The Catholic League’s Bill Donohue is fully sanctioned by the Catholic Church. Cardinal Raymond Burke is not the “highest ranking U.S. cardinal," not even close. Some Jesuits are neocons. Whatever your parents or grandparents told you about the Catholic Church, it probably is no longer true. The Tea Party branch of Catholicism may be dead, but big-money, establishment Catholic leaders and Republicans are more synchronized than ever.
Bill Donohue
The Catholic League states on its website that it is listed in the Official Catholic Directory. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) “is responsible for establishing eligibility criteria for inclusion in the Official Catholic Directory” and all the organizations listed are exempt from federal income tax under the USCCB’s “group tax exemption.”
In addition to the Catholic League, there are almost 200 (arch)diocesan offices, over 17,000 parishes, thousands of educational facilities, all manner of media, charities and anti-abortion/anti-gay groups for the laity – over 40,000 in all – listed in the Directory. Each is sanctioned by a bishop and therefore, unlike other religious denominations, all speak with one voice on contraception, abortion and same-sex marriage.
Each one has a 501(c)(3) federal tax code, meaning they do not have to file financial records (at least none which would be subject to outside audit), donors - besides receiving a tax deduction – need not be disclosed, nor expenditures. One brilliant aspect of the creation of the Religious Right is that religious organizations are perfect vehicles for dark money. The Catholic Church also has the advantage of being part of a global financial network and its “home office” is a country immune to any law enforcement save its own.
The Catholic League lists endorsements by the real “highest ranking U.S. cardinal,” the prelate of Wall Street, Timothy Dolan; Archbishop Charles Chaput, the eminence grise of the 21st century U.S. Church, (see chapters 14 and 17 of my book, The Neo-Catholics: Implementing Christian Nationalism in America); and Cardinal Seán O’Malley, the only U.S. hierarch selected by Pope Francis to serve on two of his commissions.
Catholic League board members include Opus Dei member, Russell Shaw, formerly head of public affairs for the USCCB; Opus Dei member, Prof. Robert George, recent participant in Pope Francis’ conference with U.S. opponents of LGBT equality, and neocon Mary Ann Glendon, the only American layperson given a permanent position in the Vatican by Pope Francis.
Cardinal Raymond Burke
Burke has never been elected to any position by his confreres in the USCCB. After being head of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, he was not moved to a more important city such as New York or Washington D.C., he was moved to the Vatican. At the Vatican, he was not appointed to any influential departments such as the powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Secretariat of State or the Congregation for Bishops, the department which oversees the selection of bishops. When Pope Benedict XVI appointed him Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura and President of the Supreme Court of the Vatican City State (chief justice the Vatican judiciary), he became a cardinal. This position carries the title of cardinal just as Pope Francis promoted Burke’s successor, Dominique Memberti, to cardinal.
Burke adjudicated no important issues or cases. The only important trial which took place while he held his position was that of Pope Benedict's former butler, Paolo Gabriele, accused of stealing sensitive documents and passing them on to a journalist. Burke not only didn't preside but was never mentioned.
Burke’s demotion, announced before he ever criticized the pope, was just another Ratzinger loyalist being replaced by the new pope with his own supporters. Pope Francis confirmed this when he said “that the move was part of a broader restructuring of the Vatican bureaucracy that had been decided well before the October 5-19 synod of bishops on the family. The reason he waited until after the synod to make it official, he said, was so that Burke could still participate in the meeting as the head of a Vatican department.”
In fact, Burke was just one of many bishops unhappy with the way the synod was managed. Now, thanks to grossly inaccurate reporting, Burke has become a headliner and his every word will be widely reported until he slips back into the relative ecclesial obscurity from which he came.
Jesuits
Jesuits are deservedly credited with some of the best colleges and universities in the world. Like most religious orders, the first step is to become a “novice” for several years. The second step is as a “scholastic,” a period of intellectual study, which sets the Jesuits apart in addition to practicing the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. That formation, however, doesn’t guarantee a liberal or conservative world view.
In 1975, the superior general, Fr. Pedro Arrupe, proclaimed: “Today our prime educational objective must be to form men-for-others…men who cannot even conceive of love of God which does not include love for the least of their neighbors; men completely convinced that love of God which does not issue in justice for others is a farce.” Pope John Paul II replaced Arrupe with a man closer to his own right-wing ideology in 1983. The Jesuits became more a reflection of this new leadership but, as always, allowed for a broad range of political views among its members.
Fr. Jorge Mario Bergoglio (the future Pope Francis) opposed Arrupe and was assigned to backwater positions after serving as head of the Argentine Jesuits (1973-1979) including the worst years of that country’s Dirty War (see Paul Vallely, Pope Francis: Untying the Knots). After about twelve years, Bergoglio was promoted up the ecclesial career ladder to cardinal by Pope John Paul II.
In December 2014, the Jesuit Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., accepted funds from the Charles Koch Foundation to “create a center on economic inquiry.”
Not Your Father’s Church Anymore
As most of you remember from your history of Western Civilization, the Vatican tried to align itself with powerful monarchs until the Austro-Hungarian Empire was defeated in World War I. Popes had opposed the Magna Carta, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution – any movement in Europe towards human rights and democracy. After the First World War, clerico-fascism described the Vatican’s support for every European fascist country and movement except the later Third Reich until an Allied victory became certain. Until then, popes had little interest in the Protestant United States of America. Post-war, the Vatican cooperated with the CIA in defeating communism in Catholic countries in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and Latin America but the popes had no desire to influence U.S. politics. Therefore, the American episcopate continued to be left to itself in running the Church in this country.
The war had a profound effect on Europeans and many prelates were liberalized. Pope John XXIII promoted a policy of “ostpolitik,” or détente with communism. His bishops met in the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and tried to open the Church to the world.
Many of the American bishops in the 20th century were pro-union men from working class backgrounds and many joined the civil rights movement. Archbishop Jean Jadot was papal delegate (not nuncio because Reagan didn’t establish full diplomatic relations with the Holy See until 1984) to the U.S. from 1973 to 1980. In those seven years, he was responsible for the appointments of 103 progressive bishops and the assignments of 15 archbishops.
“The CIA, which knew that another John XXIII could spell disaster for U.S. foreign policy, doubtless brought its influence to bear on the election of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla through Opus Dei and the Knights of Malta. Thus far [1983] it seems likely that the agency is, on balance, fairly pleased with the pope's performance.”
As soon as Reagan won the 1980 election, Pope John Paul II appointed Archbishop Pio Laghi as papal delegate (later nuncio) to Washington D.C. straight from his assignment as cooperator with the Argentine junta. In return for the Reagan administration’s help in freeing the Poles from the Soviet Union, Wojtyla, with Laghi’s help, transformed the U.S. episcopate into leaders of the Religious Right. Because bishops aren’t replaced until they retire or die, it took John Paul II about 20 years to turn the U.S. episcopate into an adjunct of the Republican Party.
Catholics old enough to remember the pre-21st century Church, know the difference. For those younger, the Church of your parents and grandparents hardly exists anymore. You might find some parishes connected to colleges and universities, or run by religious order (rather than diocesan) priests, which might be considered “Vatican II” organizations. But most men and women who want to work for social justice no longer consider the Catholic Church as a career option.
Big-Money, Establishment Catholics and Republicans Totally in Sync
In gratitude for their support during the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush met with Catholic prelates within a week of his inauguration to hash out the final plans of his Faith Based and Community Initiative whereby billions of tax-payer dollars would fund the Church’s charities and the bishops would take the credit. In return for the FBCI established by executive order, the hierarchs were silent about Bush taking this country to war under false pretenses and establishing torture as “legal” American policy.
On one of this five visits to the Vatican, on June 4, 2004, Pres. Bush complained that “Not all the American bishops are with me…hoping the Vatican would nudge them toward more explicit activism.” So Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) gave the American bishops their marching orders: Sen. John F. Kerry was to be denied communion because he supported legal abortion. The U.S. bishops mounted a huge media campaign against Kerry for “aggressively promoting abortion.” Although the senator had led among Catholics at the beginning of the campaign, Bush won the Catholic vote. “The hierarchical attacks on Kerry had a real impact on the race….The Ratzinger effect? Parochially speaking, there's no doubt about it.”
Keeping abortion a “foundational” issue didn’t work in 2008, so Robert George, “the greatest conservative Christian thinker,” came up with “religious liberty” as the major theme for the Religious Right going forward.
As a result of the Catholic bishops’ media campaign against the Affordable Care Act’s mandate for contraception coverage, “a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing on religious liberty and the birth control rule” was held in February 2012. Later, the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act had 190 cosponsors in the House of Representatives. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 2012 had 29 cosponsors in the Senate.
Five former U.S. ambassadors to the Vatican endorsed Romney on Jan. 7, 2012, as the GOP presidential candidate before the first debate was held even though Catholics Santorum and Gingrich were running. It was a sure sign that big-money had already decided among the GOP candidates.
In the wake of their 2012 election defeats, “pragmatic, pro-business” leaders of the Republican Party issued an “autopsy report” in March 2013:
…a remarkably hard-headed diagnosis of the party’s many liabilities: its ideological rigidity, its preference for the rich over workers, its alienation of minorities, its reactionary social policies and its institutionalized repression of dissent and innovation.
….Voters’ belief that “the G.O.P. does not care about them is doing great harm.” Formerly loyal voters gathered in focus groups describe Republicans as “‘scary,’ ‘narrow-minded’ and ‘out of touch’ and that we were a party of ‘stuffy old men.’”
….The report also warns that Republicans need to mute, if not silence, anti-gay rhetoric if they are to have any chance of regaining support among voters under the age of 30.
…. “We looked at the last two election cycles and came to the conclusion that we lost from four to seven U.S. Senate seats not because of the party message, in those cases, but because of the party’s messenger.”
When the College of Cardinals assembled in the same month to attend meetings prior to electing the next pope, the American cardinals arrived with their own press corps and equipment. They set up their own press headquarters at the Pontifical North American College even though the Vatican press office announced it would give daily press briefings. By making U.S. prelates accessible to the 5000 members of the press gathered in Rome with not much else to report, Team USA (as I call them) was able control the talking points.
The leading papabile was Cardinal Angelo Scola, an Italian and a “Ratzinger man.” So Team USA promoted an anti-Italian, anti-Ratzinger (by criticizing his Curia) sentiment among the cardinals, especially those from outside the usual centers of Vatican power – Asians, Africans, Latin Americans – who perhaps would be more persuadable, in order to elect their man.
“Stopping the [Vatican] leaks will be one challenge in a media culture which lives on leaks. It’s just the way to do business here in Rome,” Sr. Mary Ann Walsh, media relations director for the USCCB wrote.
Other Team USA insiders joined the attack.
The Vatican Bank's “murky dealings...involved Italians who have, sort of, an Italian way of doing things in the Vatican," stated John Thavis, Vatican correspondent for nearly 30 years for the Catholic News Service, the official news agency of the USCCB.
"The Curia is still deeply influenced by Italianate work habits and that's problematic," George Weigel, one of the founding U.S. theocons, opined.
“An anti-Italian sentiment seemed to grow among [the cardinal/electors],” noted Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne of Lima, Peru. In short order, the cardinals were demanding “reform of the Curia” as the most pressing order of business for a new pontiff.
So we now have a pope who eschews “ideological rigidity, a preference for the rich over workers," and "reactionary social policies" and appears to favor “institutional dissent and innovation.” Unlike his predecessor, the new pope does not appear to be “scary, narrow minded or out of touch.” He has “muted anti-gay rhetoric” and quieted his own “party’s messengers” who sounded too uncompromising and dogmatic.
"Eighteen months ago, the big Catholic stories were sex abuse scandals, crackdowns on nuns and bruising political controversies. Those stories obviously haven't gone away, but they are no longer the dominant Catholic narrative. The dominant Catholic narrative today is more like rock star pope takes the world by storm,” John L. Allen Jr., Vatican correspondent for the Boston Globe, wrote in September.
In the November 2014 election campaigns, "many Republican candidates are taking steps to project a more moderate image and try to inoculate themselves from attacks portraying them as extremists. To win, Republican candidates must offer 'common-sense ideas' that demonstrate compassion and expand their support beyond base Republican voters."
In just this month:
The Vatican said Pope Francis will speak about poverty at the UN this September.
"Mitt Romney's Re-Invention As Anti-Poverty Warrior"
Rick Santorum is “reinventing himself as an anti-poverty crusader like Mitt Romney.”
"GOP 2016 hopefuls talk big about poverty and the middle class but they're all talk"
Catholic leaders urge support for the U.S. bishops' efforts on immigration reform.
"Jeb Bush Sounds Sympathetic Note for Immigrants"
The pope will issue an encyclical in 2015 on climate change.
"Senate Passes Amendment Declaring Climate Change is Real"