrote what needs to be written in their own format and style by every prelate in the United States. Maybe courage and conviction are once again returning back to the Church in more disoceses.
And maybe one day, the Democratic Party can claim that morality, and not poverty pimping and capitulation to terrorism and tyranny, is actually written in its platform.