...or has the Vatican Council given way to the Vatican Counsel?

The headline should be "Catholic Bishops Discover the American Legal System". It's true. After two decades of acting as if the courts were some leper colony to be avoided at all costs, America's Catholic bishops have suddenly come to the realization that the Church can actually appear in front of a judge as something other than defendants. Having spent untold millions on legal fees and out of court settlements (money donated by good Catholics) the Church has decided that it can risk a few more pieces of silver to sue the Dept. of Health and Human Services. Specifically, the suit was filed by, among others, the University of Notre Dame, Catholic University and the Archdiocese of New York. (The fact that Cardinal Timothy Dolan is running for Pope played no part in this decision.)

The Church's position is that the HHS mandate that Catholic hospitals and schools provide employees with birth control and morning-after anti-pregnancy meds is somehow a violation of its right to practice its religion. In today's Washington Post, Cardinal Wuerl of Washington D.C. suggests that every church, school and hospital is an outward expression of faith and therefore equal in law. Were these institutions free-to-all, that argument might carry some weight. The fact that they are engaged in commerce clouds that picture. Nevertheless, this is America and the law allows for the fair hearing of grievances in front of a judge. Personally, I hope the RCC falls on its ass but what I think is of no consequence. (However it might be nice if the 95% of Catholics practicing birth control stopped acting soooo offended by the HHS and stood in opposition to bishops who have never missed a meal to feed a child.)

Of larger consequence is the galactic hypocrisy of a Church that, having avoided courts, lawyers and well, justice since its dirty little pedophiles started making news, is now marching into court with no hint of shame. Timothy Dolan couldn't find a courtroom with a map and a GPS device when the time came to prosecute priests for sex crimes with children. The bishops of Rome scurried like roaches when the lights of scandal came on. To this day in spite of tens of thousands of cases of child abuse not one priest has been marched into a precinct by a monsignor or bishop. The current case being tried in Philadelphia is a monument to church obfuscation and misdirection. Monsignor William Lynn, on trial for child endangerment after leaving known pedophiles in parish positions, has blamed everyone, including a dead cardinal, for the Church's neglect. Lynn is the only cleric to be hauled into court to face charges.

So now after twenty years of disgrace, denial and duplicity the Catholic Church has the unmitigated gall to use the legal system to make some obscure point about whether a hospital is a church. Far be it from me to suggest that Rome has decided the best defense is a good offense but check the facts. No archdiocese has sued any state to stop an execution even though the RCC is opposed to capital punishment. The Church hierarchy in Washington State has taken no legal action against that state's assisted suicide law. And we all thought Catholics took a dim view of assisted suicide. Face it. This suit against HHS is misdirection at its best. Timothy Dolan can appear righteously indignant for the NY media and piously defend his anti-birth control policies while never addressing the garbage cans under the piano. Pay no attention to that smell gentlemen. Instead focus your attention on those evil condoms. Seriously!

...or should we listen when the Catholic Church says gay marriage is a perversion?

After all, who would know more about perverts than the Catholic Church? They run the pedophile academy.

Truly, I would give anything to be able to ignore the Catholic Church and their gang of pedophile-enabling ostriches who think rock and roll causes men to fondle little boys. I would love to just chuckle at the false conclusions that imagine the collapse of civilization in any action that runs contrary to Church dogma. Honestly, it's amazing that the cult of hubris that brought the world the Crusades, the destruction of civilizations throughout South America and the Inquisition would have the colossal gall to pontificate on the potential harm of gay marriage. After the Church's befriending of Hitler and Mussolini at the expense of Europe's Jews and the systematic, century-long torture of Ireland's youth, you might expect a little modesty. Perhaps a retreat to a retreat. No such luck.

Five minutes after the New York State Senate approved the gay marriage amendment, New York's archbishop Timothy Dolan was ominously predicting dogs and cats sleeping together. "You think it's going to stop with this? You think bigamists aren't going to want their rights to marry?" The good bishop went on to rant about men wanting to marry their sisters but no one was listening by then. At least he stopped short of the fears expressed by former Senator Rick Santorum or Bill O'Reilly (both Catholics) who were confident that people marrying their domestic animals was the next logical step. (Santorum clearly had his eye on a fetching presidential elephant.)


Where is Rome during all this hysteria? Where are the cool deliberate members of the Curia to calmly lay out the Church's view? "We in the House of Celibacy are opposed to any wedding that doesn't involve one man and one woman. (Exceptions include nuns who 'marry' themselves to Christ.) We uphold this teaching even though we can find no passage in the New Testament that shines any light on how Christ felt about gays. We, as a religious institution however, have no control over how non-members spend their time. If gay people want to marry, ponce around in thongs and drink sidecars, that's none of our affair."


Instead, Rome allows publicity-seekers like Archbishop Dolan to blog and release statements condemning the actions of people over whom they have no authority. Why does the CC give a fig what gay people do? You would think that an organization rife with pedophiles and their enablers would tend to their own knitting. New York State law does not compel Catholic priests to perform gay marriages. (New York State law does compel bishops to report cases of child abuse and molestation but so far none have done so.)

The institution that is the Catholic Church has never gotten over the loss of its temporal power after the Reformation. It can't stand being relegated to the same public status as boutique religions like Jews and Druids. They would welcome state-sponsored religion, as long as it was theirs. They watch Evangelical Christians elect God-squaders to office in Iowa and Texas and they seethe. Even in countries like Italy and Ireland no one is listening to orders from the Holy See any more. The Church's attempts to prevent the sale of birth control pills and its efforts to prohibit divorce (both crimes against women) have crumbled in recent years. European Catholics haven't lost faith, they've simply lost faith in a Church that never appears to be looking out for the faithful. "Thou shalt cover your ass at all times" is the new eleventh commandment.



The Wall Street Journal carried an op-ed from the leader of the National Organization for Marriage (read hetero marriage) Maggie Gallagher (Irish Catholic). Ms. Gallagher devoted the entire column to affirming that when gay marriage is put to a vote, it is always defeated. At no time does she propose a single reason why anyone should oppose gay marriage or what harm it does. Her entire argument is that courts and legislatures as well as all media have a perverted liberal bias and that the people know best. Fortunately, the "people" weren't consulted prior to the Emancipation Proclamation. The "people" were excluded from participating in the "Loving vs Virginia" case in 1967 which finally allowed blacks to marry whites. The "people" want the borders closed but they also want cheap produce. The "people" love capital punishment but rarely support it when the "best people" are accused. The "people" hate welfare but love Medicare. The "people" hate taxes but love their police and fire depts. We elect legislators to protect us from the tyranny of the majority. Courts and government bodies encourage the angels of our better nature.

The legislature of New York State did the "people" a favor. Maggie Gallagher, Archbishop Dolan and every other member of the faithful who finds gay marriage offensive will now have to find something else to hate. Ms. Gallagher could devote her time to helping battered women, especially Muslim women, escape abusive relationships. As for the Archbishop of New York well, he might blog on why, after 2,000 years of Catholicism, women are still relegated to second-class status; why nuns are treated as little more that chambermaids; why the priesthood is still a male-only club? But mostly, he can explain why an institution like the Catholic Church, with its bloody and abusive past, continues to use fuzzy doctrine as a cudgel to deny people basic civil rights? That includes not just the right to marry but the right to be spared the attentions of pedophiles.