Oh, were this an April fool’s joke in August, but I just stumbled upon this column from Newsweek, by Kathleen Kennedy-Townsend, thanks to Pro Ecclesia. The former lieutenant governor of very Catholic Maryland and member of America’s most prominent Catholic political family, is not joking. Abortion? Homosexuality? Please! That’s just the Church hierarchy’s intolerance, of course. Not the Church, certainly not the American Church, and most definitely not the crazy pro-life types who so adamantly opposed President Obama’s glorification at Notre Dame.
No, the Honorable Ms. Kennedy-Townsend says Mr. Obama reflects the real American Catholic, who nods at the pro-life, pro-traditional marriage teachings, but really doesn’t care. Meanwhile, maybe the Pope should take a lesson from the uber community organizer on how to build consensus, as if God’s word can be compromised.
I just want to scream! As Jerry Seinfeld would say about the clueless:
Who are THESE people?!
By these people, I mean, of course, Kennedy-Townsend and the like minded who think the Church is a social club, not a community of faith. Sorry. Didn’t meant to insult social clubs. Many are more principled and stand for more than the transient “believers” whose lives revolve around secular political agendas, whose only purpose for the Church is to turn it into a willing arm capable of advancing their ideology.
Here’s Ms. Kennedy-Townsend making the affront herself:
Politics requires the ability to listen to different points of view, to step into others’ shoes. Obama might call it empathy. While the pope preaches love, listening to the other has been a particular stumbling block for the Catholic hierarchy (as it is for many in power). The hierarchy ignores women’s equality and gays’ cry for justice because to heed them would require that it admit error and acknowledge that the self-satisfied edifice constructed around sex and gender has been grievously wrong. Before he became John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla had a telling all-or-nothing formulation: “If it should be decided that contraception is not an evil in itself then we should have to concede frankly that the Holy Spirit is on the side of the Protestant Churches.”
Much has been said about the president, his ego and his supporters unending adulation for him, but Ms. Kennedy-Townsend’s genuflecting worship would make even him blush. Her disingenuous treatise fully exposes the agenda of leftists who were raised Catholic but long ago succumbed to the dictatorship of relativism — the same people who fawned over John Paul II for domestic political consumption (and Pope Benedict XVI, as well), but who openly disregard and belittle their Gospel ministries.
