Interesting Day Post Mortem

I'm still trying to process the backlash from the detractors and the fantastic round ups of bloggers.

On the one hand we have dissenters who have been using Cardinal Bernadin's diaper for 40 years to undermine the seriousness of killing infants who are behaving rather badly.

I don't want to get specific, but I had an exchange with somebody whose name rhymes with Snarlson where we were characterized as disobedient ecclesial campaigning crowing pride-filled egotistical superior mocking sedevanasit gossip slandering mongerers lacking humility and taking credit for what happened.  Satan prevails in the Church sometimes and we are confusing pollitical rehtoric for religious sentiment and politically smearing and dragging bishops through the mud.   But the worst part was his contemptible mischaracterization of Bp. Dolan as having the same poor judgment as Bp. Kicanas when it comes to sexual abusers.

I can't tell whether prudence was thrown out the window when I invited him to be tarred and feathered and thrown under the bus or when I called his sore looser attack on Bishop Dolan despicable.  Why doesn't Henry just put on the proabortion and sexual immoralikty sash and be done with the intellectual dishonesty.   Have convictions and be a man about them instead of hiding your dissent behind these silly tortured campaigns to try to shut people up who are whistleblowing about internal corruption.

It has got to go.

Don't miss MSW.  It is a must read for those of us in Boston who have been building the whistleblowing Church Militant crusade.

There is one other aspect of the story that I alluded to yesterday and which was confirmed for me by several bishops. The attacks on Bishop Kicanas in the last week before the election worked. These attacks focused on Kicanas’ service as a seminary rector, when he recommended for orders a man who went on to be a child molester. Kicanas had answered the charges at the time and there was nothing to them, but on the eve of the election, when the CNN ticker had an item about “Top bishop denies promoting child molester,” I knew there was trouble for Kicanas. Survivors’ groups unwittingly did the bidding of the most conservative bishops by joining in the attacks. If that were not enough, the gay activists in the Rainbow Sash movement sealed Kicanas’ fate when they “endorsed” him, a classic case of failing to anticipate the opposition. Still, I had anticipated there might be a sympathy backlash for Kicanas, not least because – whatever the bishops intended – some on the right now think they possess a “heckler’s veto” over USCCB elections. Throw enough mud at the last minute, and they can stop someone they do not like from winning. They sent text messages to bishops. They called the bishops’ rooms at the hotel. It was ugly. But, no bishop wanted to return to his diocese and be pummeled with questions about Kicanas’ treatment of a sexual abuser. There was enough smoke to suggest a fire, and the bishops have no desire to be burned on that score anymore.

Someone we don't like...for no good reason.   (rolling eyes)

Pardon me, but aren't these the people who wanted to lay people to be more vocal and Bishops more responsive and who just spent the last ten years whining about pedophile enablers?

Congratulations.  The chicken has come home to roost.

Like everyone else, I found the Rainbow Sash statement fascinating.   Note they mention a 'hard right' toward...the Republican party and Tea Party.  Evidently, the Pope is no longer even in the picture to the picture to them. I will say one thing for them - they at least have the decency to be honest and forthright about their convictions.

Here's Grant Gallicho's end game:

I wonder whether Rainbow Sashers knew exactly what they were doing, and are happy to use Kicanas’s loss to raise awareness–and money.

But what about the rest? Text messages? Phone calls to bishops’ hotel rooms? The attacks from conservatives may not have been the only thing that torpedoed his candidacy, but do the bishops who voted against Kicanas because of that smear campaign recognize they just caved in to the swiftboating of a brother bishop–and it could happen to them?

Everyone I think saw what happened to Cardinal Law and are acutely aware that dissenters have had them by the spines.  What happened was when orthodox Catholics also rose to hold them accountable, they had nothing left to loose and they simply just did the right thing.

Catholic World Report has a fabulous piece about the unraveling of the seamless garment which our friends from BHE have posted with commentary HERE.

The media casts Kicanas’ defeat and Dolan’s win as a “traditionalist” victory. But that is overstating it. For one thing, Dolan—though he sees himself walking in the footsteps of John O’Connor—is far from a confrontational conservative. According to the media’s telling, the “moderate” lost and the “conservative” won. But it is more accurate to say that the moderate won and the liberal lost. In reality, the immediate outcome of the USCCB election has to do primarily with the slow unraveling of the “Seamless Garment” and the aftershocks of the abuse scandal. Bernardin’s dream of the USCCB as a Vatican-resistant body of progressive political opinions was simply overtaken by the nightmare of clerical corruption.

BTW - do not miss the spectacular BHE trip down memory lane that notes the devastating effects of the Bernadin/Hehir seamless garment.

There are many who will try to tell you that Bernadin meant well by defining the failure to shut lights off in your home to save energy or littering on the same level of seriousness as executing unborn children in the womb.  I don't buy into it.  The fruit of the tree is just too rotten.  It was long past time to take the ax to the root

Speaking of which - do check out our blogging friend Tim who is working on an unfaithful schools blog.  He's got some reading on Boston College that is quite informative.