Many moderate bishops oppose anti-Obama line of Cardinal Dolan- VIDEO

How many seniors that you know of worry about birth control DA However they do worry about this priest. Wants some attention

Pittsburghkid, please! Dolan gives out $20gs to child raping priests and you compare his to Becket. Have you no shame?

Cardinal Beckett stood up to King Henry II. Cardinal Dolan is standing up to King Obama. It is the duty of the Catholic Church to stand up for the vunerable. No person is more vunerable that the child in a mother's womb. Abortion Pills kill these vunerable children, and leave their mothers an emotional wreck.

To KatieMurphy: Great job in exposing Cardinal Dolan. I think that it would really be funny if a Grand Jury were convened in Wisconsin, solely for the purpose of exposing him and the "Funeral Trust Scams!" If the Landmark trial up in the Philly area is successful, where a member of the hierarchy is proven guilty for Covering Up Priest Pedophilia," then Cardinal Dolan, along with others, will be "running for cover," probably back to the Vatican!

The US Council of Catholic Bishops, led by Cardinal Dolan, is trying to "High-jack" the upcoming Presidential Election in November 2012 by turning the US electorate away from the Democratic Party. Personally, I am an Independent, with Republican leanings, but if I were a staunch Republican I wouldn't want the US Council of Catholic Bishops in my Political Party, base on moral grounds, alone! Cardinal Dolan is also using this gripe against Obama as his political Soap Box, because he probably aspires to being named the first American Pope!

If you dig deep enough you will find that Dolan both cooked the books in Milwaukee as archbishop, putting the diocese money into funeral trusts rather then paying some restitution to the victims of the molestation. I have a couple websites where it also shows how eg this "cardinal" kept in ministry a known molester priest. Of course he needs the priests to keep the collection plate full. Yes I know there are good bishops, but like the repub party who terrorize and throw out any but their extremist T party members, the church does the same re decent bishops...........This btw is the perfect definition of tyranny.

I am no fan of Timothy Dolan of New York whom I regard as arrogant, pompous and a fascist. I am surprised, however, that the word "moderate" is even applied to any Roman Catholic bishop in the USA and even the world. The late John Paul II and Benedict XVI have engaged in actively ridding any existing prelate with progressive leanings and making sure that any newly appointed bishop follows the dogmatic anti-progressive Vatican line. That being said, I do hope that more moderate bishops reject Dolan's arrogant and partisan anti-Obama tactics. Dolan is no Democrat and I am sure he wishes and will do every sly thing he can to encourage Catholics to vote for Romney and the GOP. The RC Church US hierarchy is playing a dangerous political game and I hope Catholics everywhere will shun and disavow them.

"Eiriamach" - I agree with you that not all, or even the majority of, Catholics who use contraceptives consider that doing so is immoral. Some of them, as you say, would have seriously considered it and, following their own conscience genuinely, will have come to the conclusion that is not immoral for them to use it. There are, of course, others who will indeed consider it immoral, but, for reasons I have given earlier, decide to go ahead and use it anyway. And, by the way, I am most certainly not in any way judging those latter people - as I say, we are all human beings, with human strengths and weaknesses, me well included! Trust you to extract another admission from me! To be honest, I thought you would come back - but I knew it would get past HollowBack because she can't see much through the red mist, plus she has all that ringing in her ears, etc. Have a good weekend! Éamonn, Dublin, Ireland.

let's agree to disagree, Eamonn, on this issue. Consider, though, that if you are right that the 82% believe contraception to be wrong but use it anyway, how much moral guilt Humanae Vitae has generated for Catholic couples over the decades. That's perhaps the "tragedy of historic proportions" that Fox refers to. I still believe those Catholics capable of thinking through and reaching a conclusion that differs from the bishops' yet is logical, informed by medical facts, and morally respectable. Then their alienation from the bishops would be the tragedy. Thanks for the reply and best wishes!

Sorry, Eamonn, I can't believe 82% of Catholics (not all of whom actually use contraceptives at the time of the poll) think contraceptives are immoral yet they say they approve of them. More likely, many of the 82% conscientiously reject the bishops' teaching, as well as humanae vitae, which lacks any basis in scripture. In "Retreat from Theology's Frontiers" (on the net), Thomas Fox writes, "Yet for more than a generation now our church’s hierarchy has stifled healthy theological give-and-take.... Consider the deep and unhealthy divide that continues between married couples and official church pronouncements on artificial contraception. Why this divide? ... healthy discussions in the field of moral theology have not taken place since Humanae Vitae, pronounced in 1968. This has been a tragedy of historic proportions and it can be traced to a stilted understanding of natural law, and the interplay of faithful Catholics with the world in which they live. Church teachings on matters of sexuality ... simply do not hold up for many faithful Catholics. Our church teachings have become divorced from human experience.... According to a recent Pew Research Center report,... one out of three U.S.-born Catholics has left the church, many of them citing church teachings on sexuality."

Hi, "Eiriamach" - I was just trying to draw a parallel and, in doing so, yes, I agree that I could have drawn a better one. However, I still consider that the gist of my point stands up. On the other point, where some appear to consider that the fact that 82% of Catholics use contraception means that those Catholics do not consider contraception to be immoral, this argument simply does not stand up. Simply because somebody does something surely does not mean that they consider it to be morally acceptable? It might simply be that the person using the contraceptive uses it for numerical control of their family in order that they can exist more affluently, or because they are single and do not want a baby, or because they are married and do not want a baby, or for whatever reason. I might (and I intend no disrespect to those who use contraception by my use of this, perhaps too strong, example), I might decide that a close friend, or relative, is about to disclose something about me that I would prefer others not to know. I might decide that I will go to any lengths to stop this information being made public. I therefore decide to kill the third party in order to silence them. My decision is made in the full knowledge that what I am doing is not morally acceptable, to me or to anybody else. Yet, I still go ahead and do it. I know I am wrong in doing so, but I have decided on my route. The same decision criteria apply in many other areas, including, as I have said, the use of contraception. "I know this is not right, but I am going to do it anyway". That is human nature. If none of us did anything immoral, or that we felt to be immoral, it would be a perfect world. It is not. Best Wishes, Eiriamach - good to hear from you! Éamonn, Dublin, Ireland.

I'll just add that bishops are notoriously under-schooled in theology. They are appointed for their administrative skills, not their moral wisdom. Perhaps that area of ignorance would not be a serious disadvantage if they read the works of theologians. But the USCCB's recent suppression of Sister Elizabeth Johnson's "Quest for the Living God," together with their instruction to theologians to stick to catechism (!) tells me that the bishops are doing no more than retreating into medieval thinking that rejects science. Galileo is still under house arrest by the USCCB. Can anyone name one theologian of national stature whose work the bishops cite in support of their position? No, because theologians have been silenced since Vatican II, driven from the universities, their works censored because they all urged the pope not to issue the opinion that found its way into the much-regretted Humanis Vitae, universally rejected by the sensus fidelium.

EamonnDublin, I respectfully disagree. There are no experts in the moral law, which by its nature is universal, unwritten, and timeless, knowable by all who have the gift of reason. Some can reason their way to a moral precept better than others, sure, but these people are not likely to be a "nuclear expert" or a "medical consultant." I would agree with you that their knowledge of relevant FACTS "trumps the opinions of people who are not experts in those fields." But their expertise endows them with no particular MORAL wisdom and sometimes slants their views of the moral/immoral uses of the technologies they understand so well. Facts ain't values. But in the present case, Cardinal Dolan does not have his medical facts right; Notre Dame's lawsuit makes several incorrect and insupportable statements about how contraceptives work. Nor can I agree with their moral reasoning (where you think they are the "experts"?), and 82% of Catholics also disagree with their position that any use of hormonal contraceptives is immoral. That 82% has no less "expertise" in the moral law than the Cardinal has. Are you confusing expertise with authority?

The Calif. Moderate Bishop Stephen Blaire did not say bishop's oppose Anti-Obama line of Cardinal Dolan. What they said was Church's campaign against mandate is becoming too political and could hurt the church. I did not hear or read where these clergy men as seeking a "compromise" on this mandate when they know there cannot be one. Found your article a bit slanted.

I'm alway's amazed at those who argue that the government should stop giving taxes to the Church. Well where does the government collwct it's taxes ?. Answer, from it's citizens, a substantial majority of whom are religious ; Catholic/Protestant. By this logic the government should stop funding public schools, as it is inequitable to the majority religious tax paying public.