A look at the unraveling of the "seamless garment" faction of U.S. bishops
November 17, 2010 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
The Catholic World Report has a good piece on what writer George Neumayr calls “Cardinal O’Conner’s Revenge.” It thoughtfully explores the underlying reasons why the liberal candidate for president of the USCCB, Bishop Gerald Kikanis, lost yesterday’s election to New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan. It’s a brief but good read. Here’s the best line: “The irony of Bishop Kicanas’ defeat is that the fingerprints of dissenters are on the weapon that felled him . . .”
Neumayr is correct to temper the "conservative" appellation regarding Dolan.
"Conservative" as to the Catholic clergy now may be a meaningless term that covers only several issues like birth control and liturgy. The conservative priest or Pope now is likely to call the death penalty "cruel" ( John Paul II once in 1999…Benedict twice at Christmas and in a recent Kentucky dp case letter ).
That is in my view a soft regression not a development but will be with us for ages just like the hard regression of burning heretics sat in the old canon law for 6 centuries plus. So unfortunately the seamless garment movement had more success than we admit. Elijah slit the throats of 450 prophets of Baal; Samuel "hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal"…. and yet Pope Benedict in section 42 of Verbum Domini stated that "the preaching of the prophets challenged…every kind of violence"….apparently Benedict thought only of the prophets of the exile. Seamless garment ideology therefore has done more damage all the way to the top. Centuries of hard regressions in the ordinary magisterium have been replaced with their opposite end of the pendulum.