Theodore Cardinal McCarrick: 'Show Me The Money!'
By Christopher ManionAmerica’s prelates have finally rallied to confront a pressing moral issue. No, not to oppose the billions in federal funding for Planned Parenthood, nor the additional billions for foreign- aid population programs targeting Catholic Third World countries. No, our prelates have united to condemn those “ mean- spirited” Americans, millions of them practicing Catholics, who support Arizona’s decision to enforce longstanding federal immigration statutes. The bishops’ spokesman on the issue, Roger Cardinal Mahony, charitably accuses the law’s supporters of favoring “ German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques.”
This is nothing new. For years — decades, really — most of our bishops have calibrated Catholic social teaching to conform to the increasingly liberal Democrat agenda. For instance, embattled Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid has often branded opponents of amnesty as “ anti- immigrant.” In less- than- perfect charity, the USCCB has obediently perpetuated that canard. But again, he who pays the piper calls the tune.
And the piper’s tune was called with truly brazen audacity on May 6 by America’s leading pro- abortion Catholic Democrat, who made it perfectly clear just who’s boss when it comes to the Church’s politics.
From Foxnews. com: “ House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday urged Catholic leaders to ‘ instruct’ their parishioners to support immigration reforms, saying clerics should ‘ play a very major role’ in supporting Democratic policies.
“‘ The cardinals, the archbishops, the bishops that come to me and say, “ We want you to pass immigration reform,” and I said, “ I want you to speak about it from the pulpit…. The people, some ( of whom) oppose immigration reform, are sitting in those pews, and you have to tell them that this is a manifestation of our living the gospels”,’ she said.”
Now this triumphal diktat represents a verifiably “ German Nazi and Russian Communist technique,” aimed directly at the heart of the Church on the part of the omnipotent state. Has even one prelate had the temerity to condemn it publicly? Or did Pelosi’s cardinals, archbishops, and bishops show up with their birettas in hand, instead of Canon 915? ( Canon 915 states in part: “ Those who have been . . . obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.”)
Conflict Or Capitulation?
“ In my judgment a conflict between the state claiming unlimited powers and the Catholic Church is inevitable” — Hilaire Belloc, Essays of a Catholic ( 1931).
Pelosi’s brazen outburst represents a primal scream from a depraved powermonger railing at the successors of the apostles: “ Get in line!” But the bishops quietly comply. How did it come to this?
A longtime conservative activist recently gave me a clue. He was explaining why government spending kept growing under George W. Bush, even though most Republicans opposed it. “ The way politicians see it,” he explained, “ interest groups have very specific priorities. When they get their first priority, they are happy. Under George W. Bush, pro- lifers got their judges, the neocons got their war, and evangelicals got their ‘ Faith- Based Initiatives.’ Now, while many groups might want less spending, no powerful interest group came to Bush with ‘ less spending’ as its first priority. So spending just kept going up.”
So the politician’s task is to deliver a group’s first priority. He doesn’t ask, “ What else do you want,” he turns to the next interest group and addresses their highest priority. No matter how much members of an interest group might talk about “ too much spending,” the politician knows that, if they get their first priority, the rest is just background noise.
Let’s analyze the USCCB from this perspective. What does the hard- nosed Capitol Hill pol see as the Catholic Church’s “first priority”? Remember, even though the bishops are undoubtedly a powerful interest group, their first priority is all they will get. Their lower priorities will stay on the shelf — that is the way the game is played.
For almost 100 years — especially since Archbishop Joseph Bernardin planted the USCC’s flag firmly on the left 40 years ago — our bishops have advocated a wide range of liberal social welfare initiatives. They have also strongly opposed abortion. So what’s the score in 2010? Abortion is still legal, but the liberal social welfare agenda has prospered — and so has the USCCB. Catholic “ social justice” bureaucracies flourish, from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development to the huge USCCB headquarters in Washington. The bishops’ anointed experts have developed strong ties with the Washington left, on and off Capitol Hill, and those ties have paid off.
Today the Church receives two billion dollars a year from the government for Catholic Charities, tens of millions more for Catholic universities and hospitals, and tens of millions a year more for the USCCB itself.
With that scorecard, would the average Washington politician draw the conclusion that the life issues — especially abortion — are the bishops’ first priority?
Politicians might not be saints, but they’re not dumb. Politicians also understand the law. So they notice when bishops refuse to implement Canon Law (and Canon 915 is mandatory, not optional) in the case of even the most flagrant Catholic pro-abortion scandalmongers. Politicians draw the logical conclusion. And politicians are also well aware that, as Cardinal McCarrick judiciously put it a few years back, Catholic bishops do not want to “alienate” important pro-abortion Catholics on Capitol Hill because “[taxpayer] money is needed for Catholic hospitals, charities, and education.”
The bottom line: To the crass politician — the vast majority — the bishops’ actions have made it clear that their first priority is money.
Winners And Losers
Does that mean our bishops don’t really oppose abortion? Of course not. But listen to them with a politician’s ear. Left- wing politicians will always invoke the usual nostrums condemning “ waste, fraud, and abuse.” Of course, they do not mean it. Those categories finance the power of the left, and they are not about to eliminate them. To repeat: When leftist politicians rant and rave against “ waste, fraud, and abuse,” they are lying. Now, when bishops condemn abortion, they are telling the truth. But politicians wonder, do they really mean it? If they do, why has it never been the bishops’ first priority?
When bishops condemn abortion, as Theodore Cardinal McCarrick carefully observed, they must always keep in view their first priority — the money. If our bishops were seriously to make the life issues their first priority, they would invite a long and bruising battle. Eventually they might win on abortion ( I think they would, in fact, and pretty quickly), but they would definitely lose the money. Nothing personal, that’s just the way the system works. And that’s not all. The left is spiteful. After the enraged pols shut the water off, they might decide to go after the Church’s tax exemptions.
And there’s more: Imagine pro- abortion Sen. Patrick Leahy’s outrage if he were excommunicated. He might not be able to receive the Eucharist, but as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, he could still issue subpoenas.
In recent years, the bishops have received tens of billions of taxpayer dollars. The way the politicians see it, that money has bought the bishops’ tacit agreement never to go to the mat about abortion. Sure enough, the bishops never have. Instead, while formally opposing abortion, their “ experts” have for 40 years emitted a steady ooze of “ social justice” drivel, imparting the imprimatur of the Catholic Church to virtually every line- item in the left- wing policy agenda of the proabortion Democratic Party. In return, the bishops have gotten — the money.
To put it plainly, since 1968, in the hearts and minds of American bishops and in the halls of the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, there has been a struggle between Humanae Vitae — which is the infallible teaching of the Magisterium — and government- funded “ social justice,” the left- wing Marxist agenda upon which the bishops have bestowed a Catholic imprimatur.
It’s clear today that Humanae Vitae has lost.
