More symptoms of insanity on the American right

[fpb]

In yesterday's American Thinker, a man with the Italian name of Bonelli wrote the following, extremely offensive statement:

The United States is different from most other countries in many ways. One unique aspect of our country is that our elected officials, officers of the court, and the military, all pledge their allegiance to the Constitution and not to an office, individual or party. This assures continuity of the ideals set forth by the founders.

As an Italian citizen, I have personally sworn to defend the Constitution of my country when I served in the Italian army. The presumption involved in this ignorant display of insular arrogance is an insult to every constitutional government in the world.

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

AS I just SAID - and please pay attention to what I actually do say - political spinelessness is a distinguishing mark of the contemporary English episcopate. (In Scotland there are still men, thank God.) That does not have anything to do with ritual mismanagement: in fact, there is nothing like a whiff of incense and a breath of Latin to convince a Blairite filth that he is holding the line instead of selling his Lord for thirty pieces of silver.

And I just don't understand the item about your cousin in Liverpool. Are you blaming the Catholic Church for having better schools than the average?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Then you should have said that. What I was speaking about was ritual. These are kinds of treason, but different. Oddly enough, the worst offender against ritual - Cardinal Mahoney - is more firm than many more orthodox bishops in the matter of abortion. That does not excuse his various horrors, but reminds us that crimes and criminals differ.

[marielapin.livejournal.com]

http://www.americanpapist.com/2009/09/video-cardinal-mahoney-tries-to-dodge.html

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I have seen that particular video. The Cardinal was waylaid by a hostile journalist with a near-incomprehensible question, and did not answer it at all well. He is, however, the signatary of a number of radically anti-abortion letters to Congress and various bodies, as well as to his own clergy in his own diocese.

[marielapin.livejournal.com]

The second part of his question was pretty straight forward. Should abortion be allowed in the health care bill? Even if he didn't know anything about it he could have answered it better. I do not take Obama at his word in this matter. That provision is still there, an amendment to make a Hyde-type amendment to the bill was voted down, as well as conscience protection was voted down. He just appeared spineless.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As I said, I am no fan of Mahoney; in fact, I look at his every action with suspicion. Which is why I have been repeatedly surprised by firm positions taken on abortion, not once, but several times.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

P.S.: I am no fan of Mahoney. If I were Pope, he would have discovered a sudden missionary vocation to Antarctica.

[marielapin.livejournal.com]

I also forgot to mention that the priests in my cousin's diocese refuse to teach NFP in marriage counseling lest people be offended. They told her that since almost all the folks are living together and will not obey the church's teachings, they just don't want to get into it. I'm not blaming the Catholic church for having better schools, I'm blaming her priests for spinelessness in allowing the church to be used.

As far as I'm concerned, if a bishop or priest allows politics or political correctness to change the makeup of what they are teaching in catechesis, it doesn't matter how ritually sound they are, for they are morally and theologically bankrupt, and the church will start to die from within, looking very nice as it goes. To me, it is one and the same problem, lack of spine, lack of orthodoxy, lack of knowing that the liturgy and the doctrine of the church together because that unity is what keeps it strong. Priests who abuse the liturgy and priests who teach heresy are only different in semantics to me. How can you separate one from the other?