Bp. Robert McElroy
Posted on 02/01/2020 12:20:56 PM PST by ebb tide
SAN DIEGO (ChurchMilitant.com) - Bishop Robert McElroy, who once called faithful Catholics opposing homosexual behavior a "cancer" in the Church, will be presenting a lecture on how Catholics should vote.
McElroy will present his address, titled "Candidates, Consciences and Faithful Voting" on Thursday, Feb. 6, little more than two weeks after Pope Francis exhorted U.S. bishops to teach Catholic voters how to properly discern how they should vote.
But, with an eye to McElroy's liberal record, faithful San Diego Catholics are bracing for what he will say in his lecture.
It is not Catholic teaching that abortion is the preeminent issue that we face as a world.Tweet
At the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) general assembly in November, McElroy sided with Abp. Cupich of Chicago that abortion should not be considered the "preeminent" issue of our time, claiming it contradicts the spirit of Pope Francis' pontificate.
"It is not Catholic teaching that abortion is the preeminent issue that we face as a world in Catholic social teaching," the bishop claimed. "It is not."
McElroy is also a staunch supporter and promoter of Pope Francis's encyclical, Laudato Sí.
In June 2019, he attended a conference on the environment titled, "Laudato Sí and the U.S. Catholic Church: A Conference Series on Our Common Home" at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.
Delivering keynote address, McElroy stated:
For us in the United States at this perilous moment in our national history, the core themes of Laudato Sí are especially urgent. We stand, deeply estranged from one another, seething in divisions and unwilling to reconcile. We are the most powerful nation in the history of the earth, yet have rejected the only realistic pathways that have emerged to heal our broken planet.
Underscoring his environmental theme. McElroy ended his keynote address at Creighton with a call for human fairness and planetary care, by exhorting: "Let us in these days seek to build in God's grace a fairer paradise on this planet which is our common home, and to secure its just future for all of humanity."
The bishop had a series of 'listening sessions' in which faithful Catholics were asked to leave for challenging him with questions about the clergy scandal and Catholic moral doctrine.Tweet
In a 2017 America Magazine op-ed, McElroy blasted critics of celebrity Jesuit Fr. James Martin as fostering campaigns of "homophobia" and "bigotry."
Conflating homosexual behavior with same-sex attraction, he lamented: "This campaign of distortion must be challenged and exposed for what it is, not primarily for Fr. Martin's sake, but because this cancer of vilification is seeping into the institutional life of the Church."
Taking the words of Pope Francis out of context, McElroy continued, "The controversy over [Martin's book] Building a Bridge is really a debate about whether we are willing to banish judgmentalism from the life of the Church."
Faithful Catholics judge acts, not persons, in line with the Catechism, Scripture and Tradition.
Bp. Robert McElroy
Church Militant reported that McElroy allowed a man in a same-sex "marriage" to work as a pastoral associate at a parish in the diocese of San Diego. When the man resigned from his position, claiming he had "endured physical and emotional violence from groups like Church Militant and LifeSite News," McElroy responded by retorting, "There is nothing Christian or Catholic about the hateful and vile people whose persecution of [this man] drove him from his ministry." The bishop uttered not a word about his living a public lifestyle that contradicts an essential moral doctrine of the Catholic Church.
In 2017, McElroy participated in an LGBT Mass that celebrated the 20th anniversary of "Always Our Children," a document produced by the U.S. bishops, which has been criticized for downplaying Church teaching on homosexuality.
Church Militant also reported that in 2018, the bishop had a series of "listening sessions" in which faithful Catholics were asked to leave the premises for challenging him with questions about the clergy scandal and Catholic moral doctrine.
On the website for the University of San Diego, which is sponsoring the bishop's presentation in February, the event description says:
Bishop Robert McElroy, bishop of San Diego, will give an important lecture to kick-off the election year. The bishop will lay out the moral parameters and principles we should consider in deciding for whom and for what to vote. This timely lecture will initiate a year of important discussion as we determine the future of our country and world.
The voters McElroy will be speaking to live in a historically blue state. California has not voted Republican in a presidential election since 1988. Since then the state has favored Democrats by considerably lopsided margins.
McElroy must want to lose his tax exempt status.
I’m very much against this kind of thing. It’s very wrong to have churches advocate for a political outcome.
“McElroy must want to lose his tax exempt status.”
That’s is exactly what should happen to him and all other churches and clergy that advocate for political candidates and issues.
Separation of Church and state doesn’t apply to Lefties.
May Christ cleanse His Church of these worldly shepherds.
Ping
Blow it out your @$$, Your Eminence.
Time for this bankrupt organization to start paying taxes?
RCINC is the oldest most profitable multinational corporation on the planet
“I’m very much against this kind of thing. It’s very wrong to have churches advocate for a political outcome.”
It is good to advocate for good. It is evil to advocate for evil.
Government should not meddle with faith. Faith should inform and guide government.
This bishop should have no influence not because he is a bishop, but because he is evil.
His Church is The Church The Body of Christ. Everyone who is part of that Body IS cleansed. There is nothing TO cleanse. That was done at Calvary.
Now apostate church, that’s an entirely different sermon
I hope he decides to repent
Take it away retroactively for a few years.
Amen!
Not denying true tales of high-clergy opulence that would vex your spirit and blow your mind...
But this kind of statement --- no matter how rhetorically satisfying --- has the problem of being, overall, unfactual.
First of all, because there's no "RCINC" or anything like it. There is no multinational corporate structure.
Every diocese is, as a corporation, legally and financially independent. Every parish and parochial school is ultimately owned by the diocese. Some are decently funded; some are hurting for money; some are closing because they can't make it.
All institutions (e.g. Catholic Universities, Catholic hospitals), are independent, not only from the diocese where they are located, but even from the religious orders that founded them. A few Catholic colleges have more-than-adequate funding. Many, many are in danger of closing their doors, or have formally secularized to secure more adequate funds with less restrictions.
Even "the Vatican" (meaning Vatican City as a political entity, and the curial offices) --- though it has priceless treasures like art and architecture, can't convert them into cash. Who would buy the baldacchino at St. Peters? You may call it "priceless," but it's actually not an economic asset: it's non-fungible.
Vatican departments have lots of investments in pricey real estate and stocks, but --- according to the U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican --- the whole global Vatican finance enchilada adds up to less than the endowment of Harvard University (which is a tad under $40 billion.)
The annual operating budget of Vatican City is $350m, which is (I just googled this) less than the operating budget of Minneapolis.
So you've got ritzy cardinalates on the one hand, and on the other, mission stations that can't afford a photocopy machine and humble parishes that can't heat their church.
So the two questions we should ask about your comment would be:
(1) Who do you mean? and...
(2) Compared to what?
Forget separation of church and state.
This is separation of church and church.
Voting is state.
The RCINC that can afford 500/$hr legal mouthpieces to impugn and malign individuals in deposition and trial wanting justice against pedophile priests who abused them?
That's why my Catholic $$, sparse as they may be, don't go into "The Pipeline" --- the parish-diocese-usccb-vatican slipstream --- but rather to independent Catholic efforts like the St. Vincent de Paul Society, 40 Days for Life, the Divine Mercy Care clinic in MD and the independent Catholic "whistleblower" media. The real Catholics --- with a capital "C".
My priest knows this and gave me his blessing.
Other giving ideas:
"That's My Money, Your Excellency" (list at LINK)
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