It amazes me that even a man who has been a priest for 45 years can get the teachings of the faith so wrong. In this case, it’s an opinion column about voting. Specifically, this retired priest says that Catholics should not be “single-issue” voters even on abortion or euthanasia, but should consider the whole range of moral issues, i.e. the “seamless garment” of Cardinal Bernardin. Sadly, he misunderstands the Church’s teaching and thus leads people astray.
The root of his problem is the assumption that all moral issues are equal, that the protection of innocent life is equal to education policy. It also ignores the fact that while some moral issues have one correct implementatione single one that should determine how Catholic citizens vote.
This is a straw-man argument. No single issue does determine how a Catholic should vote, but some issues should disqualify a candidate from consideration.
Suppose we had a candidate who supported all the right issues, according to Father Hogan>John Allen of NCR gives his insider’s view of what happened over the Pope’s comments about The Passion. From what he describes as the original event, I can see how someone might have been confused about what the Pope said or whether it was for attribution. But regardless of how it originally happened, I still think the actions of Vatican officials in their denial phase look really bad.
Charles,
For me this isn’t about the movie. Whether the pope endorsed it or not isn’t the point. The point is whether some officials in the Vatican lied to cover their butts. Sorry, but I don’t buy that they’re so busy, that it slipped their minds. If that were the case, when presented with the evidence of their email, they’d say, “Oh yeah,” not that the email isn’t authentic.
What’s distressing to me is that someone so close to the Pope would find it so easy to hang someone else out, people like Peggy Noonan who have done nothing but say positive things about Pope John Paul, even in the midst of the Scandal.
To me, it’s the same issue at the heart of the Scandal: apparently reflexive lying even in the face of strong evidence that they are doing so.