Arkansas Blog

Isn't that "erroneous information" the Catechism? The downfall of the Catholic Church will continue to be the result of deranged priests and their misogynist mission, not by any outside forces.

It's a good thing little boys don't need abortions or the Catholic Church would have to add entire hospital wings for such medical necessities caused by their own indiscretions.

Uncle Sam needs to eliminate any and all funding including Medicare payments to Catholic medical care providers/hospitals...until these hospitals promise to serve each and every patient with all known and approved drugs and other treatment available anywhere else. ..from preventative to the abortion itself. And stop holding cancer patients hostage too.

Ladies, stand up for yourselves already! Yes, you can!

based his decision to issue the statement "on some erroneous information."

There goes the doctrine of infallibility and the immunity from liability to error or failure. Could they also be amiss in their pronouncements on birth control and stem cell research? Maybe whether women are worthy to administer the sacraments?

And if the Catholic diocese doesn't back down of this, will Catholics with pink-ribbon license plates be required to remove them? The extra money goes to the Komen Foundation, you know. I can see the monsignor checking cars in parking lots as services are being conducted. Perhaps he'll slap special tickets under the wiper blades of offenders to warn them that their place in heaven is being jeopardized by displaying an SK license plate.

Oh boy, the directive is coming from the St. Louis diocese. I hope Hebert isn't taking orders from up there because they've got issues, and I hope this isn't indicative of the overall leadership Hebert is providing our diocese. Don't you think the Baptists would have disassociated themselves with Komen long ago if abortion was any part of it? What an embarrassing and misinformed move. Also, the Komen women are not a group to mess with. Just ask Reggie Herring. I wonder where women like Anne Jansen -- devout Catholics dedicated to the Komen cause -- come down on this. If Hebert is serious about this he wil ask St. Vincent to return all funding it has received from Komen.

Instruction to the faithful? Oh brother. So the faithful must check their brains and intuitions and insights and knowledge (did i say knowledge) and sense of self, at the door and suck up the instructions from the lame hierarchy that tells them what to do, how to think, what races to run in, etc, etc., etc.. So you are an adult why? So a Monsignor in effeminate clothing can tell you how to think. Hmmm. Interesting.

Was Catholic. Best thing I ever did, like 33% of adults brought up as Catholic in America according to Pew study released last week, was leave it way behind me. It's twisted. Get out while you can.

Who the hell is this Hebert guy and why the hell would anyone thinks he knows anything more than they do just because he is a monsignor. Being a monsignor just means you play the church game and suck up to the bishop above you and toe the party line. He's a puppet trying to make you puppets. Sad. Catholics and many from other religions give their clergy way too much power over their lives.

Don't give away that kind of personal power. Think for yourself. It's OK. If God is suck a prick that he wouldn't want you to find your own way then what does that say about him/her.

The minute I read that the directive issued by Hebert was a verbatim repeat of a statement issued by Archbishop Burke in St. Louis last year, I knew the game that was being played here.

It's politics, pure and simple.

Burke is one of the leaders of the movement among some U.S. Catholic bishops to deny communion to politicians who (in their view) are not sufficiently pro-life. In other words, these bishops want to use the Eucharist as a political weapon to try to strong-arm their flocks into voting "right"--which in their mind, means voting Republican.

In the diocese of Charleston, SC, where a similar edict was issued in the last federal election, a parishioner in one parish who approached the communion rail wearing a Kerry button was denied communion.

This is ugly behavior on the part of some Catholic leaders. It is blatantly partisan. It tries to reduce the varied political options Catholics rightly have on the basis of their informed consciences to one political choice, based on the litmus tests of abortion and gay rights.

This behavior betrays the Catholic tradition itself, which is much wider and more diverse--at its best. It has led the majority of American Catholic bishops into a dead-end street, since they have placed all their eggs in the anti-abortion basket.

Once that issue no longer "plays"--and it won't, as the morning-after pill becomes widely available and women can control their reproductive choices without resorting to abortions later in their term of pregnancy--there will be nothing left to shake the big stick about, to try to bully and threaten the few Catholics still willing to put up with that kind of behavior.

Well, wait, of course there WILL be the issue of gay rights, and as many of the comments of "liberal" bloggers on this blog have proven in the last day or so, that issue will still play well in places like Arkansas, even among "liberals."

There is a tremendous fear on the part of the religious right--and the Catholic bishops have, on the whole, gotten into bed with those totally despicable political agents--that the loss of the abortion issue and eventually the gay issue will leave them with few demons to force people to the polls to vote "right." And when that happens, there is also a fear among the bishops that the kind of governments elected in place of what we have now will no longer afford generous legal protection to Catholic dioceses (and the Vatican) to keep their files closed. They desperately do not want the public to know what they knew when about the clerical abuse of minors, how they (mis)handled it, and the huge sums that have gone into the cover-up.

it's one thing for a church to frame an issue, put out information, shed light on an issue.
That's a valid and welcome, often needed role they should play.

It's another entirely for them to issue these mandates, draw these lines in the sand. The distinction is critical. You lose your sense of self and dehumanize yourself in my opinion, when you allow them to dictate how you as a responsible, well-intentioned, self-respecting, capable adult will think and/or act.

Life is short. You're smart. Really. Capable. Don't let them (CHURCH with capital C) treat you like a child that needs "Daddy Priest" to tell you how to live, think, feel and act.

Run the Race no matter what they tell ya. Run the damn Race and shout "I'm Alive". Damn it I'm Alive!"

Leslie and or Max - I really hope you all take this story to Salon or call Murray Waas or something (I don't know).. This weeks posts from Race For The Cure to Komen deserves much more exposure.

Cassandra,

Infallibilty relates to utterances by the Pope only and only on encyclical matters if the 12 years of Catholic Schooling/beating I endured taught me anything.

IABL1969,

Hebert was a teacher at Catholic High back in the 70'2 and probably into the early 90's. I guess he was promoted up as old priests retired/died. As you can probably tell from the next statement on my part, I am currently reformed, I believe Monsignor Hebert is now the LR Bishop.

Whosecrumdown

I'm going to issue an apology for you on the last comment about Hitler and Catholics. I know you didn't mean it, couldn't of even meant to write it, it just came out. And I know you regret it about as much as any comment you've ever written or uttered. That was truly pathetic.

You want to be better than that. i know you do. You'd have to. you wouldn't want to have that kind of ugly lurking anywhere within. There's is some types of human ugly that shouldn't even be joked with, and i hope you were just trying to be humorous, lame attempt that it was . So I know you just had a bad moment, momentarily lost your way, the lights went out. A lapse of judgment..

Speaking of Hatebags, I'm reading a lot of liberals suddenly going apeshit here. I'm a "cradle Catholic" and also (de repente) a "cafeteria Catholic" I believe women should control their bodies and their lives. I've been in and out of the church in my 58 years, and what it comes down to is this: Religion, ALL religion, is just a guideline, a blueprint for how to treat other people and conduct your damn self. I'm saddened by Mgsr. Hebert's knee-jerk decision, and by the churches recent (biblical timeline) pederasty scandals. Nevertheless, this is the church that evolved directly from the teachings of the Jewish avatar Jesus. When your religion or lack of one has been around this long, we'll compare misdeeds.

I think the last post by whosecrumdown has soured me on posting to the blog for a while as I have a sick feeling after reading his post. Usually I trust the process that an issue will get a fair hearing in an ongoing thread-- but that lat post of his took the wind out of me.

Damn, it made me profoundly sad.

I need to step away from the keyboard for a few days.

ARK. BLOG: Yes, that was a bridge too far.

I guess the thing that I can't get around is how profoundly myopic the Diocese's position is. There's a whole lot more women that will get breast cancer than will have abortions. This position simply disregards the far greater good that the Komen people do based on what is a probably erroneous understanding of what the money raised by the race is used for.

To me, "sanctity of human life" connotes to my mind a larger orbit than just abortion issues. It is also about promoting good health, awareness about medical issues and compassionate treatment for the afflicted. To ignore this wider consideration affecting considerably more women than will ever have abortions is to use Garry Wills's phrase "sub-primative."

And boy was that last post poorly written. It's been a long week.

Bill Maher 'We're Not the Crazy Ones'

The "Real Time" host argues that it's about time for the growing rationalist" minority to challenge the ubiquity of religion in politics.

http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/20070923_bill_maher_were_not_the_crazy_ones/

There goes the doctrine of infallibility ...<<
Cass

Oh goodness. There can be no mistake because it automatically defaults to god being mistaken.

I have an excellent new product that Race for the Cure can sell in catholic dioceses all over the country.
Right now it's a hot product.

click blue name

what did whosecrumdown say? If it was so terrible that Max removed it, it really mut have been bad.
Thanks, Max, I don't need any more high blood pressure scares.

what did whosecrumdown say? If it was so terrible that Max removed it, it really mut have been bad.
Thanks, Max, I don't need any more high blood pressure scares.

"Like Arkansas, no Planned Parenthood affiliates in Missouri offer abortion services."

Isn't Little Rock in Arkansas? The Planned Parenthood affiliate in Little Rock certainly seems to offer abortion services.

http://www.plannedparenthood.org/centerDetails.asp?id=384

This is a situation where censorship may actually cause more damage, because it fails to allow the whole story to be told. Not knowing what "whosecrumdown" said about the Catholic Church and Hitler does provoke some speculation about what was said, such as the Vatican's cooperation with Hitler during WW2. However, the Protestant denominations in Germany, especially the Lutherans and a nationalist christian movement (are there parallels today?), were even more aligned with the Nazi Party.

There remains a significant anti-Catholic sentiment in the South. Even many relatively well-educated people oddly consider the Catholic Church to be a non-Christian cult, like Mormons and Scientology. As an outgrowth of the anti-immigration movement, the KKK also made Catholics targets of their hate. I suppose "whosecrumdown" was regurgitating some of their rhetoric and that is why his post was erased. If so, we need to be aware that kind still lurk around.

However, the ignorant, ham-handed pronouncement by the diocese does not help the cause of tolerance.

The message from the Susan G. Komen Foundation to the Catholic Church should be: Drop Dead. And in the future, the nuns can get their mammograms done at their closest Exxon station.

The Catholic Diocese should have met with the foundation to discuss the concerns before they directed a demonination wide pull out from the event

Ouch. That's going to leave a mark.

"There remains a significant anti-Catholic sentiment in the South."

I'm not sure I agree with this comment. However, there is clearly an anti-Catholic sentiment in this blog, as I'm sure no reasonable person would deny.

On the other hand, we're used to it! ;-)

Kelly, you must live a sheltered life. In my rural digs, anti-Catholicism is still in the conversations and beginning to grow with the re-emerging anti-immigration talk. There seems to be a tenuous unholy alliance between Catholics and the evangelical Christians on the topic of abortion. Aside from that issue, the evangelicals are not particularly enamored of the Catholic Church.

On the flip side, progressives ally themselves with Catholics on social justice issues, but part ways on matters involving women's rights, birth control, and abortion. It is easy to confuse criticism with hate, just like criticism of the war in Iraq is labeled, by Bushists, as hate of America.

1. The LR Diocese needs to get a bishop named quickly.

2. Hebert ain't it.

Msgr. Hebert is not mistaken in his understanding. I looked into this issue three years ago for Our Sunday Visitor and found that Komen is contributing to Planned Parenthood. Here's the URL for the article: http://www.popespeaks.com/periodicals/show-article.asp?pid=1061.

As for all the comments about Catholics being stupid sheep, back off. They're stupid comments. We aren't ignorant or blind. We read papers, cruise the Net, watch TV. No one keeps us in pens and we don't have sheepdogs nipping at our heels. No priests come into our bedrooms at night to make sure we don't use condoms. No bishops go through our medicine cabinets to make sure we don't have the Pill. To speak as though they do is either ignorant or hateful or both.

Pinecone, I'm sorry, but did you even read the initial posting about this?

It states that Race for the Cure donates to Planned Parenthood in SOME states, but not Arkansas. I don't see a single piece of information in the Our Sunday Visitor article to which you link that refutes this statement.

And if the church is going to start coming down hard on every organization that provides funds to another organization supporting "sin," where is this going to stop? How many Catholic religious communities have funds invested in corporations producing war materiel, for instance? How many have funds invested in organizations that use cheap third-world child labor?

Why is Planned Parenthood the bugbear of the Catholic right?

And why do these "warnings" come out right before elections?

Should all of us who are Catholic just draw up into a tight little knot of true believers who never give an iota of support to any charity until we have verified that not a penny of that charity's funds in any shape, form, or fashion subsidize abortion? Are you willing to create a checklist of "good" organizations we can support--ones that don't support ANY of the issues about which we Catholics have moral concerns?

More to the point, would that right-wing rag, OSV, publish such a list?