There is a war
going on in the Church, and the Al Smith Obama dinner is NOT the issue.
Oh boy oh boy oh
boy. Michael Voris has painted a great big target on himself now. This is potentially the most inflammatory Vortex ever. In addition to the “third-rail
issues” he mentions, Voris takes on Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, along
with the Establishment Church that seeks to squelch the orthodox faithful who
continue to stand up for their rights to liturgy-by-the-rubics, faithful
teaching in Catholic schools, faithful practice of medicine in Catholic
hospitals…and on and on…and smacks him down. Voris then takes advantage of the
context to deliver a scathing indictment of "the Establishment
Church", and lets them know in no uncertain terms that there is an army
of faithful Catholics just waiting for "marching
orders" – if our leaders would only lead.
Has Bill Donohue
has never been "taken on" in public like this?! How will he respond? A
correspondent who has tracked the responses to the Al Smith dinner fiasco says
that mainstream Catholic sites have never
mentioned Michael Voris or ChurchMilitant.TV as "one of many who have
expressed concern over the dinner invitation." Bloggers have, but no one
else. Sure, "petitions" are mentioned, but never who is behind them.
It will be
interesting to see how or even whether Donohue responds. I hope Donohue does
respond, and that he takes his response everywhere, including Raymond Arroyo's
"World Over Live" to make sure that everyone is aware of
Michael Voris and the “danger” he poses for the Catholic Church. It’s been my
experience that the Peasant Catholics Michael Voris is talking about have just
been beaten down so much that they’ve given up fighting in their parishes for
more orthodox practices and a return to the faith where liturgy committees and
Religious Education directors have gone astray. But maybe, just maybe, the Army is awakening.
This is a long Vortex, but I hope you’ll watch
it. You can also read the script below. I’ll have my own comments on the issues
Voris brings up in a separate post.
For a list more Vortex posts on this blog, click on the
“Vortex Posts” tab above.
Here’s the script:
If nothing else, the controversy over the Obama dinner
scandal is certainly very revealing.
It’s revealing the division that has existed in the
Church in America for years now. And we
say, good – bring it on.
We aren’t fans of division. But we ARE fans of calling out the already
existing division so it can be brought to an end. We want unity. But that unity must be a legitimate unity,
not just a façade. And that’s been the
case in the Church in America for decades now – the façade of unity promoted by
the establishment elites in the Church.
Those elites include not only some members of the
hierarchy and clergy, but largely various lay people whose careers and reputations
and prestige are totally dependent on the establishment and therefore they come
out swinging whenever OTHER Catholics start rocking the boat.
Call them the Catholic-elites. And you see and hear them everywhere. They appear on and run TV, radio, newspapers
and many magazines. They write books,
articles, and issue papers. They cash in on the officially approved Catholic
speaking circuit.
And much of what they say about attacks against the
faith from OUTSIDE the Church is spot on and to be applauded and supported.
But it’s this default reaction of attacking any Catholic
who points out that the emperor has no clothes…it’s here where another side to
their personalities is revealed.
Case in point: Bill Donohue of the Catholic League. A worthy spokesman for defending the faith in
the trenches of the Culture War, he seems totally unaware of the Culture War
within the Church between the establishment camp and Catholics who are
disturbed deeply about the actions and choices of SOME leaders with regard to
giving scandal.
Last week Mr. Donohue appeared on the Lou Dobbs show on
Fox News and absolutely ripped honest Catholics who are concerned over the
scandal of Obama having been invited by Cardinal Dolan to the Al Smith dinner
in New York.
At the beginning of the interview after Dobbs has asked
him about these concerned Catholics, Donohue goes off on a tirade. Take a
listen.
(embedded video clip 1:55 – 2:10)
What does ANY of that have to do with the central
issue? To our knowledge, no one has
implied, suggested or even thought that Cardinal Dolan has been bought off. So,
we’re not even sure what Donohue is ranting on about there. It’s worth
wondering just exactly what notes and talking points he and Cardinal Dolan went
over on their pre-interview phone call.
(
embedded video clip -
2:12 – 2:27)
Sadly, as you can hear for yourself, Donohue’s lame
defense now takes on the air of being nasty.
To affix a disparaging label to thousands of his fellow Catholics across
the country who are deeply wounded and hurt by the Cardinal’s decision, not to
mention confused, is to stoop to a level of liberal name calling.
Mr. Donohue should apologize for that.
He seems to be wanting to paint this picture that
because Cardinal Dolan is a principled man, that to even question and voice
concerns of one his prudential (not infallible) decisions is worthy of being smeared by the
establishment as members of the “piety police”.
Frankly, a higher level of discourse is needed here – not kitschy little
phrases you are accustomed to hearing fall from the lips of Hilary Clinton and
Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.
(
embedded video clip - 2:28 – 2:38)
What a patently absurd comment, seriously. And notice, Mr. Donohue, we are not saying
YOU are patently absurd, but your POSITION, your comment.
What do you mean, “Give the man a chance, he hasn’t even
had the chance to put out his own statement yet”? First of all, yes he has. He has a facebook page he writes on almost
daily.
But more importantly, you have missed the point
entirely. The Cardinal inviting Obama IS
THE STATEMENT. What else does he need to
say? It is the FACT of the invitation,
that IS a statement that people are appalled about and reacting to.
Are we supposed to be sitting around and waiting for
some kind of official explanation through Twitter for why this really ISN’T
SCANDOLOUS! And just when will that be
coming? And what exactly would it say?
The archdiocesan communications director Joe Zwilling
already gave an official comment in the name of the Cardinal when he got
grilled by the New York media and said it’s just a night off for some jokes and
good times.
Sorry, Mr. Donohue; considering the glaring fact of the
INVITATION ITSELF, then Zwilling’s rather limp defense of it as well as the
long opinion piece on the Archdiocese website by a high-ranking diocesan
official – taking all these together – a statement HAS BEEN made, and it’s
quite clear, thank you very much.
And as for the comment about faithful Catholics who
oppose this scandal being “holier than the pope”, you can cut the condescension.
It has no place among faithful Catholics talking openly about a very sad
situation.
Frankly, who are you to establish, in the realm of
Catholicism, what qualifies as “more holy than the pope”?
By hurling that stupid statement around – ANOTHER demeaning comment – you imply that the correct level of response should be to
simply sit down and shut up and keep our opinions to ourselves, and any other
response is somehow beneath dignity. Our
Blessed Lord didn’t sit down and shut up when he saw scandal; he confronted it,
especially scandal within the religious establishment – ESPECIALLY that kind of scandal.
(
embedded video clip -
2:38 -2:48)
Those two examples are patently dumb. If you recall,
when the Holy Father met with Nancy Pelosi, he would NOT ALLOW a photo op with
her. Remember that? There was a great controversy surrounding
that. We’ve even attached a link to the news story from back then. NO PHOTO OP of the Holy Father
meeting with a great enemy of the faith, Mr. Donohue. NO PHOTO OP!
Dumb example.
And what’s more, the Pope used the opportunity to chide
Pelosi for her positions; he gave her a Papal smackdown. He didn’t break bread,
pour her a scotch, fire up a stogie and babble on about joy. And he did not give her her much coveted
PHOTO OP!
As for the Pope meeting Obama, the Pope is the political
head of the Vatican City-State and meets political leaders as part of his
duties. That’s a ridiculous example to throw out there.
(
embedded video clip -
2:53 – 3:05)
At this point, Donohue’s up-volume blustering has gone
from poorly reasoned to insulting.
To speak about the Church not wanting to be in a ghetto
and to engage the world, and then use the AL Smith dinner as an example of that, is stupid. Exactly HOW is the world
being engaged with the aim of changing it by eating rubber chicken with your
enemy?
Does Donohue imagine that somehow Obama will stride into
the Waldorf Astoria and see this marvelous affair and repent? Obama was already at this dinner four years
ago – and you see how much good THAT did for the Church.
And then his sneering, dismissive “they have their
little petitions, don’t they” comment…
On behalf of the nearly 13,000 faithful
Catholics (and counting) who have read and signed those “little petitions”, Mr. Donohue, just
who in the blazes do you think you are?
You deliver the same level of respect that we would get at a Planned
Parenthood conference.
Your positions in defense of this invitation are
intellectually weak, ad hominem, contradictory of the facts, and downright
uncharitable and insulting, and your blustery delivery doesn’t make them any
more true.
Ah, but the underlying attitude beneath them is
indicative of something that common everyday faithful Catholics have long
suspected and have confirmed time and time again: That just as with any large
bureaucracy and the establishment that supports it, there are people who are
members of the “in-crowd” and those on the outs – you know, the "piety police" with their "little petitions" who are "holier than the Pope".
You may enjoy basking in the glory of having such high
rank and entrée that you can talk to the Cardinal “just this morning on the
phone”, but 99 percent of Catholics don’t enjoy that privilege.
We just need to be content to sit here quietly and look
at boneheaded moves like inviting an avowed enemy of the Church to a GREAT BIG
PHOTO OP complete with not just the Cardinal Archbishop of New York, but the
same man who is the LEADER OF ALL THE CATHOLIC BISHOPS IN THE UNITED STATES – the
same group SUING him.
But see, the daily experience of Catholics on the ground,
Mr. Donohue, is that they don’t get to talk to their bishops. They don’t get to
hop on the phone with them. They don’t get their letters answered. Their emails
go ignored or responded to with an automatic reply.
The rare occasion they do get something back, it’s
generally dismissive and condescending or patronizing or comes from some
staffer at the local chancery.
And what is it they want to sit and talk with their
bishops – their shepherds, their fathers – about, Mr. Donohue? They want to talk about the crazy nun in the
local RCIA program saying Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead. They want to
try and understand why the bishop has appointed and is allowing a flagrantly homosexual
priest to run the parish and deliver very suspect homilies. They want to understand why the local Catholic school has ceased passing on the faith. And WHY do they want to talk with their
spiritual fathers about all these topics and more, Mr. Donohue?
Because they are reeling from the fact that no one in
their family goes to Mass anymore. That
their children are living in sin, that their siblings are practicing
contraception, that their grandchildren don’t believe in the Real Presence,
that their parents are divorced or cheating on each other and support abortion
or same-sex marriage, that the culture at large – and the Culture of Death
specifically – has consumed the people they love and they don’t see one blessed
finger of any consequence being lifted by the establishment church and those
who glide comfortably through those halls of power, to rescue their loved ones.
All they see is confusion and mixed messages and
politics and money-grubbing and good traditional Catholics – clergy included –
being marginalized…and abuse after abuse after abuse going on at Sunday Mass…and
the devotional life withering on the vine and parishes being closed by the
hundreds…and religious orders withering up and vocations disappearing…and
confessions a thing of the past... and Catholic marriages and baptisms
plummeting to record lows.
In short, they see the reality for what it is, Mr.
Donohue. They see the souls of their
loved ones being lost and a Church that should be bold and aggressive in
preventing that, dying on the vine.
That’s REALLY what’s going on here with the Al Smith
dinner – the whole bloody back drop to this sad affair. The Obama invite is really a flashpoint for
the much larger unspoken battle in the Church – the battle not between
Modernists and Orthodox, but between the Catholic-elites and the Peasant
Catholics that the power structures want nothing to do with.
And why do they want nothing to do with them? Because to engage them -the peasant Catholics - would force the elites
to be accountable and they know it. They would have to try and render an
explanation for all the filth and corruption and lack of charity that has so
permeated the halls of the establishment Church.
The leaders would have to explain their decisions to
allow the madness of errant theology being preached, of the spiritual insanity
that emanates from pulpits and Catholic classrooms and religious ed offices.
They would have to explain why the Church has
essentially collapsed on their watch.
And they don’t want to do that because they know there IS NO
explanation. And moreover, they have NO
plan to fix it because they are unwilling to understand the full scope of the
devastation, because it convicts THEM.
So they are content to send out attack dogs – to release
the hounds on faithful Catholics, rather than sit down and talk with them.
And most importantly what they have failed to grasp
utterly is this: Peasant Catholics – which includes…absolutely includes…many solid priests and seminarians – who up to
this point have been dismissed, smeared, discarded, ignored, mocked, belittled,
and dumped on, are willing to forgive everything and support their bishops at a
moment’s notice – in a heartbeat – if the bishops would rally to the cause of the Church and stop pandering to the culture.
You engage the world by fighting the evil in it…not by
having dinner with it.
So how about it, Establishment Church? There’s a whole army out here which has been
on the side of the Church and never left it.
We’re here ready and waiting.
Stop treating us peasant Catholics like we’re the enemy, and start
giving us our marching orders.
Please sign the petition respectfully asking Cardinal Dolan to withdraw
the invitation to Obama.
