 |
||||
Patrick Whelan MD PhD, president Jerome D. Maryon Esq, vice-president Mary Beth Saffo PhD, treasurer Catholic
Democrats of Massachusetts Roman
Catholic Dioceses: US Conference of Catholic Bishops Massachusetts
Democratic Party
|
Welcome to the Catholic Democrats of Massachusetts "Blessed are the peacemakers" (Mt 5:9) We are a group of committed Catholics who have responded to our faith tradition by speaking out against those politicians who hide behind religion while advancing policies antithetical to the call of conscience.
Cardinal Sean O'Malley! 22 Feb 2006, Rome--Boston's Archbishop Sean Patrick O'Malley was one of two Americans named a cardinal of the Church today by His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, just two years after assuming the helm for the nationally influential Boston Archdiocese. The other bishop elevated was William Levada, the former archbishop of San Francisco and now director of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome. Cardinal O'Malley issued a statement, posted on the Archdiocesan website: "I am deeply humbled and honored to be named a Cardinal by the Holy Father, for even greater service in the Church. While there are certain additional responsibilities that come with the privilege of serving as a Cardinal, I wish to reaffirm a commitment I made during my Installation Homily to the priests, deacons, religious and laity, who together form this great Archdiocese of Boston. That is, I am your Shepherd, your brother, and I am here to serve all the people of the Archdiocese. Since being named Archbishop of Boston over two years ago, I have relied on the daily prayers and support of the clergy, religious, and faithful of the Archdiocese. Together, we have faced many challenges and I look forward to continuing our work together towards strengthening our Church. I continue to pray that all people of the Archdiocese will renew their commitment to our shared mission of faith and rebuilding the Church. In the immediacy of receiving this honor from the Holy Father, in a spirit of charity, I ask for the prayerful support of the people of Boston as I assume this important role in the life of the Church."
Officers for the Catholic Democrats of Massachusetts At our general meeting on Thursday, January 26, 2006, new bylaws were ratified and a slate of officers was elected. Joining the team is Jerome Maryon, editor of the religious journal The Forum and a former US military Judge Advocate General with considerable knowledge on US foreign policy and military procedure. Dr. Patrick Whelan was elected president and Dr. Mary Beth Saffo re-elected treasurer. Dr. Andrew Clarkson will continue to serve as communications director for the national Catholic Democrats, and Dr. Whelan as the national director. There was extensive discussion of our involvement in advocating the new Democratic initiative to decrease abortion in America, Rep. Tim Ryan's sponsorship of the Democrats for Life 95/10 proposal. The group is looking to have a presence at the 2006 State Democratic Convention, with local delegate selection taking place in the coming weeks. 30 January 2006
Mayor Menino speaks publicly about his Catholicism, and helps raise a bundle for Boston's Catholic Charities Boston’s Mayor Thomas Menino was the keynote speaker for a much-publicized fund raising dinner on Friday December 9 for the local Catholic Charities, Massachusetts’ largest private social services agency. He had been targeted by a few vocal conservatives for his views on abortion and the respect that he had afforded to gay people. They had succeeded in persuading Archbishop Sean O’Malley to withdraw his attendance from the event. Perhaps because of all the publicity, the dinner was sold out for the first time, almost a week in advance, and raised more money for the less well-off than ever before. C.J. Doyle, the mayor’s chief antagonist, was among a handful of protestors outside the event. The Boston Globe quoted him as saying, “It's very disturbing to have Catholic Charities honor the mayor, when he's spent his whole career working against Catholic principles." Mr. Doyle apparently has no similar feelings about President Bush, who was honored last May at an event called the “National Communion Prayer Breakfast” in the company of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and five other bishops. Mr. Bush has distinguished himself as someone who has worked tirelessly in opposition to the Catholic prohibitions against the death penalty and against economically motivated military action, in addition to poverty policies that have begun to reverse the 15-year-long slide in abortion rates nationally. Apparently one’s rhetoric about abortion and gay marriage are more important to these individuals than actually doing what the Church teaches—namely caring for others. The protestors also went after Catholic Charities itself, citing the 13 adoption placements the agency had made to gay couples in compliance with state law over a 20-year period. One of the protest organizers, Carol McKinley, has been quoted as saying that she wanted to defund the work of Catholic Charities. Ironically, she explained to an interviewer that her motivation for sabotaging the Church's social service work was her children: "If you want to teach children about confession, you have to teach them what the sins are." Like many Republican sympathizers, she apparently feels that non-Gospel values like opposition to fidelity among non-Catholic gay couples and the threat of imprisonment to abortion providers are more important than traditional Catholic values like opposition to war-making and state-sponsored killing, or care for the poor. In his remarks at the Catholic Charities dinner, Mr. Menino reflected, “'What Jesus said, and what he showed with his life, was that the way to follow him was to take care of people…He told us in the Gospel of Matthew -- the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the sick, and yes, the imprisoned.” He added, 'How much clearer could the Lord have made it?" A spokesman
for the archdiocese, quoted in the Globe, applauded the speech.
''Mayor Menino's remarks clearly demonstrate this is a person who
loves his city and is dedicated to helping others," said Terrence
Donilon. ''We appreciate his many good deeds on behalf of the needy.
In fact, the archbishop is very thankful for the efforts of so many
who contributed to the support generated tonight for the programs
that Catholic Charities runs to serve children and families in need."
10 December 2005
Republicans sabotaging both funding and leadership of Boston's Catholic Charities, while criticizing Archbishop Sean O'Malley Not content to have embarrassed their archbishop into a pointless confrontation with their mayor, two Boston area Republican surrogates have upped the ante by demanding the resignation of the director of Catholic Charities and the revocation of an invitation to Mayor Thomas Menino to speak at a fund raising dinner next week for Boston’s poor. In a letter to Archbishop Sean O’Malley, the two activists falsely accuse Mayor Menino of being “pro-abortion,” although neither the mayor's words nor his actions have ever demonstrably led to a single abortion in Massachusetts. Joseph Doyle, leader of a group sponsored by the Massachusetts Knights of Columbus, and Carol McKinley, co-founder of an organization opposing the lay group Voice of the Faithful, patronizingly wrote, “We request that you avoid further scandal and confusion to the faithful by insisting Catholic Charities disinvite Mayor Menino and find a suitable candidate to honor in his place on December 9." They obtained the co-signatures of some 100 Catholic friends to a document that reads, “Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors, or platforms which would suggest support for their actions." Ms. McKinley’s website, which lavishly praises President Bush, makes no mention of his defiance of the Catholic Bishops’ renunciation of the death penalty and the war in Iraq. As governor of Texas, Mr. Bush oversaw the killing of more people (152) than any other governor in US history, and his actions in Iraq have led to the deaths of more than 100,000 people since his invasion of 2003. None of the involved parties have offered any criticism of the honor bestowed on Mr. Bush last spring when he was the featured speaker at the “National Catholic Prayer Breakfast” in Washington DC, which was attended by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and five other bishops. Not satisfied with having cornered Archbishop O’Malley into withdrawing his attendance from the event, Ms. McKinley further insulted the Archbishop in remarks she made that were publicly quoted this week, “The diocese is still not in compliance with the directive (of the national bishops’ conference to exclude pro-feminist speakers from Catholic events) and it's a classic example of how pro-abort politicians use their 'honors' to trample mothers and fathers attempting to hold the Bishop accountable to the promises he makes." In other words, unless a Catholic public figure’s stance on abortion matchs the empty Republican rhetoric on the issue, these individuals feel perfectly comfortable dictating to Church authorities who should and who should not be included in Catholic events. Curiously, the national Republican figure who started the ball rolling on this issue is Dr. Deal Hudson, a former Baptist minister turned Catholic philosophy professor who was fired from his faculty position at a Catholic university for sexually assaulting one of his students. One must wonder if these radicals really think that Boston’s mayor and the director of Boston’s Catholic Charities, an internationally known Catholic priest and scholar, are sinners of such notoriety that members of the Church should shun them. The whole effort has the flavor of one party’s efforts to label the other party as the party of sinners, rather than any effort to observe the Gospel. Even were it true that the Mayor is a formidable sinner, it’s worth recalling that Jesus sought out dinner companions who bore that label. “The
healthy do not need a doctor; sick people do. I have not come to
invite the self-righteous to a change of heart, but sinners (Lk
5:32).” It’s clear in this story who the self-righteous
are, how far they are willing to go in humiliating our Archdiocese
and defunding our Catholic Charities, and how hypocritical their
efforts are in light of the orchestration from national Republican
activists who have never held themselves to similar standards. Archbishop O'Malley targeted by Republican surrogates who sought to villanize Boston Mayor Menino Many Massachusetts Catholics are fuming about a campaign by a small klatch of Republican sympathizers who succeeded in compelling Archbishop Sean O’Malley into withdrawing his attendance from an annual fundraising event for the local Catholic Charities. Groups calling themselves “Faithful Voice” and the “Catholic Action League of Massachusetts” had challenged Archbishop O’Malley to boycott the December 9 event as a rebuke to Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, who is the invited keynote speaker. An article last Sunday in the Boston Globe outlined a campaign by Carol McKinley and Faithful Voice, described as “an antiabortion group,” to not only castigate Mayor Menino and Archbishop O'Malley, but also to defund Catholic Charities of Massachusetts. Ms. McKinley is quoted as advocating “boycotts of the charity well beyond the benefit dinner, hoping to reduce donations by at least $100,000 in the next six months.” To our knowledge, Ms. McKinley’s group has no track record as an anti-abortion group. They were founded in 2002 as an effort to sabotage “Voice of the Faithful,” a group advocating greater involvement of the laity in Church governance, and have been largely inactive for the past two years. Their website is a hodgepodge of mostly anti-homosexual diatribes with an emphasis on writings from people like Barbara Kralis, an extreme partisan who has written extensively in praise of President Bush and who, in a column linked on the website, labeled the Democrats as “the official abortion and sodomite party.” The Catholic
Action League of Massachusetts is a 10-year-old group focused
on opposing gay marriage, sponsored by the Knights of Columbus in
Massachusetts. It ostensibly functions “to combat anti-Catholic
bigotry and to protect the religious freedom rights of the Catholic
community in Massachusetts,” according to its website. Attacking
Catholic politicians should be antithetical to their function as
advocates for Catholics in public life. Nowhere on the websites of Faithful Voice or the Catholic Action League is there so much as a word of support for the Bishops’ strong stances in opposition to the death penalty or the war in Iraq. So these groups are highly selective observers of Catholic morality. The fact that they envision a longer campaign to sabotage Catholic Charities' financial viability indicates to us that they are perfectly willing to burn down the house in order to redecorate it. Mayor Menino has never advocated the performance of more abortions in Massachusetts, and he has never advocated legal measures to compel any religious congregation to perform gay marriages. He has worked tirelessly for the wellbeing of the poor in Boston, a cooperative effort with Catholic Charities that constitutes the most extensive and effective effort on behalf of those who are less fortunate among us. This advocacy for the poor would seem to be at the heart of the Christian message, and we will continue to combat efforts by Republicans to narrow the Catholic agenda to grappling with gay marriage and embracing the empty Republican slogans regarding abortion. Nov 25, 2005
House rejects Romney's efforts to implement state-sponsored killing Representatives decisively rejected Governor Mitt Romney's bill (H3834) that proposed to reinstate the death penalty in Massachusetts for selected forms of murder. The vote was 53-100. Mr. Romney had argued that using DNA-based technologies to validate guilt made the measure a moral response to crime. Massachusetts has not had a death penalty statute for more than 30 years, and violent crime has continued to fall nonetheless. This fact had led many observers to conclude that Mr. Romney was more interested in appealing to conservative voters elsewhere during the 2008 presidential race, rather than actually believing such a measure might have any positive effect on crime in his own state. The overwhelmingly Catholic House widened its margin of opposition substantially from the last time such a measure came up (73-80) under former Governor Paul Cellucci in 1999. Nov 25, 2005 Contending with the Parish Reconfiguration in the Boston Archdiocese The National Catholic Reporter had a cover story in August exploring the financial and political problems facing our Boston Archdiocese. Speaking admiringly of Archbishop Sean O'Malley, the piece adds some perspective to a process that will have dropped the number of Boston parishes from 402 to 274 over a twenty year period. Particularly with the Church's increased dependence on lay guidance, groups like ours and Voice of the Faithful have a key role to play in answering questions like why Boston area weekly Mass attendance has fallen to 16% of self-identified Catholics, and in searching for ideas on how we can strengthen our churches across Massachusetts. As stated in
the introduction to the Decree on the Apostolate of Lay People,
Apostolicam actuositatem, a Second Vatican Council document
issued in November 1965, "The need for this urgent and many-sided
apostolate is shown by the manifest action of the Holy Spirit moving
laymen today to a deeper and deeper awareness of their responsibility
and urging them on everywhere to the service of Christ and the Church."
2005 Massachusetts State Democratic Convention The Catholic Democrats of Massachusetts, with the support of State Chairman Phil Johnston and Platform Committee Chair Martina Jackson, organized an interfaith conference May 13 and 14 in Lowell, Massachusetts, for delegates attending the State Platform Convention. Entitled "The Democratic Message," these two sessions probed the ways that Democrats are addressing an array of issues that are important to all people of conscience: health care disparities, abortion, gun violence, stagnation of middle class incomes, the role of religion in American politics, and the seismic shift toward more military spending in our federal budget. Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, who chairs the Catholic Working Group in the House of Representatives, wrote a letter of encouragement.
Allow me to
send my warmest regards to the delegates at the Massachusetts State
Democratic Platform Convention - I wish I could be with all of you.
As a Catholic Democrat, I appreciate all that you are doing to advance
our values in the public sphere. Like you, I am proud of my faith
and believe we as Democrats and as Catholics must speak to who we
are and where we come from - the passions that motivate us. As Democrats,
Catholic teachings gave us a commitment to the issues that have
always been central to our faith. But perhaps most importantly,
the church instilled in us the idea that government had moral purpose.
|
|||
STATEMENT
OF THE HON. ROSA L. DELAURO