07/20/08
Catholic pundit and wannabe Washington power-broker Deal Hudson has come jumping out from under his post-Crisis-Magazine rock and is now an advisor to John McCain, a presidential candidate who is about as interesting as William Scranton. As a member of the Catholics For McCain National Steering Committee, Hudson has brought his past dragging behind him. A blog called Catholics United has gotten up a petition to the McCain campaign to have Hudson removed, citing at the top of a list the 2004 revelation that he had been fired from Fordham U.'s faculty and sued for having relations with an 18-year-old student.(1)
Now Catholics United appears to be a left-leaning group with an affinity for the bolshies at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. When such folks use the word "partisan" they mean "Republican." They do not like the fact that several years ago, Hudson outed and got fired a USSCB employee who was actively supporting a pro-abortion Democrat presidential candidate. Supporting a pro-abortion Democrat is, of course, not partisan.
Nevertheless Catholics United is right about Hudson having no place among Catholic campaign advisors just as The National Catholic Reporter was right for uncovering the Fordham affair.
Hudson is a member of an extensive network of Catholic cronies with hubs in New York, Washington and The Monaghanian Empire. One of its artillery men, Bill Donohue of The Catholic League For Religious and Civil Rights, fired back with "Catholics put a premium on forgiveness and reconciliation; they do not conduct vindictive campaigns of personal destruction under the guise of promoting the Catholic cause." (2)
This is a new bit of ordnance that these guys have started using. Question, with good reason, the character of any one of them and they return volley with Catholic principles, the forgiveness and defamation shells. Well, here's a Catholic principle that Jesus established as told in Matthew 23: telling the truth about Pharisees, people who say the right things and look the right way but who are whitewashed tombs, out-for-themslves whitewashed tombs.
And as long as we're on the subject of what did Jesus do, how about turning the other cheek? The Catholic League doesn't seem to do so when it goes after "slanderous assaults on" and "bigoted portrayals of" the Catholic Church etc.
I'm all for giving a damn good defensive thrashing to people who do serious material harm to Catholics. However, quite frankly, as a Catholic who has faith that the gates of hell will not prevail against his church, who reads books at great cost to watching TV, who goes to movies maybe twice a year and who is well aware that the media is religion-retarded (I work for it.), I have long thought that the Catholic League's antics are publicity stunts to get couch-potatoes to write checks so they can congratulate themselves that they're doing some good in the world.
Another thing that Jesus did was eschew political power. He rejected the kingdoms of the world offered by Satan. What's with all these Catholics thinking that we're going to have a more just society if they get in bed with the greedy business people running the oil companies and defense contractors?
Why is Deal Hudson so precious anyway? There are plenty of guys who could do the honest and church-serving work, discuss culture from a Catholic viewpoint, express the truths that Deal Hudson has but who don't have his history of three marriages and whatever personal problems that led him to his office at Fordham with a student after sucking a lime slice out of her cleavage [Would your middle-aged father or husband go out drinking with college students?]. Just like there are plenty of people who could be Supreme Court Justices who believe in strict construction and the religious basis of law but who are not gratuitously nasty drunks or fricking batshit crazy.
Character does count. Kennedy's character counts. Clinton's character counts. Hudson's character counts.
The fact that these people are sticking up for a guy that they should be stringing up suggests that it's more about the cronyism and hidden agendas than it is about Catholic causes.
Yes, Catholics put a premium on forgiveness and reconciliation, however reconciliation does not mean that everything is going to be the same as before. Reconciliation does not necessarily mean restoration. We wouldn't let the pederastic scout leader back in the troop even if he were publicly and genuinely sorry, would we?
Then there's also penance. Penance, which was public in the early days of the church, can be a way of demonstrating that one really is sorry and is trying not to do it again.
Dr. Hudson may have indeed expressed regret several times, but I don't think going from editor and publisher of Crisis to operator of InsideCatholic.com, still with the input of the departed William F. Buckley's National Review people, is much of a penance. Dr. Hudson should get far away from politics and become perhaps a shoe salesman or custodian in a nursing home. Now that would be penance.
(1) http://catholics-united.org/?q=node/157
(2) http://www.catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1463
Copyright 2008 by Neal J. Conway