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Sunday, June 19, 2011

Dowd vs. the Church: Verily, Verily

St. Patrick's Cathedral NY, NY
"Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen; but you do not receive our testimony."
John 3:11
Maureen Dowd must not have been feeling well Saturday morning. It seems she woke up and reflexively vomited up an article titled, "The Archbishop vs. the Governor: Gay Sera, Sera".

In keeping with the New York Times policy of taking every opportunity to attack the Catholic Church, this article rehashes every anti-Catholic slur of the recent past. Why is it that Dowd is unable to write more than a few paragraphs about the Church without constantly returning to the issue of a small minority of priests that were guilty of child sexual abuse? And when will Dowd and other anti-Catholics learn the definition of "pedophile"? (And when will Dowd and other baby boomers finally admit that the radical feminism of the 60s was a failure?)

In the campaign to deny the religious rights of Christians, all sorts of new "rights" are created by the anti-Christians. We are supposed to be the intolerant ones, while the mere fact that some people don't like Christians is considered a good enough reason by the ACLU to force us to hide our faith from public view. Catacombs anyone?

Pulitzer prize winning Dowd, seems to have had an anti-Pulitzer moment when she penned such sophomoric slop as:
"The church refuses to acknowledge the hypocrisy at its heart: that it became a haven for gay priests even though it declares homosexual sex a sin, and even though it lobbies to stop gays from marrying."
As a graduate of Catholic University, I would hope that Dowd would have a better understanding of what is at the "heart" of the Church, which is Christ. True hypocrisy is covering oneself with the cloak of tolerance and "rights" while being completely intolerant towards the Catholic faith and campaigning to destroy the fundamental right of religious freedom. (But I guess its OK when Dowd launches these attacks on the Church because she is herself a Mass-attending, Communion-receiving Catholic. Although she apparently holds many views that are in direct contradiction to the teachings of the Church. Like Cuomo, and Pelosi...)

I am thoroughly convinced that the main reason that Dowd et al. are so obsessed with the issue of homosexual "rights" at this time is that it conveniently allows them to further their anti-Christian agenda. As if the country and New York state didn't have much more pressing issues to deal with at this time. We can't make an inch of progress on real issues like the way that Wall Street moguls manipulate the economy, but politicians like Cuomo and Obama can proudly point to their progress on "gay rights". Yes, because that is what America is fundamentally about – the right to sexual promiscuity?

How did we go from "I have a dream" to "I have a sexual fantasy"? And I'm not just talking about homosexuals here.

On what basis was Rep. Weiner forced to abandon his political office if not on the basis of morality? And yet when the Catholic Church offers a moral argument against homosexual marriage, it is immediately repudiated a priori. Who are the hypocrites? Does morality matter to American society or not?

If morality does matter, then what do we base our moral system on? The answer to this question throughout American history has always been Christianity. Those Americans who reject Christianity as the basis of morality do not seem to understand that without that firm foundation, we are tossed about as a society as an earthquake causes people to lose their footing and their bearings; we are swept up as a tornado sweeps up houses, leaving behind a path of destruction; we are buffeted and submerged as a tsunami tears away people from their world and carries them far out to sea.

This unnatural disaster which we are experiencing as a society has its roots in the unnatural course that we have chosen over the past decades since the end of World War II. It began with the deceptions of Kinsey and Sanger and has ended with the deceptions of Obama. It began innocently with songs of peace and love, and has come to a crashing cacophonous orchestral crescendo with the campaign for homosexual "marriage". When did the unthinkable become the "inevitable"?

Oh and Maureen, notice that I didn't even bring up the oft repeated accusation against you of plagiarism in this article, because it is not relevant. The stringing together of a bunch of anti-Catholic clichés and then calling it an article is not an act of plagiarism, it simply demonstrates a lack of originality of thought.

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Epilogue: How much do I [Maureen Dowd] hate the Catholic Church? Let me count the ways.

Just so you don't think I'm exaggerating the nature of Dowd's diatribe let me give all the examples of allusions to the priest sex scandal in her 22 paragraph NYT op-ed. And remember this is an editorial written by a permanent columnist for the New York Times editorial page. Please ask yourself if this piece adheres to the professional standards of the NYT or any other reputable newspaper.

Paragraph 3. This entire introductory paragraph is dedicated to the scandal.
If only his church had been as ferocious in fighting against the true perversity against nature: the unending horror of pedophile priests and the children who trusted them.
Paragraph 10. Just warming up. Another full paragraph dedicated to raising the spectre of the scandal.
The church refuses to acknowledge the hypocrisy at its heart: that it became a haven for gay priests even though it declares homosexual sex a sin, and even though it lobbies to stop gays from marrying.
Paragraph 11. What else? The scandal.
In yet another attempt at rationalization, the nation’s Catholic bishops — a group Dolan is now in charge of — put out a ridiculous five-year-study last month going with the “blame Woodstock” explanation for the sex-abuse scandal. The report suggested that the problem was caused by permissive secular society rather than cloistered church culture, because priests were trained in the turbulent free-love era. It concluded, absurdly, that neither the all-male celibate priesthood nor homosexuality were causes.
Paragraph 12. The scandal again rears its ugly head.
In another resistance to reform, the bishops voted on Thursday to keep their policies on sexual abuse by the clergy largely the same, with only small revisions, ignoring victims’ advocates who were hoping for meaningful changes.
Paragraph 13. Is anyone else getting tired of this?
At their meeting in Bellevue, Wash., one retired archbishop from Anchorage actually proposed an amendment to get rid of the “zero tolerance” provision on abuse so some guilty priests could return to parishes. That failed, at least. 
Paragraph 20. Don't worry, it's almost over.
And how about the right of a child not to be molested by the parish priest?
Paragraph 22. And a parting poke in the eye in the last paragraph.
Worn out by the rampant sexting of Anthony Weiner and the relentless blogging of Archbishop Dolan, I’m wondering if our institutions need to rejigger: Maybe pols should be celibate and priests should be married.
So let's see, that's 7 out of 22 paragraphs of an article ostensibly about the issue of homosexual "marriage" which ends up with nearly one third of the content raising the issue of the priest sex scandal. Come on Maureen! I'm sure you can do much better than that. Next time shoot for greater than 50%. Make the anti-Catholic crowd truly proud of you.

And in paragraph 17 you refer to Archbishop Dolan as the "Starchbishop"? I missed that one until it happened to get highlighted as a misspelling. Name calling? Really? Do you still attend Mass? Why? What could you possibly get out of it?

9 comments:

  1. UPDATE: I added an "epilogue" to this article in which I document that Dowd dedicates nearly one third of her article to ranting about the priest sex scandal.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Canon lawyer Edward N. Peters, who got trashed in the wrecking ball of an article by Dowd along with the rest of the Catholic Church, has a light-hearted but brilliant reply to Dowd's derogatory remarks. You can read it here: "Oh no! Maureen Dowd doesn’t seem to like me!".

    I quoted Peters in my previous article about Cuomo and the NY "gay marriage" bill. He advocates refusing to give nominally Catholic Cuomo Communion.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oops! I gave the wrong link to my previous article on Cuomo and the NY "gay marriage" bill. Here is the correct link:
    Is Cuomo Catholic?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hoohaa! Thomas Peters, aka the American Papist, has responded to Maureen Dowd's atrocious article. I would like to think that this has something to do with me prodding him by leaving a comment on his website. But I didn't realize that Canon lawyer Edward N. Peters who Dowd explicitly references and Thomas Peters are related. Actually, Thomas is Edward's son. (I think I vaguely knew that but it had totally slipped my mind.)

    Here's the link to Thomas Peters' article:
    Maureen Dowd on Archbishop Dolan & My Dad: “Vintage Deja Vu Dowd”

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi Michael. Was looking through the archives and came across this post. Everything that Dowd writes just screams bad taste. Not to mention ignorance, and outright HATE. Hate for the True Church of Christ, as a sign of contradiction. I had to control myself while reading parts of the article. Charity. Not hate reciprocated. I will pray for her.

    St Gemma Galgani, whose face was spat upon by boys on the streets of Lucca for her piety, pray for us!

    ReplyDelete
  6. M. I'm glad you're looking through the archives. There is a narrative that runs through the articles I have posted. The Church, the Body of Christ, is living through a time of tribulation. Our faith is being tested. For those who can withstand this test there will be a promised miracle. This is the pattern that emerges from the Gospel. Jesus rewards those who maintain their faith through trials and tribulations. Those who abandon their faith are eventually brought to justice. So we should pray for Maureen Dowd and others like her. What will it take to soften those hard and calloused hearts?

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  7. P.S. @M. I have spent the last few weeks educating myself on the nauseating details of the Church sex abuse scandal. I have come to the conclusion that we should be thankful to those who will not let us forget about this criminal conspiracy within the Church.

    Dowd actually brings up an issue here which most liberals steer clear of when discussing the sex abuse scandal. It is that the majority of the crimes were committed by homosexuals within the priesthood. The sex scandal was facilitated in part by the "sexual revolution" and in particular the "gay liberation" movement.

    The latest attempt to cover this up by the liberals is to try to place a bumper sticker across this reality which reads "blame it on Woodstock". This is a blatant attempt to mock the truth. The Church must acknowledge the part it played in the coverup, but so too should the liberals that encouraged sexual permissiveness and tolerated perverse behavior.

    Here is a very well written article on this topic in case you are interested: Defending the Indefensible

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  8. Exactly! That is the same conclusion Fr. Enrique Rueda came to in his book (now out of print), "The Homosexual Network." Here is a link to a synopsis of the book: http://abbey-roads.blogspot.com/2011/05/homosexual-network.html .

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  9. M. Thanks for the link. Rueda's book was written in 1986. That was right around the time of the AIDS epidemic. Initially this was a setback for the homosexual agenda, but eventually the AIDS epidemic was used by the media to portray homosexuals as victims. This feeds right into Christian thinking on forgiveness, but leaves out the need to repent and "sin no more". (Which is a reflection on the rejection of hell as a punishment for sin.)

    I have a related article that I can recommend to you:
    Public Pedophiles

    And here is a quote from a letter written by Archbishop Medeiros of Boston in 1979 which addresses the problem of homosexuality among priests:

    "The danger in seminaries, Your Eminence, is obvious. Where large numbers of homosexuals are present in a seminary, other homosexuals are quickly attracted. Other healthier young men tend to be repelled. As a result of the efforts in our seminary, a large number of candidates have been dropped. Yet some of these, who are from other dioceses, have been transferred by their bishops to other seminaries despite complete disclosures from our seminary."

    ReplyDelete