Dolan spoils the party (Why did Democrats allow the cardinal to give a right-wing prayer? )

The Democrats still have a religion problem. No, not that religion problem. They just can’t seem to get past wanting the blessing of a larger-than-life religious figure — even when that figure has called their policies “un-American” and depicts their core beliefs as antithetical to our most cherished freedoms.

The circumstances leading up to Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s benediction last night were politically fraught, but they didn’t have to be. First, Mitt Romney announced Dolan would be giving the closing benediction at the Republican National Convention. (At the time, I wrote that the move signaled Dolan had chosen sides with the GOP. Nothing he said last night seemed to suggest otherwise.) Under fire from fellow Catholics and others, and in an effort to appear nonpartisan, Dolan offered to perform the same function in Charlotte. While some observers have argued that Dolan was backed into a corner and working from a position of weakness — he needed the Democrats to give him cover from the charges of partisanship — the Democrats looked like the ones in the position of weakness. They couldn’t, after all, say no.

Or could they have — or should they have? The problem with celebrity benedictions and invocations is that they are necessarily political, no matter how much both the host and guest protest that it’s really about honoring God, and not about politics. It’s a political convention! How can anything that happens at it not be political?

As Irin Carmon has detailed, Dolan took the opportunity to offer a prayer freighted with the hottest of the hot-button issues of the campaign — abortion, contraception and marriage equality, the latter two framed as infringements of religious liberty, what Dolan last night called “the first, most cherished freedom.”

In other words, Dolan wasn’t giving a final blessing on the proceedings, he was signaling to conservatives that he was there precisely to condemn them.

This, and in particular, Dolan’s prayer for protecting “those waiting to be born,” thrilled antiabortion activists. “This was a moment in history. So proud and inspired to witness #truthtopower,” tweeted Americans United for Life president Charmaine Yoest.

This all happened on the same day that Bishop Robert W. Finn of Kansas City was convicted of failing to report to authorities the Rev. Shawn Ratigan, who had a “pornography problem.” The conviction was the first of its kind in the ongoing church sex abuse scandal, with the case offering damning evidence that Finn failed to take any meaningful action to prevent Ratigan from taking lewd photographs of young girls on playgrounds and at church functions. Recently the New York Times reported that Dolan himself, while archbishop of Milwaukee, authorized payments to abusive priests so they would agree to be defrocked without a protracted internal church process. The report prompted the advocacy group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests to protest, “In what other occupation, especially one working with families and operating schools and youth programs, is an employee given a cash bonus for raping and sexually assaulting children?”

Perhaps Democrats thought they looked tolerant, embracing of a big tent, to have Dolan there. After all, there are pro-life Democrats seeking a place within the party. Indeed, Sister Simone Campbell’s well-received speech drew wild applause when she proclaimed that her pro-life stance is about more than one issue. As she demonstrated so vividly, the Catholic Church and its many affiliated charitable organizations are well-known to many Americans for the essential social services they provide in their communities.

The Democrats’ conflict with Dolan is not just about the church’s opposition to abortion (a view Campbell shares, but doesn’t talk much about). On the matter they call religious freedom, the Bishops have, for more than a year, embarked on a carefully orchestrated campaign, staffed with lobbyists, bolstered by activists and cheered on by the Republican Party, to paint reproductive and LGBT rights as dire threats to the religious freedom of millions of Americans Catholics (and evangelicals). As the Bishops this summer called on Catholics to commemorate the martyrdom of St. Thomas More, whom Henry VIII beheaded over his loyalty to Rome, Father Paul Scalia (son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia) more explicitly compared the contraception mandate to Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic Church and the bloody religious wars of Reformation England.

Before last night, the DNC had given a prominent role to women’s rights advocates, including Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, NARAL Pro-Choice America president Nancy Keenan and Sandra Fluke, the center of the Bishops’ storm over the contraception mandate. Although this point was not emphasized, Fluke, in particular, is a symbol of what happens when one religious group — one with a lot of money and a powerful Washington lobbying arm — tries to impose its religious views through policy. But that particular danger to religious freedom, religious pluralism and secular government was left unspoken at the convention, a serious shortcoming of the Democrats when it comes to talking about religion. Instead, Dolan was given a spot to advocate the opposite view.

Dolan was not speaking truth to power. Dolan is power. Sister Simone could not have given the benediction; nuns are considered laypeople and women are barred from ordination in the Catholic Church. American nuns are under Vatican investigation for promoting “radical feminist themes.”

The church, of course, is free to have these rules. That’s the real essence of religious freedom: The government won’t interfere with the church’s internal policies and governance. On matters that affect other citizens, though, religious freedom demands respecting the religious views of others as well: Many, many religious people, including many dissenting Catholics, believe their faith supports marriage equality, supports access to reproductive healthcare, supports equal roles for women and LGBT people within the faith. But by letting Dolan trounce on the convention’s full-throated celebration of equality for women and LGBT people, the Democrats bared their real religion problem: They still can’t seem to speak truth to power.

My wife and I watched (on Fox, which we also don’t watch that much anymore either) and heard (with puke buckets standing by) to uncle obie and then Cardinal Dolan. Dolan was truly a gem in the pile of excrement left on stage by the clown-mander in chief. To see the on line reaction to Cardinal Dolan was disgusting to say the least. Of course we are talking the party of inclusiveness regardless of race, religion or opposing view points right? Didn’t think so. We for sure had no problem with the Cardinal putting it to these clowns who can’t even determine when you have a 2/3 voice vote. That was one of the most pitiful wool pulling scenes I’ve seen in a long time. And then the “no’s” still hung with them after being stabbed in the back. Fool them as many times as you like apparently.

Go Packers

Helping keep mankind warm for 65 years.

‘Dolan was not speaking truth to power. Dolan is power.’

Uh, this is no state church in the U.S.. The RCC(or any other religion for that matter) does not have the power of the courts, the police and the military to enforce its rules on anyone.

‘Sister Simone could not have given the benediction; nuns are considered laypeople and women are barred from ordination in the Catholic Church. American nuns are under Vatican investigation for promoting “radical feminist themes.”’

Don’t like a church’s rules, don’t go. Women do not have a “right” to be ordained in the RCC just as I as a Protestant do not have a “right” to take communion in the RCC. Hence, I worship at a PCA congregation. These liberal women are free to attend the Episcopagan/Episcopal church USA instead. That’s how religious liberty and true freedom of religious choice works.

“Author is an idiot:

“nuns are considered laypeople and women are barred from ordination in the Catholic Church.”

Nuns are Religious who have taken vows, and certainly are NOT “laypeople”.

“Many, many religious people, including many dissenting Catholics, believe their faith supports marriage equality, supports access to reproductive healthcare, supports equal roles for women and LGBT people within the faith.”

No they don’t believe their faith supports these things, they just pretend it doesn’t matter.

“the convention’s full-throated celebration of equality for women “
It was about killing babies, which has nothing to do with “equality”.”

My thoughts exactly. Ms. Posner certainly is an idiot.

BTW, I have been at more than a few functions in which a nun has given benediction. The difference is that it was not an apostate nun.

Cardinal Dolan went into the den of the devil. What I saw in the last 3 days of “their” convention astounded me.

The brazeness of their excesses and demands to the intolerance and denial...such is what was on display for all America to see.

One can’t help but think about their convention in a religous context. A Biblical context and not have your very heart & soul ponder the evil that was on display. You might think what I am writing is over the top, but deep down you are just as bothered by it as I am. A lot of my conservative friends are more than distressed by the display they saw.

This is not the democrat party of even 4 years ago. For all our battling to ‘get our party back,’ one has to be amazed at where the Democrat party has gone.

This post might get pulled, but consider...

3 times the denial of God, (and none wept bitterly like Peter) for this sin.

The ‘war on women’ battlecry? The conversation here is not about denying women anything, it is about who is going to pay for HER CHOICES(Harlots and whores?).

Consider carefully some of the insights into who or what the Whore of Babylon is considered to be. I offer this version for consideration...keep in mind what the democrat convention discussed...Jeruseleum, God, and fornication...

When John introduces the Whore in Revelation 17, he tells us: “Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who is seated upon many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and with the wine of whose fornication the dwellers on earth have become drunk.’ And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of b.asphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and bedecked with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her fornication; and on her forehead was written a name of mystery: ‘Babylon the great, mother of harlots and of earth’s abominations.’ And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. When I saw her I marveled greatly” (Rev. 17:1–6).

This passage tells us several things about the Whore: (1) She is an international power, since she “sits on many waters,” representing different peoples (17:15), and she has committed fornication with “the kings of the earth,” and she has inflamed “the dwellers on earth” with her fornication. (2) She is connected with the seven-headed Beast from Revelation 13:1–10. That Beast was a major pagan empire, since its symbolism combined animal elements from four other major pagan empires (compare Rev. 13:1–2 with Dan. 7:1–8). (3) The Woman is connected with royalty, since she is dressed in the royal color purple. (4) The Woman is rich, for she is “bedecked with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup.” (5) She has committed some kind of fornication, which in Scripture is often a symbol of false religion—lack of fidelity to the God who created heaven and earth. (6) She is symbolically known as Babylon. (7) She is a central cause of “abominations” in the land, abominations being a reference to practices, especially religious practices, that are offensive to God. And (8) she persecutes Christians “the saints and . . . martyrs of Jesus.”

While the rest of her description could refer to a number of things, the symbolic designation “Babylon” narrows it down to two: pagan Rome and apostate Jerusalem. It is well known that the early Church Fathers referred to pagan Rome as “Babylon”; however, there are also indications in Revelation that the Whore might be apostate Jerusalem. Historically, a number of commentators, both Protestant and Catholic, have adopted this interpretation.

Where did this come from? Oddly enough...
http://archive.catholic.com/library/Whore_of_Babylon.asp

And let’s talk about this thought...all the people ‘prepping’ to shelter/bug out etc. In Revelations it says that Christians, God’s people, will be called out of her to not share in her punishments. Are we really witnessing the preperations for God’s call?

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