Daniel Maguire: 'preposterous and disingenuous'

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | May 26, 2011

Daniel Maguire is an unhappy man. Again. Or perhaps, still.

Maguire—who is inexplicably still allowed to teach theology at Marquette despite his abandonment of his priestly vocation, his relentless enthusiasm for unrestricted legal abortion, and his embarrassingly mediocre intellectual output— is distressed because Archbishop Timothy Dolan said some harsh things about him, and some kind things about Congressman Paul Ryan.

While serving the Church in Milwaukee, Archbishop Dolan wrote to rebuke Maguire for his public support of abortion and same-sex marriage. Maguire’s public stand, the archbishop wrote, was “totally at odds with clear Church teaching, Sacred Scripture, the magisterium, and Natural Law.” The ex-priest’s efforts to justify his position, Archbishop Dolan continued, were “preposterous and disingenuous.”

Daniel Maguire doesn’t like such blunt criticism. “He was rabid!” he says of his former ecclesiastical superior. Although Archbishop Dolan left Milwaukee more than two years ago, his words still rankle. So Maguire proceeds to strengthen the archbishop’s case, by launching another “preposterous and disingenuous” argument against Dolan.

The archbishop’s grave offense, in Maguire’s eyes, is his (Dolan’s) exchange with Congressman Ryan on the subject of the Republican lawmaker’s budget plan. While he did not endorse Ryan’s plans—and has since followed up with a clarification, underlining that no such endorsement was intended—Archbishop Dolan expressed appreciation for Ryan’s effort to address the nation’s financial crisis. The archbishop acknowledged that there are serious differences among well-intentioned people over the proper solutions to the crisis, and expressed his respect for Ryan’s views.

Maguire has no such respect for Ryan’s approach. Nor is he willing to acknowledge that good people differ on the best ways to revive the economy and to help the poor. This learned professor, who takes such pride in identifying himself as “pro-choice,” does not offer choices when it comes to economic policy. Those who disagree with him are evil.

Rather than offering any argument to support his outrageous charge that Ryan wants to rob the poor to help the rich, Maguire invokes the authority of 70 Catholic scholars who objected to the appearance of Speaker of the House John Boehner as commencement speaker at Catholic University. (A careful scholar might notice that John Boehner is not Paul Ryan, but Maguire does not trouble himself with such trivial distinctions.) In denouncing Boehner, Maguire says, these scholars were “in Jesus mode.” Lest anyone misunderstand his meaning, Maguire spells it out: Jesus would applaud the denunciation of Boehner.

That is terribly harsh judgment, entered against a man (Boehner) who takes his Catholic faith seriously—a man who fought back sobs as he told the Catholic University graduates about his lifelong devotion to the Virgin Mary. But Maguire does not shrink from harsh judgments. Indeed, the theme of his column (insofar as one can discern a theme of the rant) is that Archbishop Dolan should be harsh--in his judgment of Congressman Ryan. But not in his criticism of Dan Maguire.