They got in bed with pigs. Probably can’t figure out how they got covered in sh*t.
The USCCB is rotten and Dem to the core, but I think the problem was primarily that they went for one objection (abortion) that they were sure they could get all the bishops to sign onto and backed away from dealing with all the other important issues where there may have been more dissent.
This left it wide open for the House to simply approve something that would meet the bishops’ very minimal demands and then move ahead with the rest of it.
More than anything else, the bishops are cowards, or at any rate, those acting in the context of the USCCB. There were many individual bishops who were excellent, but unfortunately, the institutional presence of the USCCB makes it the focus of the media and the individual bishops are ignored.
It’s what I’ve been saying for years now. You can’t change the politics until you change the culture.
If one believes that healthcare is a right and no one has challenged that belief what do you expect? Of course, the Bishops are going to promote it because they don’t know the other side.
Meanwhile, the conservatives are outfunded by the liberals. You put the two together and it equals conservative thought and ideas are going to be considered outdated, outmoded and out of touch.
The sad part is that most Americans are conservative.
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As a practicing Catholic I feel there’s a large degree of truth to this- of course they took the rats at their word and are now paying a price...
there is still recourse- I remember the US Catholic Bishops threatening to shut down all the hospitals run by Catholics (I believe like 17% in the country) if the health care bill funds abortion....
This is a low blow, assuming to know the minds of the Bishops, ascribing ulterior motives even clairvoyant abilities, as if they could possibly have foretold all the votes, amendments, twists and turns this legislation took after Stupak.
The Bishops did the only thing they could, namely to help ensure no abortion funding via the only vehicle available, Stupak. The church is not an anti-government entity, and life is the most serious moral question of public policy it’s charged with addressing.
Its activism has to hold life as the highest priority, and it’s not reasonable to expect Stupak and other supposedly pro-life Dems to buck party politics to uphold pro-life principles, then expect the church to abandon principle and embrace politics.
Wow.
Catholic Bishops should also be thanked for any taxpayer funded abortions in the modern bill. Catholic Bishops have been running interference for Democrats at least since I was a student at a Catholic Seminary 40+ years ago.
I have always been convinced that Catholic bishops opposed abortion (wink, wink) when they have supported Democrats every way possible. I'd say they are getting what they have always wanted.
Kincaid is absolutely dead on.
How many Catholics have paid any attention to the fact that “the bishops” have been calling for national socialism for 75 years? How many thought the silly positions taken by “the bishops” would ever have any effect in the real world?
Well, they do.
More Catholics need to start screaming bloody murder about the National Socialists in the USCCB. “The bishops” have been the LAST to do anything pro-life. The pro-life movement is the biggest, most energetic movement for ACTUAL Christian social values in the history of the Church—and it has been, since the mid-sixties until today, almost 100% a LAY MOVEMENT. You could count on the fingers of one hand the bishops AND priests who have ever contributed an original thought or strategy to the movement. The vast majority of bishops AND priests have been obstructionists, lallygaggers, and turncoats—from pro-abortion Bernardin to pro-abortion McCarrick, on down through the ranks.