It's amazing, when you think about it. After we exhaust ourselves for decades asking Bishops to discipline those teaching in Catholic settings and getting their tin ear, it took a President's mandate to get them on a horse to lead a crusade.
Though I searched and searched for outrage from Cardinal O'Malley and not surprisingly came up empty, all kinds of good things are happening.
Bishop Jenky has restored the prayer of St. Michael after Mass.
Archbishop Gomes is rallying Catholics to fight against it.
Cardinal-designate Dolan is calling for action.
I thank them. Pray for them. Pray more of them follow their lead.
But, what action do we really want them to take?
We're calling the people who spent decades positioning themselves to take away religious liberty to ask them to pretty please rescind it?
I don't have a crystal ball. All things are possible with Christ, but IMHO, I don't have a lot of hope Christ will see the wisdom of making the fix this easy for us.
So, we speak out, oppose it, make a lot of noise and the Obama Administration does nothing. Then what?
In case anyone out there is suffering from the same case of amnesia affecting the luminaries at the USCCB, it was the Catholic Bishops who suppressed teaching and manipulated uncatechized Catholics into voting for and electing Obama. They published hundreds of thousands of booklets that gave Catholics the nudge and the wink to elect Obama. They solicited Sr. Carol Keehan who was rewarded with a magical presidential pen. They crowned their american pope at Notre Dame.
It was all good.....right up until the time the Obama Administration cut out funding to the USCCB. When the Obama Administration stopped lining the wallets of the Bishops, a stampede of them came out riding horses named Outrage and Sob Stories.
It's got to smack. Forty years of paying Bishops to suppress the teachings of the Church to elect their american pope, and as soon as it's done, they stop the extortion. The money is going, going, gone. Cry me a river. It is the best thing that happened to us in 40 years.
I'm sure you'll find this rich: Top Bishop feels betrayed by Obama. But he said he would respect Catholic Conscience rights. I was bouyed. Bishops are pushing him to something more than keep going to the White House to be patronized. He doesn't know what to do.
Let us not lose sight of the right action item.
It's critical to talk about our religious liberties, for Bishops to stand up and be counted, to engage what is left of the faithful. It's a small crowd but we finally have the harmony of the Bishops and we should take full advantage of it.
Speaking out, isn't enough. We have a deadline approaching whereby these Bishops will have two choices. They can go along with the mandate or they can refuse to go along with the mandate, come what may. Come shutting down hospitals, schools. Come jail. Notify the President. Notify the lawyers. Notify the doctors, bankers. Notify the indian chiefs. That's the right action item.
Excluding Cardinal O'Malley, who would and does force Catholics to, you know, harm and even kill other people through contracting executioners and providing the victims a ride to their death, Catholic Bishops can't go along with it.
Send out notices to hospitals to plan on emptying their beds by the deadline date and handing out pink slips. Send out notices to schools, colleges and missions that every administrator is to refuse the cooperate in the execution of this mandate or they will be fired.
We are at an intersection of religious liberty in our country. Stand up and fight.