I don't generally care to call attention to monumental acts of idiocy, but Obama-Biden supporter John W. Mashek - a liberal editorialist for U.S. News and one of a disturbingly large number of dissenters who, despite having no clue what being Catholic actually entails, insist on identifying themselves by the oxymoronic label "pro-choice Catholic" - came out with a puff piece yesterday that presents an interesting case in study, as it makes liberal (pun intended) use of virtually every logical fallacy employed by those who are ignorant of the role of the Catholic hierarchy in the shepherding of souls (and who, not coincidentally, have an ax to grind with the Catholic Church). This kind of tripe truly has to be read to be believed, so I have pasted the article in its entirety below (the original link can be found here).
BEGIN ARTICLE
"Abortion, Catholic Sex Scandals, the Bishop of Scranton, and Joe Biden's Communion
By John Mashek
Posted September 23, 2008
Once again, the emotionally charged issue of abortion has penetrated a presidential campaign, especially among Roman Catholic voters.
The bishop of Scranton, Pa., home to a strong conservative Catholic population, has forbidden Sen. Joe Biden, a Scranton native, from receiving communion in his hometown.
Biden, like 14 other Democrats in the Senate, is both pro-choice and Catholic. So the bishop decreed that the party's vice presidential candidate was not welcome at the communion rail. These Senate Democrats and many other Catholics—including this writer—do not necessarily favor abortion, but we do not feel our religious views should be foisted on others in a nation where church and state are divided.
Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey Jr. is the only Senate Democratic Catholic who is against abortion rights. Yet, he voted last year with the others on a bill that would have overturned the "Mexico City policy," which prohibits U.S. foreign aid for organizations that provide abortions. (Casey's late father, Pennsylvania Gov. Bob Casey, was also against abortion rights, and in 1992 Democrats made a big mistake by not allowing him to speak at the Democratic convention. He should have been heard. In 2008, the younger Casey did address the convention.)
In the 2004 election, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts felt the wrath of some Catholic organizations for favoring abortion rights. A few prelates of the church said Kerry and other lawmakers who agreed with him should not receive communion.
As a Catholic since birth and one raised by a devout Irish Catholic mother, I have serious problems with my church on this matter.
I admit it relates in large part to the pedophilia scandals that have ripped the church in recent years. Many priests (roughly 5,000 were accused) have been found to have abused young males and young girls, some of them altar boys. For years, the problem was hidden from public view, with priests routinely sent to other parishes without warning the new church—and certainly without informing the authorities. Some cardinals were even involved, and they were, in my view, committing criminal acts as conspirators.
For the record, rape and child molestation are crimes. Covering it up is a crime. Abortion is not a crime because of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade.
More than $1 billion in church and insurance money has been paid to victims of pedophilia and their families for the suffering they endured. Most of the victims were youngsters who looked on priests as moral guardians and were afraid to even tell their parents.
In the past few years, but too slowly for me, the church has attempted to get rid of these men and prevent such an outrage from taking place again. Pope Benedict, in his trip to the United States earlier this year, talked forcefully about the personal sorrow he felt about this outrage.
Is it any wonder, though, that some of us resent this bishop in Scranton telling Biden he could not receive communion? He had to know it would hit the national news.
That division of church and state has application here. No priest, minister, or rabbi should be telling the flock how to vote or for whom. Some do, and they are wrong.
The Knights of Columbus, in a harsh attack on Biden in a full-page ad on September 19 in USA Today, said in sum: "Your unwillingness to bring your Catholic moral views into the public policy arena on this issue alone is troubling." Here's an answer to the Knights: Every survey in recent years shows that at least half the Catholics in the United States are pro-choice. I assume you would like to read us out of the church. I will not let you dictate to me on public policy, nor should Senator Biden.
In earlier days, the Catholic vote was strongly Democratic, largely among working-class citizens in urban areas. There has been a remarkable shift to the GOP in recent elections, and Sen. John McCain, the party's nominee, is certain to get strong Catholic support from conservatives in the church. Abortion is not the only reason, but it will be a significant factor.
Whether Joe Biden is allowed to receive communion in his hometown may not seem like a big event in this fall campaign, yet it is important and disturbing to this Catholic."
END ARTICLE
Like so many others have in recent years, Mashek uses the sex abuse scandal as a scapegoat for his real prejudices against the Church (and like every other person who seems more interested in tarnishing the Church's reputation than in getting to the truth of the matter, Mashek prefers to cite the number of priests accused, but says nothing of how many of the accused have been found guilty of wrongdoing or - as is far more likely to be the case - exonerated). In fact, if one goes by what is written in the article - Mashek's own words - the entire basis of his disagreement with the Church's opposition to abortion supporters giving scandal to the faithful through sacrilegious Communion seems to be the fact that 5,000 priests have been accused of sexual abuse of minors and some members of the hierarchy were involved in covering it up, and the Church did not react to it as quickly as he would have liked.
Going by this logic, then, Mashek must really have it in for the teaching profession, since incidents of teacher sex abuse are far more prevalent on a per capita basis than they are in the priesthood. I look forward to Mashek's article discussing his opposition to the NEA's agenda based on that entity's lack of a strong stance against the problem of teacher sex abuse. I'll know it's coming because it will be immediately preceded by the one in which he confesses that it was he, and not the midi-chlorians, who fathered Anakin Skywalker.
A few more fallacies to point out:
- The fact that Bob Casey Jr. supports repeal of the Mexico City Policy logically contradicts Mashek's assertion that Casey opposes abortion rights (so does Casey's unabashed support of the most radically pro-abortion Presidential candidate in American history, but I digress...)
- Biden, like 14 other Democrats in the Senate, is pro-abortion and are by virtue of that fact latae sententiae excommunicates, and therefore not part of the communion of the Church's faithful.
- Mashek claims that the "separation of Church and state" keeps him from wanting to impose his religious views on the rest of the country. Increasingly, this unwillingness seems to apply only to opposition of abortion. It certainly does not seem apply when it comes to imposing abortion on an unreceptive populace, which I assure you is about as fervently religious a tenet as the political left embraces. So remind me: why am I not supposed to take it as an insult to my intelligence when you tell me you are "personally opposed to abortion, but unwilling to impose your views on others" when such a position would logically dictate that you abstain from voting on abortion-related issues, rather that having a perfect voting record that directly contradicts your purported "personal opposition"?
- Mashek makes the argument that the Catholic Church is more criminal in its behavior than pro-aborts based on current laws regarding the criminality of sex abuse and the legality of abortion, and lets the argument hang as if to imply that this somehow makes the Church more morally corrupt than abortion supporters. Like most dissenters, Mashek seems to think that human lawmakers have more of a say in what is right and what is wrong than does the Divine Lawmaker Himself. He also uses the argument that half of American Catholics are "pro-choice." OK. All that means is that half of American Catholics hold a view that is in direct contradiction to the Church to which they claim to belong. Only those who do so in ignorance of the Church's position have any legitimate claim to still being Catholic.
- Mashek implies that the legitimate exercise of a Bishop's right to direct a self-described Catholic to refrain from receiving Communion while causing grave scandal to the faithful is somehow an endorsement of a political candidate and a breach of the wall that separates Church and state. Little wonder that he criticizes the Bishop of Scranton for this decidedly Catholic stance: those words could just as easily apply to Mashek himself for the grave scandal he gives to the faithful in writing this atrocity of an article.
There are other things to point out. I shall leave it to any readers out there to comment on them. I pray this message finds you well. Pray for this election, and pray for a conversation of the souls of unfaithful pseudo-Catholics like Joe Biden and John Mashek. It is hard enough to spread the Gospel truth without having to deal with their counterproductive seeds of confusion. God bless!
In Jesus and Mary,
Gerald
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