Category Archives: Catholic Church

The Anchoress (aka Elizabeth Scalia) writes:

I stopped being a Democrat when it became clear that I was expected to vacate any of my own thoughts and opinions in order to fall in line with the party, or be called moronic or hateful or bigoted or even evil. There was no way the party could be wrong on anything, therefore dissent indicated a problem originating with me. “I” had the problem; not the party.

Don’t snigger, conservatives, you have your narrow-minded purists, too. Perhaps you’ve never marched in lockstep with quite the same precision as the Democrats, but you’ve run your own purges, and handily. Because whom the godlings of ideologies would destroy, they first make mad.

Currently Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is being sized up for a suit of tar and feathers or, more precisely, she is being warned that one awaits her, if she does not quickly fall back in line and do what she was supposed to do, was expected to do when President Obama nominated her to the bench: rubber-stamp his dubious policies once they landed before her, as expected.

Read the rest @ http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theanchoress/2014/01/08/fisking-stiehms-bigotry-at-us-news/

The line – “There was no way the party could be wrong on anything” – jumped out at me, because I just saw it last night in a book published in 1954, called Don Camillo’s Dilemma by Giovannino Guareschi.

In the part I read last night, the Communist daughter of the Communist mayor of the town, Peppone, has learned she is one of the finalists in a beauty contest. Her boyfriend is incensed at the idea of her going to Rome to parade in front of people in a skimpy bathing suit. However, he cannot say so, as this would betray him as a bourgeois chauvinist, so instead he objects to the pageant itself, saying that it is bourgeois. She counters that it must be politically correct, because the party is sponsoring the contest and “There was no way the party could be wrong on anything.”

Ideological purity is nothing new and The Anchoress is correct to point out that the we have our own narrow-minded purists on our side as well. I expect every group has them. I’ve certainly seen it in my Catholic experience.

• On the right, a man who refused to sit with his family at Christmas Mass, because that side of the church would be receiving Eucharist from a lay minister and he only took it from the priest.
• On the left, a nun who refused to give Eucharist to a war veteran because he had carried a gun into battle and, in her mind, that made him guilty of mortal sin.*

*Please note: The commandment “Thou shalt not kill” is not translated correctly. The original is “Thou shalt not murder.” Anyone who watches crime procedurals should be very clear on the distinction between killing and murder. And Jesus never condemned soldiers; in fact, he commended one for his great faith.

The Anchoress’ article is a review of an op-ed in US News and World Report entitled “The Catholic Supreme Court’s War on Women.” The specific issue I find particularly interesting is that while the Left is unsurprisingly outraged at Sotomayor’s siding with the nuns, the outrage expressed in this particular screed is based entirely on the premise that she’s doing it because …. gasp …. she’s a CATHOLIC. [Cue creepy music and fog machine.]

The Anchoress has a way with words. I especially like this summation of the op-ed: “bigotry intent on fomenting paranoia.” Also, “Are not the women who serve the indigent poor as entitled to justice as anyone else? Do Justice and Mercy only trend in one direction, in Stiehm’s world? Are they only rewarded to the socially obedient? Oh, my! Steihm sounds exactly like what she imagines the church to be: an entity demanding only one’s strict and unthinking obedience. Funny how easily we can become precisely the thing we hate, isn’t it?”

I recommend you read her entire piece.

Sources:

• http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theanchoress/2014/01/08/fisking-stiehms-bigotry-at-us-news/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Camillo