Much depends on Archbishop Dolan

Published in the Cumberland Times-News Thursday, Feb. 16, 2012.

"The modern problem dates to the 1960s’ spawning of Catholic liberation theology, an errant Marxist view of social justice, and Pope Paul VI’s crackdown on the 'follow your conscience' movement (regarding birth control), in his 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae."

My 92-year-old mother asked me, “What is the bottom line in the fracas with the church?”

I explained: To comply with the next ObamaCare mandate, all Catholic entities must buy employee health insurance that provides contraceptives, abortifacients and sterilization.  

This is a direct assault on Catholicism, religious freedom and conscience rights. It forces the church to choose -- obey God, or bow to Obama.

The church may either implement the mandate and violate its essence; or refuse to comply, and go bankrupt paying whopping fines; or shutter all its hospitals, universities, schools, agencies – go out of existence; or go underground, as it has had to do in other countries, at other times, under similar circumstances.

The kick is, the mastermind behind the mandate is Catholic Kathleen Sebelius, who, we might say, was empowered to define its parameters with great assistance from Sister Carol Keehan.

President of the Catholic Health Association, Keehan stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Obama and his allies, to shove ObamaCare down the nation’s collective throat. Now, applauding the president’s recent backpedaling -- which simply makes us all complicit, rather than front-line offenders – Keehan again joins forces to put all Catholics in the distasteful position of having ObamaCare thrust up unsavory parts of our collective anatomy.

Jonathan Last writes in the Feb. 7 Weekly Standard: “most Catholics took the president at his word when he met with Archbishop Timothy Dolan last fall and assured him” the policy was no threat.

“That was their mistake,” Last concludes.

Now Dolan pushes back. But against powerful and deceitful progressives, will he have the doggedness to sustain the fight? Furthermore, can he wield sufficient influence among the masses of Catholic women – who regularly choose contraceptives or sterilization over abstinence or natural family planning, and often opt to abort rather than adopt -- and their commiserating men, to sway public sentiment effectively?

Next, segue to Maryland, where Gov. Martin O’Malley, his District Court judge wife Katie O’Malley, and Del. Heather Mizeur – all Catholics – lead the charge to ram same-sex marriage through our legislature.

Mizeur dismisses the bishops, saying they can preach what they want. She decides how to be a “practicing Catholic;” her faith gives her license to “follow her conscience” -- down the aisle with her female lover.

Katie O’Malley calls House delegates who obey God, rather than bow to her husband, “cowards;” and she agrees with Mizeur and the governor that religion has no place in the public square.

Those who believe that government is not at war with religious institutions and, indeed, every individual of faith, kid themselves.

And leading the charge are progressive Catholics who would destroy civil society and the church, and remake them in their own image -- with Obama all too happy to help.

The modern problem dates to the 1960s’ spawning of Catholic liberation theology, an errant Marxist view of social justice, and Pope Paul VI’s crackdown on the “follow your conscience” movement (regarding birth control), in his 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae.

Failing to effect change within the church during Vatican II, progressives advanced their agenda socially and politically, and waited for the next viable opportunity to wrest moral authority from the hierarchy.

Michael Collins of The Annapolis Capital (Feb. 7) calls for the Maryland judiciary to discipline Katie O’Malley, for her “partisan politics” that reveal “animus toward religion in the public square.”

I suggest the church disown both O’Malleys – and all their fellow anti-Catholics – until they might repent and reform.

Much depends on Cardinal-designate Dolan. He is a big man with a booming voice and a hearty laugh. We’ll see what kind of bite he has.

Liberation theology politicizes Christianity

Published in Cumberland Times-News Tuesday, July 27, 2010.

"Jesus says our Father sent him to stir up the social order, to raise up
the poor and scatter the proud. But Jesus’ radical idea of revolution is a
spiritual wave of individual conversions. The savior’s poverty, and power, is a humble spirit."

Jesus teaches us that our personal relationship with him is the heart of our service to others (Lk. 10:38-42).

Today in America, perhaps emboldened by a President who champions their beliefs, liberation theologians -- and not just black adherents -- are ramping up efforts to remake Christianity into a politicized Christology.

Considering the movement’s genesis, it is unsurprising that President Obama has found friends at University of Notre Dame, where liberation theology founder Gustavo Gutierrez holds a prestigious professorship in the Kellogg Institute for International Studies.

Rev. Gutierrez’ bio at the Institute web site lists Latin America as his focus and “[t]he historical background and continuing theological relevance of the preferential option for the poor” as his current research topic. Gutierrez, a Peru native, is a Dominican priest.

Most associated with the Jesuits and 1960s insurgency in El Salvador, liberation theology hit a high pitch with assassination of San Salvador Archbishop Oscar Romero, killed March 24, 1980 because he publicly called Christian Salvadoran soldiers to obey God’s order and honor human dignity, and not follow government orders to oppress, abuse and kill countrymen.

A 12-year civil war ensued. Among 75,000 killed were six Jesuit priests, murdered in their home Nov. 16, 1989.

Fr. Jon Sobrino was not in the rectory that day. He continues to work and teach in El Salvador.

Two of Sobrino’s books published in 1999 are the subject of a Vatican notification to the faithful of March 14, 2007. Fr. Sobrino’s work with the poor is “admirable,” the Vatican writes, but he strays from church doctrine in his theological “presuppositions” that humanize Jesus Christ and neglect his divinity and “the salvific value of his Death.”

Fr. Sobrino’s material, rather than spiritual, view of Jesus and his teachings constructs the premise of liberation theology: That Jesus manifests social liberation from economic and political injustices imposed on the downtrodden by their oppressors -- not personal redemption from sins of immorality.

Along with Gutierrez and Leonardo Boff of Brazil (a former Franciscan priest twice admonished by Rome), and Juan Luis Segundo of Uruguay (a Jesuit priest, deceased in 1996), Sobrino was instrumental in formulating this humanistic view of social justice into a modern liturgy.

These liberation theology creators supposedly gained inspiration from the Vatican II document, Lumen Gentium: “the Church encompasses with love all who are afflicted with human suffering and in the poor…sees the image of (Jesus). It does all it can to relieve their need and in them it strives to serve Christ” (Chapter 1, paragraph 8).

Consider Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Like Fr. Gutierrez and the others, she lived among the world’s poorest outcasts and devoted her life to improving their condition. Unlike the priests, however, she embraced Jesus’ spiritual poverty, his acceptance of suffering and surrender to God’s will, and his divine power to show us the way to heaven.

Jesus says our Father sent him to stir up the social order, to raise up the poor and scatter the proud. But Jesus’ radical idea of revolution is a spiritual wave of individual conversions. The savior’s poverty, and power, is a humble spirit.

Salvation history, Jesus teaches, is God’s domain, not man’s. Our monumental spiritual task in our puny human existence is to transcend injustices with charity and forgiveness.

Largely diminished in Latin America after Rome’s 1984 rebuke of Marxist (and underlying atheist) concepts, liberation theology remains a current among liberal Catholics and a prominent force in American black churches.

Among notable U.S. liberation theologians is Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose 1990 sermon “The Audacity to Hope” inspired the beliefs of longtime Trinity United Church of Christ member Barack Obama.