<![CDATA[When Cardinals Attack]]>"Churchgoing Catholics do feel strong about the pro-life issues. They also feel strong about the economic issues. And from what we’ve seen in the last three months, they feel very strong about religious freedom. Could those churchgoing, committed Catholics be enough of a swing vote in important states where there is a heavy Catholic population to throw the election one way or the other? They could be, yeah," – Cardinal Dolan, all but endorsing the GOP in the current campaign. He goes even further here.

Cardinal George is even more enraged:

This year [for Lent], the Catholic Church in the United States is being told she must "give up" her health care institutions, her universities and many of her social service organizations.

This is such an insane spin it's worth unpacking. What Cardinal George is saying is that the Catholic church would rather withdraw entirely from its commitment to the poor because its female employees would have access to contraception, paid for by insurance companies, not the church, in their health insurance. They've done this before, ending their outreach to the homeless in DC because one of their employees, in a lay context, might actually be in a legal marriage with a same-sex spouse.

Here's a question: why are the Catholic hierarchs not as adamant about divorced or re-married people who are employed in their affiliated institutions?

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