EWTN’S FIRING OF SHEA AND SIMCHA WAS POLITICAL

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People are writing and speculating about the firing of Mark Shea and Simcha Fischer at EWTN’s National Catholic Register.  Many are happy about it.  I don’t know if too many are unhappy.  Perhaps.  Some see a change on the horizon.  Where?

Shea and Fisher served a purpose.  They were instigators and they were tasked with muddling the heads of faithful Catholics, especially to promote leftist political issues.  Lies and anger were some of their tools.  EWTN didn’t work with them out of loyalty and indulgence.  They wanted them there for as long as they had them.  They wanted the muddled heads.

Many imagine that the National Catholic Reporter or America Magazine might become a new outlet for these two writers, but that would be surprising.  There is an affinity, but not an enough of an ideological match.  More importantly they don’t have the required skill set.  FrancisChurch, from its top to its parish pastor has, unfortunately, a very effeminate homosexual quality and character.  It’s slippery.  Writers on the left are quite talented, capable and extremely careful.  They can be furious like Michael Sean Winters or Fr. Thomas Rosica, but in this they are much more like snakes than bulldogs.  They know when to come in and go out from under their rocks.  Crux’s John Allen is a highly talented and intelligent writer who sees exactly which way the wind is blowing, but he manages to maintain an air of honesty while applying very little of it.  He and others like him are persuasive, and masters at turning and twirling readers so they’re pointed off course.  Think Elizabeth Scalia and everyone at the New York Times.

A lack of persuasion is the cardinal sin for which American Catholic’s Donald McClarey faults Shea and Fisher.  Boniface says it’s that they were loose cannons off stage.  Both very true.  Mr. Armaticus thinks an unCatholic, liberal EWTN is a money-losing proposition.  I don’t agree.  There is always money in modern times for people who help to wreck the Church.  I don’t think they were fired for any of these reasons.  I think it was politics.

Politics was the reason Shea and Fisher were retained for years.  Politics was their purpose and they knew it.  They did their jobs.  It’s just that EWTN is no longer in the market for their unique (odd) services.  Why?

Well, as Wikileaks has been the latest to demonstrate, Francis – I mean the idea of a Francis as pope – is about politics (Did you think it was about Christ and his saving mission?) and the Catholic media do seem to be bending along the Francis lines.

Others have paid for it, and those payers expect Francis and his Church to turn the ‘catholic’ vote.  Shea and Fisher were just helping, but I guess EWTN has now decided they don’t want their help that much.  Has FrancisChurch jumped the shark?  Is it in fact having the opposite effect on voters?

I’m often too optimistic.  I don’t follow sports.  I know life is, in a sense, a game, but since it really isn’t, I prefer not to look at it that way.  But I’m not convinced Trump is losing right now.  I think he probably will ultimately lose because the entire establishment is lined up against him and they will mount and count the votes, but I believe he’s actually quite popular.

When Trump dinged the Francis on his U.S. Border stunt, it teased out the Pope’s monstrous hubris and contempt for decent people.  Normal people really don’t like the hyped Francis program.  They don’t like Hillary.  They don’t like people like Shea and Fisher.  You can’t just make normal decent people, sacramental Catholics who live their faith in other words ‘conservatives’ into liberals, even if you foist a Francis onto Peter’s chair.

The actual operation of the Church has always relied upon benevolent power and suffered without it.  If Trump is on the way to becoming president, my guess is it will have a certain good effect upon the Church.   Maybe for some reason EWTN now wants to anticipate that hopeful day with a remaining shred of respect.  Maybe Shea is right.  It was about Trump.

 

Trump Hits the GOP Skids. No Friendly Fire Necessary

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Billionaire

Billionaire

At Creative Minority Report Matt Archbold draws attention to an unfortunate and revealing interview with Donald Trump where he was asked about all those good things Planned Parenthood does other than abortion:

Here’s what I would do if the time came: I would look at the individual things that they do and maybe some of the things are good and I know a lot of things are bad. The abortion aspect of it should not be funded by government. Absolutely…I would look at the good aspects of it and I would also look as I’m sure they do some things properly and good and good for women and I would look at that. I would look at other aspects, also. But we have to take care of women. We have to absolutely take care of women. The abortion aspect of Planned Parenthood should not absolutely – should not be funded.

This reminds me of when Ross Perot said he’d erase the deficit by “getting under the hood” and fixing it, or that he’d “get a shovel and clean out the barn.”

Archbold writes:

Well that changes things quite a bit, doesn’t it? Trump says that the abortion aspect of Planned Parenthood shouldn’t be funded but as he knows, money is fungible and Planned Parenthood already says that no taxpayer money goes to abortion. The Hyde Amendment states that no government funding can go towards abortion. So he’s saying he would consider funding Planned Parenthood as long as it didn’t fund abortion. So Trump wouldn’t change anything when it comes to funding Planned Parenthood.

Next ‘The Donald’ told the world that he’ll permit three whole exceptions for abortions too!

I am for the exceptions. You have the three exceptions. I’m for the exceptions. The health of the mother and life of the mother. I absolutely am for the exceptions and so was Ronald Reagan, by the way. There’s nothing wrong with that. You have to do it, in my opinion. Now, Marco took a strong stand. I respect him. He believes that. I have – you now it’s just a different thing. I am for the exceptions, yes.

Trump failed to cite what the third exception was.  I assume he meant in cases of rape.  Either way, we all know that one exception is every exception because this is murder, and any lying excuse will do.

I think it’s probably hard for someone in Donald Trump’s business and position to actually be pro-life today.  Very hard.

 

 

 

Cardinal Dolan Runs for President

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What’s so funny?

Timothy Dolan, Cardinal of New York, has taken to the Washington Post to assassinate the character of the leading Republican presidential candidate just because he holds a position with which most of the country agrees.

During those happy days decades ago when I taught American religious history to university students, I spent a chunk of time in class on the ugly phenomenon called nativism, defined by the scholar and author Ray Allen Billington as, “organized, white, Protestant antagonism toward the Catholic immigrant.”

I’ve seen the cardinal chuckle and blab.  He doesn’t strike me as the type of man to have had happy days decades ago.  Cardinal Dolan is a climber.  He couldn’t have been too satisfied teaching history.  Apparently he was also one of those who presented history mainly in terms of groups and grievances.

It flourished in our country during the 1840s and 1850s — actually becoming a popular political party, the Know-Nothings — and appeared again, in the 1870s, as the American Protective Association; in the 1920s, as the KKK; and during post-World War II America, as Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

From what I understand the KKK was a murderous group which terrorized black people.  Not two paragraphs in and a Catholic bishop has condemned an entire country as killers. I detect some disparity between the cardinal and the everyman.  Dolan doesn’t have to endure the effects of illegal immigration like the rest of his poor flock.  He just has to keep those federal Catholic Charities funds rolling.

These nativists believed the immigrant to be dangerous, and that America was better off without them. All these poor degenerates did, according to the nativists, was to dilute the clean, virtuous, upright citizenry of God-fearing true Americans.

They were Protestants and wary of Catholics.  They weren’t Nazi’s trying to preserve a master race.  It was a culture shock.  Catholics brought poverty, gangs, Mafia and other bad things they’d never had to endure.  Most disastrously Catholics have always voted poorly, ushering in city bosses, high taxes, redistribution, and other unconstitutional government.  It wasn’t a purity thing, but it’s not like it wasn’t messy.  It’s not that Catholics didn’t fear God but they were certainly less ‘American.’

There’s nothing upright about leftist politics.  Even today, unfortunately, Catholics don’t vote like Baptists and their bishops don’t really want them to.

(Among other American minorities, it must be said, Catholics like me often drew the ire of nativists.)

I made the point to my students that nativism never really did disappear completely, but was a continual virulent strain in the American psyche, which would probably sadly show up again.

Liberals are always finding ‘virulent strains’ out there which must be eradicated from our minds.  Who’s calling people dirty now?

This point my students would not buy. “Father Dolan,” they would say, “there’s no denying that this bigotry was there in our past. But, come on! Who could ever believe now that immigrants are dirty, drunken, irresponsible, dangerous threats to clean, white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon America! Those days are gone.”

I wish I were in the college classroom again, so I could roll out my “Trump card” to show the students that I was right. Nativism is alive, well — and apparently popular!

Oh that’s funny, my ‘Trump card.’  Yes, those must have been happy days back when Father Dolan was teaching.  He’s just so jolly!

“Who could ever believe now that immigrants are dirty, drunken, irresponsible, dangerous threats to clean, white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon America!”

Does Cardinal Dolan hate white people and Protestants?  It sure sounds like it.  Donald Trump was not saying that all immigrants are dirty, drunk, and dangerous.  He was saying that too many of them are, so therefore the border should be ‘legally’ controlled.  People understand this but Dolan shamefully abuses his vital Christian role to ‘correct’ them about it.

From here the Cardinal repeats himself, explaining how we don’t value any immigrants at all, ever, because they’re people, I guess.  He even uses the word ‘enlightened.’  Whenever you hear that, think darkness.

I am not in the business of telling people what candidates they should support or who deserves their vote. But as a Catholic, I take seriously the Bible’s teaching that we are to welcome the stranger, one of the most frequently mentioned moral imperatives in both the Old and New Testament.

What a pile from the chancery!  Is it possible that back in those bad old days a few prescient souls imagined uncontrolled immigration might leave us with an America full of religious leaders like this?  When will the Lord give us Catholics for bishops instead of these dishonest elitist FrancisChurch shills?