Bishops & Their Critics
As promised, here’s a link to the lead editorial in our April 20 issue, “Bishops & Their Critics,” which was mentioned in Peter Steinfels’s “Beliefs” column in Saturday’s New York Times. A sample:
President George W. Bush’s decision
to go to war with Iraq was initially supported by a host of liberals,
among them New Republic editor Peter Beinart and New Yorker writer
George Packer. These commentators were convinced that Iraq posed an
imminent threat to its neighbors and that Saddam Hussein’s regime had
to be removed for both security and moral reasons.
As the administration’s case for war
was gradually exposed as a fabrication and the botched nature of the
occupation became clear, most of these liberals have admitted they were
wrong.
No such admissions of error, or even
regret, have been issued by outspoken Catholic neoconservatives who,
using the most tortured just-war arguments, publicly defended Bush’s
war of choice. Michael Novak, of the American Enterprise Institute,
even flew to Rome to persuade the Vatican not to oppose the invasion.
In First Things, George Weigel, of the Ethics and Public Policy Center,
memorably lectured religious leaders on the “charism of political
discernment” enjoyed by those in the White House (“Moral Clarity in a
Time of War,” January 2003). It was a charism, Weigel pointedly wrote,
“not shared by bishops.” He assured the war’s critics that elected
officials “are more fully informed about the relevant facts.”
Read the whole thing.
Hasn’t the “charism of political discernment” been tried and found wanting?
To show that in the Catholic world everything is related, and that what goes around comes around, if anyone should happen to visit one of the sites mentioned in the mosaic threads, the Capella Palatina in Palermo, he or she may be as shocked as I was to discover on either side of the altar dual cathedrae, one for the pastor and one for the rex. I don’t know if Roger II was wiser or more charismatic than Bush, but it’s certainly a history I thought had been buried once and for all.
AMEN to the Editorial on this horrid day (Va. Tech).
The Bishops role has been tepid.
Bishop Wenski is a minor player in the Bishop’s conference, cpompared to putatively heavy figures like the angel at Chicago.
More energy has been spent (see previous threads) on wonderfiul liturgical “renewal” or fighting SOL legislation or opening files on sex abuse or reconfiguring parishes, like the towering figure at Cleveland, who says focus on finance not on the people is the impact of parish cl;osings.
Blame the Bishops.! You better believe it! They jumped in bed with the Bush Administration on the one track “life” stuff we’ve more than beat to death here. ( I’m sure the usual suspects will talk about the milions of unborn souls, but living souls matter, matter enormously to the American people, and there is a certain moral bankruptcy at the episcopal level of this church that tries to play a good game by statments from minor offices . But little moral leadership at the top really exists .If this sounds angry, it is ! But it;’s also sad , sad not only about ourtbishops, but the unfortunates who keep trying to apolgeticize for them while more drift away.