Breaking news from the Vatican!

I imagine we'll be seeing "breaking news" headlines from the Vatican now that they've got an official Fox News spokesperson.

In his new job as the Vatican’s senior communications adviser, Burke, 52, will be counseling Pope Benedict XVI and his closest staff on how to better project the Catholic Church’s image to the rest of the world.

I can just see it now. The popey guy appears on-screen. Below his image, big red letters blink with the word: "ALERT ALERT ALERT". And then the popey guy says, breathlessly, "A miracle has occurred in Transylvania! The Blessed Virgin Mary has appeared to thousands!"

Oy. It fits right in, doesn't it? Heck, he can use direct Fox News feeds and call them his own. After all, they say the same sorts of things the popey guy says: anti-gay, anti-Obama, anti-sanity stuff. It's a miracle! And I heard on Fox News that this whole set-up was preordained in the Bible!

More Roman Catholic hypocrisy

This morning, I came across a story in HuffPo's religious section about the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. It vividly illustrates how anti-Obama and pro-GOP the USCCB is. Though the article focuses mostly on the bishops' poor compliance with new sex abuse procedures (i.e., they're doing absolutely nothing and continuing to protect the pedophile priests), it veers off at the end to talk about other matters.

Apparently there is a possibility that they'll issue a church proclamation about the economy -- something along the lines of "greed is not good". Unfortunately, such a statement would be seen as anti-GOP (because it is). And though the bishops are happy to knock Obama and his policies daily during this pre-election period -- they're terrified of doing anything that could be seen as opposing the Republicans. That would be "political". Sweet, huh?

A number of bishops -- reflecting the increasingly conservative slant of the USCCB -- raised concerns that such a document could be seen as implicitly criticizing Republican budget policies and could be seen as too political.
In the end, the bishops voted 171-26 to draft a message, tentatively titled "Catholic Reflections on Work, Poverty and a Broken Economy," and scheduled for debate and release a week after the November elections.

Anything that hurts Obama in the pre-election period is fine. But tread on the GOP? No way! These bishops are the most hypocritical creatures imaginable. To the church's final arbiters of morality, the words "truth" and "ethics" are without meaning. What craven creatures the lot of them are.

Funny stuff from the rightwing Catholic church

 I roared with laughter as I read this story in the LA Times this morning. Let's dive right in.

Led by the indomitable Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, the bishops are arriving in Atlanta for their annual spring meeting this week determined to throw the spotlight on what they perceive as an assault by the Obama administration on religious liberty.

Surely that statement is not political in any sense of the term. Heaven forfend. Going against one of the presidential candidates in an election year has absolutely nothing to do with politics.

Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore insisted to the National Catholic Reporter last week that there was nothing partisan about the church's campaign. "We're not trying to throw an election," he said. "We're simply trying to defend fundamental freedoms."

In doing so, however, the bishops have used unusually strong language. Dolan said the White House was "strangling" the church. The bishop of Peoria, Ill., compared what Obama had done to the treatment of churches by Hitler and Stalin.

Nah, not political at all. What could make anyone say that?

In addition to the Fortnight observance, the bishops also are using their pulpits to let the Catholic faithful know that they believe the administration has crossed a line. Dolan has even written a brief e-book, scheduled for publication later this month, in which he lays out an intellectual argument for "the Gospel of life."

We'll sure want to read that, huh?

McGuire [of the Catholic Association] defends the bishops from charges of partisanship, saying: "I don't think the bishops are trying to influence the campaign.... I mean, the bishops are not going to get behind one political candidate or another. They never have and never will." 

Surely not. And let's remember this is all (allegedly) about contraception. And as we learned yesterday:

Less than a quarter of U.S. Catholics attend Mass every week. Most reject church teaching on artificial contraception and a majority support same-sex relationships. About one-third of Americans who were raised Catholic have left the church, according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

That's quite a church they've got there. It is hypocrisy writ large (and wearing big, silly hats).