Can Catholic Politicians Please Act Like Catholics?

• 3 years ago

By CHRISTOPHER MANION

When the Satanic Temple announced its opposition to the Texas heartbeat law, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone had a ready reply.

“The Texas heartbeat law is being challenged by the Satanic Temple, precisely on the grounds that it is a violation of their religious liberty,” Cordileone told EWTN’s Pro-Life Weekly. “They need to have access to abortion to carry out their rituals. It’s a satanic practice.”

His Excellency wasn’t kidding. Last month, Lucien Greaves, founder of the Satanic Temple, told Fox7 in Austin that the group’s “abortion ritual is an expression of that belief and the heartbeat bill violates their religious freedom.” The group “recently sent a letter to the FDA asking the church to be allowed access to the abortion-inducing drug for its rituals,” Fox 7 added.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, an ardent supporter of abortion who describes herself as a Catholic grandmother, resides in Cordileone’s San Francisco Archdiocese. The archbishop has repeatedly and publicly condemned her abortion advocacy, and has asked Catholics nationwide to pray for her conversion.

Bishops and pro-abortion Catholic pols in their dioceses: The problem infects dozens of dioceses throughout the country. Next month, America’s bishops will meet at their annual conference in Baltimore to discuss document on the Eucharist. They might or might not address specifically the case of “devout Catholic” Joe Biden, the most radical pro-abortion president in the nation’s history. They might even explain to the faithful why the unworthy reception of the Eucharist inflicts damage on both the individual sinner and the broader Church community.

Will the document bolster our shepherds’ spirits with regard to Canon 915 and its application in flagrant situations where public scandal is indeed manifest regarding public officials who obstinately persevere in advocating grave evil?

Well, it might, and it might not.

As the USCCB meeting approaches, elections will be held in Virginia on November 2 to choose a new governor, Senate, and House of Delegates. And that brings up a problem that Virginia’s bishops share with their fellow shepherd in San Francisco.

Virginia Democrats have nominated former Governor Terry McAuliffe to run against Republican Glenn Youngkin. McAuliffe describes himself as “a very strong Catholic” — why, he attended Catholic schools for 19 years, from grade school through law school!

But McAuliffe is a radical, perhaps even rabid, supporter of abortion. So is our current governor, Ralph Northam. A trained pediatrician, Northam advocates allowing children born alive after botched abortions to die if the child’s mother and her abortionist agree to kill it. McAuliffe agrees. In televised debates with Youngkin, he has promised to provide a “brick wall” to block any and all attempts to limit abortions in the Commonwealth.

Conflicting Candidates,

Conflicting Headlines

“As McAuliffe Evangelizes for Abortion and Catholic Bishops Are Silent, What Will History (And God) Say?” — Association of Mature American Citizens.

“Catholic Bishops Rebuke Self-Described ‘Strong Catholic’ Terry McAuliffe” — Washington Free Beacon.

• + + The Virginia governor’s race has reached a rare intensity. As a former governor, McAuliffe enjoys wide name recognition. Moreover, the state that has been blue since George W. Bush’s “Big Government Conservatism” brought hundreds of thousands of government bureaucrats, contractors, and assorted grifters to Washington’s Northern Virginia suburbs, all of which are located in the Arlington Diocese.
  
  Forty-four years ago, Bishop Thomas Welsh, the first bishop of the diocese (it was founded in 1974), told this writer that the diocese was “the bedroom of Washington.” And since then, the population has exploded as the size of the federal government has.
  
  And those suburbs are key. Early on, polls showed McAuliffe with a wide lead over Republican Glenn Youngkin, a successful businessman. But recent events have caused the campaign to focus on Loudoun County, which comprises a large area including and west of Dulles International Airport.
  
  Forty-four years ago, Loudoun County was primarily agricultural. In the years since, Washington’s growth has made it one of the wealthiest counties in the United States.
  
  And given its provenance, that prosperous population is predominantly liberal, owing to its dependence both directly and indirectly on federal government spending.
  
  McAuliffe was on a roll — but then a scandal erupted in the Loudoun County School Board. School officials covered up a rape in a public school girl’s bathroom of ninth-grade girl by a boy wearing a skirt. The incident took place on May 28. The boy was also linked to a later “sexual battery and abduction” case at another high school. When the ninth-grade girl’s father tried to speak at a school board meeting, the board members had him arrested and he was dragged from the hearing room.

Can Catholic Bishops

Please Act Like Bishops?

The public school issue has vaulted the Youngkin campaign to a dead heat with McAuliffe. Democrats are panicked. McAuliffe’s ads flood Amazon videos, radio, and D.C. television stations. Democrats even produced a video featuring Kamala Harris endorsing McAuliffe that will play in hundreds of black churches throughout the Commonwealth.

Meanwhile, our Catholic bishops are, shall we say, restrained.

Given the Loudoun County “gender-based” school rape scandal, the door is wide open for Arlington Bishop Burbidge to come to the defense of the family by resonating Catholic teaching regarding the primacy of parents in the education of their children, loudly and in public.

Right now, no prelate is better equipped to do so than Bishop Burbidge.

Just two months ago he issued a profound pastoral document on the issue of “gender ideology.” It carefully explains the fundamentals of natural law and Catholic teaching, focusing on the principles articulated by Humanae Vitae.

In the face of rampant sexual deviancy advocated by radical Democrats in Northern Virginia, Bishop Burbidge was blunt: “In responding to this question [of gender] justly and charitably, one cannot deny or obscure the truth of our created nature and human sexuality. Indeed, charity always requires the clear presentation of the truth.”

Primary And Principal

Educators

Virginia Democrats have not only forced gender ideology into government school curricula, they have embraced the maxim established by John Swett, California’s anti-Catholic education czar in the 1860s. “Children belong to the state, not to the parents,” Swett famously declared. For that, he is still honored by school unions nationwide.

And Terry McAuliffe agrees. “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” he said in a debate on September 28. Youngkin responded by defending families: “I believe parents should be in charge of their kids’ education.”

“Yes” on gender ideology, “No” on parents’ rights. Why doesn’t Bishop Burbidge clear the air and condemn these twin evils publicly?

The diocese “does not endorse candidates,” his spokesman says, referring us to the USCCB document, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship. But that document apparently permits Archbishop Cordileone to condemn Nancy Pelosi’s abortion extremism. And many bishops often go further, endorsing Joe Biden’s policies on everything from illegal aliens and budgets to vaccinations, gun control, and Black Lives Matter.

Bishop Burbidge’s spokesman refers to a transitory USCCB document; but the bishop can draw on the abiding authority of the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Christian Education, which states magisterially:

“Since parents have given children their life, they are bound by the most serious obligation to educate their offspring and therefore must be recognized as the primary and principal educators.”

The teaching of the Catholic Church is clear: Parents are the first and primary educators of their children. Gender ideology is a clear and present danger to the human person and to society.

Well, when a pro-abortion, pro-public-perversion Catholic is running for governor, and he insists that the state, not parents, should be in charge of the education of children, what’s a bishop to do?

The question abides, if the USCCB reduces public moral conversation to banal pleasantries, when can bishops properly address horrendous acts on the part of civil officials? If Arlington’s bishop can’t challenge McAuliffe when McAuliffe attacks the fundamental rights of parents to be the first educators and the prime educators of their children, can Cordileone challenge Pelosi on what the USCCB has called its “preeminent issue”?

The cloud of the scandals has not yet dispersed. Policies, procedures, protocols, and palaver have replaced in fact what our bishops have repeatedly promised in theory: accountability, transparency, and credibility.

In the face of a manifest moral crisis, bishops blather on about synodality.

God help us.