Washington Post Calumniates Catholic Church

The Cranky Conservative has the details:

... grossly distorted and ignorant op-ed written by Robert McCartney.

Question: Why would Washington’s Roman Catholic archdiocese let a dispute over employment benefits, which would have little practical effect, cause it to give up doing valuable, publicly funded work helping the homeless and sick?

Answer: Because the church doesn’t want to miss an opportunity, however small, to oppose homosexuals’ right to wed.

[...]

Lest you think I’m guilty of engaging in distortrion myself, here’ the next paragraph.

That’s the lesson I’ve drawn from the dispute between the archdiocese and the D.C. Council over the same-sex marriage bill. Unless there’s a compromise before the council’s decisive vote, scheduled for Tuesday, the church would reduce its social welfare activities in ways that signal it thinks they’re less important than taking a stand against same-sex marriage.

Again, this is nothing but supposition. The diocese has taken a stance that McCartney disapproves of, and instead of engaging the arguments, he chooses to question the authenticity of his opponents. Disgusting.

I write this as someone who is not Catholic (I’m Protestant) but who has taken an interest in religious issues and the church since I helped cover the Vatican for the Associated Press in Rome in the early 1980s. I view the church as a tremendous force for good in the world in many ways, especially in its advocacy for the poor and against violence. The U.S. church supports more ambitious health-care reform than Barack Obama does, for instance.

Ahh, so we have the concern troll phenomenon at work here. The author is not even a Catholic, but he presumes he has the ability to read the hearts and minds of Catholic prelates. And the Church is a-okay as long as it only engages in actions and supports the same causes as the author...

[Read the whole thing]

(emphasis added)