Left-wing Catholics were exuberant with the election results, but their eudemonia proved fleeting: the very next week the bishops met in Baltimore where they reaffirmed their commitment to the civil rights of the unborn, the defense of marriage, and the cause of religious liberty. The Catholic League was delighted with the hierarchy’s statements.
Thus those Catholics who reject the Church’s teachings on abortion and marriage, and who support the anti-Catholic mandate being imposed by Health and Human Services (HHS), lost big time when the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) assembled for their biannual meeting. Moreover, the bishops shot down a vaguely worded document on the poor; it was not distributed to them until they arrived at the meeting.
Everyone knew the bishops would not drop their guard on issues like abortion and marriage, but given all the flack they’ve received over fighting the HHS mandate, the outcome was less certain. Timothy Cardinal Dolan, the president of the USCCB, minced no words in his continued support for religious liberty.
Critics of the bishops went bonkers. It is important for the practicing-Catholic community—the only subset that really counts—to understand that there are any number of front groups out there who deceitfully use the Catholic label to advance their agenda. Three such entities that condemned the bishops are Catholics for Choice, Catholics United, and Faithful America.
Catholics for Choice is the oldest of the anti-Catholic front groups—it is a creature of the Ford Foundation and has no members—and it told the bishops that they need to “realize the error of their ways.” Two other groups lectured the bishops to “refocus their attention on caring for the poor and vulnerable” (by which they mean pushing for more welfare): Catholics United and Faithful America; the former was founded with seed money from atheist billionaire George Soros, and the latter is an online hybrid of another Soros-funded front group, Faith in Public Life.
Remember all those Catholic left-wingers who for years were singing the refrain about the need to achieve common ground? Some of us never believed them, and now at least one of them has admitted that this was a ploy all along. “It is said after every election that the victors should put politics aside and work for the good of the country,” wrote E.J. Dionne. Then he unloaded: “If President Obama believed this pious nonsense, he would put his second term in jeopardy.” Nice to know he does not want the president to “work for the good of the country.”
