It’s newspaper columns like today’s that reminds of why I stopped listening to Boston Herald writer Howie Carr’s radio program. Howie is a lapsed Catholic with a completely secular, power-structure view of the Church. He’s no liberal. He’d more accurately be described as libertarian in many of his views: Basically it boils down to “leave me alone.”
Today, Carr takes on the appointment of Cardinal Law to his ceremonial post in Rome and the parish closings. He acknowledges that the cardinal makes somewhere in the neighborhood of $29,000 per year as a senior clergyman. But with no further evidence to back it up, he hints that the cardinal must be dipping into the Boston archdiocese’s funds to pay for his lifestyle. Who pays for his airfare to Rome? Who pays for his Rome apartment? Well, if you’d bothered to ask any knowledgeable Catholic journalist, Howie, you’d know that the airfare is paid for by the Vatican because the cardinal is a member of various pontifical councils. The apartment is part of the job of being archpriest of St. Mary Major Basilica, which is something more that a “tourist-trap church,” as he puts it.
I’m with you 100% on this one, Dom. The times I have listened to Carr, I end up wanting to put my foot throught the radio. My brother used to be a devoted listener and I just used to shake my head whenever he would mention him. Not to mention that fact that he is, I believe, pro-choice. He is the type of conservative that drives me nuts, socially libertarian, fiscally conservative. I don’t care what you do, just leave me and my money alone, ARRRGHH!!
Actually, I believe he’s anti-abortion (not exactly pro-life), but not for all the right reasons. It’s more of a states rights thing than a killing babies thing.