Cardinal Dolan and the Al Smith Dinner... WWJD?

I apologize for the infrequency of posts. My plate is a bit full right now. It takes me several days to put thoughts together and publish. By the time it's ready, it seems the controversy is not newsworthy!


In between happenings here at Camp McKinley, I have been reading a bit and thinking about the hoopla around the Al Smith Dinner.

I've read the Cardinal's response to criticism and the responses of the usual suspects who rush to sweep corruption and cowardice of our esteemed episcopal leaders under the carpets.

The message seems to be we are just not as holy and humble as Cardinal Dolan, Mark Shea, Bill Donohue (I'll get to him in a minute), etc. Their manifestos on charity in response to the objections of Catholics, explain, in one way or another, how they are all the imitation of the Christ.

That Cardinal Dolan would lead a crusade of our fellow Catholics to construe our objections as some kind of contest over piety came as a surprise to me. To use Bill Donohue's caricature of the fruit of his conversation with Cardinal Dolan, we see ourselves as 'the piety police'.

I want to state, right here and now, and for the record: I do not contest that I, Carol Mary McKinley, would come in last place in a contest for holiness. Furthermore I zealously concur that Cardinal Dolan, Mark Shea, Bill Donohue are much holier and pious than this miserable sinner. I have little doubt that others objecting to the Cardinal's invitation of Obama to the Al Smith dinner feel precisely the same way.

Holy, holy, holy is Cardinal Dolan, Mark Shea, Bill Donohue, et. al.

Nolo contendere.

Now that I've got that squared away I wish to re-affirm the factual information relative to the Cardinal's assertion that his invitation to dine Obama is the execution of Christ's maxim to dine with sinners vs. Christ's actual ministry as it appears in Scripture.

When Christ drank water from the well of an adulteress to converse with her,we see an interaction between a Jew and a Samaritan woman. The content of the interaction involved prophecy, enumerating the number of "husbands", disclosing His Knowledge that she was not married to the man she was shacking up with, affirmation of the Source of Divinity and living water, which He invited her to drink for the sake of her own salvation. He turned the lights on. Made crystal clear to her what the Source of salvation was, and that her own immoral practices placed her in peril.

By the end of his interactions with the sinner and other Samaritans in the village over the following few days, here is the fruit of the knowledge Christ imparted:

Those who heard the content of Christ's interactions said the following: “We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world."

Alternately, the purpose of the Cardinal Dolan's dinner is to raise money for his Archdiocese of New York. Obama is booked as an entertainer. The content of the conversations will be telling jokes, political allies mocking each other over good food, good quality bourbon and cigars.

We do the same thing here in Boston on St. Paddy's day. To the best of my knowledge, not a single politician in the history of the event, taking a taxi home from the event three sheets to the wind, has ever subsequently showed up at RCIA.

If I'm mistaken, please correct me.

See the difference?

The content of the interactions between the Samaritan and Christ were interactions between the Divine Physician and the soul in need of healing and conversion. After the woman, the sinner, arose from sharing water with Christ, she walked away healed.

Year after year at the St. Paddy's Day roasts, the politicians walk away retaining their ignorance and continue passing legislation that murders and kills. Year after year, decade after decade.

Any reasonably prudent person can therefore conclude, Christ's ministry was not about sharing food and drink, telling jokes and laughing it up.


To be clear, Cardinal Dolan is not dining with the sinner for the purpose of converting him or anyone else in the room. He is not assembling for the purposes of salvation and conversion. Obama is his court jester to raise money for the Archdiocese.

It is absurd - and I can't even bring myself to believe it is in good faith - for the Cardinal or anyone else to pretend this gathering is about Cardinal Dolan's imitation of Christ's ministry 'eating with sinners'.

The Cardinal's actions three weeks before an election has the potential and no doubt will be used by Obama's political team to give the appearance the Cardinal honored Obama and they can therefore cast their ballots for Obama. When the Cardinal weighed the consequences to our country, to the children slaughtered under this regime, the sick and imperfect who are heading to the death camps to be euthanized in the next four years, he made a 'pastoral' decision to use Obama as his cash cow.

There isn't a single person in the room of the Al Smith dinner who walk away from the interactions imparted with the knowledge necessary to know Who is the Christ, the Divine Source of Knowledge and Salvation.

It will do just the opposite as the interaction will be used to lend credibility to Obama as the savoir of the world.

The Cardinal's objectives are about the sound of "ca-ching". Consequently, the Al Smith dinner does not qualify for theological clearances of the salvific actions of Christ.

This plebe is here to remind you that the Cardinal's event is about food, booze, cigars and money.


If the Cardinal and his flash mob of the authentic holy Catholic elite want to continue on their path of mocking 2000 years of theology, perhaps they should open up the Al Smith dinner to other notorious sinners so they can be really, really holy?

President Obama's political allies have rekindled the ancient practice of
crucifixions.

If Cardinal Dolan was really, really nice, the Muslim brotherhood would be invited to the Al Smith dinner. "When I was hungry you gave me food." WWJD?



this fella? WWJD?

How about hitting the jackpot and inviting these sinners from Taliban? WWJD?

How about the Kurds? I'll bet they are hungry. WWJD?

These groups rising in the ranks of our country, born of the race and economic hatred being fed to our fellow countrymen by the Obama administration? WWJD?


If you haven't seen the fruit of Cardinal Dolan making phone calls to Catholics turning them into ferocious attack dogs against righteous Catholics, check out Bill Donohue on Lou Dobbs:




See how a Cardinal can turn the money and power behind his crozier into a lightening rod?

Kempis eat your heart out.

As a friend recently said about the Catholic League, which just about sums up the response from the 'piety police':

"Thanks Bill. Perhaps another controversy about lights on a building will come along and you can mobilize your grassroots members around the crusade".

Nero fiddles while Rome burns.


Is this the unification of a shepherd of Christ's One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church?

Making phone calls to turn Catholics against one another because his widdle feelings are wounded? He can't look himself in the mirror and say - Gee, I may have made an error in judgment (and theology)here"?

If Catholics like Bill Donohue are going to turn chicken sh*t when they get a phone call from F Troop at the Chancery, rather than showing up on Lou Dobbs to do the Cardinal's bidding, might they simply consider tiptoeing away to hide under their rocks? Leave righteous people to do the work they don't have the spine to do themselves?

Go on...take the money and run.