Powerful words from Cardinal George

From the Plenary Session Address by the Archbishop of Chicago and president of the USCCB:

In working for the common good of our society, racial justice is one pillar of our social doctrine. Economic justice, especially for the poor both here and abroad, is another. But the Church comes also and always and everywhere with the memory, the conviction, that the Eternal Word of God became man, took flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, nine months before Jesus was born in Bethlehem. This truth is celebrated in our liturgy because it is branded into our spirit. The common good can never be adequately incarnated in any society when those waiting to be born can be legally killed at choice. If the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision that African Americans were other people’s property and somehow less than persons were still settled constitutional law, Mr. Obama would not be president of the United States. Today, as was the case a hundred and fifty years ago, common ground cannot be found by destroying the common good.

This is the fiftieth year since the calling of the Second Vatican Council by Blessed Pope John XXIII. The Pope looked at a divided world and hoped that the Church could act as Lumen Gentium calls us, as the “sacrament of the unity of the human race.” Those who would weaken our internal unity render the Church’s external mission to the world more difficult if not impossible. Jesus promised that the world would believe in him if we are one: one in faith and doctrine, one in prayer and sacrament, one in governance and shepherding. The Church and her life and teaching do not fit easily into the prior narratives that shape our public discussions. As bishops, we can only insist that those who would impose their own agenda on the Church, those who believe and act self-righteously, answerable only to themselves, whether ideologically on the left or the right, betray the Lord Jesus Christ.

Read the entire address.

Comments

[Dan Deeny]

Cardinal George mentions the Dred Scotte decision. Very interesting. Look up Roger Tawney in Wikipedia. There you will see that he was a Catholic and a slave owner who freed his slaves. In the famous Dred Scott decision, he argued in part that Scott had no rights because he was property. Sen. Obama, in his Illinois vote, argued that if the nurses cared for the baby, then the baby would have rights like other persons. Did Lincoln say anything at the time about the problem of treating a person like other pieces of property? Poor Sen. Obama: he is a man of his time and of his culture who is applying in life what he has learned in school. But Sen. Biden, Fr. Pfleger, Gov. Schwarzenegger, Prof. Kmiec, and the others are Catholics. Shouldn't they be different?

[Todd]

I realize the cardinal's context, but the last line is very telling:

"As bishops, we can only insist that those who would impose their own agenda on the Church, those who believe and act self-righteously, answerable only to themselves, whether ideologically on the left or the right, betray the Lord Jesus Christ."

I don't know that lay voters chose to elect a pro-choice president or attempted to impose an agenda so much as reject an incompetent political party or sought to express their own judgment in the lay sphere.

It is curious that a prelate would speak of personal agenda, as we saw much of that in the cover-up of sexual abuse, and pile on the hubris of being answerable to no one. Does Cardinal George see the irony in his words, or is the a pretty statement crafted for one occasion, and not fitting for being taken out of that narrow context?

[LJ]

I have no doubt Todd that Cardinal George was making no exceptions for anyone, including Bishops. But even if in his heart he was, he still spoke the truth and that is what he is supposed to do.

You recall that even Jesus warned his disciples to obey the truth coming from the mouths of those on the seat of Moses even if those hypocrites didn't obey that law themselves.