{"id":138,"date":"2008-10-30T11:12:58","date_gmt":"2008-10-30T11:12:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2008\/10\/battling-bishops-episode-lxvii.html"},"modified":"2008-10-30T11:12:58","modified_gmt":"2008-10-30T11:12:58","slug":"battling-bishops-episode-lxvii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/10\/battling-bishops-episode-lxvii.html","title":{"rendered":"Battling Bishops, Episode LXVII"},"content":{"rendered":"

“As the day of the great convocation drew nigh, the proclamations of high churchmen rang out across the Land…”
\nYes, it’s getting intense, even a bit medieval, if you like Bishop Finn’s Muslim crusader analogy<\/a>. The Globe’s Michael Paulson has a very good and comprehensive take this morning<\/a>.
\nWhile the intensity of the election battle and the role of abortion and religion (namely, the Catholic Church) is undisputed, the number of “single-issue” bishops (as the “abortion-trumps-all-vote-GOP” prelates are termed) is all over the map.
\nRocco updates<\/a> his original “guesstimate” of 50 bishops with a detailed reckoning–and raises the total to more than 60. He lists them, with links to relevant documents for those who wish to peruse. At the RNS blog<\/a>, Dan Burke notes that one pro-life activist makes that 89 bishops (out of nearly 200 heads of dioceses).
\nThese are judgment calls, and tough to nail down. At CWNews, Phil Lawler<\/a> cites Bishop Cupich’s America essay about racism as a direct contrast to Bishop Gracida’s blast at “Barack Hussein Obama.”
\nThat seems like a stretch, to say the least. But he also portrays an apparently real division between the bishops of Arizona:<\/p>\n

“The contrasting statements by American bishops has produced a striking contrast in the state of Arizona, where Bishop Thomas Olmstead of Phoenix has produced a hard-hitting booklet entitled Catholics in the Public Square, arguing that abortion is the paramount issue in this campaign, and distributed over 100,000 copies to parishioners in his diocese. In neighboring Tucson, Bishop Gerald Kicanas has not given permission for pro-life activists to hand out Bishop Olmsted’s booklet in parishes…”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As an antidote to all this, try Baltimore Archbishop Edwin O’Brien’s pre-election column in this week’s archdiocesan paper. Baltimore Archbishop Edwin O’Brien’s election eve column<\/a>, which recognizes the division within the hierarchy…but he hews to first principles, takes a serious and sensitive approach, and says he will not engage in public battles over reception of the Eucharist:<\/p>\n

Our Conference of Catholic Bishops has agreed overwhelmingly that there can be differing pastoral approaches at this critically teachable moment. Some American bishops, after engaging public officeholders to no avail on this serious issue, have opted to forbid their reception of the Eucharist within their jurisdictions. In so doing they are within their rights, and I respect their decision. However, and upon soul-searching reflection and prayer, I have decided that I will not take this public step. Let me note the following points in support of what I pray is a prudent decision on my part:
\n1. In contrast to and in spite of the measured tones of several bishops who have made this decision, many of the letters I have received and advertisements I have seen calling for this penalty reflect an uncharitable anger and even a vindictiveness that undermine the healing intent of those bishops’ decrees.
\n2. At this stage, the divisive result of such an action in the Archdiocese of Baltimore both within and outside the Catholic community would, in my opinion, prove counterproductive to our evangelizing efforts and to our overall unity.
\n3. In this unique and highly charged atmosphere, it is likely inevitable that such a step, in spite of any appropriate attempts on our part to explain it, would be distorted as constituting an unwise and unwarranted intrusion of the Church in the political life of the community. It might even undermine pro-life politicians, suggesting that their position is simply a consequence of pressure from the institutional Church, rather than the result of the Church’s clear obligation to defend the dignity of every human life.
\nHow grateful we must be to those public figures (a good many of whom are not Catholic) who often put their careers on the line in defense of innocent human life. As for those Catholics unwilling to defend life, I would hope that prayer and the graces that would accompany discussion and persuasion would help bring about a conversion of mind and heart. We ask no politician to do anything unconstitutional or immoral in pursuing legal steps to avoid the killing of innocent human life and in defending women too often victimized and traumatized by a powerful abortion industry.
\nWe ask all our public servants to reflect upon the words of St. Thomas More, the patron saint of those who hold public office. From the gallows which would soon claim his life, he declared that he would die “the king’s good servant, but God’s first.” Whose servant, my admirable friends in public life, do you claim to be?
\nAs a bishop of the Catholic Church, I must be authoritative in explaining the Church’s 2,000-year teaching on a matter as basic as life and death. I pledge not to be confrontational, however, and would welcome a private discussion of this message with those who seek or hold public office.
\nFinally, I ask for your prayer for me and our Conference of Bishops as we meet here in plenary session next month in efforts to provide just and effective moral guidance for our people and our leaders whom we seek to serve. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whatever the reality, the post-election hierarchical convo in Baltimore should be interesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“As the day of the great convocation drew nigh, the proclamations of high churchmen rang out across the Land…” Yes, it’s getting intense, even a bit medieval, if you like Bishop Finn’s Muslim crusader analogy. The Globe’s Michael Paulson has a very good and comprehensive take this morning. While the intensity of the election battle…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bishops","category-catholic","category-church","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nBattling Bishops, Episode LXVII - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/10\/battling-bishops-episode-lxvii.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Battling Bishops, Episode LXVII - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"“As the day of the great convocation drew nigh, the proclamations of high churchmen rang out across the Land…” Yes, it’s getting intense, even a bit medieval, if you like Bishop Finn’s Muslim crusader analogy. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}