DIOCESAN ATTORNEY BACKS PRO-ABORTIONISTS, NIXES OUR GUIDE
A TALE OF TWO PAPERS
A SMALL CONFESSION
Dear Friend of Catholic Answers:
Today is a very important day for all Americans. Unless you have been fast asleep for the last year, you know which day it is. That's right ...
It's All Souls Day.
The majority of Americans who have ever lived are now dead and could use our prayers. Let's not forget them, particularly those who have no one to pray for them.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST IN LA CROSSE
The attorney retained by the Diocese of La Crosse issued an opinion that our "Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics" should not be distributed because it might jeopardize the tax-exempt status of the Church.
In following that advice from Jim Birnbaum, Fr. Richard Gilles, the administrator of the diocese (which has not had a bishop since Raymond Burke left to become the Archbishop of St. Louis), instructed parishes not to use our voter's guide.
It turns out Birnbaum was not a disinterested party. During each of the last three elections cycles (2000, 2002, 2004), he donated $2,000 to the campaign of Congressman Ron Kind, a Democrat representing the La Crosse area. Kind is so pro-abortion that he can boast a 100% rating from NARAL.
If our voter's guide had been distributed in the La Crosse Diocese, Kind's re-election prospects might have been injured. We will know by tomorrow how close his race turns out to be. In 2002 he won by a wide margin, but this year the state Republican party earmarked his district for special attention, presumably because it thought Kind's Republican opponent had a good chance to unseat him.
However that may be, and however that particular race goes, what Birnbaum did rankles. It rankles not so much because he was wrong in his legal opinion--our voter's guide comes nowhere close to the boundaries of what is permissible for a non-profit--and not even because it was our voter's guide he attacked and not someone else's.
No, what rankles is that a man who gave substantial donations to pro-abortion candidates (Kind has not been the only recipient of Birnbaum's largesse) was retained to give legal advice relating to the application of Catholic moral principles.
No one endorsing or assisting pro-abortion candidates has any business representing a Catholic diocese in any capacity. Granted, Birnbaum is an independent contractor and not an employee, but can't the chancery in La Crosse find as legal counsel someone whose civic activities are not in conflict with Church teaching?
Archbishop Burke so strongly endorsed our voter's guide that he ordered it to be distributed throughout the St. Louis area. He has been unwavering on the life issues. If Birnbaum did legal work for La Crosse while Archbishop Burke headed that diocese, it must have been the case that the Archbishop did not know of Birnbaum's campaign donations.
Now that the facts have been brought to light, I hope we will not be hearing from spinmeisters in La Crosse. I hope diocesan officials will not make excuses for Birnbaum. The diocese needs to find a new attorney whose civic actions accord with Catholic principles.
CIRCULATIONS UP AND DOWN
Periodicals that make use of special Postal Service rates are required to publish annually a Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation. Usually these statements are published in October, and they are easy to spot because they are the only portions of the periodicals that are in microscopic type.
You might suspect that the publishers don't want you to read the statements, and, frankly, that usually is the case, since circulation figures are seldom as gloriously large as publishers would like their readers to imagine they are.
Two publications' statements caught my eye recently. One was from the "National Catholic Reporter," the most liberal of the four nationally-circulated Catholic weekly newspapers, and the other was from "The Wanderer," the most conservative of them. (The other two papers are "The National Catholic Register" and "Our Sunday Visitor," but I forgot to look for their statements.)
Some years ago the circulation of the "National Catholic Reporter" was around 40,000, and the circulation of "The Wanderer" was around 30,000. This year the former reported 42,000 and "The Wanderer" 21,000 (the figures are rounded down). The circulation ratio for a long time held at 4:3, and now it is 2:1.
I think I can understand why the liberal publication's readership has gone up a little. Things have not been going well for the left wing of the Church. Young men going through the seminaries are "too conservative." Too many bishops have become uppity by going public with the faith, Archbishop Burke being just one example. Liturgical documents from Rome have trended in the "wrong" direction.
The Catholic left finds itself in disarray. Things are not working out as they were supposed to. The folks who were riding the wave of the future now find themselves stuck in a time warp. Even young Catholics, who supposedly are avant garde, are looking elsewhere for the sort of faith they will adopt.
Call it heightened polarization, much as we have seen in politics. As things go badly for them in the Church, liberals circle their wagons and look for solace in the few places still congenial to them. One such place is the "National Catholic Reporter."
But how to account for the decline in readership of "The Wanderer"? One might think that the forces that discourage liberals might encourage conservatives, making more of them sign up for publications that reflect their views.
Maybe so, but people usually band together in adversity, and they tend to go their own ways when they think things are looking up. It might be the case, then, that fewer conservative Catholics feel a need to subscribe to publications that give them comfort.
Perhaps another reason for the big drop in circulation of "The Wanderer" is demographics. My sense has been that that publication has had a readership considerably older than that of the other three national weeklies. If so, it may be that many long-time readers of "The Wanderer" have been dying off and have not been replaced with younger readers.
I ADMIT, IT'S A FAILING
In "Casablanca," Claude Rains' character was "shocked" to find gambling going on at Rick's cafe, and you may be shocked to learn that tonight I will watch television. It is my biennial habit to watch election returns. Seldom does anyone I vote for win, and usually the propositions I vote against are passed, but every once in a while the electorate sides with me, a small confirmation that things are not yet hopeless in politics.
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