I once heard the story of a women named Kara Walton, of Claymont, Delaware who “sued the owner of a night club in a nearby city because she fell from the bathroom window to the floor, knocking out her two front teeth. Even though Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the ladies room window to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge, the jury said the night club had to pay her $12,000 . . . plus dental expenses.”
While this story seems to be an urban legend, I was sort of left with the same feeling after reading about the most recent civil war going on in the Catholic Church, this time between Catholics for Choice and the Cardinal Newman Society.
Catholics for Choice, a group who’d like to enter Catholicism through the bathroom window without having to subscribe to any Catholic belief or doctrine about contraception, abortion, or homosexuality, has recently released its “Opposition Notes: An Investigative Series on Those Who Oppose Women’s Rights and Reproductive Health”, deeming The Cardinal Newman Society “The most unhappily and inappropriately named society on the planet.”
While the Newman Society’s mission is “to promote . . . a truly Catholic university education and to seek the faithful implementation of Ex corde Ecclesiae,” Catholics for Choice seems to think that the CNS is not living up to the inclusivity of its “freethinking namesake.” They should be more inclusive, says CFC, but not so inclusive as to include the official Church document Ex corde Ecclesiae which CFC defines as, “a document that was an attempt to close ranks in Catholic education after years of openness to modern society, especially in the United States.”
“There are important debates to be had about furthering Catholic higher education,” says CFC, “but healthy debate seems to be the main target of the CNS. The question is—should Catholic institutions be judged by a narrow set of criteria imposed by one self-appointed judge of orthodoxy?”
While University of Notre Dame president Rev. John Jenkins is correct that The Cardinal Newman Society has “no ecclesiastical standing and no academic standing,” and at times, i’ll admit, does give off an overly-eager “watchdog” vibe, the Society “enjoys a significant level of approval as working within the official teaching authority of the church.” That’s more than Catholics for Choice can say.
February 7th, 2013 | 5:32 pm
I agree with your characterization of them trying to enter through the bathroom window, but I feel compelled to critique the expression “civil war going on in the Catholic Church”. Please don’t dignify such a disingenuous infiltration operation as being a combatant in a civil war. It’s like calling the 911 attacks part of a civil war. CFC’s official position is to encourage people to do something that the Catechism clearly states incurs automatic excommunication (CCC # 2272). It is impossible and inherently contradictory to be Catholic and pro-choice, full stop.
February 7th, 2013 | 8:28 pm
How many people are actually associated with “Catholics for Choice”? And how many of them are Catholic? I see at Wikipedia that its $3 million annual budget is supplied by the likes of the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Playboy Foundation (who knew Hugh Heffner was such a humanitarian?).
CFC is a great example of astroturfing. Just like Westboro Baptist Church, they’d be nothing without the constant media attention.
February 7th, 2013 | 9:33 pm
It quickly becomes clear that no one in Catholics [sic] For Choice has read anything at all by Bl. John Henry Newman save for that one quote about conscience, naturally stripped completely out of context. Otherwise they could not quote for their disordered causes a man who once famously said “For thirty, forty, fifty years I have resisted to the best of my powers the spirit of liberalism in religion.”
Dave and Devinicus are correct: CFC is nothing but astroturfing, done by people who have very little interest in Catholicism but a great deal of interest in power and novelty.
February 8th, 2013 | 7:34 am
The civil war in the Church has nothing to do with sex. That is the distraction. The real civil war has to do with how we view the poor and their support. The real civil war has DiMarzio and Dolan saying that the Christian demand is that the government continue its support for the poor, and Morley (and passively Chaput) supporting libertarianism and Acton-type economics.
This is the civil war that killed Catholic and priests and bishops in Central America. It is now the American Catholic war.
February 8th, 2013 | 9:48 am
If there is a “civil war” in the Church, it is between the aging cadre of Boomer activists who seek their moral and intellectual validation from the ideologues of the secular left (for whom the State is church, if not god) and those of us who hold with the unbroken tradition of the Faith. I suggest you read some more recent publications for a sober assessment of the failed liberationist experiment in LA. And I doubt if Cdl. Dolan would accept your casual generalization.
February 8th, 2013 | 11:06 am
Hello Dan,
The civil war in the Church has nothing to do with sex.
With respect, the war in the Church has almost everything to do with sex.
And it’s no coincidence that it first erupted at the same time as the outbreak of the Sexual Revolution in the 1960′s.
Your attempted connection of all this with Central American civil wars of the 70′s and 80′s is perplexing. And there’s nothing to suggest that the bishops you name see anything like the disagreement you characterize here.
February 8th, 2013 | 11:35 am
A quote that has come up in FT before, “It’s the sex, stupid.”
Anyone interested in joining my new group called Catholics for Grave Sin? We are now accepting endorsements too.
@ Richard, spot on. Would that more people would study the Bl. Cardinal Newman – for anyone interested: http://www.newmanreader.org
February 9th, 2013 | 9:37 pm
Didn’t The Bishops inform the prodigal sons and daughters who identify as “Catholics For Choice”, that they are no longer in communion with Christ’s Church, so they have, in essence, left His Fold?
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