InsideCatholic.com | Understanding "Incivility"

More crying and weeping about "incivility". Heaven forbid that Jesus should have called people names, bound up a whip of cords and beat the crap out of people...

If Catholics always and everywhere took the point of view taken by a lot of contemporary Catholics and people like Deal Hudson, Catholicism would never have evolved beyond a parlor game.

It's hard not to view his role as being that of a wet blanket for any fervor on the part of Catholics in general. Wherever it rises up, he feels compelled to impose his layman's authority and disapproving glance to shame Catholics into silence while their legacy continues to be bought and sold on the free market.

InsideCatholic.com | Understanding "Incivility" | Feature | Articles

More Reports that CCHD/USCCB Supports Planned Parenthood And Promotes Homosexuality

This is just in from Deal.

Two new reports have been published today on the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD).

Rob Gaspar at Bellarmine Veritas Ministry has dug more deeply into the CCHD relationship to the Center for Community Change (CCC).

In "Sleeping with the Enemy," Michael Hichborn at the American Life League has also uncovered more disturbing facts about CCC. Hichborn also chronicles the personal involvement of the USCCB's John Carr, Executive Secretary of Justice, Peace, and Human Development. Carr oversees the CCHD.

Read Further...

And more stuff in from lifesitenews quoting from abovementioned Hichborn article, and about members of CCHD and USCCB being in openly homosexual relationships.

Washington, DC, February 2, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A national group that promotes abortion and homosexual rights has deep ties with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development, according to a report released Monday.

Top USCCB executive John Carr held simultaneous leadership roles, creating a conflict of interest, with the USCCB and the radical Center for Community Change.

"The closer we look at the Bishops Conference [staff and programs], the more we find a systemic pattern of cooperation with evil," said Michael Hichborn, American Life League's lead researcher into the USCCB scandal. "The CCC has lodged itself into the highest places of power in the USCCB while working to promote abortion and homosexuality."

Deal Says the USCCB Had to Keep Stupak on Task

From tomorrow's New York Times comes a story by Jodi Kantor about Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI).

It contains the following very interesting tidbit:

Mr. Stupak says he urged the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to toughen its stance on the legislation; representatives from the conference and the National Right to Life Committee did not return calls

The parenthesis are from the original story. Why are they there? Perhaps Kantor did not know what a bombshell this statement from Stupak would be among many Catholics.

It makes you wonder what Stupak thought the USCCB should be tougher about? The abortion issue? Or abortion and other issues as well? And did Stupak mean the USCCB should be tougher behind the scenes or in the public eye?

But if Stupak feels he is hanging tougher than the USCCB then how do you make sense of all those stories about lobbyists from the USCCB keeping Stupak on message?

Certainly the USCCB has studiously avoided a tough public stance, preferring not to risk their internal negotiating position.

I wish Kantor explored Stupak's meaning here -- perhaps Stupak went off the record at this point, and Kantor had to call the USCCB and National Right to Life for comment.

That the USCCB did not return her call is surprising given the prominence of the NYT and the importance of the issue raised by Stupak.

Link to original Inside Catholic...

Phoney Catholics and Health Care "Reform"

In an ill-advised attempt to square liberalism and the Catholic Faith with Health care Reform, this Chicago "Catholic" writer tries to take Deal Hudson to task for his critical position by adopting an emotional argument, suggesting that we have a common goal of "abolishing abortion". I am not aware that this is a Catholic position. Unfortunately, abortion, like all sins will be part of the human condition until the last trumpet. This writer might not be aware of the irreconcilability of the Catholic Faith with funding for abortion, but he's not interested in truth, he's interested in promoting more socialism, defending the seamless garment mode of Chicago's own Cardinal Bernardin.

Deal Hudson--formerly of the conservative Catholic Crisis magazine--used his InsideCatholic blog to denounce two Catholic political interest groups lobbying for health care reform: Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United, although he calls them "fake" Catholic groups.

Hudson appoints himself the arbiter of what is Catholic, [so do you] and if you support health care reform that in any way might lead to an abortion paid for with public funds, you are not one. (Hudson told US News and World Report's Dan Gilgoff that calling the groups "fake" was "journalistic hyperbole," which I guess is another name for calling people names.) Hudson goes on at length to point out the connections these group have to the Democratic Party and George Soros (while not mentioning his own GOP paymasters, for whom he courted Catholics on behalf of previous administrations). [So?]

According to Hudson, Catholics should oppose health care reform if it in any way directs public money to abortion--even if it does practically guarantee health care for children already born. Abortion, after all, is a "non-negotiable," and you're a "fake" Catholic if you disagree with him. [He'd be right]

Well, I disagree with him, and if he wants to have a debate about whether I'm a Catholic, I say: Bring it, Deal. It's time for Catholics with actual knowledge of the breadth of the Catholic tradition to start speaking up for themselves before we all get read out the church.

Case in point on abortion: While the church does teach that procured abortion can never be morally justified--and Catholics are bound to that teaching--Catholics are free to hold different positions on how the right to life should be pursued in the public sphere. Our common goal is no abortions;[No it's not our common goal, we are still not allowed to participate in the procuring of an abortion, especially not with government money] our paths can differ. There is plenty of evidence that making abortion illegal actually does little to prevent it--it just forces women in crisis into dangerous and desperate situations. Catholics who argue that access to affordable health care and other progressive social policies will reduce abortion are on solid moral ground.

I'm not the only Catholic who is willing to do the difficult moral math and judge health care reform worth the difficulty surrounding abortion funding. On Christmas Day The New York Times reported that both the Catholic Health Association, which represents hundreds of Catholic hospitals, and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, whose member congregations built the bulk of the Catholic health care system in this country, came out in support of the Senate's approach to the segregation of public funds from premiums used to fund abortion coverage. (UPDATE: Sister Carol Keehan of the CHA denied any divergence between CHA and the bishops in a Catholic News Service story yesterday.)

In other words, you don't have to limit yourself to what is finally the clumsiest of moral arguments and say that abortion alone is the make-or-break issue for Catholics when it comes to health care reform. Catholic teaching has long recognized access to health care as a human (not merely civil) right. (And you'll note that the loudest voices on abortion have said next to nothing about the fact that more than 10 million undocumented immigrants are explicitly excluded from this measure, which should outrage any Catholic.)

Not all Catholics are willing to make the perfect the enemy of the good when health care for a further 31 million of our fellow citizens is at stake. And they're every bit as Catholic as Deal Hudson.

Bryan Cones [Should become Episcopalian] is managing editor of U.S. Catholic magazine in Chicago.

Fake Catholic Groups Working Overtime for Healthcare Bll

InsideCatholic

It's sad to report, but report we must: The same fake Catholic groups that helped President Barack Obama get elected have rallied to the cause of the health-care bill, abortion funding and all. As reported by LifeNews.com, Catholics United (CU) and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (CACG) are warning Catholics not to get too hung up on things like federal funding of abortion.

Interviewed by the Christian Science Monitor, CU president Chris Korzen commented, "The wrong thing would be for anyone to be so firmly entrenched in their positions on federal funding of abortion that they're not willing to come to the table and talk about a compromise."

Victoria Kovari, the interim president of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, claimed, "We share all the bishops' concerns," adding that the "difference is [our] feeling that we would be morally remiss if we walked away from all of the health care [reform]. We have to take seriously our call to be about what's good for the whole human family."

In other words, pass the health-care bill, even if it contains abortion funding. This is precisely the kind of proportionalist reasoning that I fear many Catholics are using to brush aside concerns about abortion funding: The evil of abortion, those like Korzen and Kovari argue, is offset by the many benefits of health-care reform.

Catholic teaching explicitly rejects such self-justifying tactics (see Veritatis Splendor 75), and the U.S. bishops have been unwavering on this point. As Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the USCCB Pro-Life Secretariat, remarks in the same CSM article, "There are moral absolutes that we can't get beyond."

Links to original...