Story: "Prominent clergy are duking it out on social media over Joe Biden calling himself Catholic."

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Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, Rhode Island led the controversy when he commented on Twitter, “Biden-Harris. First time in a while that the Democratic ticket hasn’t had a Catholic on it. Sad.” Bishop Tobin’s tweet was understood as a jab at Biden, saying he isn’t authentically Catholic.
 
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Bishop Tobin comment was pretty mean. A Catholic not in good standing is still Catholic.
 
aroosi said:
Bishop Tobin comment was pretty mean. A Catholic not in good standing is still Catholic.
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A Catholic in good standing is still Catholic.

I agree on the meanness of Bp Tobin’s comment. Does that make him “a Catholic not in good standing”?
 
StudentMI said:
I found the Bishop’s comment hilarious, myself.
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I’ll admit I think the same.

Reminds me of St. Jerome, the sassypants.

Frankly, I’m not following the story, but I think our public Catholic figures do owe us more policing of the powerful, and considering the dramatic and horrific cascading consequences of powerful politicians who purport to be Catholic (but then perpetrate evil and scandalize or lukewarm-ize the faithful in the meantime), I refuse to be offended on behalf of such wilfully Church-opposing politicians.

May our bishops sassypants them even further. Amen.
 
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I wasn’t familiar with Bloy before you mentioned him here, but just looked him up – interesting, Pope Francis quoted from Bloy in his first homily as Pope! Apparently that made news because of how “politically incorrect” the fellow is considered to be.

Also came across a couple bonus Bloy quotes. Gotta say I like this guy.
“Any Christian who is not a hero is a pig.”
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Provocative, sure… But y’know what, these days I think we’re too comfortable for the good of souls. We need some prophets to provoke us out of our lukewarmness into heroism. Maybe not uniformly adopting the sassypants style of the more provocative prophets… but I honestly do believe that sassypants comments have served their prophetic purpose throughout history. Sometimes the truth is best said sharp. And then the rest of us can be more gentle. Soil tilled up sharply, then gently patted back down in better composition.
 
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Bloy is one of my heros. They’ve released quite a few of his books in English translation. I highly recommend them!
 
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Cheers mate! I have so many books on the go right now, but I’ll jot his name onto my future list. If nothing else he strikes me as a well of quotes I’ll find amusing on the level of some St.Jerome gems.
 
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Oh, I think Bloy meant:
“You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain”

😄
 
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27lw said:
Oh, I think Bloy meant:
“You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain”

😄
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Haha could be. I also hear in it a commentary on the banality of evil. Connected to: “All that’s needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” Or CS Lewis’s analogy of how we initially invite God in to fix a couple pipes and then are horrified when God starts knocking out the walls and putting in extensions and it turns out God intends to rebuild our humble little house into a glorious palace. He doesn’t just intend to make us ‘not too bad all things considered’, but active, saintly heroes.

A Christian isn’t called to just silently creep around the world avoiding certain evils that others fall into. Each of us is called to do particular goods (and those tend to involve heroic virtues and actions). To fail to do the particular heroic goods we’re called to do… Well… I’d tend to side with Bloy on what a person gradually becomes, if not a saint. We’re always becoming something. There are only two eternal destinations; no middle destination.
 
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Freddy said:
I keep thinking about glass houses, motes and beams.
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On the one hand, yes. We all need to be very careful before and during any critique of the action of another.

But on the other hand… I think the Judeo-Christian tradition has a long and worthwhile history of speaking truth to power. And I’d far rather a bishop willing to publicly rebuke a worldly politician, than a bishop cowering in fear of a worldly politician.

I’m not necessarily endorsing a universally snarky approach to it (nor suggesting Tobin’s particular choice of words was prudentially optimal, etc). But I do think there’s actually a reasonable argument in favour of clergy rediscovering the courage to publicly shepherd their flocks – including the sheep who enter political life – rather than doffing their caps to those sheep who obtain worldly status and start publicly promoting evils like abortion etc.

Basically I think errors are possible in multiple directions, and a critique could be made of either silence or speech at different times. On this occasion, I’m glad to hear a bishop speak, because honestly I wish more of them would speak, much more often.

I’m actually reminded of a powerful question asked by Stephen Fry (a quite likeable British comedian and atheist) years ago, when he exploded onstage during a debate with a couple of Catholics. The Catholics effectively suggested that one shouldn’t expect the Church to be further ahead on social issues than others; that one should recognize Catholics as products of their culture and not expect them to rebuke or lead the culture when it errs. And Stephen burst out: “Then what are you FOR?” It was really powerful and, though of course I continued my conversion to Catholicism, I took away that atheist’s rebuke of Catholics-who-fail-to-rebuke-a-sinful-culture as the most powerful point made in the debate.

Basically, I think a bishop willing to rebuke a public figure (whether done brilliantly or not) is at least trying to do what he’s for. Whereas a bishop who never publicly rebukes a public figure… I think there’s a risk they’re being cowards and not allowing God to use them for what they’re for, even in the eyes of atheists and potential converts, who look from the outside and see rampant lukewarmness and apathy.
 
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Fr. Martin was accurate. Bishop Tobin was inaccurate. My own bishop is a pretty decent teacher and theologian, so I guess I will just consider myself fortunate.
 
MNathaniel said:
Basically, I think a bishop willing to rebuke a public figure (whether done brilliantly or not) is at least trying to do what he’s for . Whereas a bishop who never publicly rebukes a public figure… I think there’s a risk they’re being cowards and not allowing God to use them for what they’re for , even in the eyes of atheists and potential converts, who look from the outside and see rampant lukewarmness and apathy.
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Yes. For example, Cardinal Dolan in NY is waaaay too friendly, as in backslapping friendly, with Governor Andrew Cuomo - who, while Catholic, is essentially on the wrong side of every social & moral issue in politics today (when abortion, gay marriage, drug legalization, whatever). Cuomo is an issue - but I can make an argument that Tobin is worse for condoning it through his buddying up to Cuomo.

https://ricochet.com/586278/archive...-of-cardinal-dolan-and-gov-cuomos-friendship/

Here’s a terrific excerpt:

“Cardinal Dolan would probably have to endure being disinvited from dinners at the governor’s mansion or Cuomo’s Manhattan digs and this action would put a kink in any public events where he shares the limelight with the governor, but he [has been on record] saying that “We must end abortion, and not with contraception” and that abortion must be made illegal. Well, here’s your chance, Eminence to walk-the-walk and not just talk-the-talk. Your own presumably practicing Catholic governor is using his office and bully pulpit to pass legislation that will bolster the state’s efforts to continue to kill children and harm souls. How about using your own office to publicly condemn Cuomo’s actions and call for his excommunication? Or are you more concerned with being ostracized from New York power circles and cocktail parties? Are you a really a Catholic cardinal called on to do lead Catholics away from mortal sin or are you a paper tiger in a skull cap?”
 
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mdgspencer said:
see Church Militant - Serving Catholics

Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, Rhode Island led the controversy when he commented on Twitter, “Biden-Harris. First time in a while that the Democratic ticket hasn’t had a Catholic on it. Sad.”
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Apart from Tim Kaine, have there been other Catholics on the ticket recently? And even though Kaine was personally against abortion, he always voted pro choice.

Tobin’s comments appear to be political rather than faith based. As an outsider, Biden appears to be an honourable man (with faults). Trump? The polar opposite.
 
Freddy said:
Tobin’s comments appear to be political rather than faith based. As an outsider, Biden appears to be an honourable man (with faults). Trump? The polar opposite.
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I’m also an outsider (non-American), but if we’re both jumping in here… Do you really care (as your primary concern) whether your politician is an “honourable man” on some personal, private level? Or do you care that your politician will effectively perform political functions that achieve political outcomes closer to what you believe are morally just?

I tend to think of politicians like airplane pilots. Say I want to go to Sweden, and two airplane pilots promise to take me to Sweden – and one of the pilots is a total jerk in his personal life, whereas the other pilot has great table manners and is pleasant to chat with in his personal life. Well, maybe I’ll ‘reward’ the pleasant pilot by paying to take the plane he’s piloting, rather than the rude pilot’s plane.

But if only the rude pilot is promising to take me to Sweden, and the pleasant pilot (ever so pleasantly) promises to take me to the middle of the ocean and kick me out of the plane there, I’m gonna have to choose the rude pilot who at least is promising to take me to Sweden. Even if the rude pilot is lying and plans to throw me in the ocean too… at least he isn’t promising to do that, and the ‘nice’ pilot is. Heck, even if the rude pilot promises to just generally get me to Europe, but at least let me land safely and walk off the plane freely, I’m gonna take my chances on his plane rather than the other.

I honestly don’t understand the charismatic cult-leader approach to politician selection, where people talk about choosing their politician based on who they’d like to grab a beer with, or who they think is “nice” or secretly shares their innermost values. Except for the sake of his own soul, I don’t care what a politician is secretly like, or what his table manners are. I don’t care what religion he says he has. I care what concrete actions he will concretely effect through the wielding of political power through his office. I care less about a pilot’s so-called ‘personal values’ than whether he tells me to my face that he plans to throw me out of his plane into the middle of the ocean.

And a party platform can convey such anticipated actions fairly clearly. Everything down to what kind of judges a specific politician will appoint, to what kind of legislation they will block versus promote, etc.

Politics isn’t religion. Politics is the world of prudential consequentialism and outcomes-based thinking, not imagining any of the candidates are being examined for canonization and we’re being asked to figure out which of them is the ‘saint’ (spoiler alert: perhaps none of them are).

I’m avoiding specificity in favour of, or against, any specific politician or party here, in any country. This is just my opinion about politics regardless of country, party, person, decade. Elections aren’t for rewarding saints with halos, they’re for filling job openings with people qualified and most likely to effect the outcomes you want to achieve.
 
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Yes, technically, Joe Biden is Catholic. But being a public figure, it is fair to question Biden’s authenticity as a Catholic when he is using it to attempt to garner votes (those on the other side have certainly had no problem doing that with Trump). This is the kind of thing that more bishops should be doing, but a Catholic bishop actually willing to speak out against politicians that parade their faith in such a manner as this is rarer than bigfoot nowadays. Maybe the way Bishop Tobin here did this wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but the fact is, if Biden was Catholic, you would never know it from his platform or the way he has voted in Congress over the years on certain issues.
 
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MNathaniel said:
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Freddy:
Tobin’s comments appear to be political rather than faith based. As an outsider, Biden appears to be an honourable man (with faults). Trump? The polar opposite.
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I’m also an outsider (non-American), but if we’re both jumping in here… Do you really care (as your primary concern) whether your politician is an “honourable man” on some personal, private level? Or do you care that your politician will effectively perform political functions that achieve political outcomes closer to what you believe are morally just?
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That he or she will perform the political functions in a reasonable manner according to their policies is an absolute given. Who is going to vote for someone who is incompetent? Well, who would think that would be the case…

But the head of a country’s government represents that country. You want the person to be respectable and respectful. To be reasonably honest. To have an ability to string a few words together in a coherent manner. To be ‘statesman-like’. To be an honourable person.

Is Bidden that type of person? From what I know of him…yes. Is Trump? An unqualified no.

Surely those are characteristics that we’d look for?
 
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