Here's how Jesus responds to me:
"You seem anxious and troubled. Who told you to ask this question this way?"
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@NYCatholicRadio@KHalveyGibson@americamag@bcstm@Americaeditor@Kerry_Weber "Get behind me, satan!" — because the enemy can (and does) use Scripture and twist good moral claims to divide and desolate us. Jesus asks me if I think that he wants me to pay attention _only_ to the unborn while ignoring immigrants and the poor. And I say "Of course not."
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And Jesus says: "What do you read in the Scriptures and hear from my church?"
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@NYCatholicRadio@KHalveyGibson@americamag@bcstm@Americaeditor@Kerry_Weber To love God with all my heart, and mind, and strength; to love my neighbor as myself. And neighbors are everyone wounded, vulnerable, and in need: the unborn, immigrants, the poor, those who suffer from racism, and on and on.
Jesus says: "Do you think I can choose just one?"
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Thread: This statement on vaccines from the Arch. of New Orleans is grossly irresponsible—it focuses on a hypothetical situation which _no one_ actually faces while introducing entirely predictable confusion and anxiety about situations _many_ people face. nolacatholic.org/news/a-stateme…
Here's the takeaway the church ought to be announcing loud and clear: These vaccines are safe, effective and morally acceptable even if not perfect. Solidarity, especially with those at increased risk from Covid, calls us to get as many people vaccinated as soon as we can.
Instead of leading with that clear witness and call to solidarity, many Catholic leaders have instead publicly amplified already-resolved moral questions around the vaccines' remote connections to abortion, providing fodder for vaccine hesitancy and fear-mongering. That's tragic.
The US bishops begin their meetings today — and will discuss the #McCarrickReport. They need to remember that this is not just about McCarrick, but about an ecclesial culture that looked other way, at every opportunity, despite being warned.
There is no single smoking gun; there are decades of smoke in which no one looked for the fire causing it.
The problem is not primarily malice or lies — it's clerical self-protection and ambition. McCarrick's success in the church became his shield against the truth. 2/
And everybody else — lots and lots of bishops — to whom the vague rumors and anonymous reports came was able to decide to dismiss them. And they did, because it was easier by far to brush them away than to turn over the tables in this particular temple. 3/
The problems with this article are legion. There are failures of common sense and pastoral care, failures of logic, and applications of church teaching that are simultaneously stunted and overzealous. This is going to be a long thread (five big points); buckle in.
1st: The article starts and ends with focus on priests and what’s broken with them, not on what survivors are telling us about how the church spent decades protecting priests and ignoring them.
2nd: The article simplistically collapses abuse and harassment in seminaries together with criminal abuse of children, and then collapses both with failure to live in celibate chastity.