{"id":114,"date":"2010-11-17T12:06:23","date_gmt":"2010-11-17T12:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/dolan-takes-command-of-usccb.html"},"modified":"2010-11-17T12:06:23","modified_gmt":"2010-11-17T12:06:23","slug":"dolan-takes-command-of-usccb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/dolan-takes-command-of-usccb.html","title":{"rendered":"Dolan takes command of USCCB"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By choosing New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan as their new president,<br \/>\nthe Catholic bishops opted to keep speaking loudly whatever the size of<br \/>\nthe stick they carry. Dolan is a glad-hander who, post-election,<br \/>\nsignaled that he&#8217;d be treading in the footsteps of his predecessor,<br \/>\nCardinal Francis George. <\/p>\n<p>George&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com\/2010\/11\/dear-brother-bishops-chiefs-farewell.html\">valedictory address<\/a><br \/>\nwas a paean to episcopal predominance: We were right to oppose health<br \/>\ncare reform and those who presumed to speak as Catholics on the other<br \/>\nside were just opinion-mongers (take that, sister!). The <i>sensus fidelium <\/i>is all right in its way, but we are the only ones who get to speak for the Church&#8211;<i>L&#8217;Eglise, C&#8217;est Nous<\/i>.<br \/>\nSure, because of the wound to Church unity brought about by the health<br \/>\ncare debate, it is devoutly to be hoped that &#8220;means can be found to<br \/>\nrestore the seamless garment of ecclesial communion.&#8221; But as for us,<br \/>\nwe&#8217;re wearing our No Apologies Jeans.<\/p>\n<p>That set the stage for<br \/>\nDolan&#8217;s surprise victory over the more irenic Bishop Gerald Kicanas of<br \/>\nTucson. As he prepares to do his Bully Pulpit thing, however, the<br \/>\nquestion is whether Dolan will stand up to conservative agitation as<br \/>\nwell as liberal dissent. Thus far in his tenure in New York, he has<br \/>\nshown himself one of those Catholic leaders who wants no enemies to his<br \/>\nright&#8211;backtracking quickly, for example, from his support for the<br \/>\nPark51 Muslims. It&#8217;ll be interesting to see how he handles the likes of<br \/>\nDeal Hudson, the professional agitator who has not been afraid <a href=\"http:\/\/www.catholicity.com\/commentary\/hudson\/07632.html\">to go after<\/a> the USCCB.<\/p>\n<p>The <i>New York Times<\/i>&#8216; Laurie Goodstein was right to include in her <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/11\/17\/us\/17bishops.html?ref=us\">story<\/a><br \/>\nsome pointed quotes from Hudson&#8217;s professorial twin, Princeton&#8217;s Robert<br \/>\nGeorge. If George maintains his role as Dolan&#8217;s intellectual guru, I<br \/>\npredict that Michael Sean Winters&#8217; <a href=\"http:\/\/ncronline.org\/blogs\/distinctly-catholic\/what-happened-bmore\">relative optimism<\/a> will be misplaced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By choosing New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan as their new president, the Catholic bishops opted to keep speaking loudly whatever the size of the stick they carry. Dolan is a glad-hander who, post-election, signaled that he&#8217;d be treading in the footsteps of his predecessor, Cardinal Francis George. George&#8217;s valedictory address was a paean to episcopal&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Dolan takes command of USCCB - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk<\/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\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/dolan-takes-command-of-usccb.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dolan takes command of USCCB - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By choosing New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan as their new president, the Catholic bishops opted to keep speaking loudly whatever the size of the stick they carry. Dolan is a glad-hander who, post-election, signaled that he&#8217;d be treading in the footsteps of his predecessor, Cardinal Francis George. George&#8217;s valedictory address was a paean to episcopal&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/dolan-takes-command-of-usccb.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-11-17T12:06:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Dolan takes command of USCCB - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/dolan-takes-command-of-usccb.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Dolan takes command of USCCB - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"By choosing New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan as their new president, the Catholic bishops opted to keep speaking loudly whatever the size of the stick they carry. Dolan is a glad-hander who, post-election, signaled that he&#8217;d be treading in the footsteps of his predecessor, Cardinal Francis George. George&#8217;s valedictory address was a paean to episcopal&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/dolan-takes-command-of-usccb.html","og_site_name":"Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","article_published_time":"2010-11-17T12:06:23+00:00","author":"Mark Silk","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/dolan-takes-command-of-usccb.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/dolan-takes-command-of-usccb.html","name":"Dolan takes command of USCCB - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-11-17T12:06:23+00:00","dateModified":"2010-11-17T12:06:23+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/dolan-takes-command-of-usccb.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/dolan-takes-command-of-usccb.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/dolan-takes-command-of-usccb.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Dolan takes command of USCCB"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/","name":"Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","description":"Beliefnet Voices","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d","name":"Mark Silk","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","caption":"Mark Silk"},"description":"Mark Silk graduated from Harvard College in 1972 and earned his Ph.D. in medieval history from Harvard University in 1982. After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}