What a nice charitable headline selected for Cardinal’ Dolan’s recent contribution to political discourse: Nativism rears its big-haired head: Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric is a sad return to a terrible American tradition.
Cardinal Dolan:
“I am not in the business of telling people what candidates they should support or who deserves their vote.”
So says Cardinal Timothy Dolan, speaking out in an op-ed in the NY Daily News over this weekend. According to the content of his piece and the Cardinal’s disclaimer, I guess we can assume that he IS in the business of telling people what candidates they should NOT support or who does NOT deserve their vote!
Now of course Cardinal Dolan has a right to his opinion, and if he wishes to express it publicly, I have no problem. But the Cardinal is helping to expose an alarming phenomenon which, in my view, is overtaking the Roman Catholic Church these days.
Besides a clear decision on the part of the highest leadership of the church to become politically “hyperactive”, there is an equally clear decision that the “politics” it has chosen to join with is of the leftist ideology. And this decision is made at the expense of moving the traditional values, teachings, and tenets of the faith to the “back of the bus” in favor of the “modernist” socialist, globalist view of the world.
Pope Francis has certainly led the way in this very significant shift in the Church’s ministry. The church’s opposition to abortion and gay marriage…still stands, but the “new” emphasis in Catholic messaging is clearly opposition to capitalism, redistribution of the world’s “wealth”, “equality” as it wishes to define it.
The Pontiff seems to revel in the attention and applause he receives for his advocacy on these positions from the worldwide liberal press and Catholic left.
Cardinal Dolan is right in step with this theological shift. Along with the US Catholic bishops, he heartily endorsed Obamacare…with a minor exception when it comes to government’s suppression of religious freedom which is part and parcel of Obamacare.
The Church’s leadership, Cardinal Dolan included, has supported the Obama administration’s positions and actions on illegal immigration, including a significant role in establishment and proliferation of “sanctuary cities”…and garnered significant federal funds in return. As his op-ed reveals, he makes no distinction between ‘legal” and “illegal” immigrants. As has become the modus operandi of the “Francis administration”, he gives lip service to the traditional values and positions of the faith…”we need to control our borders”…but does not acknowledge the very real problems illegal immigration is causing which Donald Trump’s candidacy is highlighting, however clumsily it may have been brought forward. It is one thing to express deep concern and give succor to the plight of those allowed and encouraged to illegally enter the country. The Cardinal, however, does not call for the immediate halt to the continued non-enforcement of existing immigration laws as the flow across our borders continues and thus increases the plight of many more innocents .
In fact, his op-ed, in many respects, sounds much like a standard Democrat candidate’s stump speech.
And, finally, I find Cardinal Dolan’s choice of issues for an op-ed this week, of all weeks, more than disconcerting, but sadly, certainly characteristic of the “new” Catholic Church. THE topic, which should be addressed from the pulpit in every parish in America, this weekend, is the grisly, immoral, inhuman activities of Planned Parenthood and the support American taxpayers are forced to give that despicable organization! DLH
