A Sore Loser?
William A. Dinges, a professor of religious studies at The Catholic University of America, is steamed. Addressing a national gathering of 100 or so diocesan social-action leaders in Washington, D.C., Dinges says that “polarization” in the Catholic Church has reached a new peak with the 2004 presidential election (according to a Catholic News Service report, Feb. 22).
Who’s to blame? It’s largely the right-wing Catholics, who insisted that the election hinged on abortion and embryonic stem-cell research. Dinges says the rhetoric has been “vitriolic” and the behavior “uncivil,” being characterized by “confrontation, harassment and attempts at intimidation.”
Dinges deplores all this “rancor,” “incivility,” and “name-calling.”
You May Also Enjoy
'Sanitized' news articles report Christian persecution as sectarian or ethnic violence, an inaccurate characterization of the reality of Christian minorities in the world today.
The Works of Mercy originated in a hell-fire sermon that Jesus preached as a final summary of his teaching, a sermon reported in the 25th chapter of Matthew.
What he teaches us is that the tree of 19th-century radical biblical criticism continues to bear poisoned fruit.