UNITED STATES
Minnesota SNAP
By Vinnie Nauheimer
The Catholic Hierarchy lost more in this past election than Mitt Romney ever could. The sin of hypocrisy has caught up with and trampled the power of what once was a powerful voice in American politics: the hierarchy of the American Roman Catholic Church. The bishops played their final hand in American politics and came up woefully short, aces and eights: the dead mans hand. Catholic bishops were undeniably roundly, soundly, and publicly rebuked in a fashion that was equal to the effort they expended to influence the election. Whether the hierarchy accepts it or not, they will now be consigned to pages of the volume: No Longer Politically Relevant.
Can bishops be politically significant to national politics when they can’t influence their own parishioners? They can’t. Bishops along with their pundits loudly proclaimed their ability to hold sway over the Catholic population of between sixty to seventy million Catholics in the United States, but as this election proved to the world, they couldn’t deliver a pizza without a GPS.
Only a few years ago, Bishop Chaput, Archbishop of Denver, was able to rally Colorado Catholics as a block to defeat a revision of the Statute of Limitations Bill that would have made it easier for victims of Clergy Abuse to recover damages from their abusers and the church that protected them. This year Colorado was one of only two states that passed a bill legalizing marijuana.
Not since the days of the Legion of Decency have the bishops been so vocal. In those days they utilized all the media in their efforts to prevent scandalous movies like Baby Doll or Lolita from being viewed by Catholics under the pain of sin. Below are some of the numerous exhortations voiced against Obama by bishops of the Roman Catholic Church.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.