Who is Right About Religious Liberty? Cardinal Dolan or Catholics For Choice?

This past spring the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a Guest Commentary by Jon O'Brien, president of Catholics for Choice, claiming that it is not President Obama's administration interfering with Religious Liberty, but rather the Catholic Bishops. So who is right about Religious Liberty? Cardinal Dolan or Catholics for Choice?

For Greater Glory and the Historical Attack on Catholic Religious Liberty

The historical attack on Catholic Religious Liberty began really at the founding of the Church. We're experiencing something of it now, although in our mostly money-mediated modern milieu it looks much different. It came on with a vengence at the time of the Protestant Revolt, and again at the time of the Communist Revolutions (yes, plural) of the early 20th century. For Greater Glory is (part of) this story in Mexico, which was at least a brutal repression as anything done in 16th century England. The film is still on two screens in the St. Louis area; one in Creve Coeur west of 270 on Olive, and the other in St. Charles.

Archbishop Robert J. Carlson is calling on all parishes in the archdiocese to participate in a Religious Liberty Weekend of activities June 23-24 in conjunction with the U.S. bishops’ Fortnight for Freedom. My own recommendation would be to go see this film before this coming weekend, and then go to some of the events and shout ¡Viva Cristo Rey! You should expect to hear in response ¡Que Viva!

Roe v. Wade and Deadbeat Dads

A Pattern of Denial
by Robert E. Hurley, M.D.     

What have Roe v. Wade and deadbeat dads, single moms, poverty and STD’s in common?  Quite a lot, actually.  In his 1996 Pastoral Letter on Courage, Arlington Bishop John Keating pointed to the connection by noting, “as radical feminism demands that abortion be readily available as an exclusively female option to bear or to abort a child, it unwittingly justifies male abandonment and lack of commitment.”  And, unwittingly or not, this is precisely what the Roe v. Wade decision did. The court decreed that a former crime is now a “right” to have an infant destroyed, and that the authority to enforce this “right” is conferred on the woman exclusively. If that’s the case, then since authority and responsibility go together and since no one can be held responsible for anything over which he has no authority or control, it is only logical for men to conclude that the court has transferred their responsibility to whomever it has given decision-making authority. Roe v. Wade has given both men and women a legal rationale for abandoning their responsibilities toward others, including each other. The consequences for themselves and society have been predictably disastrous.

Outside the Church, No Salvation and Fr. Feeney

Credo's Spiritual Adviser Fr. Brian Harrison, O.S. has a  new two-part theological essay published in the online version of Living Tradition titled  “Father Feeney and the Implicitum Votum Ecclesiae”. The Latin there means “implicit desire for the Church”. The essay defends the Church's teaching, only quite recently developed explicitly, that sometimes non-Catholics can be linked to the Church by an implicit or unconscious desire that is sufficient for their salvation. The late Fr. Leonard Feeney and his followers have claimed this is heretical. According to them, “Outside the Church, no Salvation” means that only those who are consciously Roman Catholic at the moment of death can reach Heaven. All the rest, he said, even the most devout Protestants and Greek Orthodox, die “outside the Church” and thus are damned.

Most Catholic writers dismiss “Feeneyism” as extremism, if not bigotry; but they rarely face up honestly to the arguments he deployed, based on older, medieval magisterial teachings (including infallible ones) that were promulgated in a decidedly pre-ecumenical age, and that seem to support Fr. Feeney's rigorous position.

In this essay Fr. Harrison does not address in detail the question of whether those dying as non-Christians can enter the Kingdom of Heaven; he focuses mainly on the case of those who die believing in Christ, but without sincerely professing the Catholic Faith (including submission to the Roman Pontiff). Catholics (and other Christians) generally agree on the meaning of “no salvation”. But what does it mean to be “outside the Church”?