Should Bishop Paprocki be quartered and hanged?
The local breed of budding secularists have anointed themselves with a secular mission of rubbishing anyone with any connection with the Church for being so audacious (not to say down right arrogant) and dare to touch anything that has to do with politics. I am not referring to direct party political endorsement such as “PL for ever” or “PN is Malta’s salvation” for which the offender would be quartered and hanged. I am mainly referring to comments about divorce, IVF, expressions about hell, same sex marriage, the relationship between Church and society, among others. Such statements are considered by the self-declared paladins of free speech to be political interventions. Consequently Church people are totally banned from uttering them or else they face an oddly assorted bevy of sweet compliments . This is an interdiction in reverse. It seems that those who have anything to do with the Church are less equal than others.
I am quite amused by this attitude. Malta’s biggest fundamentalists are to be found among a bunch of budding rabid secularists!
But let me increase my amusement by referring these ladies and gentlemen to an editorial recently written by Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield (Illinois) on the website of his diocese. I will not take a position pro or con of his arguments but I will give long quotes for your consideration. Image, just imagine how ballistic would our home-grown secularists become if some Church man would say anything close to this over here.
Paprocki lambasts the Democrats’ timid reference to God
Bishop Thomas Paprocki criticised the procedure used during the convention of the Democratic Party and the timid reference they made to God after some wanted even that reference excluded:
“After outcries of protest from outside as well as within the Democratic Party, the sentence with the same reference to God used in 2008 was restored to read, "We need a government that stands up for the hopes, values and interests of working people, and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential."
“Before anyone relaxes and concludes that all is well now that the Democratic Party Platform contains a single passing reference to God, the way that this was done should give us pause. Convention chairman Antonio Villaraigosa had to call for the voice vote three times because each time the sound level for the "ayes" and the "nays" sounded about even, far short of the two-thirds necessary according to convention rules to amend the platform. That did not stop the convention chairman from declaring, "The ayes have it!"
“What is troubling about that is the blatant disregard for the rules and for the apparent wishes of about half the delegates. The reference to God is back in the platform apparently because President Obama wanted it back in. That may be fine for now, but if a future president wants references to God taken out, apparently that can be done regardless of the wishes of the delegates if that is what The Leader wants. That does not bode well for democracy in the Democratic Party.”
Paprocki’s thumbs down to Democrats
Bishop Paprocki then did not mince his words about the position of the Democratic Party on abortion and same-sex marriage:
“In 1992 Presidential candidate Bill Clinton famously said that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare" … Apparently "rare" is so last century that it had to be dropped, because now the Democratic Party Platform says that abortion should be "safe and legal." Moreover the Democratic Party Platform supports the right to abortion "regardless of the ability to pay." Well, there are only three ways for that to happen: either taxpayers will be required to fund abortion, or insurance companies will be required to pay for them (as they are now required to pay for contraception), or hospitals will be forced to perform them for free.
“Moreover, the Democratic Party Platform also supports same-sex marriage, recognizes that "gay rights are human rights," and calls for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal law signed by President Clinton in 1996 that defined marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman. “
Bishop Paprocki agreed that there are positive things about the Democratic Party but said his job was to point out those things “that explicitly endorse intrinsic evils. My job is not to tell you for whom you should vote. But I do have a duty to speak out on moral issues. I would be abdicating this duty if I remained silent out of fear of sounding "political" and didn't say anything about the morality of these issues.”
Republicans get clean bill of health
Bishop Paprocki then discussed the platform of the Republican Party adding:
I have read the Republican Party Platform and there is nothing in it that supports or promotes an intrinsic evil or a serious sin … One might argue for different methods in the platform to address the needs of the poor, to feed the hungry and to solve the challenges of immigration, but these are prudential judgments about the most effective means of achieving morally desirable ends, not intrinsic evils.”
Now read his conclusion:
“I am not telling you which party or which candidates to vote for or against, but I am saying that you need to think and pray very carefully about your vote, because a vote for a candidate who promotes actions or behaviors that are intrinsically evil and gravely sinful makes you morally complicit and places the eternal salvation of your own soul in serious jeopardy.”
I will not discuss whether the analysis of Bishop Paprocki is right or wrong as my point is a different one.
Imaging how all hell would break loose and how much brimstone and fire would be dumped down on any Church person who would “dare” say something similar on any topic which the local secularists dub as political and consequently decree it as a taboo. Quartering and hanging would probably be seen as too lenient a punishments for such ecclesiastical scum, wouldn’t it?
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CJohn Zammit
Oct 6th 2012, 20:50
@Ms. Jessica Debattista
My reply to your last post was not published -- it seems that the editor of this blog has a problem with the King's English and its Canadian usage.
At the risk of irritating the learned scribe, I'll briefly reiterate the substance of my unpublished comment: upholding fundamental human rights trumps everything else, and therefore, denying any citizen a basic right, protected by the Constitution to boot, in an exercise to prevent or lessen "friction", is anathema.
@Fr Joe
I will not comment on your opening paragraph, but if the online editor allows me, I'd like to address Bishop Paproki's position on abortion as being "intrinsically evil":
1) Both (saints) Augustine and Aquinas saw nothing evil in abortion prior to ensoulment.
Were they evil?
Some might say that these saints lived in a technologically dark age, before the advent of modern instrumentation which allows us to investigate matter down to its most basic element, the atom.
True enough, but for all our technological sophistication, we still have to develop an instrument with which we can view the soul; so, in that respect, we are no farther ahead than those two saints ... and if their observation, that it takes a certain number of days for the foetus to acquire its soul (and therefore, become a person) is correct, then Bishop Paproki is wrong.
2) Prior to Pope Leo XIII, equally infallible popes condoned abortion along the lines of the two aforementioned saints.
Were these popes evil?
It's possible that if they had, at their disposal, our modern technology, they might have acted differently, but ...
3) Does God need puny mortals' technology to make up His mind?
One might ask, how does God fit into this argument?
Well, popes are infallible in matters of faith. "Infallibility" means that, it is not the Pope who is talking; it's the Holy Spirit Himself. And as all Catholics know, the Holy Spirit is part of the Holy Trinity, and therefore, God.
So, is Bishop Paproki declaring that the timeless, omniscient God is evil (for allowing abortion in centuries past)?
Antoine Vella
Oct 4th 2012, 20:24
Archbishop Mercieca once said that political parties should not be present in Local Council elections, thus supporting the MLP position of the time.
The MLP was obviously delighted but the PN did not hang and quarter the archbishop. They politely disagreed with him, as was natural, but never even suggested that he should have refrained from entering into a political controversy. One can only imagine what the Labour reaction would have been had the archbishop sided with the PN.
Incidents and anecdotes like this put into sharp focus the intrinsic differences between the PN and PL.
P. Barbara
Oct 3rd 2012, 16:24
Mike Abbott,
You have just brought up the same argument I raised, only in a more silly manner.... I said everybody is entitled to his opinion........Of course I bother to educate myself, but I choose to find the right way and means, surely not from people who are not well versed on a subject and trying to turn the world upside down with inane comments.,
Karl Consiglio
Oct 3rd 2012, 13:45
Fr. Joe Borg,
Because we believe that to still believe in God as on a par with still believing in Father Christmas. Its hard to take any adult who still believes in Father Christmas seriously, that's why.
Jessica Debattista
Oct 3rd 2012, 12:08
I have questions.
The Church teaches us, and it has been teaching us for hundreds of years.
Sometimes we, the faithful, take the teachings literally and become obedient to the instruction even while sacrificing ourselves to what we are told is the will of God.
God has always existed even when the universe was one chaotic cauldron of gases and whatever else the universe is comprised of. I am no physician/scientist but I go by my intuition which I think is a legitimate mode of working out whatever presents itself as a problem. I am not bound by any teaching though my upbringing must have moulded me in such a way as to make me embrace religion as the light that guides my way, but I have questions.
Christ came to us 2000 years ago and revolutionized the old way of thinking. He was tortured and killed for His avant-garde philosophy and for making the High ranking personalities of the then existent church lose face infront of the multitude that had erstwhile given them homage. I see a parallel situation developing in our times but we do not have a second coming of Jesus to show us the way. We are getting some thinkers within the church proposing change which could be beneficial to a society which has evolved in the way it hast. Can we put the clock back? No! So what can we do? We have to tackle the modern problems but it seems that there is no goodwill amongst us.
God has existed forever and at a certain point in time He had sent His son to show us the way. It was a different way of life than ours and Christ attracted crowds eager to hear His words of wisdom and He fired them with zeal to the extent that they were not afraid to die for their faith. They were the first martyrs – the first saints.
2000 years ago, Christ taught to the people of the time and proposed a good way of life which benefited and gave hope to a suppressed people.
We are suppressed people too – not knowing which way to go for we have evolved but we do not seem to have a guiding light.
We say that God is still the same and what applied to the people of 2000 years ago still applies to us now. But is that true? Science has opened doors which had been unimaginable in years gone by and maybe this is giving us a false feeling of superiority but at the same time it is giving us a lot of angst for though we are not a people suppressed by the Romans, who ruled at the time of Christ, we are people who live in constant fear of madmen with the power at their hands to destroy the world and we are subject to their whims. We are so overcome with this fear that we are disoriented. We want to live the present the way we want to, and we want to get as much out of life as we possibly can for the fear is there – that one day we may be annihilated because of some misguided fool of a madman that thinks himself all powerful.
I ask myself: “How would Jesus tackle today’s problems which are not the problems of 2000 years ago but which are basically creating turmoil inside us pretty much the same way?
Divorce, cohabitation, same sex marriage, IVF, abortion etc are issues that create friction in a society that is no longer led by a guiding light.
Today we think of ourselves as intellectually advanced and can therefore make up our own minds, and woe if anyone or anything stands in our way. So we grow aggressive and only look to satisfying our hedonistic nature. And it worries me. I can understand the individual needs of these people who hanker for the above mentioned needs - some of which have already been granted - but will the effect of these issues, if granted unconditionally leave a negative effect on society at large? Should we be thinking only of our own needs or wouldn’t it be better if while we strive to achieve happiness we try to lessen the damage by taking into consideration that we all depend on each other to bring harmony in a world that is so screechingly discordant that we cannot even hear the little voice inside us – our conscience.
CJohn Zammit
Oct 3rd 2012, 22:55
"Divorce, cohabitation, same sex marriage, IVF, abortion etc are issues that create friction in a society that is no longer led by a guiding light."
Why should any of those five personal choices -- that's what each one is: personal choice -- be an issue?
Each one affects just those seeking that particular choice - their Constitutional right.
If only religious leaders could heed Christ's warning, the one about Caesar and God, which in earthly terms means, "mind your own darned business", life would be so much simpler.
There is a vast difference between teaching religious values, and imposing those values through legislation. Legislation affects every citizen. Religion does not.
As a secularist, I will be the first in your corner to fight for your right to practice your religion, unconditionally and unhindered, but ... when you throw at me this type of question: "but will the effect of these issues, if granted unconditionally leave a negative effect on society at large?", then I am going to kick your sorry behind because you are overstepping your rights and infringing on mine.
If it's personal - as any of the five choices happens to be -- it does not affect you or society. [Butt out!]
Jessica Debattista
Oct 4th 2012, 11:50
@ CJohn Zammi: “Why should any of those five personal choices -- that's what each one is: personal choice -- be an issue?
Each one affects just those seeking that particular choice - their Constitutional right.”
If you think that "Divorce, cohabitation, same sex marriage, IVF, abortion etc” do not create friction in a society then we must be living on different planets.
It is useless going back to the arguments that had come up during the run up to the divorce referendum for it is a fait accompli now, and many people are benefitting from it, which is well and good for the happy couple concerned, but do not delude yourself that society is getting any better. I know for a fact in at least one family – but I feel sure that there are many, many others - that children are negatively affected and there is great friction between the two families.
I was particularly struck by what “In 1992 Presidential candidate Bill Clinton famously said that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare"” The key word for me is “rare” and maybe that is what we should keep in mind. It seems that our rights are sacrosanct but we fail to see that our obligations are likewise sacrosanct. If we can lessen the instances even if the issues aforementioned are legalized we can have a better balanced society and maybe less friction.
We cannot escape friction for we do not live in isolation and our behaviour is interweaved with the whole fabric of society. Weak threads make for a weak fabric!
Ramon Casha
Oct 3rd 2012, 05:59
I'm not sure which budding secularists you had in mind. I have seen a few comments that tell the church to "mind its own business".
I don't, but I do expect the state to make no distinction between Catholics and anybody else. I expect the state to legislate according to what is best for Malta, not according to what the Vatican dictates - even if such instructions are delivered via the local curia. And yes, I do expect the constitution to be made into a secular one, not least because it's been decades since the church was in a position to teach what is moral and what is not. A church that is still fighting the long-lost War On Condoms has quite a bit of catching up to do before it can teach anyone else about the moral issues of today or tomorrow.
Mr Joseph Carmel Chetcuti
Oct 2nd 2012, 22:22
The bishop has every right to express the Church's teaching but no right to interfere in a secular society. In a secular society, God should be out of the equation - totally!
Joe Brincat-LL.D
Oct 2nd 2012, 21:35
You have missed what the American hierarchy said on Ryan's budget. And incidentally Ryan is a Roman Catholic ! Which reminds me ........
Kevin Cassar
Oct 2nd 2012, 20:29
I'm afraid you got it wrong (if that is REALLY the way you understand it). The "local breed of budding secularists", as you call them, do not reject the comments or suggestions or whatever by anyone with a connection to the Church, because of their origin, but rather (as should be expected), because most of the time (if not all the time), these "opinions" have nothing to back them up except for religious dogma or taboo. If on the other hand, these persons know what they are talking about (as P. Barbara seems to suggest), then they should not have any difficulty in presenting a rational argument along with all the "knowledge" that backs it up. I know it's very hard for religious people to understand because after all, they view faith as a virtue, but I would have severe doubts that they would accept anything from outside their religion on faith alone.
Mr Andrew Camilleri
Oct 2nd 2012, 17:26
Of course all hell would be let loose if the local church made a similar statement. This is Malta and not America. We have been through the problems when the cuech meddles i politics - the USA has not. Our attitudes and culture are different. Since when has Joe Borg equalled the USA with Malta? On which level are we equal? I doubt very much if in the USA the church would tolerate a priest who continually preaches againt one political party in favour of another.
Mr ALBERT LEONE GANADO
Oct 2nd 2012, 17:16
The huffington post one of the leading online content aggregator political blogs in the USA had this to say about Bishop Thomas Paprocki" " A Chicago bishop who once blamed the devil for sexual abuse lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Church and proposed shielding the church from legal damages has been named to lead an Illinois diocese.
Recently we had this condemnation of Paproki
"Truth Wins Out Condemns Illinois Bishop For Implying that Catholics Must Vote Republican or Go to Hell".
Sounds that if this bishop was born thirty years earlier he would as an arch conservative have made a good auxiliary to our then Maltese archbishop.
Politico-religious priests are not only manufactured on this island of ours it seems and at least one hopes we have moved ahead of such a societal aberration..
Eric Soames
Oct 2nd 2012, 16:56
We're electing a President not a Pope.
The condemned were usually hanged before the quartering. If anything, after the fun stuff, like disemboweling, drawing, application of hot pincers, etc, the bits of victim were mounted on pikes around the town to serve as a warning.
P. Barbara
Oct 2nd 2012, 16:19
Fr Joe, I agree totally with your first paragraph - of course everybody is entitled to his opinion, but I cannot fathom how some of these "paladins" profess to know more about everything than everyone even though it is not their field. The least they could do is sit back and listen to who has knowledge on the subject , but no, today everybody is an expert on any subject including abortion, same sex-marriage, public transport . religion, divorce, murder investigations, missing persons, child caring, rape...the list is endless, and the know-alls too numerous to be counted !
Mike Abbot
Oct 2nd 2012, 20:50
just because you can't be bothered to educate yourself doesn't mean other people don't make an effort to learn. There are some of us that actually care enough about these subjects to learn and become knowledgeable enough to make an informed opinion, learn to tell when someone else is making baseless claims and learn to judge when a real expert is talking.
Please choose the reason of your report below: