From CWN’s Blog:
Whose
dishonesty?
You could write it off as just one more election-year gimmick, and
maybe you'd be right to do so. But the tortured effort by Senator Dick Durbin
to make Democrats look more
"Catholic" than Republicans still deserves a comment.
To get the results he wants, Durbin ascribes equal importance to every
political stand taken by the US bishops' conference: all 101 of them. So a lawmaker who votes against a bill on exposure to mercury, or
a bill on ownership of media outlets, is marked down just as much as one who
votes to protect abortionists who suction the brains out of babies.
A dishonest approach? Of course it is.
But who should be blamed for that dishonesty? Senator Durbin is
acting like any partisan politician; he's seizing an opportunity that was made
readily available to him. That opportunity was available because the US
bishops' conference becomes involved in dozens of political controversies that
do not involve clear-cut moral principles, thus distracting attention
from those that do. If the bishops issued forthright statements in the
first place, establishing a clear hierarchy of moral issues, Durbin could not
have exploited them in this way.
So why don't they issue clear statements? Because they want to be exploited in this way.
If you have a better explanation, let me know....
-- Bill Nelson (bnelson45-nospam@hotmail.com), June 04, 2004