By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
With all due respect, it is time that the bishops took action.
Sr. Carol Keehan’s latest outrage of scandalous disobedience was to invite President Obama to address the national gathering of the U.S. Catholic Health Association (CHA) in June where he proceeded to thank the organization, crediting it with the role of those without whose help he could not have passed Obamacare. Sr. Keehan is the president of CHA.
The increasingly confusing Catholic landscape is making the truth of Catholic faith and morals ever more difficult for the average Catholic to grasp in the context of what Benedict XVI called a “catechetical emergency.”
Where the bishops can act to remove that fog of war in the battle for winning souls, they should act. The math is simple: Either remove Sr. Keehan from leadership of the CHA or act publicly to remove the title “Catholic” from the organization.
We must support our bishops by prayer and obedience. We must act in tandem with them to spread and nurture the Catholic faith for the salvation of souls. But at the same time we are, all of us, bishops and flock, subject to the faith and morals of the Church of Christ, and we must help and correct each other whenever that becomes necessary in order to obey the will of God.
There are many things the Catholic bishops have no earthly power to do anything about, except to pray. At the same time, there are always situations where no one has the power to act but the bishops together on the national level, or an individual bishop in his own diocese.
Abortion is not health care; it is murder.
Sr. Carol Keehan has openly defied Jesus Christ by her encouraging and enabling behavior toward the “Affordable” Healthcare Plan, including her acceptance in 2013 of the administration’s final “accommodation” on compliance with the HHS mandate rule. That mandate orders health plans to include contraception; some of the methods covered are abortifacient. The bishops and evangelicals opposed accepting that “accommodation,” in part because it does not cover “for-profit” employers. See article by Ben Johnson in LifeSiteNews, July 9, 2013.
Even the title of the plan itself has turned out to be a specious lie as so many people are now bankrupted by the program or turned away from any source of health insurance altogether. Above every other consideration, the plan is not about health care as long as it approves or pays for any type of abortifacients.
Those issues aside, Sr. Keehan’s latest escapade of inviting President Obama to address the organization in a national high-profile gathering is a purely gratuitous and simply unnecessary scandal of complete disobedience.
For the bishops to allow her to continue in her post while the bishops themselves are attempting to rightly teach the opposite of Obamacare, in accord with Humanae Vitae, that every use of contraception is a moral evil, confuses and divides Catholics. Many of the faithful are already struggling to do what is right or need constant support of right teaching in order to reject what is sinful with the help of grace.
For too long the Catholic faith has been for too many a useless personal piety without any consequent public witness through faith in action. Pastors in the trenches are fighting the daily battle for souls and they need and deserve the support of our bishops.
Continued episcopal tolerance for public posing as Catholic by those who most likely are unable to receive Communion in a state of grace because of their support for abortion, contraception, the HHS mandate, or the redefinition of marriage, among other evils, undermines parish life and priestly ministry.
That is why I am asking and praying for our bishops to act because it is their God-given mandate. There is no one else who can do so. It is never too late to do the right thing.
When it comes to life in the Church at the local level, the pastor who insists on consistent obedience in all matters Catholic is at a distinct disadvantage. For many years now Catholics have commonly shopped around to get sacraments on the least demanding of terms. It is very easy to find a parish where expectations and standards are kept low to keep the numbers in the pews stable. For many the priest has become a sort of a sacramental “automat”: It is OK if he dispenses Communion at the local “eucharistic drive-through” on Sundays when wanted, but God help him if he dares to act like a Father and proceeds to dispense any actual advice or counsel.
The priest today who insists on consistent obedience, whether in the manner of praying the liturgies of the Church or by preaching consistently on all the moral issues of the Church, risks “punishment” through rejection by the laity who use gossip and email to foment rebellion and encourage others to join them in boycotting the parish.
The widespread disobedience so characteristic of Catholic life that has threaded its way through our recent history, from the implementation of Vatican II in violation of the documents and the rejection of the moral teaching in Humanae Vitae, has been allowed to fester. The fact that 60 percent of Catholics reportedly support the Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage is just more evidence that disobedience has been allowed to snowball in the absence of strong episcopal leadership.
Disobedience is rife in the Church, beginning with the way that Catholics pray the Mass with a selective obedience to the rubrics and receive Communion in the hand standing, without even so much as a movement of the body in worship of Christ truly Present. We have prayed disobediently for so many years that disobeying the moral teachings of the Church has become merely an extension of the typical experience at the “every-parish” Sunday Mass.
Dear U.S. Catholic bishops: Please act now. Every minute that passes in darkness and confusion unenlightened by Catholic truth leaves more souls in eternal jeopardy.
Thank you for reading, and you can find my petition requesting the bishops take action to correct the Catholic Health Association at my blog “APriestLife.blogspot.com”.
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(Follow me on Facebook at Reverendo Padre-Kevin Michael Cusick and on Twitter @MCITLFrAphorism. I blog occasionally at APriestLife.blogspot.com and mcitl.blogspot.com. You can email me at mcitl.blogspot.com @gmail.com.)
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