Category: Commentary/Editorial || By

They say you can tell a lot about someone's character by the kinds of company they keep.

But what does it say about the character of the Catholic and Anglican bishops of Pittsburgh that they've decided to keep company with the likes of Dr. James Dobson, Gary Bauer and Chuck Colson?

Those names should be familiar --- they are among the most prominent voices of the far-right wing of the Republican Party --- but in case you don't know who they are:

• Dobson is the founder of Focus on the Family, a fundamentalist Christian group. He's been called the leader of a "gang of thugs" by no less than former Republican majority leader Dick Armey of Texas. Among other things, Dobson believes that Democrats, including most of those in the U.S. Government, "despise America."


• Colson, special counsel to President Nixon, was described by Slate magazine as "the evil genius behind an evil administration" and served seven months in prison for his role in orchestrating the Watergate scandal and its cover-up. Ah, but in jail he found religion and formed a prison ministry.


• Bauer is possibly the least malicious of the three. A former Republican presidential candidate known for falling off the stage during a pancake-flipping contest, Bauer is now primarily a commentator. Among his other positions, he's a proponent of using the Bible to justify torturing prisoners (though he means accused terrorists, not white-collar criminals like Chuck Colson).

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Would you want to hang out with these guys? I'd want to shower after shaking their hands.

But David Zubik, Roman Catholic bishop of Pittsburgh, and Robert Duncan, Anglican bishop of Pittsburgh, have no such qualms. Duncan, Zubik, and Zubik's predecessor, Donald Wuerl, now archbishop of Washington, D.C., are among the signatories of something called the Manhattan Declaration.

The declaration, made public last week, calls on signers to engage in "civil disobedience" to protest any laws that would compel them to:

"Participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality."

On the surface, you may ask --- well, so what? No one's going to compel a Catholic hospital to perform an abortion, or a Baptist minister to officiate at a gay wedding.

As the Los Angeles Times notes, federal courts "have aggressively protected the free exercise of religion" guaranteed by the First Amendment.

The L.A. Times also points out that the U.S. Congress --- then as now led by the Democratic Party --- in 1993 passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which exempts religious organizations from having to comply with certain regulations that would violate the doctrines of their faith. It was signed into law by another Democrat, President Clinton, who issued a further executive order in 1996 providing additional protection to religious groups.

. . .

In other words, this declaration is no fire, just a bunch of smoke.

But it still stinks, and it should leave a particularly foul odor in the noses of local Catholics.

Bishop Zubik's decision to lie down with the radical right is disturbing, not least because conservative Christians have often found it convenient to bash Catholics as "not truly Christian."

An evening spent watching Wall-based WPCB-TV (40) or listening to local Christian radio stations will expose you to plenty of anti-Catholic propaganda.

Apparently, Zubik and other prelates regard gay marriage and abortion as such abominations that they're happy to link arms with people who would otherwise denounce them as "papists" worshiping false gods.

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What, then, of gay marriage and abortion? I don't want to open those cans of worms, but grab an opener, and let's start cranking.

Roughly half of all heterosexual marriages in the United States end in divorce, according to official statistics. That seems about right, based on my own observations.

But in the meantime, I'm also friends with committed gay and lesbian couples in stable, monogamous, happy relationships.

Along come Bishops Zubik and Wuerl to tell me those people are evil for wanting legal protection under the law. (And Bishop Duncan as well --- but Duncan has been helping to tear apart the Episcopalian church over extending the sacraments to lesbians and gays, so his signature on the Manhattan Declaration is hardly a surprise.)

I'm reminded of the joke about the politician who said: "Who you gonna believe? Me, or your lyin' eyes?" Well, your excellencies, I'll believe my eyes, thanks.

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And I'm hardly alone: Half of all U.S. Catholics are ignoring the church's teachings and now think that same-sex civil unions should be legalized. Among young Catholics, the support for same-sex civil unions is near 80 percent.

(Remember --- the issue is not whether the government can force a Catholic or Anglican priest to bless a gay marriage. The government can't. The issue is whether the government can extend the legal protections of a marriage license to a lesbian or gay couple.)

Now, let's take abortion. The Catholic Church and many Protestant churches teach that abortion in any circumstance is murder.

If Bishops Zubik, Wuerl and Duncan --- and all of the other people who signed the Manhattan Declaration --- are saying that civil partnerships for gays and lesbians are as bad as abortion, then they think lesbian and gay couples are the moral equivalents of murderers.

My conscience will not allow me to accept that. In fact, I find that implication morally offensive.

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Finally, I'm old enough to have been taught about the heroic nuns, priests, rabbis and pastors who marched in the 1950s and '60s to guarantee equal rights for women, racial minorities and migrant farmers. Pittsburgh's famous "labor priest," Msgr. Charles Owen Rice, was often on the front lines of those demonstrations.

And there are many stories of heroic clergy who stood up to the Nazis during World War II to protect Jews from harm. Homestead's St. Maximilian Kolbe Parish is named for one of them.

Now, Bishops Zubik, Wuerl and Duncan are threatening civil disobedience against any laws that would require them to treat a same-sex partnership as a marriage.

I don't know in what context that would arise --- same-sex benefits for a Catholic school teacher, perhaps?

But here's a charming thought: The Catholic Church, which demonstrated in the 1950s and '60s in favor of protecting people's civil rights, might start protesting in order to take away people's civil rights.

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The signers of the Manhattan Declaration believe that "the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened."

But they don't mention unregulated capitalism, which has enabled big, multi-national corporations to abandon communities like McKeesport, Duquesne, Monessen and Homestead, decimating the American working class. Surely the lives of "the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly" are threatened when big companies move their operations overseas, canceling health insurance and gutting pension plans.

For that matter, they have nothing to say about health insurance companies that drop people from their plans to avoid paying for treatable conditions --- or about VA hospitals, which, during the Bush Administration, declined treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, telling them in effect to "pray harder."

Nor do they mention the toxic reality shows and other tawdry TV programs of no redeeming value that are pumped out on a daily basis, including those of the Fox network, owned by that bastion of conservative rectitude, Rupert Murdoch.

In fact, the only issues over which the signers of the Manhattan Declaration feel compelled to commit "civil disobedience" are abortions and gay marriage.

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In other words, the Manhattan Declaration isn't worth the paper it's printed on. It's a sham.

Although the Manhattan Declaration claims to be "non-partisan," the presence of conservative firebrands like as Dobson, Bauer and Colson should provide all of the evidence you need that this is a fairly transparent attempt to inflame the voters before next year's mid-term election.

If you need more evidence, know that longtime Republican campaign adviser Karl Rove --- former senior political strategist in the White House of President George W. Bush --- supports the Manhattan Declaration, too.

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So then, the goal of the Manhattan Declaration is to fire up the Republican Party's base to try and re-take the U.S. Congress in 2010. (As if the Democrats aren't doing a good enough job of that on their own.)

And the Catholic and Anglican bishops of Pittsburgh and the Catholic archbishop of Washington --- knowing the political motivations behind this farce --- were happy to sign on.

If I were a cold-blooded agnostic, I'd say that by engaging in partisan politicking, they are jeopardizing the generous tax-exemptions granted to their dioceses.

. . .

But instead, as a product of 13 years of Catholic education and a Mass-going Catholic, I will just get discouraged and unhappy.

I don't lightly criticize the church or its leaders, but it's depressing to see Bishop Zubik squander his moral authority on behalf of gutter politicians like Karl Rove.

And although I'm far from the exemplar of a Christian life well-lived ("for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God"), I also wonder about the ethics and morality of things like the Manhattan Declaration.

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After all, setting aside politics, if God made all things, then He made gays and lesbians, too. And He wouldn't make them if He doesn't want them in His church.

Yet things like the Manhattan Declaration send a clear signal to those people that they are not wanted.

Bishops Zubik, Wuerl and Duncan: If God wants gays and lesbians in His church, who are we as mere mortals to drive them away?

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