Cardinal Timothy Dolan

February 19, 2012
Cardinal Timothy Dolan
Saint Patrick’s Cathedral
New York, New York 10022

Eminenza,

Martin Luther.

He should have been, forgive me, the paradigmatic template for mug-wump Catholics.

He was an Augustinian monk who had problems, first with his order, and then with his Church. In the end he left both. In addition to constructing in his mind a new path to God he turned European History upside down. By following his beliefs to their Logical conclusion - he couldn’t stay in a Church whose fundamental tenets were impossible for him to believe – he was an honest man.

The particular points of his theological disagreements are not germane to this discussion. He knew, 600 years ago, he could have his cake and eat it. More importantly, he knew that he could not eat his cake and have it. He left the Church because he could not live within its navigational markers. For that he is given points for honesty.

We have Catholics, people like Vice President Curley Biden, Secretary Kathleen Sibelius, Senator Little Dick Durbin, Senator Patty Murray, Senator Barbara Mikulski, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, all, with no exceptions, all the Kennedys [living and dead] who think that their Church allows 2 from column A, 1 from column B, and a free pick before 6:00 PM. They gape, slack jawed and somewhat embarrassingly, when someone says “Thou art Peter. Upon this Rock I will build my Church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against It.”

The people mentioned were held over a Baptism fount and had Holy water poured over them. They were anointed with chrism. The stain of original sin was washed from their souls. A few years later they heard the words “Ego te absolvo”. They then ate the body and blood of Christ. A few years after that a Bishop tapped their cheeks and swore them into the Army of Christ.

They became full-fledged members of a marching society that is now into its 3rd millennium.

Their resolve was shaped and hardened by people as diverse as Josephite nuns, Christian Brothers de la Salle, Norbertine monks, and Jesuit priests

If they didn’t know the rules when they signed their contract they do now.

The rules from the Baltimore catechism about mortal sin are still in force. The issue must be grievous, you must have sufficient reflection, and there must be full consent of the will.

With the possible exception of Congresswoman Pelosi, a woman who suffers from diminished capacity that thralldom to the tenets of modern American Liberalism demands of its adherents, particularly those who think that evil results from socio-economic causes, all the others must know that the “conscience thing” won’t go away.

“The world turns and the world changes,
But one thing does not change.
In all of my years, one thing does not change.
However you disguise it, this thing does not change:
The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.”

Holy Mother Church, and don’t those words sound odd yet reassuring, gives much leeway in things labeled malum prohibitum. Vito Corleone was right when he said the Church turned its gaze away from drinking and gambling. Those things that fall under the very narrow roof of an infamia, things that are malum per se, can not to be treated so casually.

Tevye, from Fiddler on the Roof, said that there was a line he could not cross. It only involved a marriage. No one would have died from it. This is a different as it can be.

Saint Augustine, Luther’s mentor, said “Love God and do what you will”.

20 years ago, Governor Mario Cuomo, a modern American Liberal with 19 years of Roman Catholic instruction told an eager audience at Notre Dame University, the most “Catholic” thing in America, that while he was personally opposed to abortion he had no choice but to countenance it because it was the Law of the Land. Logic would dictate that he would have personally put Dred Scott on the midnight train to Georgia because it too was the Law of the Land.

Although Lord Barack the Beneficent would have benefited from someone wagging a threatening finger in his face during geography class – Hint. The number of states in the Union corresponds to the number of stars on the flag. – he had the political sense to put Roman Catholics in the front line of his assault on life. There was no shortage of volunteers.

Chris Matthews, a Kennedy ass kisser of such sublime ignorance that if film became available of Saint Jack buggering Macaroni, Caroline’s pony, at the Easter Egg Roll – Easter? Egg? Good Friday, Redemption? Resurrection? Spring? New Life? – he would say it was a misunderstanding fueled by the Tea Party, tells us it is OK to acquiesce in murder. Further, the greater good of emptying the emergency rooms of illegal aliens, illegal immigrants, the undeserving poor, and free loading scoundrels is sufficient to overcome infanticide.

It is one of those moments when the choice is clear

.All of the abovementioned names have several things in common. In matters civil they have never seen a tax that shouldn’t be raised or a regulation that couldn’t be tightened. That they are all card carrying modern American Liberals is a given. That they are all elected officials or public people is also a given. They are also Roman Catholics who publicly profess their faith and have raised their children as Catholics.

Thomas More told us that “when statesmen forsake their private consciences for the sake of their public duties…they lead their country by a short route to chaos”.

I don’t think they are in danger of losing their heads.

I can’t, as no man can, speak to the state of them losing their souls.

I know in my lifetime there was a form of excommunication – de facto – for when prominent Catholics gave scandal to the faithful. I don’t know if it survived Vatican 2.

The United States Government is telling the Roman Catholic Church that they must acquiesce in murder. The first line of this murderous phalanx is led by volunteer Judas bulls, Catholics all

The distant sound they will hear is that of the Hound, God’s Hound, picking up their scent.

There is time, there is always time, to come out of the cave and “look up and see the stars”.

Is it time for you to nail some instructions to the front door of Saint Patrick’s?

“All are welcome. The Confessional is always open. If ‘public duties’ require you to genuflect in a church whose only sacrament is abortion stay away from the Communion rail in this Church. That’s freedom of choice, isn’t it?”






Kevin Smith