Ave Maria!
Bishop Raymond Burke focuses attention on US Bishop’s document “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship” and the Catholic News Service (CNS) for causing voter confusion and soft-pedaling the new president’s radical pro-abort stance and so leading many Catholics to support him.
By Hilary White, Rome Correspondent
ROME, January 28, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A document of the US Catholic Bishops is partly to blame for the abandonment of pro-life teachings by voting Catholics and the election of the “most pro-abortion president” in US history, one of the Vatican’s highest officials said in an interview with LifeSiteNews.com.
Archbishop Raymond Burke, the prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, named a document on the election produced by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops that he said “led to confusion” among the faithful and led ultimately to massive support among Catholics for Barack Obama. More at LifeSiteNews.com
I was just reading all of this on Father Angelo’s blog. I’m certainly happy that the Church is finally noticing the neglect of the USCCB. However, so much damage has been done that it will truly take only divine intervention to repair it all. (an article on Catholic Exchange about this the other day was very well taken.)
Regardless of the mess we’re currently in, we NEED our bishops to become the strong, united, Godly force they were destined to be. Maybe the Catholics will then learn to fish or cut bait instead of standing around in the middle claiming to be Catholic but living as if they weren’t.
As always, thanks for educating all of us.
Blessings,
Jen
This is something many of us already knew and lamented over.
Many good Catholics who are obedient to Holy Mother Church’s moral laws are also afraid to hold their bishop’s fee to the fire. They will quickly praise a bishop when he does good (which the must do)… but are loathe to rebuke him when he does something bad. This is called clericalism. One should correct privately (at first anyway), with love, but with firmness. If a bishop persists in his error then he should be dealt with in a more public manner (such as writing up the chain of command). Public media is a last resort but it can be morally used to warn others about error if a bishop is teaching falsehood.
If a priest corrects his bishop he may be putting himself in danger of bitter persecution from his local chancery. A layman has the power to correct his bishop like no other person in the local Church. But it must be done with love. The Marian chivalry often discussed here and on MaryVictrix is the way to go with this.
Raymond Arroyo of EWTN fame recently stated that some of his friends (who happen to be US bishops) indicated to him that numerous US bishops actually voted for Obama.
This would not suprise me.