Bill Donahue's latest screed

I have been remiss about posting here. This is the latest piece from my Examiner blog:

Those of us in the liberal Catholic press owe a great debt to Bill Donahue and those who publish him for providing us with something to write about. The Washington Post published his latest screed about how secularists are attempting to destroy Catholic culture and society as a whole - but that because of abortion and gay rights, all those God fearing right wingers will win out in the end.

Some issues are entirely secular or have secular aspects which must be addressed (like abortion). As far as culture, I have always found it abundantly amusing that Fox News is subsized by the Fox entertainment establishment, which has some of the raunchiest entertainment in the marketplace.

As far as sexual morality, it exists not for God but for people, because God loves people and because He is intrensically happy regardless of our moral behavior. When the Catholic hierarchy creates dogma that ignores this fact, the people in the pews are right to ignore it. Secularism is good here, since it prevents violence on the part of religious authorities to enforce their idealistic and wrongheaded views.

Bill Donohue seems to discount that the President of the United States started his career as a Catholic Charities employee and the Vice President and the Speaker of the House are Catholics and Democrats. Six Justices on the Supreme Court are Catholic - the last of which was appointed by the current Democratic President. Of course he has his own version of who is or is not Catholic. He is not entitled to an opinion on this, however.

Finally, it is the liberals in the Church and public life (and the voting booth for Obama) who see economics as the solution to abortion. We are begining to win the day - starting with health care reform and the raising of wages for the least among us. Don't count out our ability to increase the number of liberals once our economic agenda gets done. By the way, it is false to alledge that abortion and ideology are linked - many conservatives resort to abortion when their children end up pregnant, or when they cannot afford yet another child. Indeed, given the economic status of many conservatives, the Democratic economic proposals may not actually help our cause - however we are not so callous as to have political motivations for doing good.