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Cardinal Dolan Explains Himself
In a
recent posting on the
website of the Archdiocese of New York, Cardinal Dolan
defended his decision to invite Barack Obama to the
annual Al Smith Foundation Dinner on October 18. The
defense presented demonstrates the total surrender of
the Catholic Church to the Zeitgeist and the powers that
be in America.
Dolan begins by praising an address by the Supreme
Knight of the Knights of Columbus to the annual Knights
Convention, in which the Supreme Knight “exhorted us to
a renewed sense of faithful citizenship [Cardinal
Dolan’s emphasis], encouraging us not to be shy about
bringing the values of faith to the public square. This
duty, he reminded us, came not just from the fact that
we are Catholic, but also from the fact that we are
loyal Americans.”
In the Year of Our Lord 2012, America is descending into
an abyss of utter depravity, with the blood of tens of
millions of aborted children on its hands and militant
homosexualism on the march. Yet as America becomes
another Sodom, faced imminently with the fate of all
Sodoms, Cardinal Dolan’s idea of “faithful citizenship”
is not to be “shy” about bringing our “values” to the
“public square.” The “public square,” of course, is
that great temple of the American civil religion,
peopled by all loyal Americans—a place so much bigger
than any one church, including the Church of which
Cardinal Dolan happens to be a prince, consecrated to
his office with a vow of blood martyrdom.
Referring again to the Supreme Knight’s speech, Cardinal
Dolan writes of a “promising initiative of the Knights
of Columbus to foster civility in politics…
Americans are fed up with the negativity, judgmentalism,
name-calling, and mudslinging of our election-year
process, and eagerly want a campaign of respect,
substance, amity —civility! [Dolan’s emphasis].”
Dutiful servitor of the Zeitgeist, Cardinal Dolan calls
for the one virtue the new order demands of everyone:
civility. Let’s everybody be nice, not allowing our
differences about such matters as the death of millions
of innocent children or the demands of militant
homosexuals for legal recognition of their sodomitical
relations to give rise to any sort of unseemly
acrimony. Civility—with italics—that’s the thing!
Turning to his decision to invite Obama to the Al Smith
Dinner, Dolan offered the excuse that “the Al Smith
Dinner is not an award, or the provision of a platform
to expound views at odds with the Church. It is an
occasion of conversation; it is personal, not partisan.”
With all due respect, whom does the Cardinal think he is
kidding? An invitation to the Al Smith dinner is an
honor to the invitee, and is most certainly a platform
for the promotion of views “at odds with the Church”—by
which the Cardinal means “at odds with” the divine and
natural law. Obama’s very presence in an honored
position on the dais promotes his diabolical program
even if he says not one word in defense of it.
Indeed, as the website of Al Smith Foundation
observes: “In
the days before Saturday Night Live, the Al Smith dinner
served as a kind of ‘proving ground for the candidate as
entertainer,’ as one reporter described it.” That is,
Cardinal Dolan is furnishing a stage on which Obama will
entertain the American people with professionally
written and carefully rehearsed comic material, in the
hope of winning votes or at least more favorably
disposing the electorate to the evil he represents. By
allowing Obama to elicit waves of laughter and applause
from his oh-so-civil audience—loyal Americans all—and
worse, by joining in the jollity himself, Cardinal Dolan
will materially assist the final degeneration of what is
left of the moral order in America.
“I am receiving stacks of mail protesting the
invitation,” Cardinal Dolan admits. But those stacks of
mail will not deter the Cardinal from his uniquely
American mission of civility. “Let me try to explain,”
he writes. The Al Smith dinner, the Cardinal explains,
is intended “to show both our country and our Church at
their best: people of faith gathered in an evening of
friendship, civility [Card. Dolan’s emphasis],
and patriotism, to help those in need, not to endorse
either candidate.”
People of faith? What faith, exactly, do Catholics have
in common with Barack Hussein Obama? We know the answer
already, but the Cardinal provides it anyway: the faith
of Vatican II, which replaces preaching with discussion
and conversion with dialogue: “the teaching of the
Church, so radiant in the Second Vatican Council, is
that the posture of the Church towards culture, society,
and government is that of engagement and dialogue. [Card.
Dolan’s emphasis] In other words, it’s better to invite
than to ignore, more effective to talk together than to
yell from a distance, more productive to open a door
than to shut one.”
Quite simply, this is baloney. The Church was
commissioned by Our Lord to be a sign of contradiction
to the world, just as Our Lord was to the Pharisees at
the cost of His own life. To the extent Our Lord
dialogued and engaged with unbelievers it was for the
purpose of correction and enlightenment. But Cardinal
Dolan will not be engaging or dialoguing with Barack
Obama in order to correct or enlighten him. Rather, the
Cardinal will join the rest of the crowd of jolly,
faithful citizens in fêting the man he has honored by
inviting him to the dais, applauding his remarks,
laughing at his prepared jokes.
Cardinal Dolan asks: “What message would I send if I
refused to meet with the President?” How about this:
the right message. The message that Holy Mother
Church will not dignify evil by providing it with a seat
of honor; that the Church will not cast her pearls
before swine; that the Church will not reduce to a
frivolous social occasion what is really a combat—a
final combat—between Christ the King and the Prince of
Darkness.
Furthermore, at the Al Smith Dinner the Cardinal will
not “meet with the President,” as if to remonstrate with
him concerning issues of the day. The Cardinal has
invited Mr. Obama to festivities at which he will be an
honored guest immune from serious criticism, according
to that very spirit of “civility” the Cardinal deems the
paramount concern of American public life. Not truth,
morality and justice, but civility—with repeated
italics—is what the event will promote.
“Some have told me the invitation is a scandal,”
Cardinal Dolan admits. That is because it is a
scandal. “That charge weighs on me,” he reveals, but
evidently not very heavily. He replies to the charge:
“So, I apologize if I have given such scandal. I
suppose it’s a case of prudential judgment: would I give
more scandal by inviting the two candidates, or by not
inviting them?”
The rhetorical question is plainly disingenuous: not
inviting either candidate would give no scandal
whatsoever, and the Cardinal surely knows this. There is
nothing in the charter of the Al Smith Foundation that
requires presidential candidates to appear and tell
jokes at the annual fundraising dinner. And it is the
very presence of the candidates that has reduced the
event to a standup comedy venue both candidates
manipulate for blatantly partisan purposes.
Cardinal Dolan concludes his apologia for scandal with a
remark that is simply too much to bear: “In the end, I’m
encouraged by the example of Jesus, who was blistered by
his critics for dining with those some considered
sinners...”
What can one
say in the face of such shameless demagoguery? Our Lord,
of course, supped with sinners in private, with the aim
of reaching their hearts through His preaching, as He
did with the sinners and tax collectors who supped with
him (to the grumbling of the Pharisees) while He told
the parable of the prodigal son recounted in the Gospel
of Luke. Cardinal Dolan, on the other hand, will be
hosting a gala public event covered by the worldwide
mass media in which the center of attention will be, not
the Son of God and His Gospel, but Barack Obama and the
gag lines he paid comedy writers to provide for him. To
suggest that Our Lord provides the example for this
iniquitous farce borders on blasphemy.
There is no longer any time for polite diplomacy
respecting wayward prelates, grinning captives of the
spirit of the age. In the hope of shaming them into
courageous public opposition to evil, let us acknowledge
publicly and bluntly the reality of our situation: If
prelates like Cardinal Dolan represent the hope of the
Church, humanly speaking there is no hope. The Cardinal
Archbishop of New York is playing the role of merry
mortician, helping to lower the Church Militant into its
final resting place in a grave he has already helped to
dig.
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