Discourse and the rights of Catholics

At the risk of being considered an authority on anything I must respectfully disagree with the Prince of the Church quoted here. The Cardinal opines that the climate of discourse in the United States directly led to the murder of a nine-year old girl and others whom he did not even mention, he only spoke of the shooting of Congresswoman Gifford as if she was somehow the only victim in this tragedy. The Cardinal set up a straw man. The reason was not the media or certain politicians or grass-root movements or the public discourse over health-care, economics or whether or not the President is a native born. It was a crime against God and man undertaken by one man who, without God in his heart, committed a terrible crime and heinous and evil act. He could have chosen another way.

In this week's Catholic Register, Father Scott Lewis, S.J. reflects on the Book of Sirach and he comments on the scholarship view of this Book of the Holy Bible as "two-way spirituality". To quote Father, "As individuals we are given opportunities each day to choose between life and death." That man in Arizone chose death. He chose it of his own free-will and not because of Fox News, Sarah Palin, the Tea-Party Movement. I expect more from a Prince of the Church then the usual hyperbole that this was all the fault of someone else in the same way as CNN or the Puffington Post concluded.

As for the public discourse gossip is always wrong as is detraction of an individual. Ideas in the public square and the questioning of what is going on in the Church today by those Shepherds and bureaucrats is on the table for debate as it should be.

If we had the Internet forty or fifty years ago would the sexual abuse crisis inflicted on thousands have been allowed to continue unabated? Would those homosexual pederast priest been allowed to go about their evil?

Would those who destroyed churches and the ars celebrandi and our liturgical praxis and Catholic culture through a hermeneutic of rupture with tradition and false interpretation of the Second Vatican Council have gotten away with it?

It is easy for those in command of Catholic newspapers and Catholic television media and Catholic chanceries to criticise the unwashed bloggers and new media television personalities.

It has been said here in Toronto that the new Mayor, Rob Ford, is a child of the old Mayor, David Miller. Miller's elitism, arrogance, secrecy and abuse of process; his cuddling up to the unions lack of respect for property owners and tax payers and his insane tax increases brought Rob Ford to power.

Perhaps the bloggers and Internet TV network personalities are a result of the behaviour and attitude of bishops, priests, clericalist Catholic television producers and newspaper editors and writers and church bureaucrats and other professional Catholics who for decades have dismissed the concerns of John and Mary Catholic as being no-nothings.