From the Editor's Desk...
By Michael J. Matt
CATHOLIC IDIOCRACY: Cardinal Dolan
In what might just be the most dramatic nine minutes of television you’ll watch in 2019, a prince of the Church manifests the classic symptoms of SRS (Spine Reduction Syndrome) the moment Fox News hosts ask him to provide a Catholic response to abortion becoming the coolest thing in New York since Frank Sinatra.
Cardinal Dolan was brought in not as theologian to explain the hypostatic union or anything particularly challenging.
His job was merely to reiterate Catholic teaching on the intrinsic evil of murdering preborn babies, and maybe conjure up a little manly angst along the way.
Pretty simple assignment. But that’s when all stupid broke loose.
Summing Up the Abortion Issue According to Dolan on Fox and Friends:
• As long as the opponents of life argued for "safe, legal, and rare" abortion, we could rest easy.
• Get pretty worked up about how it’s now going to be "unsafe, mandatory and frequent", but save the special righteousness for the fact that some people are celebrating this, like with "champagne and brie" and stuff.
• The public figure who claims to be Catholic and who signed the nation’s "most aggressive" women’s health (READ: partial birth abortion) act into law is not the concern of the Church…
~ See Editor's Desk/ Page 2
Editor's Desk,
Continued...
because that’s a pastoral and spiritual thing… which "somebody" should talk to him about… but not Dolan.
Dolan isn’t Cardinal enough for that (the permutations of logic that happened there are the reason your head hurts and your face feels hot).
• Oh no, we certainly can’t excommunicate the Governor for this, because that’s what he wants and that would be "playing into the hands" of the enemy who would- wait for it--say that the Church is too, well, you know, just too intolerant, and everybody knows NewYork’s Cardinal Archbishop is the very picture of laugh and let laugh!The haters of life want the Church to be that stereotypical bigot, so we’re gonna sit this one out, thank you very much. See how clever and classy?
He’s even got working knowledge of sophisticated VIP food like brie!
• Keep the conversation away from the moral and obvious reasons why abortion is cold-blooded murder and those children are souls loved into existence by God and entrusted to mothers who are damning their own souls in the process.
• Instead, try really hard to steer the topic onto that of education and strong public schools, it’s safer and makes us feel better. Plus, watch us take a shot at SOCIAL MEDIA… so righteous.
Even secular media folks, in other words, were looking at the top gun of the Catholic Church in America, and positively begging him to reaffirm their own feelings of horror at the new law. All they got was another stupid joke followed by a blast of mighty wind.
Should Governor Cuomo Be Excommunicated?
Dystopian novels have been chilling readers to the bone for decades. Orwell’s, "Nineteen Eighty-Four", Huxley’s "Brave New World", Walker Percy’s "Love In the Ruins".
These classics provide terrifying glimpses of a harsh and colorless world where human beings have been cowed into a state of perpetual shell-shock as their humanity is stripped away by governments exercising ultimate control over life and death.
The plots and characters vary but the stories have a similar feel: haunting, whitewashed halls, emotionless workers in uniform carrying out murder with hypnotic calm, an overwhelming sense of hopelessness as the protagonist finally succumbs to death, or worse—a mindcontrolling brainwash.
The reality of 2019 is becoming remarkably similar to the fiction of
Nineteen Eighty-Four.
In 2019, dystopia is GovernorAndrew Cuomo signing an act into law for New York State which allows for the execution of babies on their birthday; upon natural entry into a world which was supposed to treasure, nurture and protect them; which instead waits with open shears to stop their tender, beating hearts.
In 2019, dystopia is Virginia Democrat Kathy Tran proposing state legislation that would not only allow abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy, but also permit a woman to decide whether she wants to "abort" her baby as she’s actually dilating and about to give birth.
In 2019, dystopia is Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) not only backing this sordid legislation, but calmly describing the scenario whereby a woman’s "right to choose" now includes "keeping her baby comfortable" after delivery until she can make up her mind whether or not to kill "it". (President Trump decried this in his State of the UnionAddress as an "execution" of a baby, which is exactly what it is.) In 2019, dystopia is a Cardinal of the Catholic Church preferring to sleep with the Left rather than rend his cassock in outraged protest over Godless and inhuman legislation that takes the lives of unbaptized babies. It is his job to call down the wrath of God on those who will not suffer the little ones to even continue to breathe, much less come unto Jesus.
In 2019, dystopia is the blood of innocents on consecrated hands.
In 2019 and where the unborn are concerned, we have achieved a dystopia beyond Orwell’s wildest dreams.
And while Oceania’s most rich and famous bishops are conspicuous by their uselessness, others, in lesser-known outposts around the world, are trying to amplify the silent scream of the unborn:
Statement from the Diocese of Buffalo regarding the Reproductive Health Act: Earlier this week, Bishop Malone added this statement to the NYS Catholic Conference of Bishops, regarding the passage of the Reproductive Health Act: "NYS is already the state with the highest rate of killing pre-born children through abortion. This is a tragic day for NYS that makes a very bad situation even worse. It is a barbaric action of our legislature, and clearly nothing to celebrate."
Welcome words indeed, but still not enough. In New York, in Virginia, in Washington, in San Francisco—we are referring to Catholics who are laboring to help millions procure successful abortions, which according to the Code of Canon Law #1398 incurs the penalty of automatic excommunication. The Catholic bishops of America must make this clear and public.
And if some loophole can be cited whereby latae sententiae excommunication is not incurred in the case of Catholic politicians legalizing de facto infanticide, then the bishops must excommunicate them directly in accord with canon law. Why?
For two reasons: 1) To shock these maniacal baby killers into repentance and conversion.
2) To awaken the entire country to the severity of the horrific sin of abortion and to deter more states from following New York’s satanic lead.
Paragraph #2272 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church offers reason why abortion is one of the few sins that carry the penalty of automatic excommunication: "The Church does not thereby intend to restrict the scope of mercy. Rather, she makes clear the gravity of the crime committed, the irreparable harm done to the innocent who is put to death, as well as to the parents and the whole of society" If this country’s "Catholic" bishops do not as a body put this country’s "Catholic" politicians on notice that the penalty for the horrific crime of abortion is expulsion from the Catholic Church, then before God and Man the blood of the innocent will stain their hands forever.
"Expel the wicked man from our midst," Excellencies and Eminences. For God’s sake, do your job and at least try to stop the bleeding of the unborn!
Dolan: I don’t know the man!
But apparently, Cardinal Dolan’s bid to curry favor with Andrew Cuomo didn’t pan out the way he’d hoped, and a week later he pouted over being mistaken as part of the "Religious right" by the cool crowd in NYC. (Challenge Question: Try to find an actual defense of life in this third-gradelevel hissy fit.) From Cardinal Dolan’s blog:
Hiding Behind Labels
Today, with a home field advantage in the New York Times, Governor Cuomo linked me with the "religious right."
This is something new from the governor. He did not consider me part of the "religious right" when seeking my help with the minimum wage increase, prison reform, protection of migrant workers, a welcome of immigrants and refugees, and advocacy for college programs for the state’s inmate population, which we were happy to partner with him on, because they were our causes too. I guess I was part of the "religious left" in those cases.
The civil rights of the helpless, innocent, baby in the womb, as liberal Democrat Pennsylvania Governor Robert Casey once remarked is not about "right versus left, but right versus wrong."
The governor (Cuomo) also continues his attempt to reduce the advocacy for the human rights of the pre-born infant to a "Catholic issue," an insult to our allies of so many religions, or none at all. Governor Casey again: "I didn’t get my pro-life belief from my religion class in a Catholic school, but from my biology and U.S. Constitution classes."
Yes, religion is personal; it’s hardly private, as the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life and struggle for civil rights so eloquently showed. Governor Cuomo’s professed faith teaches discrimination against immigrants is immoral, too. Does that mean he cannot let that moral principle guide his public policy? Clearly not.
Debate abortion on what it is. Don’t hide behind labels like "right wing" and "Catholic."
Now, that’s guts "cardinalin", Eminence! And, not to worry: We think they’ll still invite you to do your funny thing on St.
Patrick’s Day now that you’ve made it clear you’re not with those retarded "religious right" people but you’re all down with Martin Luther King and everybody. Well, played!
In case you’re curious, Eminence, we’ve printed an example of how a Catholic bishop—as opposed to bishops in your Church of Idiocracy—should respond in the face of massive political evil.
Keep in mind that His Excellency wasn’t defying a little stain likeAndy Cuomo, either. As the Gestapo was rounding up priests and nuns and making all kinds of Catholics "disappear", the Bishop of Munster stood up in his pulpit like a roaring lion and thundered Christ at the entire Nazi regime… Turn to page 15 to find out! ■
" Could it be that even strong talk against the pro-aborts creates more waves than these guys can handle, as they paddle around the kiddie pool in their neo-Catholic water wings? "