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This Just In

Giuliani highlights hypocrisy of the church and Catholic pols

Rudy Giuliani

A week after Bishop Thomas J. Tobin gained national attention for his condemnation of Rudy Giuliani’s position on abortion, one has to wonder what happens next.
 
Will Tobin tighten the net and try to force campaign volunteers to divorce themselves from Rudy? Will he argue that supporters cannot remain Catholics if they work for Giuliani’s election? Will he banish them from the communion rail for ignoring his dicta on abortion?
 
During his visit to Rhode Island, Giuliani dodged queries about Tobin, preferring to embrace the supporters who flocked, checkbooks ready, to subsidize his Republican presidential bid. Tobin, meanwhile, got more mileage from his message, thanks to the New Hampshire lightning bolt that dramatically punctuated his condemnation of Giuliani’s position.
 
The overwhelmingly anti-choice Host Committee for the local Giuliani fete — including Senate Minority Leader Dennis Algiere (R-Westerly); former Lieutenant Governor Bernard Jackvony; former Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey; and former Republican State Party chairwoman Patricia Morgan — seemed oblivious to the bishop’s warnings. Perhaps strident pro-lifer Laffey ought to practice obedience, capitulate to his bishop and encourage other Catholic followers of Giuliani to follow.
 
Tobin, meanwhile, ought to worry about what’s morally wrong at One Cathedral Square.
 
Since his consecration as bishop, some lawyers representing clients alleging sexual abuse by priests say they have been ignored when they came forward under the so-called Pastoral Program initiated in 2005 by former Bishop Robert E. Mulvey. About 50 cases were processed under Mulvey’s Pastoral Program, providing counseling for the victims and about $2 million in cash settlements. (The original settlements of at least another 38 victims, from one legal group alone, cost the diocese under Mulvey $14.25 million, and there were other settlements after that.)
 
Why does a bishop, who is so fixated on what is morally and dogmatically acceptable concerning a woman’s pregnancy, ignore what is moral and dogmatically acceptable on the question of sexual abuse of children by priests?
 
The Catholic Church and the Diocese of Providence have always been arbitrary in defining who is moral and Catholic, and who is not.
 
Heavy contributors to Catholic Charities are divorced and remarried with ease while their blue-collar equivalents are banished from the pews. The late Mafia kingpin Raymond L.S. Patriarca is given full burial privileges in a Catholic cemetery, while a beloved Catholic priest who chose suicide is stripped of the reverend title in his obituary.
 
Loving relatives are denied the chance to be witnesses at their loved ones’ weddings, baptisms, or confirmations because of one priest’s judgment that they are not worthy. In some cases, that same priest is later defrocked for sexual abuse of young people.
 
Giuliani, a former seminarian, is twice divorced and remarried, a public philanderer and arguably a political slut (Giuliani nominated — and then withdrew — his friend Bernard Kerik, an unscrupulous libertine, for the nation’s top security job). Why anyone even considers him a Catholic at this point may be the eighth glorious mystery.
 
Critics charge that the Catholic Church, which often adopts the Christian symbol of the fish, may be deteriorating morally. Mr. Patriarca could have told Tobin that the fish still rots from the top down.