Culture War: April 2004 Archives

A debate is brewing around St. Blog over the appropriateness of refering to pro-abort "Catholic" politicians as Catholic In Name Only (CINO). Initially, I intended to stay clear of this controversy since I'm personally not fond of the CINO label. This has nothing to do with canon law and everything to do with taste -- I prefer the much more inflamatory (and I would argue accurate) designation of Demoncrat.

Nevertheless, over at Catholic Kerry Watch my friend Earl Appleby posted a good post on why he believes the CINO term is appropriate. Additionally, Earl dropped me an email soliciting my thoughts as a canonist and inviting me to respond.

Truth be told, I really don't know what canon law says about calling a pro-abort "Catholic" politician a CINO. Nor am I all that interested in researching the question, since I really don't care about the answer. I only have so much sympathy to go around, and as long as innocent children in the womb are being brutally dismembered limb-by-limb, I'm not gonna waste a drop of sympathy on some panty-waist pro-abort who claims to share the same faith as I do. Guess what? You don't.

So if pro-abort "Catholic" politicians find the CINO designation offensive, I don't care. Why? Because try as I might, everytime I get past my outrage at their abuse of the name Catholic, the horror of abortion stops me before I can give the CINO debate any serious thought. In short, every pro-abort Catholic politician is, in my opinion, an offense that should be met with excommunication or public refusal of Holy Communion.

So rather than cry over a few lost votes, pro-abort "Catholic" politicians should sit down, shut-up and thank God their mother didn't similarly dissent from Catholic moral teaching.

Key West homotel expels heterosexual couples.

[I just submitted this to the Wanderer]

Hopefully, this is the first instalment in what will become a monthly blog-style column for the Wanderer. For our readers unfamiliar with this new medium, a blog is basically a cross between a webpage and an internet diary. It is much shorter than an editorial, and it allows the blogger - that is, author of the blog - to link and comment upon various news stories ignored by the mainstream media. In general, there are five rules for blog commentary: keep it short; stick to current topics; don’t hold back on sarcasm; be personal; and stay informal.

Many Catholics discovered the power of this medium last October when the Terri Schindler-Schiavo became hot news in Florida. Where the New York Whines injected its usual liberal spin, bloggers got the facts out in time to save Terri. Anyway, if you happen to be surfing the net, please stop by the two group blogs to which I regularly contribute. These are Catholic Light [http://catholiclight.stblogs.org] and Envoy Encore [http://envoymagazine.com/encore].

...comes Private Member's Bill C-250 that would outlaw the Bible and the Catechism of the Catholic Church as hate literature. What's scary is that this bill is close to passing. Here's my thoughts from an editorial I recently wrote...

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Speaking of silence and the culture of death, Canada’s homosexual lobby is marching again to silence faithful Catholics, Evangelical Protestants and Orthodox Jews. This comes in the form of Bill C-250, a private member’s bill currently proceeding through the Canadian Senate. This bill attempts to enshrine “sexual orientation” in Canada’s anti-hate speech laws. What terrifies many Canadians is that the terms “sexual orientation” and “hate speech” both remain undefined. Yet if recent rulings from Canada’s various human rights tribunals are any indication, simply quoting from the Bible or the Catechism of the Catholic Church could now land you in jail. No word yet whether or not the Wanderer and Envoy Magazine will move to an on-line edition so that our Canadian readership can remain informed.

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