"Shenanigans"

An astute writer over at the Washington Post's On Faith blog has taken a hard look at the Catholic League, and the recent dust-up over John Hagee.

The writer is, in a word, skeptical:

The Catholic League is not the “All Catholic" League. It is not official Catholicism: still less does it speak for each and every one of the nation’s 60 million Catholics. As someone who once endeavored to work with the League, I was disappointed to learn that it is run out of a single office by a single ego. So, while I find newsworthy the recent exchanges between the League’s president, Bill Donahue and Evangelical pastor, John Hagee, they don’t amount to dogma.

Moreover, there are unanswered questions about the protest-apology sequence recently featured in the press. For one thing, Rev. Hagee has been repeating for two decades the stale rant that the Catholic Church is the “whore of Bablyon.” Similarly, Hagee has embraced the uncritical characterization of Pius XII as “Hitler’s pope.” [Hagee’s bigotry will receive a separate comment from Catholic America.]

Why then did the Catholic League wait until February of 2008 to become angered by Hagee’s career of bigotry over two decades? February was when the millionaire Reverend was invited to support Republican candidate, John McCain: but if the Arizona Senator’s action caused the ruckus, why didn’t the Catholic League just denounce McCain or continue to demand the candidate reject a bigot’s support? Why surrender and give absolution so meekly -- especially when Hagee’s two-page apology used the mealy-mouthed expression of regret for "any comments that Catholics have found hurtful,” rather than the complete recantation called for?

Because Catholics who are committed to their religion would not sell out as easily as did the League, I think the whole episode smells of what my grammar-school Irish nuns called, “shenanigans” – and for political effects, not for defense of Catholicism.

Now, forgiveness is a virtue and I would not begrudge Mr. Donahue’s low threshold for bigotry. What irks me, however, is his venomous and unyielding denunciation of Catholics who support Senator Obama for president. The Catholic League demanded the dissolving of Obama’s Catholic support committee, accusing all of the members of disloyalty to the faith and labeling the actions of the Democratic Senator as “Hitlerian.” In light of Donahue’s meek passivity before the hateful career statements of a right-wing bigot, this is all too choleric bluster against fellow Catholics.

This contradictory behavior is explained by a glance at the League’s criteria for Catholic politics: abortion, embryonic stem cell research and tax dollars to Catholic schools. Left out are major Catholic teachings like forgiveness of Third World debt and opposition by two popes to the Iraq invasion. (Please note that an unjust war is just as intrinsically evil as an abortion.) The League also ignores the American Catholic Bishops’ support of universal health insurance, immigration reform that unifies families or repeal of the death penalty. Apparently, these major social justice teachings of the Church are not Catholic enough for the Catholic League.

There's more, and some interesting comments, at the link. Take a look.

UPDATE: As you might expect, William Donahue disagrees with the above sentiments. And he's posted a response, which reads in part:

Stevens-Arroyo questions why the Catholic League “waited until February of 2008 to become angered by Hagee’s career of bigotry over two decades?” He says it is because February was when Hagee endorsed McCain.

Now if he had bothered to read our website, he would have learned that I first wrote to Hagee in 1997. Therefore, the answer he supplies to his own question implodes. But this is small potatoes compared to this gem: “The Catholic League demanded the dissolving of Obama’s Catholic support committee, accusing all of the members of disloyalty to the faith and labeling the actions of the Democratic Senator as ‘Hitlerian.’”

In actual fact, I never made such an accusation. What I did was to report on the NARAL voting record of those members of Obama’s advisory group who were, or currently are, public office holders (by the way, the overwhelming majority agree with NARAL 100 percent of the time and one advisor was told by her archbishop this week not to go to Communion). And I never labeled “the actions” of Obama “Hitlerian.” What I said is that Obama made a “Hitlerian decision” when he voted to allow a baby who survives an abortion to die without attending medicinal care. I stand by that accusation.

Stevens-Arroyo makes a desperate, and failed, attempt to equate abortion with “major Catholic teachings like forgiveness of Third World debt” and other such issues. Quite frankly, I never heard of a Catholic teaching on forgiving Third World debt. That’s because there isn’t one. There are bishops, and no doubt cardinals, who have pronounced on this subject, but unlike abortion there is no such listing in the Catholic Catechism.

Finally, he says that “ALL varieties of Catholic politics deserve tolerance.” Really? Does that mean that those who are pro and con on any given issue—genocide, slavery, infanticide, the intentional killing of innocents—deserves dialogue? He must be talking about some other religion. My religion holds to certain truths, moral absolutes that deserve more than tolerance—they demand acceptance.