His office’s statement:
Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, has accepted an invitation to deliver the closing prayer at next week’s Democratic National Convention. As was previously announced, he will also be offering the closing prayer at the Republican Convention on Thursday of this week.
It was made clear to the Democratic Convention organizers, as it was to the Republicans, that the Cardinal was coming solely as a pastor, only to pray, not to endorse any party, platform, or candidate. The Cardinal consulted Bishop Peter Jugis of the Diocese of Charlotte, who gave the Cardinal his consent to take part in the convention that will be taking place in his diocese.
We knew from the get-go that Dolan was willing to pray at both conventions, but the criticisms (largely from the left) came anyway. Now they’ll probably start coming from the right.
Such criticisms will be misplaced. Many pro-abortion and pro-same-sex marriage groups try to pain the Catholic church not as a religious body but rather as an “anti-woman” or “anti-gay” political lobby. Having Dolan pray at the Democratic convention makes it much harder for them to make that argument. After all, one never would invite the heads of Americans for Tax Reform or Freedom Works to the DNC podium. Christian moral commitments are not essentially partisan ones, and it important that Democrats as well as Republicans recognize this.
The takeaway is this: A silent, respectful reception for Dolan will constitute a minor affirmation of the special importance of religion in American life. And a rude reception? Well, that would embarrass all those who seek to discredit the church’s moral witness.
August 28th, 2012 | 10:44 am
Stop the criticisms and bring up a while new raft of questions such as:
How does one give the benediction at a convention of death eaters?
August 28th, 2012 | 11:08 am
Good for him. Now we shall see if the convention attendees will pray respectfully with him, or boo him. I strongly suspect the latter will be the case.
August 28th, 2012 | 12:10 pm
@Kamilla
Even the Martyrs Prayed for forgiveness and blessings upon their executors.
August 28th, 2012 | 12:49 pm
Perhaps at the Democratic National Convention, Cardinal Dolan will ask to be placed between two pillars. When he finishes the closing prayer, he will push mightily on the pillars and bring the roof down, killing everyone. There is a precedent.
August 28th, 2012 | 2:24 pm
I suggest the good cardinal bring Fr. Gabriele Amorth with him.
August 28th, 2012 | 3:30 pm
What if it was a question of a Catholic Bishop offering the closing prayer at a Democratic convention back when the Democrats were the party of slavery? And they were just that.
The Democrats opposed the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution. The 13th banned slavery. The 14th effectively overturned the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision (imposed upon America by pro-slavery, Democrat Supreme Court justices) by guaranteeing due process and equal protection to former slaves. The 15th gave Black Americans the right to vote.
The Democrat party’s extremist and utterly radical commitment to slavery is revealed as the sincerity of those who said slavery was wrong but supported the Democrat party’s pro-slavery agenda anyway (think of Democrats today who say “abortion should be safe, legal and rare”) was mentioned in a speech at New Haven, Connecticut by Abraham Lincoln. An excerpt:
The contemporary Democrat party is every bit as committed to state-sanctioned killing of the child in the womb it was to slavery. They will not tolerate any restrictions on abortion at all, and insist on everybody, including Churches and their members who consider it an intrinsic evil, be involved in it in some way or another, as in forcing Catholics to participate in the provision of abortifacient drugs via the HHS mandate. The effort to legitimize what is intrinsically evil by forcing everybody to be involved in it is an approach that was used by the Democrats back when it was the party of slavery. Another excerpt from Lincoln’s New Haven speech makes this clear:
Cardinal Dolan, to refresh his apparently fading memory, needs to take a long hard look at the photographs of slaves whose backs had been shredded by the lash and read up on how they were bought, sold and bred like animals. He then needs to take long hard look at the contemporary photographic evidence that reveals the grim horror of dismembered babies and read up on the trauma and heartache abortion has brought millions of women. He should then ask himself if it really is appropriate to aid the Democrats in maintaining the facade of legitimacy behind which they hide the horror and evil of child-killing by offering the closing prayer at their convention. That is exactly what they want of him: to legitimize the platform of the party of child-killing and same-sex unions in the minds of voting Catholics. That platform will be more illegitimate – according to true, traditional Catholic teaching – than was the platform of the party of slavery.
The only thing that could redeem his saying that closing prayer would be for him to use it to condemn that platform as bluntly as Christ condemned “whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear to men beautiful, but within are full of dead men’s bones, and of all filthiness.” (Mt: 23:27, Douay) Christ had no toleration at all for a facade of legitimacy used to sustain utterly evil practices.
August 28th, 2012 | 3:42 pm
JP,
Unless I am mistaken, the martyrs didn’t go around issuing public offers to pray at the “Festival of Christians and Lions”
August 28th, 2012 | 3:50 pm
A prayer for the unborn would be a courageous act, and the lack of “amens” would speak volumes….
August 28th, 2012 | 4:07 pm
I wonder if he will give the exact same prayer at each convention… that could be interesting
August 28th, 2012 | 4:07 pm
Ok Harry……Christ lived, walked, and dined with sinners…..and of course, like here He was judged for that…….but that didn’t mean He approved of what they did or were doing. The Cardinal is there to offer prayer, not to be a witness for their wrong doings.
August 28th, 2012 | 5:02 pm
Hello, LEE B,
Christ was merciful to individual sinners. No doubt about it. So, while He showed compassion and mercy to the woman caught in adultery, He wouldn’t have attended an adulterers’ convention composed of those who promoted adultery as a legitimate activity within marriage. His doing so would have legitimized their agenda in the minds of His followers and would have involved Him in the destruction of traditional marriage as an institution.
The promotion of child-killing and same-sex unions are contemporary assaults on traditional Christian beliefs regarding marriage and human sexuality. The Church should and does have the compassion of Christ towards individual sinners involved in this, but, just as Christ wouldn’t have attended an adulterers’ convention, Cardinal Dolan should in no way legitimize the agenda of the Democratic convention by taking part in it, unless it is to bluntly condemn their anti-life, anti-Christian, godless social engineering.
August 28th, 2012 | 6:10 pm
Matthew– How naive of you to think that having Dolan pray at the Democratic convention will change anyone’s position.
If the DNC invited the heads of Americans for Tax Reform or Freedom Works to the podium, everyone would see that as a charade, which is what Dolan’s invitation is and unfortunately the Cardinal falls for it.
The principal reason Dolan should not accept is that by going to the DNC convention, he simply gives cover to the Democrat Catholics to again justify ignoring the abortion leanings of the party.
You might want to spend some time with Harry, as he seems to have a good understanding of the situation.
August 28th, 2012 | 8:24 pm
Harry has it exactly right. Unless Card. Dolan will tell the Democratic Convention that their adamant support of abortion is an abomination before God and man, he should not go. Unless Card. Dolan will tell President Obama that his lies, oppression, and immorality cry to God for vengeance, then he should disinvite him from the Al Smith Dinner. Anything else is dishonest and will only aid and abet the enemy. When will Card. Dolan start acting as if he understands the seriousness of what we are facing?
August 28th, 2012 | 8:58 pm
May I humbly remind the good Cardinal Dolan,
as he preens and pontificates under the spotlights
of the political conventions:
there is really room for only ONE superstar in his religion.
As the Cardinal addresses and blesses the Republicans and their billionaire buddies,
as he smiles upon those who would destroy Social Security and voucher Medicare to death,
as he joins with those who readily admit they they “don’t care about the very poor”……
it would be good, it would be very good …for the dear Cardinal
to remember -and take to heart- the words of his boss,
who once said “What you do for the least of these you do for me”.
Unless perhaps, just perhaps, the Cardinal is working for someone else these days?
As our Founding Fathers realized: Politics, secular power, and Religion do not mix.
They bring out the worst in each other.
And ultimately…..they destroy each other.
August 28th, 2012 | 11:05 pm
I can just imagine the comments that arose when the Lord Jesus told the centurion he would go to his house to heal his slave, when He entered the house of Levi (Matthew) the tax collector and was surrounded by tax collectors and prostitutes…
It is important to note that Pope Benedict has called upon the Church in America to speak up for respect for human life from the moment of conception until natural death, for marriage between man and woman for life (and the family), for religious freedom, and to assist in bringing the tone of communication in our country (especially our ideological and political conversations) to a civil level.
Cardinal Dolan is doing this. We need to do the same.
August 29th, 2012 | 7:31 am
The Democratic party will just use the Cardinal to trick the Ignorant Christian. The news media will use pictures & lie about the “submission of the Catholic Church.” The democrats have no intention of taking a moral stand on anything. Don’t you understand their political platform?
I will never trust the Democrats and I am finding it hard to trust Cardinal Dolan. He is getting bad advice somewhere. You cannot “serve two masters” The “choice” is clear.
August 29th, 2012 | 9:18 am
Since when did the Catholic become an exclusive, untouchable sacred club? Both parties are guilty of undermining morality, The Church and the sacredness of religion. Both.
I am dumbfounded to understand how anyone can still be so deluded to think that one party or the other is going to strengthen morality or the Faith, in their policies, in their approach to politics. So what if +Dolan offers a prayer at a party convention, to either side? So what? Let him pray Our Prayers wherever he goes, to show the presence of the faith in the lives of the faithful. Choosing where to pray, and snubbing the Democrats or the Republicans is playing into the political sides; and by golly the flack he will get for doing that. Some people need to re-read their comments. Cardinal Dolan is not out to scandalize. He is not an idiot in American History or American politics. He is not the anti-Christ offering prayer of death to the enemy. He is doing exactly what a servant of God should be doing- displaying the Faith and praying. And he should seek ANY opportunity to do exactly that.
August 29th, 2012 | 12:40 pm
EB I think you do not understand that the Cardinal’s 1st duty is to defend the Catholic Church. He should do nothing that could be interpreted as supporting a political party that is waging war against Catholics and all Christians. (HHS mandates, No Conscience Clause, Homosexual marriage etc.) Giving a prayerful Amen to the Democratic Convention is supporting their amoral platform. Obama is fixed on forcing his authority on America. You can bet I’m praying, God help us & give us mercy because our Catholic leaders have dissolved into pablum.
August 29th, 2012 | 4:01 pm
Deborah – I thought the Cardinal’s first duty was to love God and love his neighbor. After that, probably spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ; see above. Even those of us that love the church have to acknowledge that it’s filled with power struggles and contradictions. The political parties in this country have much to answer for in terms of ethics and morality. Prayer is a good exercise for both parties.
August 29th, 2012 | 4:46 pm
Democrats want the Catholic vote. All they need is a picture of the Cardinal at their ritual. If he rained down fire and brimstone and screamed at them, the media would still make it look like a Catholic could vote for the death party.
@stanchaz: “As the Cardinal addresses and blesses the Republicans and their billionaire buddies,”
Democrats are billionaires, too, they just pretend they are just like the working guy. Read “Who Really Cares” to see who contributes more to the poor. It’s the conservatives. Leftist billionaires give out condoms and free abortions to dark skinned peoples.
“as he smiles upon those who would destroy Social Security and voucher Medicare to death”
–Social Security will go bankrupt as there are less children to pay into it, i.e., Greece had riots over its insolvent pensions. No republican has advocated killing Medicare to my knowledge, but it is the same as SS–you need young people to pay into this, instead of aborting them.
“as he joins with those who readily admit they they “don’t care about the very poor”……
—Source? the free market has brought more people out of poverty than any other economic system. While single women are abandoned by men, becoming very poor, they continue to vote democrat, a party that protects the service (abortion) that allows men to jump from bed to bed, leaving women in poverty.
“it would be good, it would be very good …for the dear Cardinal
to remember -and take to heart- the words of his boss,
who once said “What you do for the least of these you do for me”.
–I agree.
And I laughed at David Nickols joke.
August 30th, 2012 | 6:09 pm
Glad to see I am not the only person totally scandalized that Cardinal Dolan will be offering a blessing for the platform of infanticide and sodomy.
Also, it might be more effective if we identify sodomy by it’s name: sodomy. “Gay ‘Rights’” and “Gay ‘Marriage’” is the language used by people who don’t want to admit what it is and why it is bad: sodomy.
“Abortion” is the silver bullet against “pro-choice”; likewise, “sodomy” is likely the silver bullet against sodomizers. Except that is probably hate speech. To actually identify an act by the actual term.
Cardinal Dolan is doing no good service to the Church, by blessing the democrats’ convention and platform.
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