USCCB President Timothy Dolan on Cuomo Concubinage Controversy: Tempest in Teapot

A day ago, Brian made a comment at my recent posting about the remarks of the president of the U.S. Catholic Bishops' Conference, Timothy Dolan, re: the Obama administration's decision not to defend DOMA.  Brian's comment--which notes (rightly) that there's an inbuilt dialogic space exclusively for the powerful in the American Catholic church--points to a New York Times article on Tuesday, in which Nicholas Confessore discusses the response of Dolan to calls to exclude New York governor Andrew Cuomo from the eucharist.  Since, you know, he lives with a live-in girlfriend, Food Network talk maven Sandra Lee.  Without benefit of holy matrimony.

The push to exclude Cuomo from communion began with Edward Peters, a professor at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit and a consultant to the Vatican's Apostolic Signatura (headed by none other than Cardinal Ray Burke, the "de facto pope of the Republican Catholic church" who called for U.S. Catholic bishops to ban "grievously anti-life"--read: Democratic--politicians from communion in the 2008 elections).  Peters denounced Cuomo's reception of communion as "objectively sacrilegious."  Because of, you know, Sandra.  And the live-in thing.  Which is concubinage.

And we all know what the Catholic church thinks about concubinage.  Especially for high-profile Democrats.  Who happen to support same-sex marriage.

And, of course, as the USCCB president and a high-profile Catholic bishop in the same state in which Cuomo lives, Timothy Dolan had no choice except to jump into the fray.  Dolan and several other bishops had lunch with Gov. Cuomo Tuesday, and here's the USCCB president's take on the Cuomo-concubinage-communion controversy following the lunch: asked whether the concubinage came up during lunch, and the question of communion, Dolan states,

Thank God it didn’t, because it was a bit of a tempest in a teapot.  We were just happy to be there, and he obviously was, too.  We got lunch out of it.

And isn't that nice of Archbishop Dolan.  And pastoral and all.

But here's the thing: as his recent remarks about the Obama administration and the defense of marriage act indicate, it's not a tempest in a teapot for the USCCB president when two committed gay people seek the right of civil marriage.  To, you know, solemnize and even consecrate (if a church or synagogue agrees) their union--to move it beyond mere concubinage.

Remember what Dolan just said about the Obama administration's judgment that DOMA--with its legalized discrimination prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying civilly--can't be defended constitutionally?  For Dolan, that decision to stop defending indefensible discrimination is an "alarming and grave injustice."

And remember what that hoary neo-culture war document seeking desperately to gin up new attacks on gay and lesbian Americans, the Manhattan Declaration--which Dolan signed and whose planning meetings he helped organize and host--says about marriage?:

We confess with sadness that Christians and our institutions have too often scandalously failed to uphold the institution of marriage and to model for the world the true meaning of marriage. Insofar as we have too easily embraced the culture of divorce and remained silent about social practices that undermine the dignity of marriage we repent, and call upon all Christians to do the same.

But as the Manhattan Declaration goes on to argue, the real threat to the sanctity of marriage in our society today is not heterosexual couples living in concubinage, or divorcing and remarrying à la the Newt.  It's the gays.

It's the gays and their--get this--their desire to marry!  To live in stable, committed, blessed relationships.

That's what's undermining traditional marriage.

And that's why the gays and their desire to marry are definitely not a tempest in a teapot, but a real tempest, such that it is an "alarming and grave injustice" to question discriminatory laws that do not permit same-sex couples the rights and benefits of marriage.

But when a high-profile heterosexual Catholic lives in an extra-marital relationship and people ask whether his "concubinage" gives scandal and should cause him to be barred from communion, that's a tempest in a teapot.

Something seems not quite right about this picture, doesn't it?

Because remember that while the USCCB president finds the push to deny communion to Gov. Cuomo on the ground that his lifestyle gives public scandal and his reception of communion is "objectively sacrilegious" a bit of a tempest in a teapot, Catholic bishops in the U.S. keep denying communion to people who even dare to wear a rainbow sash or pin, simply to show solidarity with their LGBT brothers and sisters.  The most recent highly publicized case of that action involved Bishop Nienstedt in Minnesota last fall.

And remember that in Colorado last spring, the children of a lesbian couple who belong to a Catholic parish and are practicing Catholics were turned away from a Catholic school, with the blessing of Archbishop Chaput of Denver.  And remember that a Catholic college in Pennsylvania has just fired a faculty member, stating publicly that his being openly gay and partnered puts him at odds with Catholic teaching.   And remember that the U.S. Catholic bishops joined with other religious rights groups to send a letter to Congress last August asking for their continued "right" to engage in such discrimination in workplaces and institutions owned by faith-based groups.

As I say, a bit of a tempest in a teapot when people call for excluding Gov. Cuomo from communion because he lives in "concubinage," per the president of the USCCB.  But decidedly not a tempest in a teapot when it comes to discriminating against gay folks. 

Something's not quite right with this picture, is it?

Oh, and about the now-Catholic Mr. Gingrich?  And his three wives and the affairs and all of that?  It turns out they were all about his excessive love of his country.  Love of country made him philander.  And swap wife for wife.  And treat the discarded wives with shocking disdain.

I kid you not.

Commentary on Gingrich's Presidential Aspirations Continues

Newt Gingrich and Wife Callista

Religion Dispatches has two good pieces today looking at (first essay) Newt Gingrich's attempt to re-create himself as the model Catholic presidential candidate, and (second essay) at the role religion and the religious right will be likely to play in the election.  Joanna Brooks surveys Gingrich's "new Catholic" rebranding.

As she notes, Gingrich is already playing to audiences who buy the current ideological party line of the Catholic hierarchy and apologists for the hierarchy--namely, that Western nations are succumbing to godless secularism, and only a return to religion and conservative moral values will heal all the ills that ail us.  Gingrich began to float this analysis--and his "new Catholic" image--in the 2008 elections with his Rediscovering God in America project, the themes of which he keeps stressing now in tours around the nation in which he and (third) wife Callista hawk a film they've made about John Paul II and his role in defeating communism in Poland.

And Sarah Posner explores the developing role of the pastors' policy briefings in the 2012 elections.  As she notes, this Iowa pre-election event is sponsored and funded by a secretive group called the Iowa Renewal Project, which featured only Mike Huckabee among GOP presidential candidates in the build-up to the 2008 elections, though Gingrich (who was not then running as a presidential candidate) was invited to speak, as well.  

This time around, the group has invited a number of GOP hopefuls, including Huckabee, Gingrich, Haley Barbour, and Michelle Bachmann.  Iowa is a flash-point for the religious right for two reasons: as one of the first primary states, it helps determine the course of the elections.  And because it has legalized same-sex marriage, it is under heavy attack from the religious right and the Republican party in general.

Finally, at Huffington Post, this recent article picked up from AP feed asks whether Gingrich's murky marital past will encumber him as he tries to rebrand himself as the model Catholic candidate in the 2012 elections.  As the article notes, in the plus column, Gingrich is a media darling who have helped him craft an image of himself as an articulate intellectual, and he's backed by "a fundraising juggernaut" (which no doubt keeps him on the radar screen of media outlets for whom money talks).  

But there are also indicators that key members of the religious right will not be on board with his attempt to rebrand himself as a "new Catholic."  The HuffPo article cites Jerry Luquire, head of the Georgia Christian Coalition, who says, "Newt Gingrich's election would send a terrible signal to anyone who's working to live a morally upright life.  I would find it very hard to vote for him."

This will be an interesting election to track closely.  And as I keep saying, most interesting of all will be watching the reaction of "traditionalist" Catholics who profess a strong commitment to traditional family values when it comes to their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, but whose commitment to these traditional values often appears to be considerably more elastic when it comes to Mr. Gingrich and his three marriages.

Mark Silk on the Revival of the Crusades as 2012 Election Cycle Begins

As a follow-up to what I posted yesterday about Rick Santorum and his recent remarks about the crusades, I'd like to point to a very valuable posting on the same topic at Mark Silk's Spiritual Politics blog.  Mark kindly provided the link in a comment on my Santorum posting yesterday.

Mark notes he happened to be teaching the history of the First Crusade right when Santorum opined that the crusades were not in any way an act of Christian aggression, and that "the left" has revised the history of that bloody period due to an animus against Christendom.  He provided students with a copy of Santorum's remarks, and then let them comment.

And they found Santorum's take on the crusades ridiculous.  They did so because they had just been studying Fulcher of Chartres' account of the crusaders' actions in Jerusalem in 1099.  For those who want to read this account, which is regarded by historians as an exceptionally accurate depiction of what happened when the crusaders took Jerusalem, Paul Halsall of Fordham University has made the text available online at his Medieval Sourcebook site, using the text provided by August. C. Krey in his The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eyewitnesses and Participants (Princeton: 1921).

As Mark Silk notes, it appears that the call to crusade is back as the 2012 election cycle approaches.  And as Karen Armstrong, whose work on the crusades is now a classic source for the history of that period, noted several years ago, "We simply cannot afford this type of bigotry."  

Not any longer.  The price is too high--for Americans, for the global community.  The shameless pandering of politicians like Gingrich, Huckabee, and Santorum to the religious right feeds on our ignorance, counts on our remaining ignorant.  One of the key educational challenges we face in the U.S. is expanding our knowledge of other cultures and other religions.  

As the Pew Forum's study of religious knowledge in the U.S. last fall revealed, knowledge of religion in general--including Christianity--is abysmally low precisely in those areas of the nation dominated by the religious right.  In those areas of the nation on whose votes Messrs. Gingrich, Huckabee, and Santorum are counting.

In order to do better as a people, we need to know better.  The onus is on us to inform ourselves.  And for people of faith who continue to be duped by the empty, self-serving showmanship of the family values crowd, that means, I would propose, taking the kind of close critical look at politicians like Rev. Huckabee that David Corn and John Brummett take per Max Brantley's summary today at the Arkansas Times blog.

Rick Santorum on Crusades: The Left Hates Christendom

 

Yesterday, as I wrote about the presidential aspirations of Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee, and how both gentlemen are now doing everything in their power to position themselves as the candidate of choice of the religious right, I said,

The 2012 election cycle is going to be interesting to watch.  I predict it will be one of the slimiest, most unabashedly mendacious eruptions of religious and moral hypocrisy by so-called defenders of religion that we've seen in a long time on the American political scene. 

In a separate posting on the ongoing and astonishing attempt of the leaders of the Catholic church to redefine the term "religious freedom" to mean that they have the right to block the freedom of other religious groups to solemnize gay unions, I wrote,

Interesting, isn't it, to see people twist words like "freedom" and "non-discrimination" (not to mention "love," if they ever get around to talking about it) into something that means the very opposite of what the words actually mean, even while claiming that they are the ones whose freedom is being curtailed, and they are the ones being discriminated against?

And here's a story that combines aspects of both of those previous postings: another right-wing Catholic who is making noises these days about a 2012 presidential run, and who, like his fellow Catholic Mr. Gingrich, is also seeking to woo the religious right, is Rick Santorum.  And recently, in the heartland of the American religious right, at a private Christian school in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Santorum made the baffling claim that the medieval crusades were not about aggression at all, but that the "left" has revised the history of that shameful moment of Christian history in order to score points against Christendom.

Santorum stated,

The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical.  And that is what the perception is by the American left who hates Christendom.

And he went on to say,

What I'm talking about is onward American soldiers.  What we're talking about are core American values. "All men are created equal" — that's a Christian value, but it's an American value.  It's become part of our national religion, if you will.  The point I was trying to make was that the national faith, the national ideal, is rooted in the Christian ideal — in the Judeo-Christian concept of the person.

Islamic violence = evil aggression.  Christian violence against Islam = good and holy non-aggression.  American values = Christian values.  American aggression = God at work in the world defending the world against evil.

As I've been saying about Mr. Gingrich, it will be interesting to watch this election and see just how willing American Catholics are to be duped by these folks intent on selling out core Catholic values as they pander to a religious right whose values have little in common with Catholic values.  The U.S. Catholic bishops have worked long and hard to fuse the American Catholic church and the Republican party by getting into bed with the religious right.

Messrs. Gingrich and Santorum are the result.  As an indicator of how willing some American Catholics are to give Newt a free pass to engage in shameless pandering, since these Catholics are comfortable with equating the Catholic position on political matters with that of the Republican party and the religious right, watch the responses to Michael O'Loughlin's latest posting at the America blog.  O'Loughlin focuses on how Mr. Gingrich "is pontificating on various moral issues of the day even as he battles questions about his own moral failings."

And some of his brother Catholics are already logging in to indicate that said pontificating (on an exceedingly shaky moral foundation) doesn't matter in the least to them: Gingrich is an outstanding leader with a viable moral vision for American society.  Watch the blather about admirable Newtian moral leadership pile higher and higher at this site as O'Loughlin's posting reaches the ears of the right-wing Catholic talk networks.

The graphic is Tea Party Jesus's send-up of Santorum's recent remarks in South Carolina.

More on the Newt

More on the Newt now running for the Republican presidential slot in 2012:

Huffington Post has a video clip of Gingrich calling for Obama's impeachment due to the recent decision about DOMA.

And Jeff Zeleny has an article in today's New York Times suggesting that, just as I have foreseen, Gingrich is now seeking to position himself as the Catholic candidate par excellence, to play to the religious right.  And that to some of Newt's fellow Catholics for whom right-wing politics trump the niceties of theology and morality, it won't matter a whit that he preaches about the sanctity of one-man-one-woman-for-life marriage--against the gays--even though he has been married three times.  With affairs in between.

And speaking of potential Republican presidential candidates trying to jockey for the favor of the religious right, Judge Andrew Napolitano certainly backed the oily, pseudo-avuncular but mean-as-a-snake Mike Huckabee into a corner yesterday, in an interesting discussion of the constitutionality of DOMA.  As Frances Martel notes, though Rev. Huckabee began his argument with the disclaimer that he's not a lawyer, that didn't cause him to miss a beat, as he immediately asserted that the Obama administration's DOMA decision is "legally wrong."

The 2012 election cycle is going to be interesting to watch.  I predict it will be one of the slimiest, most unabashedly mendacious eruptions of religious and moral hypocrisy by so-called defenders of religion that we've seen in a long time on the American political scene.  The big question: will the American people finally open their eyes to what these folks really intend--to the way in which they are acting as front men for corporate groups whose real agenda has nothing at all to do with the sanctity of marriage or the defense of life, but everything to do with consolidating their control of the political process and enriching themselves even more, at our expense?

Hypocrisy Alert: Mr. Gingrich Calls for Mr. Obama's Impeachment Over DOMA

*Another update to a story about which I blogged recently: a few days ago, I noted Newt Gingrich's refusal this week to engage a question a student at the University of Pennsylvania asked him.   Isabel Friedman asked Gingrich, who is currently gearing up to run as a Republican presidential candidate in 2012, how he thinks he can credibly attack gay persons and gay rights, given his own far from stellar marital history, with three wives and several publicly known affairs.

My posting also noted that, though some of my co-religionists are suggesting that it is a non sequitur to ask a presidential candidate (who is also a Catholic) whether his life history supports the values he claims to espouse in attacking gay folks, I myself see questions like this as an extension of the Catholic sacramental principle.  There is an intrinsic and important connection between what we teach and who we are.  The latter is our real message to the world.  Actions (and lives) speak far louder than words.

And so attacking gay persons and gay lives as morally beyond the pale when one hops from marriage bed to marriage bed with adulterous beds in between is not only morally inconsistent--it's morally odious.  The huge chasm between what one imposes on others as a moral standard and what one permits oneself is so glaringly obvious that the disconnect is about more than a flawed hermeneutic device: it's about blatant, unabashed hypocrisy.  And a cynical attempt to manipulate others while one clearly does not care a fig about the "values" one's using to perform that manipulation.

And now there's this: when the Obama administration announced this week that it will not defend DOMA, Newt Gingrich responded with a call for the impeachment of the president. That's right: defending traditional marriage and the sanctity of the marriage of one man with one woman for life is of such critical importance to this Catholic presidential candidate that he stands ready to impeach President Obama because his administration has decided that legislation targeting a vulnerable minority for no reason other than that the minority exists is unconstitutional.

It will be interesting to watch Mr. Gingrich position himself as a shining standard-bearer of Catholic values in the upcoming presidential campaign.  And interesting, above all, to see how many of his co-religionists let him get away with the shameful posturing.

*Apologies for the previous incorrect title.  I should definitely not post a posting in haste!

They Call It a Non-Sequitur . . .

I call it the sacramental principle.

Margaret O'Brien Steinfels has posted an interesting summary at Commonweal's blog re: Catholic presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's response to a question asked by a student when Mr. Gingrich spoke yesterday at the University of Pennsylvania.  Student Isabel Friedman asked Gingrich,

You adamantly oppose gay rights ... but you've also been married three times and admitted to having an affair with your current wife while you were still married to your second.  As a successful politician who's considering running for president, who would set the bar for moral conduct and be the voice of the American people, how do you reconcile this hypocritical interpretation of the religious values that you so vigorously defend?

And some of my brethren of the Catholic right, as they discuss this question and Gingrich's dismissive response to it at the Commonweal site, are calling Ms. Friedman's question a non-sequitur.  That is, what does Gingrich's own moral behavior in the realm of sexuality or his marital history have to do with his right to oppose gay rights?

This is precisely the point I addressed in my posting yesterday noting the increasingly high price the Catholic church is paying now for turning itself into a heteronormative homophobic old boys' club in which any and all heterosexual men, no matter how morally dubious their behavior in the area of sexuality and marriage, are considered the standard-bearers of "traditional" morality and "family values."  While any and all gay or lesbian persons, no matter how morally admirable, are considered ipso facto to be betraying Catholic moral values.

Once again: the price the Catholic church is paying for equating morality with the Newt Gingriches of the world and denying the title "moral" to every self-accepting gay and lesbian person in the world is a price of cognitive dissonance: the clear disconnect between the moral lives of the Gingriches et al., who are the most stalwart defenders of the Catholic hierarchy's continued ugly attacks on gay and lesbian persons and gay and lesbian rights, and what the Catholic tradition really teaches about moral values and goals is too stark for many Catholics to support any longer.

In a church based on a sacramental principle, there's no getting around the lives being led by those doing the teaching and the proclaiming.  When those lives are at an utter remove from the values being proclaimed--and being used to bash others on the ground that those others aren't up to moral snuff--people will stop listening.

As they should stop listening, since what a group lives is far and away its more important message than the words it uses to proclaim its message.  

What these right-wing Catholic brethren call a non-sequitur, I call the sacramental principle.  When men who have been married three times and have cheated on one of their wives while married to a previous one preach to me about sexual morality, I tend to listen with jaded ears.  As I do when leading Catholic journalists whose own widely known sexual histories and lived witness to traditional marital values in no way conform to the ideal then egg the bishops on to attack gay and lesbian folks, in the name of defending the sanctity of marriage.

P.S. When I read uncensored (!) comments of my Catholic brothers on Catholic blog sites comparing my committed, monogamous relationship of love with another man to bestiality, I feel--precisely so--as I feel when I go down to my city's public library, scroll through newspapers from my state in the 1950s and 1960s, and read letters from white Christian gentlemen of those decades describing African Americans as apes.

Yes, those letters exist.  And yes, they were freely published at one time.  No credible newspaper would publish them now--not on your life.  Nor would anyone air these opinions in public, not even those who continue to whisper such ugly lies in the privacy of their homes and clubs.

In another century, people are going to scroll through Catholic publications now considered credible and professional, and be equally shocked to read comments like the bestiality ones now being made about gay human beings in these publications.  And people are going to wonder what kind of publication that wished to call itself Catholic and to be thought credible would permit such comments to go uncensored--when these same publications freely censor comments of gay folks trying to defend themselves against such slander.

And they're going to wonder, as I wonder both about my fellow Christians of the past in my part of the U.S. and about these Catholic brothers in the present: who gave these men such an astonishing sense of entitlement?  Entitlement to regard themselves as the center of the universe, and their lives full of power and privilege as the norm to which everyone else should aspire?  Who anointed them the moral arbiters of the universe, even when their own lives in no way conform to the values they're preaching to those beneath them?