The feeling that "religious dictates" are outside a person rather than inside, sums up the plight of many American Catholics.
What faithful, practicing Catholic does not cringe when he hears the Kennedys referred to as "one of the United States' most prominent Roman Catholic families?" Why not single out say, the family of U. S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a faithful Catholic with a brood of nine children, one of whom is a priest who, as his father quips, "took one for the team." Justice Scalia is a man who is not ashamed to defend his faith:
To believe in traditional Christianity is something else. For the son of God to be born of a virgin? I mean, really. To believe that he rose from the dead and bodily ascended into heaven? How utterly ridiculous. To believe in miracles? Or that those who obey God will rise from the dead and those who do not will burn in hell? God assumed from the beginning that the wise of the world would view Christians as fools . . . and he has not been disappointed. Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world.
But the Kennedys? After all, it was their most favorite son, JFK, who first suggested that political interests should come before Church teaching, when he famously said he would always act "in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates."
This feeling that "religious dictates" are outside a person rather than inside, sums up the plight of many American Catholics. They have lost the interior disposition necessary to properly practice the faith. The name Catholic is nothing more than a brand for these folks; in some ways a brand of dishonor, feeling as they do that it represents a repressive group of religious fanatics. But they can call themselves whatever they like; they certainly are not practicing Catholics.
And yet, it is this group that is always sought after by the media when they need quotes or polling data that contradicts Church teaching. And when the heretic bears the name of Kennedy, it doesn't get any better than that. So it was no surprise that Newsweek eagerly published a hit piece by the slain President's niece, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, in which she sees fit to lecture Mother Church in the person of the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI.
As its title implies — "Without A Doubt: Why Barack Obama represents American Catholics better than the pope does" — it is a mostly rambling and predictable litany of the accusations against the Church by one who is obviously outside of it. So clueless in regards to Church teaching is Ms. Townsend, that she refers to those who actually follow it as "vocal bishops and pro-life activists."
But she does have a point. Those like her have created their own Church, one that blows with the winds of change and popular opinion. It is no surprise that a member of the most liberal family in America should choose to make her points by citing polls of her like-minded "Catholics." Now polling is no way to run a country and it is most certainly not the way the Church operates. She may have missed this in Catechism class, but the Church derives its authority from its founder, Jesus Christ, who guaranteed that the Gates of Hell — let alone opinion polls — would not prevail against her.
Speaking on behalf of her fellows in heresy and citing their views on homosexuality and condom use, Townsend writes: "American Catholics do not want to be told by the Vatican how to think." No, one would assume they'd rather get their opinions right from the New York Times. She goes on to claim, "Meanwhile, against all scientific evidence and protestations from clergy on the ground, the pope claims that condoms aggravate the spread of AIDS." I don't know if a Kennedy recognizes a Harvard researcher's findings as "scientific evidence," but according to Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies:
The pope is correct. Or to put it a better way, the best evidence we have supports the pope's comments . . . I also noticed that the pope said 'monogamy' was the best single answer to African AIDS, rather than 'abstinence.' The best and latest empirical evidence indeed shows that reduction in multiple and concurrent sexual partners is the most important single behavior change associated with reduction in HIV-infection rates.
Then, in an incredible burst of unintentional self-incrimination, she writes that the Church cannot "acknowledge that the self-satisfied edifice constructed around sex and gender has been grievously wrong." Speaking for myself, I cannot imagine a more accurate indictment of the Democratic Party.
Near the end of her heretical piece, Ms. Townsend accuses the Vatican of employing "rhetoric" when speaking of love and truth. Now, I'm forced by her writing style to assume that she attaches the modern definition to the word, as to mean "insincere" or "pretentious." But were she employing the word as applied to Plato, Aristotle or St. Augustine, she and her true spiritual leader, Barack Obama, might learn something about truth and love as so beautifully laid out by Pope Benedict in his latest encyclical:
Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love. It falls prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word "love" is abused and distorted, to the point where it comes to mean the opposite. Truth frees charity from the constraints of an emotionalism that deprives it of relational and social content, and of a fideism that deprives it of human and universal breathing-space. In the truth, charity reflects the personal yet public dimension of faith in the God of the Bible, who is both Agape and Logos: Charity and Truth, Love and Word.
This is an absolutely beautiful explanation of what faithful Catholics believe.
If the Kennedys and their ilk are heretics as Ms. Fabrizio claims, why hasn’t the Roman Church made this clear by excommunicating them? Apparently it hasn’t occurred to Ms. Fabrizio that her church is giving the Kennedys and other rich and powerful Romans a form of indulgence so as to make use of their prestige and political power, just another example of its long history of corruption by worldly power.
Ms. Fabrizio’s criticism of John Kennedy’s remarks is particularly obtuse and can be construed as a desire to have American officials be vassals of her Roman master. The president of the United States should be accountable to and govern for the benefit of the American people, not the foreign potentate who rules the Vatican. If Ms. Fabrizio thinks otherwise, she is certainly not conservative in the American sense and should move to a country that accepts this form of foreign domination.
John Kennedy’s remarks were an assurance to the American people that he would govern on their behalf and not be swayed by pressure from the Roman Church. This was used to belittle the legitimate understanding of the nature of the Roman Church, a disparagement which has not stood the test of time now that Roman bishops are openly threatening American officials with religious sanctions if they don’t toe the Vatican’s line. American governance should be by the people, of the people, and for the people, not by Rome, of Rome, and for Rome.
Ark,
There are many who wish that Rome would take action against those who are engaged in public scandal (that is, encouraging others toward sin) such as the Kennedys, Nancy Pelosi and other Catholics in positions of authority. But the aim of Mother Church is to call back and correct the members of the flock who have gone astray, as did her Founder who "came to call sinners."
There is NOTHING in the teaching of Jesus Christ that would preclude any of His followers from being good Americans. The founding of this country is/was proof of that!
Lisa Fabrizio
Ms. Fabrizio,
Of course there is nothing in the teachings of Christ that would preclude His followers from being good Americans. America was founded by Christians. However, the important point is that it was founded by Protestant Christians, not Romans. You are dodging the issue by using the term good Christian rather than good Roman and making it necessary to parse such terms as “good American” and “good Christian.”
The founding of this country was a Protestant achievement. The Roman societies established in the New World have ranged from marginally successful (Quebec) to basket case (Haiti), with most being corrupt backwaters (most of Latin America). As a fellow who used to write the Wall Street Journal’s “The Americas” feature once pointed out, Latin America is backwards because it missed the Protestant Reformation and the Industrial Revolution. It should be needless to say that the Roman Church did everything in its power to prevent the Protestant Reformation from succeeding and that if it had accomplished this there would be no United States.
While there is nothing in the teaching of Christ that precludes Christians from being good Americans, there is plenty in the dogma of the Roman Church that does.
For starters, good Americans understand and practice the religious tolerance that keeps our society free of sectarian discord. On this point the more devout the Roman the less he is a good American, because the Bishop of Rome believes he holds a monopoly on Christianity based on the dogma of apostolic succession and thus is the head of the “True Faith.” Devout Romans wholeheartedly believe this bigotry and thus deny the legitimacy of other Christian sects and hold their fellow Americans in contempt. It is certainly within the realm of the possible that once there is a critical mass of Romans in the electorate the First Amendment will be suspended and the Roman Church made the official American religion. The anti-abortion movement has a strong element of this in that it seeks to incorporate Roman dogma into American law, thus subjecting free Americans to the authority of Rome. It should be needless to say that this violates the spirit of the First Amendment and that other efforts to force religious dogma on all Americans have been disasters. See Prohibition (a product of the Abolitionist–Progressive Left, best seen as a heresy).
Good Americans jealously guard the American sovereignty that was purchased at great sacrifice; they take a dim view of the threat of religious sanctions to put us under a foreign yoke. Good Romans believe that American sovereignty should be abdicated to a European monarch, a reversal of the American Revolution. George III was the head of the Church of England as well as monarch of Britain (itself the result of a failure in Roman statecraft).
Good Americans also cherish the ideals of the Founders, who eschewed collectivism as a “wicked” (James Madison’s words in Federalist 10) equal-division-of-wealth scheme. The Roman Church not only advocates collectivist socialism within the United States but also an international version which would tax hard-pressed middle income Americans to give to corrupt, backwards countries in the Third World, including Latin America. While the Bishop of Rome has foregone the National Socialism of his Hitlerjugend youth, he certainly hasn’t foregone socialism, which, at bottom, is exploitative and objectifies people.
I would also point out that the Roman Church isn’t free of the Religious Left heresy that is rendering the so-called mainline Protestant sects irrelevant.
Good Americans want to keep the fundamental American culture that produced our form of constitutional self-government. While they understand that a certain level of immigration is necessary to prevent stagnation, they also understand that full open borders will lead to ethnic and cultural dilution that will undermine constitutional democracy. I would point out that at least one prince of the Roman Church, a cardinal in Los Angeles, as well as many of its clergy, support the invasion of illegals we are suffering in a form of Jean Raspail’s “Camp of the Saints” in slow motion. Doubtess all these Roman clergy, like their Protestant Religious Left allies, believe that they are good Christians, nevermind that in his epistle to the Romans St. Paul said that Christians should obey the civil authorities.
Good Americans understand that we live in a dangerous world in which military preparedness is necessary to keep the peace. Roman clergy (nuns in this case) have been convicted of interfering with our national defense by entering restricted missile sites. They doubtless believe they are good Christians and good Romans.
Good Americans are loyal Americans and don’t support the enemy in wartime, as the Berrigan brothers and other Roman clergy did. They Berrigan brothers and their ilk doubtless believed they were good Christians and good Romans.
I would also point out that there is NOTHING in the teachings of Christ that say Christians should put up with Roman clergy sodomizing their young adolescent sons, but this went on for decades in a country that allegedly has a rule of law. Good Americans believe in equal justice under the law for all, not the immunity of clergy from secular law of the Dark Ages.
Ark Ashamed of Bill
Lisa – me thinks you should spend some time reading the words of the Master and see what He really says. You wrote a fascinating article.
Ark: you wrote a good article. I too have a fascination with the history of the Roman Church. Christ had some very serious statements about the corruption of the religious people/leaders. Being a good believer (in the NT sense) is very much different than being a good Roman.
Using the rules of language would lead a learner into a very surprising revelation about religious corruption. The underpinnings of Rome are not at all Biblical.
I have in my possession a news article from the late 1800's or the early 1900's which makes comparisions of Nations which were established by followers of the Reformation and by Nations established by Rome.
Sunday in an informal and sometimes empassioned discussion a statement was made, "Biblical faith and believers in Jesus Christ are the only faith people who do not kill their spiritual antagonists." I live in a community of faith people who have been killed and harrassed by organized religions.
At present, a follower of Jesus Christ can be a vocal and good American. But our allegiance is to the Supremacy of Jesus Christ. When a human government opposes the Sovereignty of God's commands, then we as His followers are required to stand against it. Romans 13 and I Timothy are only part of the directives for walking in submission while under a human government.
Good stuff. Thanks
Dale