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Which side is Texas Catholic on? March 20, 2010

Posted by Tantumblogo in Abortion, Dallas Diocese, General Catholic, Society.
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I just got my latest edition of the Dallas Diocesan newspaper, Texas Catholic, and I read it cover to cover, just like I always do.  No, but I did read the article on the health care monster that is devouring our lives legislation and was pretty disappointed.  Meaning ticked off.  The article was straight off the Catholic News Service wire.  That’s the first problem, CNS tilts towards progressivism in a big way.  The article itself was worse (I can’t link to it, Texas Catholic doesn’t it have it on their website and I’m not going to dig through CNS trying to find it).

The article is titled “CHA backs health care bill; bishops still object to abortion wording.”  Those darned fuddy duddy bishops, always hung up on semantics!  I mean, when will they get with the program??!  How dare they try to derail the progressive agenda with some uptight claptrap about abortion.  Is that ALL they ever worry about?!?  In all seriousness, the bishops concerns go far beyond vague wording.  This bill unequivocally funds abortion, to the tune of many billions of dollars a year, which ALL Americans will be required to pay into the disasters called ‘health insurance exchanges.’  The ‘protections’ are a joke, and will be meaningless in practice.  So, from the very start, the article pits the CHA as good and reasonable, and the bishops as hung up on minor technalities.

It gets worse as it goes along.  While the article does briefly present the concerns outlined by the USCCB, over 2/3 of the article is devoted to the CHA side of the story (such as it is).  More importantly, the last 1/2 of the article is devoted to CHA’s Sr. Carol Keehan and others spinning away the bishop’s very legitimate concerns.  The overall impression given is one of the bishops being unreasonably hung up on abortion (it’s just a blob of tissue!), and of CHA and St. Carol being devoted to trying to bring desperate, life-saving health care to the poor downtrodden masses of the United States, who are presently forced to resort to wicca priestesses  and bizaare native american healing techniques for their health care, both conveniently available at the nearest LCWR facility.  The article doesn’t editorialize at all, unless one counts the snipping of quotes, the placement of rebuttals, and the weighting of text as bias.  Of course, that doesn’t have any impact.

There are many Catholic news services available now.  I’m sure Texas Catholic would say they are contractually obligated to run CNS blah blah blah.  Whatever.  I have to wonder if Texas Catholic couldn’t find an article that was a little more supportive of the bishop’s collective opinion, and a little less endorsing of CHA, which is nothing more than a trade group!  They do include some commentary from Dr. Timothy Jost, which is so biased as to be laughable – his very background renders him immediately beyond suspect.  This commentary is also hostile to the bishop’s opinion.

So, in our great ongoing national suicide pact debate, Texas Catholic has perhaps made its stand known.  Given that Bishop Farrell is the ultimate publisher of this newspaper, is it possible this story has his approval? 

I have no idea.