They Trusted Him

In an interview conducted by James Tarranto in the Wall Street Journal Cardinal Timothy Dolan decries his betrayal by the President of the United States:

At the end of their 45-minute discussion, the archbishop summed up what he understood as the president's message:

"I said, 'I've heard you say, first of all, that you have immense regard for the work of the Catholic Church in the United States in health care, education and charity. . . . I have heard you say that you are not going to let the administration do anything to impede that work and . . . that you take the protection of the rights of conscience with the utmost seriousness. . . . Does that accurately sum up our conversation?' [Mr. Obama] said, 'You bet it does.'"

The archbishop asked for permission to relay the message to the other bishops. "You don't have my permission, you've got my request," the president replied.

"So you can imagine the chagrin," Archbishop Dolan continues, "when he called me at the end of January to say that the mandates remain in place and that there would be no substantive change, and that the only thing that he could offer me was that we would have until August. . . .

I suppose it's a stretch and disrespectful to boot to liken His Eminence and his fellow bishops in the USCCB to the character of Flounder (less so the President to Otter) in the movie Animal House. Neverthless, this scene comes to mind.



To be fair, Dolan, though he evinces little or no concern for our present horrendous liturgy, is far brighter than most of the bishops in the USCCB, whose decades-long attempts at grafting leftist ideology to the moral teachings of Holy Church has, at last, yielded little else than their being shown for fools. The only charitable thing that might be said of the USCCB is they strike this former member of the Episcopal Church as not being quite as dumb as their counterparts in that institution. That would be a stretch indeed.