Is Bishop Chaput Leading a Counter-Attack?

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Mar 23, 2010

I said yesterday that I expected the U.S. Bishops to be displeased at open opposition within the allegedly Catholic ranks, and that they would have a strong psychological incentive to make sure this doesn’t keep happening. Today Archbishop Charles Chaput began the counter-attack against those groups which, calling themselves Catholic, worked against the bishops in the matter of pro-abortion health care.

In a column to appear tomorrow in his diocesan newspaper, Archbishop Chaput identified four lessons to be learned from the vote that passed pro-abortion health care legislation on Sunday. First, the bill is unethical. Second, the promised executive order does not address the problem. Third, “the combination of pressure and disinformation used to break the prolife witness on this bill…should put an end to any talk by Washington leaders about serving the common good or seeking common ground.” And fourth, self-described “Catholic” groups have done a “serious disservice to justice, to the Church, and to the ethical needs of the American people by undercutting the leadership and witness of their own bishops.”

Chaput dismissed as unsurprising the positions of Catholics United and Network, since these groups were already known to be pro-abortion. Instead, he fired a strong salvo at the Catholic Health Association:

But the actions of the Catholic Health Association (CHA) in providing a deliberate public counter-message to the bishops were both surprising and profoundly disappointing; and also genuinely damaging. In the crucial final days of debate on health-care legislation, CHA lobbyists worked directly against the efforts of the American bishops in their approach to members of Congress. The bad law we now likely face, we owe in part to the efforts of the Catholic Health Association and similar “Catholic” organizations.

Since Archbishop Chaput is a particular champion of both Catholic teaching and episcopal authority, his forthright condemnation of the CHA does not yet signal a concerted action among the bishops to regain control of the health association which bears the Catholic name. But in view of the direct assault on episcopal leadership mounted by the CHA, it seems likely that the USCCB as a whole will be looking for ways to remedy the problem before the scandal worsens.

Over the past forty-five years in the United States (and many other Western nations), most older Catholic associations, periodicals, publishing houses and universities—usually under the leadership of men and women religious—have been used to support the falsehoods of the prevailing culture largely with the consent of the bishops, and sometimes with their active support. But now that the bishops are gradually charting a new and more militantly Catholic course, clashes with these secularized, old-line institutions are becoming more frequent, and more public. We saw this in 2009 with Notre Dame’s decision to honor President Obama. But The Catholic Health Association has escalated the battle by directly opposing the entire USCCB rather than just a handful of bishops who could be dismissed as “extreme”.

As a growing internal conflict, this will almost certainly be of tremendous benefit to the Church. This is one area in which we should all be praying that the fight escalates. In the end, a lot of the traitors are going to have to be hung (out to dry) by the bishops. The likelihood of this happening will be in direct proportion to their anger. Me, I want them to take this resistance to their authority personally, because I want them hopping mad.