Should Catholic Bishops Go On Strike?
By CHRISTOPHER MANION
Historian Peter Brown finds many occasions in the late Roman Empire illustrating the truism that power comes with the bestowing of gifts. In the late fourth century, with these gifts “both the state and the clerisy [were] able and willing to celebrate hubristically their superiority and generosity,” he writes.
Of course, Catholics don’t need Lord Acton to know that power corrupts: We knew that already from John’s First Letter and from Augustine’s City of God. What Lord Acton added was the dimension of absolute power, which “corrupts absolutely,” he wrote. “Great men are almost always bad men…[and] despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.”
Sixty years ago, there were few men who would call Lyndon Johnson a virtuous man — for reasons his biographer Robert Cairo amply documents in painstaking detail.
And yet, LBJ, one of the most powerful men of his generation, did not have within his grasp anything close to the despotic power that the federal government has today. True enough, Johnson’s “Great Society” programs laid the groundwork for what today amounts to a “turnkey tyranny,” but even LBJ threw down his cards and went home when the cards were finally face-up on the table.
“Catholic Joe” won’t.
Since 1965, the amount of federal aid that Catholic institutions receive has risen from the meager to a mountain — multimillions per year. Our bishops have cheerfully welcomed and applauded this funding and hired lawyers, lobbyists, and outside firms to beg for more every year (the USCCB refuses to provide the financial details of those relationships, however).
And yet, Lord Acton’s principle and those of John and Augustine have been proven true: As government power has become more despotic, its morality has become more corrupted.
Who fifty years ago could have expected that the federal government would even dream of defending sodomy, the mutilation of children both in the womb and in childhood, the distribution of obscenity in grade school classrooms, and the destruction of the family?
And that the taxpayer would be forced to pay for it?
That is power incarnate.
And, per Acton’s rule, every passing day sees the government’s moral corruption becomes more absolute.
Curiously, while the faithful have watched these perversions with horror, our bishops have been careful not to offend their benefactors. Indeed, they continue to ask for even more government money. Meanwhile, they will not condemn the pro-abortion Catholics in the White House and on Capitol Hill.
That might cause trouble.
It might be cause-and-effect, it might be pure chance. But they have never objected to federal funding of contraception as “family planning” — quite the opposite: They have put Humanae Vitae in the bottom drawer while lobbying for full funding of those programs, even when they include funding for abortion.
The welfare programs they support have names promising progress, but in reality they foment the destruction of the family and perpetuate poverty and crime, and the pleas for more federal support just keep on coming.
There must be a better way.
In fact, there is.
Our bishops should go on strike.
“A Change We Can Believe In”
And now is the time.
Catholic teaching has honored the rights of the working man for centuries. Specifically, Catholic labor law recommendations have always recognized the dignity of the worker and the dignity of work. Adam and Eve were tasked with the tending of the garden long before they were expelled. And the various teachings of the Church emphasize the importance of the virtue of work and the desirability of a virtuous employer.
Bishops should tell Catholic institutions receiving federal funding to say, “No More! We’re not for sale!”
Our shepherds have wonderful Catholic allies, colleagues, and models in the Third World to show them the way.
For years, even decades, Catholic bishops in those countries have begged the American bishops to oppose the federal government’s inhuman requirements for its aid programs. Impoverished countries must include “family planning” — that is, contraception and abortion — in their public health system, or they won’t get any programs devoted to clean water, hygiene, first aid, and agricultural development. Brave Third World bishops have asked their American brothers to support them, to no avail.
“But our bishops are afraid to,” we hear. You think their African brothers aren’t? They’re being kidnapped, their faithful are slaughtered, their churches are torched — often when filled with stalwart souls about to be martyred.
And our bishops are “afraid”?
Bishop Marcellin Yao Kouadio isn’t afraid. He’s president of the Ivory Coast bishops’ conference, and on June 4, he blasted the government for its corruption and its support of homosexual rights.
When Kamala Harris showed up in Ghana last April to schmooze its corrupt president, she symbolized not only American taxpayer money but Joe Biden’s moral rot. He put Harris in charge of shoving his satanic agenda down the throats of pro-family Africans throughout the continent by paying off their corrupt politicians.
But “Catholic Joe” hadn’t reckoned on Bishop Matthew Gyamfi, president of Ghana’s Catholic Bishops’ Conference. Bishop Gyamfi told Ghana’s president to throw Biden’s bribes back in Kamala’s face. When asked whether he would accept U.S. aid funding if the Biden agenda were attached, the bishop firmly replied, “I will not.”
“Dear Excellencies: Who Are You Again?”
Last week Joe Biden bragged that he’s “the most ‘pro-Union’ president in American history.” He’s already given tens of billions — taxpayer funding — to unions, and has shown his solidarity with the powerful school unions as well.
In Catholic Joe, our pro-union bishops will have a strong ally!
Admittedly, he’ll be blind-sided at first. He’ll need some persuading. After all, they’ve been so dependable for so long, uttering nary a discouraging word about Joe’s moral mutilation of everything sacred. Joe knows his Machiavelli — he’d rather be feared than loved — he’s made the bishops afraid as Hell.
But Joe considers himself a master negotiator. Those African dictators might have trembled when the bishops roared, but not Joe! He’s got a few cards on the table that he hasn’t turned up yet.
Biden chaired the Senate Committee on the Judiciary when Pat Leahy (D., Vt.), Joe’s successor as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told a reporter that “I’ve always thought that those bishops and archbishops who for decades hid pederasts and are now being protected by the Vatican should be indicted.”
And Leahy is still the committee’s senior Democrat.
Was he blowing smoke?
And Joe could mention the new investigations conducted by Democrat Attorneys General in Illinois and Maryland.
And there’s always Merrick Garland, the country’s most anti-Catholic attorney general in 200 years, whose goons are already spying on Catholics throughout the country.
Garland just let Joe’s son Hunter off on a felony charge. Do our bishops think he’ll give them equal justice?
Constantine embraced the Cross and defeated Maxentius on the Milvian Bridge. An unarmed Pope Leo the Great confronted Atilla the Hun outside of Rome and the barbarian fled for his life.
As Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne taught us all a century ago, the best defense is good offense. The American Church today confronts the most immoral and despotic president in history. Should they keep taking Caesar’s coin? Or can they emulate the bravery of their African brothers and throw it back in his fact?
Bishop Gyamfi’s words should be their inspiration: “If you sell your birthright, if you sell your culture, that tradition, if you sell who you are for money, then you get the money — who are you again?”
STRIKE!
