Weigel on Boston’s mayor Menino and Catholic Charities

Weigel on Boston’s mayor Menino and Catholic Charities

Leave it to George Weigel to say all the right things about the Boston Mayor Menino situation. And give credit to the Boston Globe for publishing Weigel’s op-ed which contradicts their earlier editorial.

Weigel systematically dissects all of Menino’s ridiculous assertions about Catholicism, giving them more intellectual heft than they’re probably due, but crossing all his t’s nonetheless.

So it seems that Menino knows neither the Bible, nor the catechism, nor the teaching of popes and bishops. Why should anyone beyond Catholics care? Because Americans will continue to debate the role of religiously informed moral reason in public life. That debate can be intelligent or dumb; it can strengthen democracy or weaken it; it can build bridges of understanding through serious conversation or fracture communities and stoke animosities. If political leaders like Mayor Menino continue to promote caricatures and cartoons of Catholic conviction, the debate will be unintelligible and fractious. And American democracy will be the weaker for it.

So what should we do going forward to make sure that what has happened here isn’t simply forgotten until the next outrage? First, it wouldn’t hurt to write a note of thanks to the Globe for giving Weigel a chance to speak for us.

Second, why not send a fax, letter, or phone call to the apostolic nuncio in Washington (the pope’s representative in the US) or the prefect of the Congregation for Bishops in Rome asking why it took a layman to say what needed to be said?

Most Reverend Gabriel Montalvo
Apostolic Nunciature of the Holy See
3339 Massachusetts Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20008-3687
Telephone: (202) 333-7121
Fax: (202) 337-4036

Giovanni Battista Cardinal Re
Congregation for Bishops
Piazza Pio XII 10
00193
Rome, Italy
Phone: 011.39.06.69.88.42.17
Fax: 011.39.06.69.88.53.03

We’ve already seen that they’re paying attention. A little more prodding could help enormously.

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