INSTEAD OF writing a response objecting to what I said about the white Catholic fascism problem after the Al Smith Dinner and Trump's Nazi Rally in Madison Square Garden I'll go with this report about how the almost exclusively white, male, elite US Catholic Conference of Bishop's almost entirely non-condemnation of what was said in either case. Especially note what it says about the smarmy, ever-smiling Tim Cardinal Dolan.
Among the first to speak on behalf of the Catholic Church was San Juan Archbishop Roberto González Nieves, who issued a statement on behalf of his Puerto Rican brother bishops: "Puerto Rico is not a floating island of garbage. Puerto Rico is a beautiful country inhabited by a beautiful and noble people." The "joke," he said, not only provoked "sinister laughter, but hatred."
Only a few Catholic leaders have joined Gonzalez in condemning Hinchcliffe's disparaging remarks. The Diocese of Youngstown, Ohio, issued a statement saying, "There is no room in the Church of Christ, nor the world, for hatred of ones' brothers and sisters, or for any malice to be held in one's heart against them." San Antonio's Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller described Hinchcliffe's remarks as demonstrating "a lack of maturity."
But the silence among many Catholic leaders is reminiscent of the decades of cover-ups and excuses when tens of thousands of children suffered from the sexual abuses perpetrated upon them by Catholic priests and other religious leaders.
The silence of New York's Cardinal Timothy Dolan is especially noteworthy. New York City has the highest proportion of Puerto Ricans in the United States, the majority of them Catholics and faithful church attendees. Yet, even now, days after Trump's rally, not a word from Dolan.
In the past, Dolan has boasted of his close relationship with Trump, calling him "a great gentleman" and a "great friend of mine," telling Trump in 2020 that he calls him more often than his 90-year-old mother in Missouri. Those comments stand juxtaposed to Trump's crude references to women, boasting in 2016 that he likes "grabbing them" and "forcibly kissing them."
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dolan pleaded for funding to keep the diocese's Catholic schools open. In return, he received $1.4 billion in federal aid at Trump’'s direction. Maybe he has $1.4 billion reasons for keeping quiet now.
Dolan is not alone in keeping mum. Jack Jenkins, a Religion News Service reporter, tweeted that all the bishops in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops he contacted to respond to Hinchcliffe's remarks either refused to answer or did not respond.
The US Catholic Conference of Bishops is mostly staffed by those appointed by John Paul II and Benedict XVI and they are mostly a moral and pastoral disaster. I hope Dolan is retired soon. He always reminded me a lot of the criminal Bernard Law, the one who took it on the lam when he knew he was facing a subpoena as the clergy sex abuse scandal broke and who was given a plum assignment by the morally problematic JPII. He clearly has no problem with Trump's history of sexual abuse and rape and I'm sure he's not stupid enough to be unaware of Trump having wanted his mistress who became his second wife to have an abortion, since that's the excuse a lot of them use for supporting Republican-fascists. The Catholic right has always had a strong double-standard on even the issues that they allegedly care about most.
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