The welcome message from Cardinal Arinze

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | May 23, 2003

What Cardinal Arinze said at Georgetown is simply what the Catholic Church teaches. Moreover, everybody knows that's what the Church teaches. Yet the moral teachings of the Church are proclaimed aloud so rarely that when we hear them-- especially at a Catholic university!-- it comes as a shock. (A welcome shock in some cases.)

The cardinal's critics won't admit that they want to place restrictions on what Catholic leaders can say. But that is exactly their intent. It's OK to talk about the weather and baseball and apple pie, but when you talk about Church teachings, that's "inappropriate."

For readers who share my delight with Cardinal Arinze's bold statements, I have even more good news. This wasn't an accident; the Nigerian cardinal did not stumble into an unexpected controversy. He knew, when he prepared his speech, that he would be walking into a barrage of media criticism. He more or less planned it, God bless him.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?