Disunity among bishops? What disunity?
Apparently seventy-two hours of incomplete univocity was just too much to bear. On Tuesday, Bishop Stephen Blaire, gave an interview to America magazine in which he expressed concern that there wasn’t wider consultation among bishops about the USCCB’s anti-contraception-mandate strategy. “I think there are different groups that are trying to co-opt this and make it into political issue,” he said, “and that’s why we need to have a deeper discussion as bishops.”
Today, however, Blaire spoke to Catholic News Agency to emphasize that in no way, shape, or form did he mean to suggest that he did not stand with his brother bishops in their rejection of the contraception-coverage mandate. In that interview, Blaire points out that he was a member of the USCCB committee that drafted the bishops’ most recent statement on religious freedom: “I contributed to and voted for this statement, and continue to support it, including its call for legal action as was announced on Monday,” Blaire says.
Last night, Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., and Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore appeared on The World Over to discuss the matter (more on that broadcast later). They reassured viewers that, while there may be some difference of opinion among bishops about this or that strategy, the bishops stand together in “overwhelming unity,” as Lori put it, when it comes to the fight against the contraception mandate — and the series of lawsuits filed this week.
Not in California. As E. J. Dionne reported on Wednesday, lawyers representing the California Catholic Conference wrote to the USCCB arguing that the proposed lawsuits would be “imprudent” and “ill-advised.”
Uniformity is not unity, particularly when it comes to political coercion.
It’s hard to believe that this statement was ever once written by some US bishops. Where are these guys now?
Thanks, Grant – had missed this from Blaire. Is this what the media calls – “walking back your statement?” And I missed the world famous, The World Over, last nite so can’t wait to hear your summation – can remember a time when no bishop would have been caught dead on EWTN. And historically, EWTN was to be “suppressed” or “restricted” per accounts but in one nite, it rewrote its bylaws and moved to lay control; thus, avoiding any type of hierarchical or episcopal moves.
May want to post and look at what the 13 dioceses and their bishops are saying in this week’s diocesan papers (IMO, catholic rags). Hope that Lori and Wuerl had more clarity on the questions and issues than what is represented below from the Texas Catholic.
From Dallas and the overeager Bishop Farrell (who Rocco Palmo thinks walks on water). From the Texas Catholic, front page at the top:
“The HHS mandate does offer some exemptions but uses very narrow criteria in determining which entities qualify as religious organizations, requiring that they must primarily provide services to persons who share their religious tenets. Catholic hospitals, schools, agencies that offer service to the poor currently provide services regardless of a person’s religious affiliation.
“…..our lawsuit argues that government should not decide how a religious organization is defined”
“The implications of the HHS mandate in its existing form are far reaching. Religious organizations would be forced to re-configure. Catholic entities would be forced to hire only Catholics and offer services primarily only to Catholics.”
(Note – on the same page on which Farrell’s statement ends – there is a half page advertisement for the new movie, “For Greater Glory”.)
One truly wonders how Farrell and his chancellor, Mary Edlund, arrived at this interpretation of events. The column is an opinion piece masquerading as the “truth”. There is no comprehensive description of the HHS mandate and its fourfold proposed definition; etc. It basically contracts the whole issue into one narrow opinion.
You would expect that some type of vetting was done by legal experts in this area before this column went to press? This statement is factually in error; creates scandal; misinformation; and can be seen as an indirect threat. Keep in mind, this is a diocese of over 1.5 mil catholics, in a very Republican state. Where is the gospel message here, is this countercultural in any way? Appears to just re-echo what we read every day in terms of secular politics and the far right Republican screed in Texas.
It also repeats the very approach of Cardinal George – he, who made pastors read a letter the week-end after HHS released its revision and asked for comment until August. Instead, George had written a letter weeks earlier and, instead of withdrawing this now outdated letter, he forced pastors to read it – a letter filled with misinformation, outdated information, and threats.
Is this what we will have to put up with during the “Fortnight of Freedom”?
Did Blaire make any statement that provided more nuances? To say he agress with the lawsuit direction – well, that can be a fairly broad statement. What happened to his initial point that moves such as this lawsuit could be seen or taken over by folks with a partisan agenda? Who pressured him? So much for expecting anything to happen at the June USCCB meeting.
Bishop Blaine’s position does not seem to me inconsistent with the America interview. He is concerned about the actions of the bishops being coopted and he wants further discussion and collaboration. This does not mean he disagreed with the lawsuit, which Notre Dame joined in with thoughtful reasoning. I don’t think he is flip-flopping and I think he should be respected still for having a principled position against the mandate and a principled concern about the coopting of their action by religious right folk, including likely some bishops.
Whom do you believe, Bishop Blaire or Bishop Blaire? His latest statement did not appear to address the most significant quote I saw in the America interview of May 22: “The question is what is our focus as bishops and that we have opportunity to clarify our focus and that we are all in agreement on focus.” Whatever he meant by “focus” deserves clarification.
The Catholic bishops have been grandstanding from the get go about the Obama administration’s contraception-coverage mandate.
Then there’s Bishop, Daniel R. Jenky of the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois. He appears to be on the very far right of most of his colleagues, at least I hope so. Here are quotes from his letter of April 12th,. in his diocesan paper. The title of his “homily” is “A Call to Catholic Men of Faith”. (to me it seems more like a call to battle than a homily) He first challenges the men, (I’m not sure if there were any women in the congregation), by saying, “We must be a fearless army of Catholic men, ready to give everything we have to the Lord, who gave us our salvation.” He goes on to talk about Bismarck closing down catholic schools in Germany, Clemenceau the “priest eater” in France, and Hitler and Stalin of unhappy memory. All geared to scare the hell out of the Catholic men of faith. And for a real clincher he reminds them,
“This fall, every practicing Catholic must vote, and must vote their Catholic conscience, or by the following fall our Catholic schools, our Catholic hospitals, our Catholic Newman Centers, all our public ministries—only excepting our church buildings—could easily be shut down.”
There’s much more fear mongering language in his homily, but towards the end he offers some solace, “We have nothing to fear,…St. Michael the Archangel, and all the hosts of heaven, fight on our behalf.” I wondered if that’s the same St. Michael that the church has been praying to for peace since I was in grammar school?
One thing that Bishop Jenky might need to fear are the charges in a letter that the Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) filed against him on April 19, 2012 with the director of the Exempt Organization Division of the IRS. The author of the letter Rev. Barry W. Lynn, the Executive Director of Americans United, and an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, presents a clear case to the IRS of how the bishop has violated the IRS publication “Election Year Activities and the Prohibition on Political Campaign Intervention for Section 501(c)(3)Organizations” (FS-2006-17, February 2006), which reminds tax-exempt entities not to engage in any advocacy that “functions as political campaign intervention”. Rev. Lynn goes on to remind the readers that “Even if a statement does not expressly tell an audience to vote for or against a specific candidate…(they are) at risk of violating the political campaign intervention prohibition if there is any message favoring or opposing a candidate.”
We shall see, what we shall see!
The USCCB now has a letter from Bishop Blaire on its website:
http://www.usccb.org/about/bishop-stephen-blaire-statement.cfm
Dr. Fausel, Thanks for the information about the IRS complaint.
I’ve been wondering if the bishops’ recent rhetoric has crossed the line into electioneering. I’ve done different types of advocacy w/ 501c3 non-profits for quite a while and our lawyers have always cautioned us against anything- a legislative report card- anything- that would create even an implied preference for a candidate. I think it is pretty dangerous to compare a candidate to Hitler during a campaign season. Or even, for that matter, to assert during the midst of a campaign that a candidate is trampling on our most fundamental freedoms and most cherished rights. I thought that clearly indicated a preference and I’ve been curious as to how they’ve been able to do it without jeopardizing their exempt status.
@ Jack Barry–Where is the inconsistency in Blaire’s statements? It is only there if you don’t believe he meant what he said in the America interview about agreeing with the overall position of the bishops but being concerned about it being coopted. All he is doing now is reemphasizing the agreement part of the interview. He has accomplished a lot just by having his statement up at the USCCB website–it is the most sane, clear, civil statement I have seen from there in days. People who want clear lines in the sand drawn will see Blaire as a disappointment. People who want to see a measure of flexibility and reflection and discussion evident as this develops should be pleased if not satisfied, IMHO.
Mr. Metzger – good observations. But, and this is complete conjecture, wonder if Blaire is inserting himself into this process hoping to balance out the knee-jerkers (Morlino, Jenky, Olmsted, Lori, etc.) Wonder if he negotiated with Dolan and pressured Dolan to exert some “braking” on these guys who are all but Republican first, bishops second.
John Page had stated on an earlier post when Blaire’s interview was first seen that, in reality, Blaire heads up the USCCB committee that should be overseeing, developing, and negotiating on issues such as the HHS mandate before Dolan and a tiny minority hatched this “ad hoc” religious liberty committee.
FLASH: “THE BUTLER DID IT”
The NYT reported 5 minutes ago that the “Maria” who passed confidential papers of the Pope’s to an Italian journalist is none other than the Pope’s butler. (I told you this sounds like a Peter Sellers movie.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/26/world/europe/popes-butler-arrested-in-vatican-letters-leak.html?hp
(Yes, this is a digression. No doubt a future thread will take up this particular scandal.)
Greg Metzger (05/25 – 8:19 pm) —
Omission, not inconsistency. His May 22 interview identified the focus of the bishops as a question. The statement was senseless if he had no grounds for saying it. If he knew the answer, there would have been no reason to call it a question. If he didn’t know the answer in May 2012, there are serious problems within the USCCB of communication at least and perhaps, as some speculate, collaboration.
A line in Blaire’s clarification may be a gentle way of trying to indicate that it is time for the bishops _as_a_body_ to focus: “Our defense of religious liberty is advanced when there is open discussion about the best strategies to promote our common goal”.
That you could commend Blaire’s USCCB statement for unusual sanity, clarity, and civility, with which I agree, is an unfortunate reflection of the caliber of what is too often seen.
Thank you Bill deHaas, Jack Barry, John Hayes and others. I’m an observer on this one and find your postings solid and informative.
I am amused again at the dissembling skills of bishops. They have a well-honed ability to say yes, no, maybe, perhaps, and never all at once. Honest to God, laughter is the only corrective for the chancery-speak on display in hierarchical power politics.
Grant, yeoman work dissecting the verbiage in recent weeks.
More family members hanging on by their fingernails as this all plays out.
Greg Metzger: I agree with your take.
Be sure to see Kevin Clarke’s helpful piece below at America. He is the one who interviewed Blaire for America and he has a particularly good perspective to comment on the latest round of reporting.
http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&entry_id=5148
Greg,
Thanks for the link to Kevin Clarke’s measured comments.
Fascinating how quickly, in the calculus of some, yesterday’s fearless hero becomes today’s timorous backslider. Father Jenkins felt this whiplash; now it’s Bishop Blaire’s turn.
And fascinating as well, how very low a bar we set to laud someone as a “fearless hero”.
Agree. I felt the comments about Blaire were exaggerated from the start. Wishful thinking.
(Just like the continuing insistence about how MANY Catholics from ALL points on the spectrum RUSHed to the barricades to join the CRUSADE against Obama/women/contraception.)
It’s vital in the current regime that USCCB appear to be united/ ‘Communio episcopi” and all that.
Ann’s noting of the problems in Rome is not entirely irrelvant.
Secrecy, lack of transparency and the institution first remains the order of the day in governnace.
In that context voices of moderation tend to be tamped down. Extremism wil only further the perception of irrelevance, despite titles, thetoric or even lawsuits.
Gerelyn: Enough is enough. We get it. You didn’t like that a lot of Catholics agreed that the original form of the mandate was a bridge too far. Are you ever going to stop repeating yourself?
Agree with Greg Metzger. E.J.’s article about Blaire overinterpreted what he was saying out of very understandable wishful thinking. He is the cause of the confusion here, not Blaire.
Gerelyn =
When was the last time you were yourself the first to speak out to your own in-group about a serious failing of your group? Jumping on a bandwagon takes little courage.
So I repeat, Yay, yay, yay, Bishop Blaire!
Hi, Grant:
Are those who make the claim every going to stop repeating themselves? (Two of the most prominent, as you know, made the claim again this week.)
They wish many/most Catholics really had been as premature as they were.
Hmm. Ann Olivier says, “Jumping on a bandwagon takes little courage.”
Of course she may be speaking about her own experiences of jumping on bandwagons. Perhaps when she has jumped on bandwagons, it took little courage for her to do so.
But she may be wrong about that in general. It may take a modicum of courage to jump of a bandwagon.
In any event, the editors of COMMONWEAL and E.J. Dionne, among others, jumped on the bishops’ bandwagon and objected to the Obama administration’s original contraception-coverage mandate.
By contrast, Gerelyn did not jump on the bishops’ bandwagon regarding the Obama administration’s original contraception-coverage mandate.
Now, Ann Olivier made her observation in the context of praising Bishop Blaire.
In the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, I think that Bishop Blaire does deserve some credit for speaking up publicly. However, it remains to be seen if anything constructive will come from his public comments.
Flash… USCCB butler was seen jogging over to Langley.
Where are Jeeves and his creator, P.G. Wodehouse, when we need them?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/26/us-vatican-butler-gabriele-idUSBRE84P0CG20120526
Frankly, Bp. Blaire’s bald claim that this is a “religious liberty” battle with the HHS mandate seems just as egregious as what the usual suspects have been saying, even if he says he has qualms with their “strategies.” Of what exactly do his qualms consist? Did he ever say? If so, I didn’t catch it. So much was left unsaid, so much left to be surmised and then blamed on the surmisers when they wrote about it publicly. Obviously, a bishop doesn’t let it be known, esp. during a public controversy, that he has “qualms” or anything approaching a disagreement with fellow bishops over strategy unless something’s up. For Bp Blaire to claim otherwise is disingenuous, and hardly worthy of anybody’s trust. On the other hand, if the Catholic media leaves it at that, they might as well admit they do little more than read and repeat news releases for a living.
Irene Baldwin: “I think it is pretty dangerous to compare a candidate to Hitler during a campaign season. Or even, for that matter, to assert during the midst of a campaign that a candidate is trampling on our most fundamental freedoms and most cherished rights. I thought that clearly indicated a preference and I’ve been curious as to how they’ve been able to do it without jeopardizing their exempt status.”
The fact is religious groups and their spokesmen have been getting away with this sort of thing forever in the US, precisely because the American state has never wanted to give even a hint of acting with anything but respect toward the church. That’s why the bishops’ claim that the Obama administration is purposively attacking their religious liberty is so outlandish. Many on the right see Obama as some sort of crazed secularist who’s out to destroy religion, but unless you’re drinking what they’re drinking, that makes about as much sense as the birther nonsense. It’s embarrassing to hear Catholic bishops repeating that rhetoric.
In reality, the HHS made a mistake in its original understanding of how Catholic institutions relate internally. The bishops themselves gave conflicting signals on that score during legal negotiations during the sex abuse scandals. Once the President realized what had gone wrong, he tried to backpedal without offending anybody, but the opening his political opponents had wanted had already been breached. The Republicans and their cohorts in the episcopacy have been exploiting the issue ever since. I don’t know how many bishops don’t like what’s going on, but I hope a lot of them. The question is will they ever speak up or put an end quietly to what their fellow bishops have wrought.
Patience… When the LCRW issue launches a LCRW counter attack next month this ‘religious liberty ‘ teapot tempest will look to the bishops like the good ole days on the parade ground. .
The sermon on Pentecost was on how wonderful our Spirit led Church today was (though we need to do more, of course.)
I didn’t know whether tp laugh (ala Ed and Nicho;as) or cry.
The vatican is in some disarray, and Fr. Armooth(Ithink that’s the spelling) statements have yet to be given full play and, already, “the butler did it” is not getting much crecence.
If the USCCCB effort is being backed and kidled in rome by Cardinal Burke,Abp. Staford and the like, more divsion on the politico/religion scene will be forthcomin -nevermind issues with LWCR or the Girl Scouts, etc.
One associate keeps referring to the United Stgates Conference of Catholic Bigots.
It’s supposed to be a time of Church renewal a new Pentecost each year,
I don’t see that in the”fortnight For Freedom” or other propaganda.
Thomas Farrell ==
I used the term “jump on the bandwagon” in the sense defined by The Phrase Maker, “Join a growing movement in support of someone or something, often in an opportunist way, when that movement is seen to have become successful”.
Most certainly there is no public movement within the hierarchy to criticize its current leadership. So Bishop Blaine’s public call to revise the USCCB plans re HHS policy was not part of a movement. He was not jumping on a bandwagon. His statement was a first and unique call, which no doubt was quite a lonely one.
Every public opposition to one’s own tribe requires courage.. Even if he qualified his original statement, he most certainly didn’t reject it. We should be grateful to him
https://lcwr.org/media/news/prayer-lcwr
Prayer for LCWR
May 17, 2012
God’s Spirit – LCWR Prayer
In this time of pain and promise,
we call on God’s Spirit to bless
the leadership of LCWR, of our
Congregation, and all women religious
who strive to live the gospel in these
uncertain times.
We call on the Spirit of God to reveal
the way forward that is faithful to God’s
dream for us and our lives together.
May all who are called to engage
in prayer and conversation come to
the table with hearts that are open,
transparent, and faith-filled. May their
reflection be marked by a deep listening
to the voice of the Spirit at work in
our world.
May the holy ones who have gone
before us inspire us by their courage
and wisdom and affirm that we are
not alone.
May we continue to faithfully live the
questions of our time and witness to
the people of God that we are women
at home with mystery and filled with
fierce hope for our shared future.
Amen.
Prayer by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM