So, what’s Bill Donohue up to these days?
Over 120 blogs have been credentialed as members of the media for the Democratic National Convention; those who have received credentials are allowed to cover the Convention at the Pepsi Center. While most of them offer legitimate commentary, some do not.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue is protesting two of the blogs:
“The list of credentialed blogs include radical sites like The Daily Kos. Worse are blogs that feature anti-Catholic and obscene material. The two most offensive are Bitch Ph.D. and Towleroad.
“On the home page of Bitch Ph.D. there is a picture of two children: one of them is shown flashing his middle finger. Today’s lead post, which was written August 17, is called ‘Jesus Christ.’ It begins with, ‘I’m a really crappy Catholic who hasn’t been to mass in ages because most parishes around here ‘will’ insist on being aggressively anti-abortion….’ The writer then objects to some children’s toys on the grounds that they are more offensive than desecrating the Eucharist.
Ah, so the DNC needs to kick Bitch, PhD out because she’s not a good enough Catholic for Bill Donohue. Not because she’s anti-Catholic; because she’s not the sort of Catholic Bill Donohue agrees with.
Of course, one might say that Donohue is engaging in pure religious bigotry here; by declaring that only anti-choicers can be acceptable Catholics, he’s personally excommunicating over half of American Catholics from the church. One might suggest that this makes Donohue something less than a spokesperson for Catholicism, and instead more a man who uses the specter of anti-Catholic bigotry to advance a conservative agenda. Then again, if you read Bitch, PhD., you knew that last year.
Ha, you know what really tickles me about this? Donohue can go to a site called “Bitch PhD” and look at that picture and STILL assume that the kid flipping the bird is a “him.” If that doesn’t succinctly illustrate his worldview and the limits of it, I don’t know what does.
While I think Bill Donohue is a disgusting, contemptuous man, and I think trying to bar certain journalists from political events because of their views is both stupid and vile, if you are pro-choice then you are a bad Catholic. Religions have rules; Catholicism’s doctrine is established by a hiearchy of bishops, cardinals, and a Pope, and to veer from that doctrine would mean being, in the eyes of the church, a bad Catholic. After nine years of Catholic education I learned that in order to be a good person, one often had to be a bad Catholic.
Also, he is not “personally excommunicating” anyone. He can’t, and pointing out that someone is disobeying the orders of one’s faith is not even close to what expulsion from the church entails or means.
But yes, he is still very much an idiot. On that, we agree.
While I think Bill Donohue is a disgusting, contemptuous man, and I think trying to bar certain journalists from political events because of their views is both stupid and vile, if you are pro-choice then you are a bad Catholic.
That may be — but that’s not for me, you, or Bill Donohue to decide. It may be for the Catholic church to decide, and they’re allowed to, but they’ve been walking a fine line because…well, they don’t want half their membership to leave them. And if they started enforcing a pro-life-or-bust philosophy, that’s exactly what would happen.
Bill Donohue is trying to be more Catholic than the Pope here; sorry, that’s not his place. If the Catholic church wants to expel pro-choice members, it can, but until it does, it’s not for Donohue to decide that members of the church are apostate, when the church has not.
He is pointing out who is faltering by Catholic standards, and that is completely within a layperson’s authority. He hasn’t overstepped his bounds by declaring he has powers the Church has not invested in him, so he isn’t trying to be more Catholic than the Pope. If he did actually declare someone expelled from the Church, then that would be a different matter.
The Church (even supposedly liberal, lovely John Paul II) has spoken out against abortion and those who try to legalize it. Here’s JP v.2.0 on the subject:
“I declare that direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being. This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written word of God, is transmitted by the Church’s tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal magisterium. No circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever make licit an act which is intrinsically illicit, since it is contrary to the law of God which is written in every human heart, knowable by reason itself, and proclaimed by the Church”
-Evangelium Vitae 62
Donohue is merely reminding people of this rubbish. As long as he is defending Roman Catholic doctrine and portraying it accurately, and as long as the Vatican does not ask him to stop, he is being a “good Catholic”. That seems to be what he is doing here.