The Red Catholic

My former diocese, the Diocese of Sioux City, has one stellar Bishop. My aunts refer to Bishop Walker Nickless and Pope Benedict as the “Nick and Benny” show so I knew Bishop Nickless must be doing a stellar job. The one thing I have been most impressed with has been his willingness to tackle the current issues and define them in terms of our Catholic identity. Most recently, he has written about the health care debate and the Catholic’s responsibility. This is an absolute must read. I will attempt to summarize:

Bishop Nickless lays out 4 essential benchmarks for acceptable reform in Health Care. They are:

First and most important, the Church will not accept any legislation that mandates coverage, public or private, for abortion, euthanasia, or embryonic stem-cell research.

Second, the Catholic Church does not teach that “health care” as such, without distinction, is a natural right.

Third, in that category of prudential judgment, the Catholic Church does not teach that government should directly provide health care.

Fourth, preventive care is a moral obligation of the individual to God and to his or her family and loved ones, not a right to be demanded from society.

He expounds each of these examples and explains where the current bill fails to make acceptable reform. There is an end run around the Hyde amendment and the costs will burden the working class.

Read the entire article here.

In what should not have been a surprise, reporters were shocked at Florida’s All – Everything quarterback Tim Tebor when he announced that he was a virgin and was saving himself for marriage. It caused me to reflect on the fact that this has gone from an expectation to being as rare as a Republican in Dubuque.

Without too much fanfare, Fr. Jenkins has torpedoed Notre Dame’s standing as a Catholic Institution. Yes, there were protests and a few million of withdrawn support, but overall the Catholic community has failed to hold itself to its own standards of ethics and morality.

Here, in Dubuque, Iowa, one of the two Catholic colleges invited Congressman Bruce Braley to speak at their commencement. Clarke College, a “Catholic” college followed Notre Dame’s lead and made the decision to award an honorary doctors of laws degree during their commence which occurred May 9.

Both “Catholic” colleges took the extraordinary steps to not just invite pro-abortion politicians to speak at their commencements, but to bestow upon them an honor from the institution. I can’t say I would be happy to have Congressman Braley speak at any Catholic anything, but the officials at Clarke College obviously had seen and heard about the Notre Dame controversy and took cover under the illustrious wings of the formerly most prestigious Catholic university in the country and followed their lead. Notre Dame’s decision to honor a radical pro-choice President has now set the standard in Catholic academia, and it has been lowered.

My beloved Notre Dame has let me down, my beloved Dubuque Catholic community has let me down and soon, I suspect, the standard will be so low that there will be little difference between Clarke College and Notre Dame and the University of Iowa and Berkley. Maybe that’s why they are “liberal” arts institutions.

Earlier this month, the city of Dubuque announced an agreement with the owners of Dubuque’s soon to be former strip club, “The Office.” The agreement is for $30000, The Office will close on July 1, 2009 and will never open an adult entertainment facility there again. Questions have been raised by the Telegraph Herald Editorial Board and others about the heavy handed approach the City of Dubuque took in aggressively changing city ordinances to regulate the strip club and make it difficult to remain in business.

The city council needed to act aggressively to fix a zoning problem previous city councils had believed banned strip clubs from the city of Dubuque. The Office found a location and a loop hole in the zoning ordinances to allow them to build the strip club forcing the city council to act to protect the original intent of the existing zoning ordinances. The time to question the council was when they originally drafted the ordinances and not in their robust defense of the intent of this law.

The Dubuque City Council has done one thing that our state legislature failed to do; defend the law that a properly elected government body had put in place to prohibit certain acts. The Iowa Legislature failed to act to defend their own body’s law defining marriage between a man and a woman and should look to Dubuque for the courage to do so. Kind of ironic that Pat Murphy is from Dubuque…

In a completely unscientific, informal poll, the vast majority of people I have talked with are opposed to gay marriage but weren’t willing to sign a petition for fear of being labeled as someone committing hate crimes. After all, sexual orientation is a protected class in Iowa and anyone who may have their name on a list opposing gay marriage may be drug before the same kangaroo court that allowed this fiasco to begin with under the anti-discrimination laws. How did we come to this? Thank Donald Rumsfeld.

The architect of the Iraq war gave the media the strategy of demoralizing people by and all out assault until they believe there is no chance of resisting, let alone winning. The “Shock and Awe” campaign waged by the media across the nation and especially in the great state of Iowa have conspired to create fear and angst among average citizens who have legitimate beliefs but are scared to talk about them. Look at this weekend’s media cycle and you can see why people who oppose gay marriage, oppose big government, and support fiscal restraint were standing with eyes wide and were almost immobil by the barrage of shocking news coming from media outlets.

In the last month, the Iowa Supreme Court with their willing accomplices in the Iowa Legislature and supported by an adoring media have successfully pulled off a ruse that is worthy of any left-wing dictatorshipgovernment run propaganda program movie script. Coverage of the gay marriage issue has dominated with virtually all reports showing the happy, media-whoring, gay couples smiling for the supportive media with the opposition being relegated to the final paragraph. There has been little mention of the closed door, formerly smoked filled rooms where the giant spending ponzai schemes and massive debt spending were hatched in secret and release so there was no time for public scrutiny. Little discussion of the 4 and 5 a.m. sessions that decided the most important legislation from this year’s general assembly while people slept. No discussion about the successful GOP campaign to stop big labor from owning this state.

Instead, we saw a media content with spinning porkulous spending as job creators rather than the work creators it really is. There was NO discussion about the obviously political Iowa Supreme Court’s intentional choice to release their ruling when they did, after funnel date, so the Democratic legislature could block any attempts to change the law to make it pass constitutional muster. There was no discussion about the Iowa Supreme Court choosing to view the Iowa Constitution as a “living document” rather than recognizing that the forgers of the constitution wanted it to be rigid and difficult to change. Not even the normally centered Iowa Journal had discussion about this, only a couple of lawyers who thought the rulings were very smart and well written.

In short, the unholy marriage of the Iowa Supreme Court, the Iowa Legislature (including Gov. Culver), and the news outlets have overwhelmed the people of Iowa with their Shock and Awe attack.

The Alliance Defense Fund and Iowa Family Policy Center have offered free legal help to county recorder offices who wish to refrain from issuing gay marriage licenses on the basis of their personal religious belief or deeply held moral convictions. The groups have offered proposed policy language and offered to defend the policy for free.

The two groups proposed policy language and offered to defend the policy and provide free legal review and defense if it is challenged on the basis of its content.

The proposed policy says that employees “shall not be required to issue or process a marriage license, or to perform, assist, or participate in such procedures, against that individual’s religious beliefs or moral convictions.” It also requires that objecting employees not be subject to discrimination in employment, promotion, advancement, transfer and several other areas.

Napier argued for the benefits of the policy in a Wednesday statement.

“Government employees who believe in marriage as the union of one man and one woman should not be penalized for abiding by their beliefs,” he said. “This policy allows an employee who does not wish to violate his or her own conscience by issuing a marriage license to a same-sex couple to abstain and allow the transaction to be performed by someone who is willing to do it. Forcing them to participate in offensive acts contrary to their deeply held beliefs in order to remain employed is unconstitutional.”

The inaction of the Iowa Legislature Leadership, Governor Culver and the unconstitutional law making by the Iowa Supreme Court has brought Iowa to this mess and it is our duty to remind Iowans when the culprits of this debacle come up for re-election.

The impetus to my second article on my trip to Des Moines was, unfortunately, driving by Wahlert High School in Dubuque, Iowa. Somewhere around noon on Earth Day there were a couple of dozen kids roaming around the grounds of the high school with their green shirts on presumably picking up trash to help the environment. Seeing those young people reminded me of my trip, listening to Des Moines talk radio and my disappointment in the failure of our generation to properly educate our children.

The weekend after Iowa Supreme Court broke from their mandate and allowed gay marriage in Iowa, I noticed one of the people on my facebook friends list had joined a group supporting the decision. I was quite surprised this friend had joined this group so I checked it out and found much of what I expected: a pro-gay marriage facebook group. What I didn’t expect was the three dozen or so Mazzuchelli Middle School students on this list and a handful of Wahlert student members as well. For those of you not from Northeast Iowa, this is the Catholic middle school and high school in Dubuque, Iowa. Imagine my surprise that Catholic school students were so misinformed on the issue when they go to a school where it is permissible to talk about these issues. This will not be about the failures of the Catholic School system to properly form the consciences of young people. Instead, I will discuss the broader issue of education on the important issues of our time.

Des Moines afternoons are ruled by Steve Deace, a conservative radio host who brings the issues of the day to the radio. Much of the discussion during my time in Des Moines was devoted to the gay marriage issue including a guest appearance by a formerly gay individual who was featured in the movie Milk. During his discussion against gay marriage, there was a particularly sad time when he was talking about the arguments of the gay marriage proponents. Basically, he pointed to Mel Gibson and the numbers of self-identified Christians getting divorces and the sad fact that the divorce rate is the same among Christians versus non-Christians. Steve Deace had no understanding of the Catholic Church rules of annulments and sounded not only mis-informed but someone who was grasping at straws to defend against the gay marriage proponents. This is a perfect example of the failings of our party to do a good job of explaining the why we believe what we believe.

Conservatives, and particularly Christian Conservatives, would do well to stop thinking solely in terms of faith and start using their brains. That’s not to say we should check our beliefs at the door but rather understand how to achieve our intended goal. Steve Deace couldn’t or wouldn’t put his finger on it. We can no longer afford to hold up our bibles and use it for the basis of everything. Don’t send me hate mail about this because I am NOT saying the bible shouldn’t be the basis of our belief system, only that we can’t use it to argue everything in the public realm. Christians from different denominations can’t even agree with the interpretations of the bible or even what books are included, so let’s learn this lesson NOW and not later. Our faith gives us the wisdom and insight to understand what is right and wrong and the conviction and strength to fight for it, but it cannot be the sole reason for our arguments for or against something.

So here comes the question; how do we argue without basing it on our faith. Answer: use logic.

1. What is the role of government in moral matters?

2. The role of government is to enact laws that promote positive outcomes for those in society who would be adversely affected by an action.

Take this to the smoking, drinking, speed limit, welfare, medicaid etc. etc. etc. We are enacting laws that use history, logic and statistics to support them. But when it comes to the moral debates, we throw this away, grab our bibles and begin to preach. The “this is the way it is” arguments do not work in debates and do not change people’s minds. Ask yourself why people believe that gay marriage is OK or why so many people will say they are PERSONALLY pro-life but believe it is a woman’s choice to decide. Conservatives have failed to argue with logic the reasons why these evils are not acceptable. Instead, liberals have succeeded in giving people a way to believe that is contrary to their belief system because it seems to make sense on the surface. Those people were never forced to logically defend their belief or given enough information to tip the scales.

Let’s return to the Catholic students supporting gay marriage. They view it not as a moral issue but a civil rights issue. The teachers and parents and mentors have failed in their quest to form these student’s conscience. The Iowa Conference of Catholic Bishops did a nice job in explaining this, not in religious terms, but in logical terms:

This unwarranted social engineering attacks the good that marriage offers to society, especially the good of children, and weakens the critical relationship between marriage and parenting. We will resolutely continue to protect and promote marriage as a union between a man and a woman because of its unique and historical contribution to the common good.

Why can’t conservatives use this logic when arguing this issue? Why don’t we force people to defend why it is OK for gays to be married and not polygymists? They can’t argue against one without arguing against the other. We won’t change hard core liberals with education, but we will change young people’s minds and those who believe it is wrong. They want to understand why they believe what they are told to believe and it is our duty to explain it to them.

I know a lot of the discussion this weekend about Twitter has been about Ashton Kutcher and Oprah and their additions to the entire Twitter-verse. There will not be any regurgitation of those stories, but it did give me the springboard for my first report on last week’s trip to Des Moines.

Whether Twitter and Facebook are a fad or not remains to be seen, but I am going to guess it is here to stay. When sitting in the galleries of the Iowa House and Senate I saw facebook pages open, twitter apps humming and website updates happening. Social networking is definitely being used in conjunction with politics and the legion of followers seems to be growing exponentially. One of the topics of discussion I pushed at the capitol was the reasons WHY it is important for legislators to be on facebook and twitter. I will retell part of those discussion here. But before I do that, perhaps I should back up a bit.

I lived in Le Mars Iowa for the majority of my life and before moving to Dubuque. My conservative belief system came from the discussions around the news broadcasts, at the barber shops, in church and in school. As I grew older, the topics of the day were discussed at Curry’s Barber Shop, the Pantry Cafe and the Country Kitchen and Sweet 16 Lanes. This is important because the topics that were relevant to that day were discussed with an explanation why that topic was good or bad for us. Of course this had each person’s spin added but overall I heard very passionate defenses of conservative principles from a wide variety of people who had their own personal stake in what was happening. It was in this upbringing that I came to realize that the best and most meaningful way to influence people politically or ideologically was to understand what they are passionate about and then talk with them about that. Sounds great, right? There are/were problems: time and information. Enter social networking.

Moving to Dubuque for a conservative is like a Canadian moving to Honduras. The issues are different, the people are different and the politics are different. Now I am forced to deal with a more hostile crowd than I was accustomed. I needed current…almost real time information about what was happening in the state and, more importantly, the WHY. I needed to know what was going to be on the news tonight and pre-empt a person’s viewing with a different view point. They need to hear the conservative viewpoint before the filter of media and their liberal, union parents and friends who will start discussing it AFTER the news. Unfortunately, no “guerrilla activist” has the time to read news site after news site or story after story each and every day. Guerrilla activists need to be able to sift through the information in an easy way but in a way that they then can access the information they need to fight for the conservative cause.

**insert harp chords here** The Twitter Feed

Twitter has provided us a way to get that information in a short and easy to sort style. We, the guerrilla activists, can then use that timely information in the battle for the hearts and minds of our co-workers, friends and family. It is current, it is relevant and straight from the horse’s mouth. Believe it or not, people are impressed when I tell them that Christopher Rants has tried to add an amendment regarding letting the people vote on same-sex marriage and then the next day tell them that thanks, in part, to Chuck Isenhart (my representative) the Democrats wouldn’t allow it. Heck even California allowed a vote of the people. I had provided a viewpoint BEFORE they heard about it on the news and then they saw what happened with their own eyes.

The moral of this story is to not think of Twitter or Facebook as just a way to “keep in touch” with people, think of it as providing the tools to help your most staunch supporters to help spread the message you are trying to send. These tools give us…the guerrilla activists more information to change things one voter at a time.