Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
The nation’s premier dissident “Catholic” newspaper, the National Catholic Reporter, is demanding that Cardinal Timothy Dolan address the “hot heads” at EWTN’s National Catholic Register for promulgating a petition to strip the errant Catholic Health Association of its name.
According to Michael Sean Winters of the National Catholic Reporter, every bishop in America should be experiencing heartburn after Pat Archbold of the National Catholic Register published an article explaining why the Catholic Health Association (CHA) should lose the privilege of using the name “Catholic”. The article was written after a statement was issued by Sr. Carol Keehan, president of the CHA, in which she accepted the final version of the contentious birth control mandate in spite of the fact that the U.S. bishops have publicly scorned it. Because this is just one of many examples of Sr. Keehan’s dissidence over the years, which has caused tremendous scandal in the Church, Archbold is calling for signatures on a petition to Cardinal Dolan to strip the CHA of its Catholic name.
Winters is now accusing the Register of “whipping up people to think that the government is just waiting to rob us Catholics of our religious liberty, that the HHS mandate is evil incarnate, even though they refuse to say that it amounts to illicit material cooperation with evil, and the USCCB point man on the issue, Archbishop William Lori, publishes tendentious statements without correction.”
He is demanding that Cardinal Dolan, “who has a long-standing relationship with EWTN, which now owns the Register . . . step up to the plate” and speak up before his tenure as the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) comes to an end in November.
“He could do the Church a favor by speaking up now, before he heads for the exit, to remind the hot heads that CHA and its members are loyal sons and daughters of the Church, that they bring the healing ministry of Jesus to the world, and that it is un-Christian, as well as unkind, to cast such vile aspersions at them. Saying this much will not ‘harm’ the lawsuits. It will, however, help to heal the Church.”
It is amazing to me that a newspaper which has been attacking the basic tenets of the Catholic faith for decades with such audacity that several bishops have publicly condemned it is now suddenly concerned about healing the Church.
My suggestion to Mr. Winters is that if he and his news organization truly want to heal the Church, they should start by cleaning their own house first.
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