I cannot pass over the actions of the Catholic Health Association and an organization called Network, a lobby of American religious Sisters, who said, quite publicly, that what the bishops have taught is false. They said that the legislation does provide an adequate framework for a Catholic to follow his or her conscience about abortion. So, we had a trade organization — the Catholic Health Association — which calls itself “Catholic” and we had religious Sisters who call themselves Catholic, saying, “Sorry, bishops, you got it wrong, here is the teaching of the Church.”

The Lord Jesus Christ, unworthy though the bishops are, called the bishops to lead the people in faith; He did not call anybody in the Catholic Health Association and he did not call any of the Sisters in Network. To boot, those Sisters who signed the Network document said that they speak for 59,000 American Sisters — that would be every last Sister in the U.S. Yet, another grouping of Sisters came out publicly expressing their disagreement with Network. Unfortunately, the claim that these Sisters in Network represent all Sisters is actually what is false, not the teaching of the bishops.

And, of course, people like Speaker Pelosi could not do enough to wave the letter from the Catholic Health Association and the letter from Network to provide cover for Democratic legislators who wanted to waffle in protecting innocent human life. Speaker Pelosi is not called by Jesus Christ to lead the Catholic faithful, any more than the religious Sisters in Network are, any more than the leadership of the Catholic Health Association is.

The bishops are called to teach, sanctify, and govern. But, as I said before, with regard to the Holy Father, if people will not recognize authority, then they cannot lay responsibility at the feet of those to whom they are disobedient. The pope and the bishops are only responsible when their authority is accepted. The then-Cardinal Ratzinger himself has said, in our contemporary world, the word “obedience” has disappeared from our vocabulary and the reality of obedience has been anathematized.

In this way, very serious harm is being done to the Church because people in the Church wonder, “Who speaks for Christ? Does the Catholic Health Association speak for Christ? Does Network, an organization of religious Sisters, speak for Christ? Do they teach with the authority of the bishops? Is the bishops’ teaching just another opinion?”[reference]

While I agree with quite a lot of what the good bishop is saying, I think the issue is not as clear as he makes out. Can a faithful Catholic in good conscience disagree with a statement by the Bishop’s Conference on legislations for good reason. I would say the answer is yes. When the bishops in union with the Pope teach on something such as abortion, contraception, etc then certainly they are acting in their capacity as the official teachers of the faith. When a Bishops Conference talks about the prudence of a piece of legislations, it is usually another matter. The prudential question in this case was whether or not this bill funded abortion – I certainly thought the evidence was quite strong that in fact it did. The bishops in this case had advisors and other help to make a very informed decision on this and so were well capable to give solid prudential advice on this matter that should have been accepted. Though I still think it was possible for someone to weigh all the evidence and come to another conclusion without sinning. I certainly don’t think this is what the CHA and the LCWR did – they were never really bothered by the possibility of Federally funded abortions and let socialized medicine trump any possibility of them being wrong. Ideology came before really looking at the bill and seeing this as a real possibility. No doubt in the future on the issue of immigration the Bishops will support a bill that includes amnesty. If so than many progressive Catholics will be demanding that other Catholics follow the bishops in this regard. As regards immigration there are certainly many prudential questions that Catholics may disagree on and other areas where they may not disagree. I bring this up because I think the bishops versus sisters meme has gone a bit far without the necessary caveats. As Father Z mentioned before “Keep in mind that, in the matter of the vote on the health legislation, we are in the nebulous cloud of contingent, prudential judgments. Therefore, real clarity of the facts of the legislation is vital.”

That being said I think the whole health care bill fiasco proves that dissent kills. The actions of the CHA and LCWR were highly publicized and more than likely helped to bring about passage of the bill. Pro-abortion types certainly paraded their actions about including the President. I it hard to know how this affected individual Catholic congressman and their votes – but it certainly didn’t help and in fact provided a cover for a yes vote. A house divided can not stand and when religious publicly act in this way we certainly see the results.

Two-Thirds of Catholics in the Congress voted for this bill. It could not have been passed without Catholic help. Poorly catechized Catholic politicians is nothing new and like the poor they will always be with us. What bothers me is the lack of an appropriate response to dissident Catholics. I think the USCCB did a fairly good job in opposing this legislation, but they could have responded better to the CHA/LCWR situation and making it clear that they had no legitimate voice in supporting the bill. Catholics such as Nancy Pelosi can talk about being devout Catholics in good standing while making a mockery of the faith in support of murdering the unborn. She has indeed spoken with her bishop and then went on obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin with not a word about it. She went on to ask St. Joseph to intercede with a bill that funds abortion. I guess she got St. Joseph and Moloch confused. Would be nice to see Catholic politicians ask intercessions for something that does not include intrinsic evils.

The problem of the LCWR is nothing new. The Vatican’s Apostolic Visitation happened because the evident problems were not being addressed here in the United States. It should never have reached this state – but ever since dissent to contraception, dissent has pretty much been ignored hoping ti will go away. The CHA has taken previous stands in disregard of Catholic truth before and yet they are still allowed to use Catholic in their name – something they need permission for canonically. They are not a trade organization, but a “betrade” organization. How many innocents have died due to chemical abortion caused by abortafacients such as the pill? I wonder how many marriages and families have been destroyed by the false promise of contraception? How many people do dissidents have to kill, before some action is taken to bring them back into the folds of the Church?

There are certainly some Bishops such as Bishop Vasa who have effectively fought against dissidents in their diocese and have brought some back to the truth, while making it clear that their positions are not acceptable. Clarity is so important and when dissidents range free they do untold damage. No doubt most bishops are correctly upset by the actions of CHA/LCWR and others, I just hope they realize this situation came out of nowhere. The L.A. Religious conference with it’s many dissident speakers occurred during the end of the health care debate. Many diocese send there people there so I guess generating more dissidents is the priority.

There will always be dissidents and people who teach a false Gospel. Faithful Catholics should make sure that such are discredited and that the sweet truth of the Catholic faith is evident over poor imitations.

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican this weekend opened six Twitter accounts, including one in English.

CNS

This time it actually appear true. Previously someone did a Vatican twitter feed that was picked up and promoted by the Vatican as an official feed. As usual the media did not seek confirmation first.

The English Twitter feed is news_va_en – doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.  Though they do have an avatar of a St. Peter statue. St. really should be the Patron Saint of Tweeting in that often he said something before really thinking about it.  In fact I could easily see Peter tweeting at the Transfiguration.  “Master, its well that we R hre; let us make 3 booths, 1 4 U & 1 4 Moses & 1 4 Eli’jah.” and of course scripture records “For he did not know what to say ” — Patron Saint of Tweeting for sure.

I have pondered that one day Congregation for the Causes of Saints will investigates someone Twitter feed for heroic sanctity in the course of an investigation. In fact the first miracle could be finding signs of heroic sanctity in a Twitter feed.  Well at least they would know what the Servant of God had for lunch.

Oh well I guess it is better than the Congregation for the Causes of Saint going through a Servant of God’s Facebook page and determining what if anything their score of Farmville means

Now I am all for the Vatican getting more fully involved in Social Networking, but I was rather disappointed when I saw the new Vatican home page.

The Catholic sisters of Network, a national Catholic social justice lobby, who signed the statement supporting the current health care bill (over what they term the “false claims” on abortion of folks like the U.S. Catholic bishops) claim to represent “59,000 Catholic sisters in the United States.”

There’s no way that number can be accurate.

According to Georgetown University’s Center for Research in the Apostolate, in 2009 there were 59,601 total sisters in the United States. Clearly, not all of them share the assertions of the Network statement.

In fact, as Mary DeTurris Poust points out in a previous post here, the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, which represents about 10,000 sisters, issued a statement supporting the bishops’ analysis.

Plus LCWR has a membership of around 1,500 people and they don’t query the members of the communities. Even among the most progressive religious communities they are not 100 percent pro-abortion. I was heartened once to see on a Dominican site discussing abortion that even though many supported abortion some members of the infamous Adrian Dominican sisters were quite pro-life.

Sister Mary Any Walsh from the USCCB also chimes in:

Washington—A recent letter from Network, a social justice lobby of sisters, grossly overstated whom they represent in a letter to Congress that was also released to media.

Network’s letter, about health care reform, was signed by a few dozen people, and despite what Network said, they do not come anywhere near representing 59,000 American sisters.

The letter had 55 signatories, some individuals, some groups of three to five persons. One endorser signed twice.

There are 793 religious communities in the United States.

The math is clear. Network is far off the mark

OSV

Hmmm, was the women who signed twice from Chicago?

Well to be charitable maybe the nuns who came up with the numbers had the same math teachers President Obama had. The President said health care would reduce employers costs by 3,000 percent so math skills among supporters of this bill aren’t exactly formidable.

The numbers don’t really matter. After all nuns who lie about the numbers they represent would never lie about the bill not supporting funding of abortion.

I do find it rather odd the people using the the phony numbers of nuns think this is an argument in favor of the bill. So most Americans being against the bill doesn’t matter, but somehow this does?

In 1966 there were 181,421 religious in the United States. Feminism and liberalism and the very ideas the LCWR represent decimated the ranks as thousands and thousands left their orders. You just might think that of those numbers that quite of few nurses were lost that would have been helping people and additionally keeping health care costs down.