And trash the archdiocese Kaine and O'Malley did. Kaine likened ADW's digging-in to "picking up one's marbles and going home" and added that it might "set a bad example." O'Malley lamented that this is "not like the Catholic Church that I know."

Right you are, Governor O'Malley! The Catholic Church that you know is in heresy from the authentic Catholic church. However you are to be excused for thinking that the Catholic church that you know is the real one because until recently, the heretics were the face and leadership of the Catholic Church in the U.S. Many are still lodged in its national and local bureaucracies and in its affiliated colleges and universities and in parishes in affluent, educated places such as Montgomery County, MD, where you grew up.

The kinds of Catholics that you know, Governor O'Malley, are the ones who bargained with the DC government in the first place, ignoring the fact--obvious to the discerning for nearly 40 years--that the moral attitudes and behavior of the DC citizens who elect that government are flagrantly at odds with Catholic teaching. It was inevitable that this government would enact a law that is repugnant to Catholic positions on marriage and threatening to freedom of conscience.

These are also "Catholics" whose views on abortion are at odds with church teaching and this is among the things that make them heretics. Other points of dissent are the Christ-instituted hierarchy and in persona Christi male priesthood. As with all heresies there is at bottom an exaltation and worship of human beings over God. However we will confine our discussion here to the sanctity of innocent human life and particularly abortion.

Laundry Lists and Scorecards

Extreme members of the heresy, including prominent "Catholic" elected officials, have gone so far as to proclaim that abortion is a "human right." Most heretics think of abortion as wrong but diminish it to being merely an item on a laundry list or scorecard, an issue of equal value with the other issues. Plusses next to "concern for the poor" and "combatting racism" negates the minus of dissenting from church teaching on abortion.

This is how "Obama Catholics" were able to justify their support of the most pro-abortion candidate for the American presidency ever to run. They thought it was important for the U.S. to have an African-American president and didn't care that he's going to appoint anti-life judges and commissioners who will have us in a "long night in Gethsemane" for decades. This is how numerous nun or priest presidents of Catholic-church-affiliated universities have justified, without the slightest qualm and sometimes with strong arms, the honoring of pro-abortion public figures.

And out of the laundry-list/scorecard mind comes the question: How can he call himself pro-life when he's for capital punishment and started a war and is against universal health coverage?

The answer to this is that The Catechism of the Catholic Church (2270) states that abortion is always wrong and never permissible. While the church is not crazy about capital punishment (2266) and war (2307) and teaches that they should be avoided if possible, the church's position--regardless of what even a couple of popes have said off the cuff--is that war and execution are permissible and debatable. No one who advocates them per se is ipso facto in sin. But as Bishop Tobin of Rhode Island wrote to Congressman Patrick Kennedy, rejection of the church's teaching on abortion is "a deliberate and obstinate act of the will"(1), worse and more damaging to one's communion with the church than sins in which the appetites tempt.

It is in "concern for the poor" that the heresy is really apparent. Let's consider first what heresy is. G. K. Chesterton in William Blake defined it as "the exaltation of something which even if true, is secondary or temporary in its nature against those things which are essential and eternal, those things which always prove themselves true in the long run." He also wrote in St. Thomas Aquinas, The Dumb Ox that "Falsehood is never so false when it is very nearly true."

Isn't concern for the poor the most important part of being Christian? Actually no. It is certainly true that the Catholic Church has always expressed what Pope John Paul called "a preferential love for the poor" ("Preferential option" is the coining of Latin American Marxists and is not part of authentic church teaching.). No one argues that Jesus placed helping the poor high on a list of what one must do to be saved. The heresy has occurred in exalting concern for the poor to a level where it trumps everything else, where it is the highest priority. It is a heresy that has bred a pragmatic attitude that anything that purports to benefit the poor, even abortion itself, is desirable and permissible.

To realize that there is a higher priority than helping the poor, we need only to read the Gospel passages Matthew 26:6-13, Mark 14:3-9, and John 12:1-8 about Jesus' feet being anointed with expensive perfume. Judas the Betrayer protests that the oil could have been sold and given to the poor. Jesus responds by saying that "the poor will always be with you"; his feet must be anointed. He is God among men who is about to be killed. What may seem contradictory to Jesus' statements about giving all to the poor and indeed what looks like a callous act of self-indulgence is the teaching that above everything else, God is to be honored. In Matthew 6:33, Jesus says "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God," but we won't get into that. Suffice it to say that honoring God and seeking first the kingdom do include helping the poor in ways that are truly best for them and not counter to God's laws.

Gray Hairesy, The Notre Dame Affair and The Changing Sea

Yes, as it became clear after the election of 2008, there are two Catholic churches, an authentic one with a proper view of life issues and a heretical one with a disordered view. The heretics are mostly over 40, usually way over 40; the Catholics taking back the church are the young folks who were inspired by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Time is not on the side of the heretics.

It may seem to be a disaster, but what happened at The University of Notre Dame's commencement last May has actually given the recrudescence a boost. While it has been off the orthodoxy track since the 1970s, Notre Dame U. is still, in the eyes of many Catholics, the premiere Catholic-Church-affiliated university in the U.S. Its honoring of a pro-abortion president with a doctorate of laws, in defiance of the U.S. Bishops' statement, Catholics in Public Life(2) and against the wishes of the bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend, was a bucket of icy, wake-up water in the faces of many Catholics including bishops and Notre Dame alumni. They have jumped up out of their slumbers with fists shaking to march in the increasing ranks of the militant.

In commenting on the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy, George Weigel hoped that it would mark "the end of an era in which Catholics in the United States identify 'concern for the poor' with big-government-funded and big-government-managed welfare programs." (3)

That the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has made support of health-care reform conditional upon antiabortion provisions signifies that the sea is changing. Only a few years ago, the bishops would have been squarely behind the overhaul, no questions asked, spare no expense. The days of the laundry list/scorecard of issues appear to be ending at the USCCB.

The Archdiocese of Washington's brinksmanship over DC's gay marriage legislation is a bit of a surprise given that Archbishop Donald Wuerl let himself be played for a suckah by Nancy Pelosi when he first got to town. I suspect that more politicians like Patrick Kennedy will be having their doors blown off.

A Pretty Nasty Bunch and "Partisanship"

Heretics can be a pretty nasty bunch and they may not go quietly into their good night without a lot of wild shrieking and lashing. The devil does have a role in it all and these are people who think that they're more compassionate than God and who share the world's contempt for good Christians.

I mentioned above the nun and priest university presidents who use strong arms against those who protest their celebration of pro-choice figures. During Obama's visit to Notre Dame, 88 protesters were arrested for "trespassing" on the open Notre Dame campus. Pro-Obama visitors were not arrested for "trespassing." Despite requests, the Notre Dame administration has done nothing to get criminal charges against the protesters dropped or reduced. Indeed there is an implication that Fr. Jenkins' university is actively encouraging the prosecutors to saddle the protesters with permanent criminal records. These were peaceful protesters and among them was a 79-year-old priest, a nun in full habit and Norma McCorvey, the Roe of Roe v. Wade. (4)

At another university in Michigan, the nun president actually had professors stripped of tenure (serious damage to an academic career) and fired because the protested a pro-abortion honoree.

For decades, pro-abortion and otherwise liberal politicians have been accustomed to dealing with a pussycat U.S. Catholic Church that is silent and even supportive as long as the politicians are "helping the poor." Now that the church is making the killing of innocents a top priority, the liberals are screaming "Partisanship!" meaning "Republicans!" Never mind that pro-life Democrats were a big help in inserting restrictions on abortion-funding in the House of Representatives version of health-care overhaul.

With the cries of partisanship come veiled threats to oppress the church legally. Congressman Lynn Woolsey, in accusing the U.S. bishops--"Who elected them to Congress?"--of "bullying" congressmen and "dictating the finer points" of abortion-funding restrictions in health care, suggested that the IRS ought to visit "the council's" tax-exempt status (5). In the contretemps between the church and DC City Council over the gay marriage bill, one councilman, Harry Thomas, observed that the church has "tax-exempt property" and should be "wary of picking a fight."

Well, authentic Catholics are also fighters. They fought the Cathars' assault on human life. They fought at The Siege of Jerusalem and at LePanto. They fought the U.S.'s inherent anti-Catholic bigotry in the Nineteenth Century. They're getting ready to fight in the courts and legislatures and arenas of public opinion in the Twenty-first.

(1) Dear Congressman Kennedy by Bishop Thomas J. Tobin
http://www.thericatholic.com/opinion/detail.html?sub_id=2632

(2) http://www.usccb.org/bishops/catholicsinpoliticallife.shtml

(3)Weigel The Death of Edward Kennedy and The End of An Era, 9/16/09
http://www.archden.org/index.cfm/ID/2585

(4) Prof. Charles Rice: Open Letter to Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., President, University of Notre Dame
http://fumare.blogspot.com/2009/09/open-letter-to-rev-john-i-jenkins-csc.html

(5) Lynn Woolsey: IRS should scrutinize bishops
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29336.html