Comments on: Maureen Dowd on Archbishop Dolan & My Dad: “Vintage Deja Vu Dowd”

By: Nelson

Nelson — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 05:05:53 +0000

What are protecting marriage from? Are stopping people from getting divorced? I see all these men talking about protecting marriage while they’re already on their third wife. If Jesus was alive now, do we really think he would spend one second on this nonsense?

By: Fr. Peter

Fr. Peter — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 17:03:40 +0000

Actually one could say that since the New York Times in the past has been guilty of fabricating stories that everything printed there false and since their soon to be retiring editor has admitted his blatant political bias that EVERY news story is so biased as to not have a shred of truth.

By: Scott W.

Scott W. — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 15:50:54 +0000

Please respond to what I actually wrote. I didn’t say or even remotely imply that it is limited to homosexual priests. But there is very much a narrative by from a number of quarters trying to make homosexuality vanish from the issue altogether.

By: Sandra Gray

Sandra Gray — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 00:04:46 +0000

Queen Elizabeth I and Dowd would have got on well to gether in there ignorance and small mind. Look at the plank in her own rather than the splinter in the odd priest.

By: Francis

Francis — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 20:02:59 +0000

The sex abuse crisis is not limited to homosexual priests, or even homosexual activity. Sexual abuse is really about power, not about sexual orientation.

By: PaxDominus

PaxDominus — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 18:38:32 +0000

The Democratic Party’s embrace of secular humanism in its platform is terrible. What was once the party of working-class Catholics has become the party of rich secularists and the academic elite. There are still a few good Democrats out there in the U.S. House and in some state legislatures, but they’ve largely vanished.
However, the Republican Party is largely the party of big business and Nationalist Protestantism, and while Democratic economics is government-centric, Republican economics, which takes a lot from Ayn Rand, Ludwig Von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek, is centered around the individual, and I can’t possibly see how you can reconcile Republican or Democratic economic policy with Rerum Novarum, Centesimus Annus, or Caritas in Veritate. What’s needed in this country is a thoroughly Catholic political party which takes its inspiration from Catholic social teachings and thinkers like Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton. I think the Republican Party is the lesser of two evils for now, and those are the candidates I’ve been voting for, but that doesn’t mean I like doing it.

By: Scott W.

Scott W. — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 18:24:43 +0000

Her article where she breathes about gay priests and abuse crisis suggests that (as your father pointed out) that some progressives keep deviating from the Official Talking Points and forget to pretend that homosexuality has nothing to do with the abuse crisis. So MD is doing us a favor by pointing out the mindset. Namely, that for YEARS dissidents have talked about the legions of gay priests in our midst (to be fair, so did many radical traditionists) and then the crisis hit and suddenly there is nary a one to be found. You can’t have it both ways.

By: TJM

TJM — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 18:01:58 +0000

Sounds like you’re desperate to find something on the Republican platform that is contrary to the Faith. But you can’t, because there’s “no there, there.” There is no moral equivalence. If Pius XI were alive today he would formally condemn the Democratic Party like he did the Nazis and Fascists.

By: PaxDominus

PaxDominus — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 13:12:00 +0000

I double-checked the party platform for the GOP and you are correct in that nothing in that platform is intrinsically evil. However, widespread support for “enhanced interrogation techniques” among GOP officials in certain situations, including waterboarding, which are forms of torture, including almost all of the 2012 GOP Presidential candidates, is especially problematic, and torture is an intrinsic moral evil. I thought support for these techniques was in the GOP platform, but it isn’t.
There’s also a line in the 2008 GOP Platform that looks problematic.

“The waging of war – and the achieving of peace – should never be micromanaged in a party platform, or on the floor of the Senate and House of Representatives for that matter. In dealing with present conflicts and future crises, our next president must preserve all options. It would be presumptuous to specify them in advance and foolhardy to rule out any action deemed necessary for our security.”

This can be read as ruling out guidelines for warfare like the Just War Theory.

You are right, however, that the Democratic Party platform does endorse some intrinsic moral evils, most especially abortion, and that is extremely and gravely problematic. I will never vote for a candidate that is not pro-life and/or a candidate that supports same-sex marriage or civil unions. That’s my minimum threshold.

By: Francis

Francis — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 03:15:09 +0000

Greg: I could not agree more. The failure of the bishops in this area has really undermined the trust and confidence that the laity used to have in them. The molesters themselves have an excuse – they are sick, sick people. For the bishops, there is no such excuse.