Fundamentalism is an attitude towards other people’s ideas and opinions that has everything to do with religion. Like Hitler, bin Laden, the KKK, the abortion clinic bombers, the IRA, all of them are acting on the belief that their religion is the only right one. Thar is what fanaticism is all about.
http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=2236872

James Carroll is a pseudo-intellectual. If he understood the role of the episcopacy, it is to faithfully transmit, unaltered, divine revelation. In the area of faith and morals the Bishop has no choice. He must teach the faith. He must uphold morality.
Liberal and Conservative are secular political terms that do not apply here. For the Bishop there is only Fidelity and Infidelity. The job isn’t open-ended in faith and morals.
“New Deal, Labor, War-on-Poverty, and Civil Rights coalitions, and though there were always conservative bishops (like Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York), the Church did not make doctrinal or ethical conformity a precondition of its participation in the struggle for equal justice. That is why, across the 20th century, it was a force for progressive social change. That is over.”
No Mr. Carroll. The issues outlined above were not the same as abortion and gay marriage.
It wasn’t an act of immorality to be poor, or working class in a factory, or African American. Being those things was not synonymous with lacking moral rectitude. Nor is being gay in orientation.
But abortion and homosexual sex ARE held by the Church to be abominations, and for good reason. They are antithetical to the good of humanity as set forth in Christian anthropology as informed by divine revelation. Gay marriage mocks the order of marriage and its being a human reflection, a glimpse into the inner life of the Blessed Trinity.
It’s not that the Bishops have become political conservatives. It’s that they are no longer being presented with issues that represent deficiencies in the evolution toward the establishment of the Kingdom of God. They are now being presented with requests to assist in codifying into law that which is destructive of Christian Civilization:
The aping of sacramental marriage.
The slaughter, worldwide since 1960 of 1.8 BILLION (with a B) babies through abortion.
The Bishops have been asked to cease functioning as Bishops, and have rejected the request. hat isn’t conservative. That’s FIDELITY.

If political liberalism in this country hadn’t become so obsessed with sexual immorality and abortion, Catholics would still be solidly on the liberal side. Carroll writes as if consistent Catholics have not been systematically excluded by the liberal coalition’s destructive and unChristian dogmas.

In the 1960s, Archbishop Rummel of New Orleans threatened excommunication of racist Catholics who persistently sustained vile segregation. Rummel was a hero of the Church. I suspect that Carroll would whole-heartedly endorse that assessment. Faithful Catholics want their bishops to be bishops, and not the propaganda wing of the new Democrat Party. We want our bishops to engage with Patrick Kennedy and the likes of him because, to use a crass American standard, that’s what they are paid to do. We want our Church to continue to engage in the public square in pursuit of her Constitutional right and obligation to do so.

Mr. Carroll has touched on an important point of our Catholic faith. Remember Matthew 25. It is the judgment day scene. Those condemned are not condemned for the sins they committed … i.e. infractions of the 10 commandments, precepts of the church or failings against moral teachings. Why? Because the Good News is that God send his son into the world to save it not condemn it. He forgives whatever sin we might commit. However, they are condemned because they did not do “social justice” … feed the hungry, give drink to thirsty, visit the sick, etc. Catholic Bishops have forgotten this message. For example, the opposition of the Bishops to health care reform is an opposition to the command to “visit the sick.” To explain, back in the time of Jesus there were no hospitals as we know them now. The command to visit the sick was a command to take care of the sick … not to simply stop by to say “hello.” The Bishops should be more concerned about the selfishness that has spawned a nation of people who do not want to help one another and feel no moral obligation to do so. Shame on the Bishops for missing the heart of the Christian message!

By defining abortion as The Only Issue That Matters, the bishops have aligned themselves with the cynical Republican Party, whose recent history shows that they want abortion as an issue to drive voters to them. Thus the alignment with the right-wingers who have no use for the rest of the church’s (and indeed Christianity’s) actual social agenda, as clearly delineated in Matthew 25.

New Deal era catholic bishops would have taken time out of their day to condem gay marriage, sodomy, fornication and abortion had there been a prominant political party and half the country pushing them as rights

James Carroll’s “An American Requiem: God, My Father and the War that Came Between Us” does a lot to explain not only the rants that Carroll currently publishes but also the appeal of those rants to a sizable sector of the American public. Carroll’s memoir recalls his own days as a Catholic priest, when his increasing sympathy for the anti-war left made him turn against his father, a devout Catholic who served at the Pentagon. Though his father was appalled by his son’s public rebelliousness, he nonetheless ended up helping him escape the legal consequences of his actions. What a paradigm for the whole generation of Sixties rebels who now devour columnist Carroll’s adolescent tirades against both religious and civil authority!

It is perhaps not immaterial that Mr Carroll writes for a publication entitled “The Beast.” In fact, the Church never condemns anyone. Not even the excommunicated. Only God can condemn the sinner. The Church only condemns behavior, IE, Sin, and always loves the sinner. Why are we as Catholics concerned about what is said or thought by “those who; [through persistent, unrepented sinning, have excommunuicated themselves] from the: One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church established by Jesus Christ. True we must and may love and pray for them and work with them on common goals. But to be swayed by their confused, ignorant and twisted thinking is aiding and abetting their sin. Hate sin, love sinners and please don’t excommunicate yourself.

Ex-priest James Carroll is the Boston Globe’s resident, mercenary Catholic-in-name-only Church basher. Unsurprisingly, he does not subscribe to Church teachings on the life issues; he is a cynic and a fraud who derives his sustenance from the Globe, graying, self-serving Vatican II Catholic-in-name-only peers, and the heterodox Paulist Center in Boston (are you listening, Cardinal Sean; do you care?)
Mr. Carroll is just another “Catholic” who’d be much more honest to just be done with it, and publicly attach himself to the Episcopal church, but that of course, would spoil his gig!

What should the bishops be doing instead?
Greg, you seem as infatuated with political liberalism as you think Mr Carroll is.
For one, I would hope that the bishops are intelligent enough not to be manipulated by the GOP for political purposes. A little realization that Catholic conservative activists have played many of them like fiddles for years.
Second, I think the bishops can offer leadership and resources to indisputable pro-life initiatives in addition to abortion lobbying. Promoting adoption. Sheltering women with crisis pregnancies. Offering a personal moral witness might help: selling episcopal mansions or turning them into homes for women or teens in trouble.
The new crop of bishops seems very uninterested in all this. Many seem fixated on their bully pulpit, their righteous anger, and their path to episcopal promotion.
Conservative bishops I have no problem with, per se. It’s the unimaginative ones that are killing us and the pro-life effort.

The only fundamentalist are the Liberals who toe unthinkingly and obediently the orthodoxy of political correctness.

I remember reading James Carroll’s “Prince of Peace” many years ago and even though I was much more liberal then, than I am now, I thought he was a profoundly confused man with a streak of arrogance that would eventually ruin him for writing or reasoning.
Seems I was correct

So, you’ve missed the news stories over the years, the ones where another Catholic adoption agency has to choose between closing shop or continuing its work – adoptions – under conditions that undermine its very purpose in promoting adoptions in the first place? Or you skim right over those stories, without ever letting the thought enter your head: “Wow, the Church already IS in the business of promoting adoptions! Who knew?”
The Church, and Church supported agencies, have been doing the very things you suggest for years, in obedience to Her Lord. I guess, also in obedience to her Lord, she performs these good works without a lot of public proclamation. At least, you have managed to miss it.

Well – I think that Carroll is as big of a blowhard as some of the bishops are.
Perhaps the problem is all the to-the-right and to-the-left back and forth, who is right and wrong, etc.
It grows tiresome and as Todd says, does little to move the pro-life movement.
Last night I was in my theology class and a presentation was given about a controversial theologian. The hackles went up hard and fast on the issues of abortion and same sex attraction, you could see the room divide and retreat to sides.
And people who proclaim themselves followers of Jesus and against the violence of abortion suddenly become almost violent.
The truth and the wisdom are deep within the seed that we continue to fight over instead of seeking and finding transformation and conversion. That has to happen for all if the “lamb and the wolf, the leopard and the kid, the calf and the lion” that we heard about in Isaiah is to come about.
Sadly we are so militant that saying that implies to some that abortion is ok. It is not. It is also not ok to feel and use hatred and diatribe to heal this worst wound of our culture as I understand my faith.
Carroll and some of our bishops do not necessarily agree.

Don’t get me started on adoption. The Church has done great work in the past, and today the busiest dioceses handle at most a handful of adoption cases a year. In my own, the count is about five in the last seven years.
If the bishops were really interested in a pro-life witness on the adoption front, they would listen to what I could tell them about 130,000 kids in foster care: orphans or with parental rights terminated. Catholics can and should, quite frankly, be lining up to adopt these kids. That would be the start of an indisputable pro-life witness. What do we get instead? Political pablum and Republican wannabes. Spare me. Spare us all.

On political pablum, Todd, I bow to your expertise.

To Gerard Nadal: You completely missed the point of Mr. Carroll’s critique, and might I add, you dismissed him in a rather immature fashion by calling him a “pseudo-intellectual.” While I don’t agree entirely with all of his points, his main argument is that the American bishops have aligned themselves with political conservatism and fundamentalism in a way which is blind to the glaring problems with conservative politics and which alienates many Catholics. Of course the bishops need to oppose gay marriage and abortion, but they also need to be the champion of the poor and downtrodden, something the “moral conservatives” are not exactly known for. Conservative politics, while sticking up for the rights of the unborn, intends to create a system which is more in line with American notions of prosperity than with Catholic social teaching.
The Church needs to positively live out and preach its message, yet to be clear, it is a message that transcends political boundaries. A society that does nothing to help the poor down and does little to nothing to help them is no more a just society than the one that kills unborn children. The job of the bishops is to proclaim God’s justice in every area of society, not just on one or two issues.
Mr. Nadal, perhaps you should go back and read some of the Church’s teaching, especially its social teaching. One of its central tenets is the “preferential option for the poor.” The American bishops indeed have the duty to oppose abortion, but that does not mean aligning themselves with a political movement which has a preferential option for the rich. They need to speak authoritatively on all issues of justice, not just a few politically advantageous ones. Read your catechism, sir.

James Caroll and Joshua Dean, I am guessing are either non-catholics or non practicing catholic because they are both of the mark by a wide margin. For almost 2000 years, catholics have been fighting against abortion and helping the poor and the proof is in the writings of the early church fathers. Joshua, if it matters to you, find a study comparing catholics against any group in terms of charity (financially or in service) and if the result does not lead you to home Rome then nothing will.

What a moran.

Joshua,
I’m rather familiar with the CCC. I also stand by my assessment of Carroll. The American Bishops will ally themselves with whatever political party is championing an issue of social justice.
In the Civil Rights era, it was with the Democrats.
In the Cold War, again with the Democrats with anti-nukes.
In the era of Roe v Wade, with the Republicans
With Health Care, if Stupak holds, with the Democrats
Gay Marriage-Republicans
Sanctuary for illegal immigrants-Democrats
Prayer in school-Republicans
Fair Trade-Democrats
I could go on, but you get the point. In omitting this historically accurate analysis, in suggesting that the Bishops are acting politically rather than pastorally consistent with the CCC, Carroll is being fundamentally dishonest in presenting a warped version of history and ecclesiology.
On health care, one could say that the Bishops have aligned themselves with the party that has facilitated the murder of 50 million babies. Let’s not play that game, okay?
I know my CCC. Why don’t you try reading the newspapers sir?

It appears the work that lies before the Bishops is the work of healing the divide within the Church.
Perhaps the most effective action they could take at this moment would be to design and sponsor a series of “learning conversations” among the faithful during which differing views could be viewed, not with a polemical style but rather with a “from the heart” style, leading to a consensus on the more profound fundamentals from which all could move forward, if not in unison, then in collaboration.
When the sickness of political polarity, the name-calling and senseless trashing of one another, becomes the order of the day, it is time to retrench and rediscover Christian community, to rediscover our brothers and sisters.

Mr. Lozada: I agree with your analysis of Church history completely. The Catholic Church has opposed abortion from the outset, and it has done more than any organization throughout history to help the poor. But I would push back by saying that not only do the Bishops need to help the poor, but they also need to critique the political structures that keep poor people poor. The Church has also done that for 2000 years, and there is plenty of evidence for this practice in the Church Fathers as well, both in their lives and their writings. I am thinking here especially of St. John Chrysostom, who not only preached in favor of helping the poor but also decried the political powers of his day that refused to help them. But thank you for your comments.
PS. I am a devout Catholic who agrees with Church teaching on every issue of doctrine and morals.
Mr. Nadal: First off, I sincerely apologize for being so tendentious, and I apologize for the comment about you not knowing your catechism. I appreciate your opinion, and I find this discussion to be quite interesting, because I think the future of the Church in America (and Europe for that matter) depends on how it engages politically. Second, while I stand by my assessment of Carroll, I think you are right to point out his lack of historical perspective. He acts as if the Church’s defense of the unborn is something new. As Mr. Lozada pointed out, that is entirely inaccurate. Additionally, I think you are right to point out that the Church is consistent on the issues regardless of the party. I would ask, though: while the Bishops are consistent on the issues, do you think that they place too much emphasis on abortion and gay marriage at the risk of devaluing the importance of other issues? Or is Mr. Carroll’s problem with the media’s portrayal of the Bishops rather than their actual actions and statements? Also, I would like to push you on a statement that you made. You said that “the American Bishops will ally themselves with whatever political party is championing an issue of social justice.” My question is this: can the Bishops champion issues of social justice without allying themselves with any political party? It seems that the Church could appear a lot more consistent if they championed social justice without allying themselves too closely with particular groups whose fundamental presuppositions are different than those of the Church. I take issue with the fact that they are more vocal with their critiques of abortion and gay marriage than they are with their critiques of several Republican economic and social policies. What are your thoughts?