Catholic Bishops Open Falsely Named "Religious Liberty" Drive

The protectors of child rapists among the U. S. Catholic bishops are having an increasing hissy fit that their ability to inject their religious beliefs into government policy is being eroded and, worse yet, they are increasingly unable to gorge at the government funds trough without restriction on their discriminatory policies towards those who refuse to embrace the bishops' belief system. To counter what should have been happening long before now, the bishops - lead by porker in chief, Archbishop Dolan of New York - have concocted a disinformation campaign to play the victim card and claim that Catholic religious freedom is under attack. Never mind that (as noted in a post yesterday) that the bishops' and Vatican's agenda is very much out of sequence with the views of most U.S. Catholics. The biggest threat according to the bishops? Civil equality for LGBT citizens. You know, the ones the Nazi Pope has described as "inherently disordered" and "inclined toward evil." Obviously, if the bishops want to become major political players, it's time that the Catholic Church's tax-exempt status be ended. The New York Times looks at the lies and bullshit issuing from the bishops:

The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops opened a new front in their fight against abortion and same-sex marriage on Monday, recasting their opposition as a struggle for “religious liberty” against a government and a culture that are infringing on the church’s rights.

The bishops have expressed increasing exasperation as more states have legalized same-sex marriage, and the Justice Department has refused to go to bat for the Defense of Marriage Act, legislation that established the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman. “We see in our culture a drive to neuter religion,” Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York, president of the bishops conference, said in a news conference Monday

The bishops are struggling to reclaim the role they played in the 1980s and into the ’90s as a nationally recognized voice on the moral dimension of public policy issues like economic inequality, workers’ rights, immigration and nuclear weapons proliferation. Since then, however, they have reordered their priorities, with abortion and homosexuality eclipsing poverty and economic injustice.

But as the sexual-abuse scandal largely overshadowed their agenda in the last decade, their pronouncements on politics and morality have been met with indifference even by many of their own flock.

Bishop Lori said that in states like Illinois and Massachusetts, and in the District of Columbia, Catholic agencies that received state financing had been forced to stop offering adoption and foster care services because those states required them to help same-sex couples to adopt, just as they helped heterosexual couples.

Some liberal Catholic commentators have criticized the bishops’ priorities, saying they are playing into the culture wars. John Gehring, Catholic outreach coordinator with Faith in Public Life, a liberal religious advocacy group in Washington, said, “The bishops speak in hushed tones when it comes to poverty and economic justice issues, and use a big megaphone when it comes to abortion and religious liberty issues.”

For the sake of true religious freedom under the United States Constitution for all citizens, one can only hope that the influence of the morally bankrupt bishops dwindles further and that rank and file Catholics will vote by closing their checkbooks - or better yet, by walking away from a thoroughly corrupt institution.