took and mixed in with three measures of flour until
all of it was leavened." Matthew 13:33
Cardinal Grinch Stafford
Originally published in E-Leaven, December 2008
The world was alight with hope. The American people had voted for peace. The long ordeal of the war-mongering and incompetent Bush regime had finally ended. Celebrants danced in the streets. Except for one party pooper, who wrote: "if Obama, Biden and the new Congress are determined to implement the anti-life agenda which they spelled out before the election, I foresee the next several years as being among the most divisive in our nation's history."
Addressing the International Conference to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute on Marriage and the Family at the Catholic University of America, Cardinal Stafford called the President Elect "aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic." The former archbishop of Denver unleashed rhetoric from another planet. He writes in a murky style that demands a dictionary, only one symptom that he's totally out of touch with the realities of life in the U.S. Maybe at his cushy Vatican post, people don't have to worry about the economy. But he offers little ground for his opposition to Obama, other than obscure medieval poetry.
Probably delighting his audience, Stafford plunged ahead with the turgid prose: "Catholics weep over Barack Obama's words. We weep over the violence concealed behind his rhetoric and that of Joseph Biden and what appears to be that of the majority of the incoming Congress. What should we do with our hot, angry tears of betrayal?" Surprisingly, Cardinal, not ALL Catholics wept. Some were delighted with a brilliant possibility, a man who can actually craft a sentence, who promises to close Guantanamo and end torture. Some, as in the following examples, expressed their outrage. Last time we checked, hope was still a virtue. Venomous mud-slinging was not.
Is Cardinal Stafford a Sore Loser…?
Lee P. Kaspari
As a catholic, I must speak out against Cardinal J. Francis Stafford’s rancor and mean spirited comments regarding President-elect Barack Obama. It is unfathomable and, in my opinion, unconscionable that Stafford's anger and malice is so great that even prior to Inauguration Day he states "I foresee the next several years as being the most divisive in our nation's history." If this is Christianity at its best I am embarrassed to be called a Christian. I loathed the local Catholic church hierarchy's pronounced, bitter and hateful politics prior to election day and today find it even more intolerable.
The old boys club - and it is all men, no girls allowed - in these tumultuous times both nationally and globally can focus on only one issue abortion. Cardinal Stafford’s lecture was on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae (1968) which told Catholics they could not use birth control. Stafford makes this point when he states in his lecture: "The truest reflection of the relationship between the believer and God is the relationship between husband and wife, and that contraceptive use does not fit within that relationship."
From a practical point of view, the vast majority of Catholics in the child bearing age-range today do not pay much attention to or rely on the knowledge and advice of celibates regarding the physical, psychological and emotional intricacies of the conjugal act as a total gift of body and soul.
The Cardinal states regarding Obama’s election that "Americans were too excited at the prospect of electing a black president." Such a statement may be true but to posit this as the reason President-elect Barack Obama was elected or received 54% of the Catholic vote is insulting to the intelligence of the electorate. Is Cardinal Stafford a sore loser because his candidate did not win or does some one need to tell him that the earth does move or that it is not flat?
He Represents Hope
Jerry Peters
The news reports on Cardinal James Stafford’s comments at Catholic University regarding the President-elect of the United States of America seemed to have been quickly muted. I spent some time using the internet to track down Cardinal Stafford’s actual comments, and to find opinion and reaction. Not much of either, but I did find and read Cardinal Stafford’s recent reflection on Humanae Vitae, and the conflict it caused in Baltimore upon its publication in 1968.
I read the whole document with interest. I was struck more with Stafford’s personal stubbornness than with his theology.
I remember Cardinal Stafford from his time as Archbishop of Denver…… I remember mostly his ham-fisted style, and the many priests – and nuns - who were open in their puzzlement and difficulty accepting his style. He seemed the antithesis of “fraternal”….. dogmatic and unwavering. (I guess you would expect a member of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy to be dogmatic – it is their job.) I recall no one who missed him as he went to Rome on his new Cardinal wings. His job? From what I have read and heard, he is responsible for “selling” indulgences. Great.
So now he comes back to Catholic University. To his old hometown area. To personally attack our new President-elect, a man who was elected with the highest hopes of our nation. A man who must clean up a wasteland from the still current President’s eight years service which divided our nation, neglected our children, enraged our international friends, wasted our financial resources, and totally neglected our moral landscape. President-elect Obama will have a difficult time. He will have many who question his actions. However, my guess is that he will have few public dissenters who attack him as viciously and with the mean spiritedness shown by Cardinal Stafford. Nor, I expect, will he find American ex-patriots wearing highest trappings of the Roman Catholic Church who chose to treat him with such contempt and loathing.
Hopefully, Cardinal Stafford has already returned to Rome, where he can live like a prince with his peers, including Cardinal Benjamin Lay, who has successfully evaded criminal law, civil law, and ecclesiastical law in spite of his part in the ruined lives of young people over many years. We might also remind the Cardinal that the United States Supreme Court now seats a majority of five Justices who are Roman Catholics.
Not only is Barack Obama not “apocalyptic”…… he represents hope – to America, and to many throughout the world.
Would that the Catholic Church, as it has so often in history, do likewise.