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Presidential candidate Kamala Harris is refusing to attend the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner (October 17), a New York Catholic charity event which has been traditionally attended by presidential candidates since 1960, except for 1984 when Walter Mondale stiffed the event.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York and host of the event, believes that Harris’ spurning his invitation doesn’t bode well for her presidential prospects given that Mondale only won one state out of fifty, his home state of Minnesota.
Others are calling out Harris for snobbery and contempt for Catholics. However, I think Harris made the right decision.
Harris has nothing to gain by showing up to Dolan’s party. She already has the Catholic vote…and probably Dolan’s.
The majority of Catholics historically vote democrat no matter how radically hostile to Catholicism their candidate is, including “Catholic” Joe Biden. In fact, a recent study confirmed that between 2018 and 2024, 83% of donations from major Catholic charity organizations went to pro-abortion Democrat-affiliated political action committees.
Some people still scratch their heads at this phenomenon, but I don’t. Since at least the mid 1960’s, Catholics have become increasingly anti-Catholic in everything but their traditions and fiestas.
I already laid out in a previous column (“And we’re concerned about Pagans in Paris?”, Aug. 15, 2024) some pretty damning facts. According to a 2021 Pew Research poll, the majority of Catholics support abortion, same-sex marriage, and artificial birth control - all stuff Harris and the Democrats radically champion.
Dolan, as archbishop of one of the largest dioceses in the nation, has continually demonstrated that he prefers to be a jolly-old bishop in the “Church of Nice” as he is repeatedly squeamish when it comes to doing anything more than whining when Catholic moral teaching is threatened.
In 2019, Dolan clashed with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo over a law authorizing late-term abortions. Dolan said all the right things, but took no action, refusing to excommunicate Cuomo or even deny him Holy Communion, falling back on the tired excuse that “excommunication should not be used as a weapon.”
Nowhere does the Catholic Church teach that excommunication is anything but a medicinal measure. The end goal of excommunication or even the temporary denial of Holy Communion is always to bring a wayward Catholic back to the fold. It’s a “pastoral” action, not “a weapon.”
Dolan knows this because in the same statement where he refused to discipline Cuomo, he said:
"From a pastoral perspective, if a pastor…knows of a grave situation involving a parishioner, it is his duty to address that issue personally and directly with the parishioner.”
This is true when the “grave situation” is “personal.” But Cuomo, at the time, was no ordinary “personal” parishioner. He was the governor of the state of New York and his support for abortion up to delivery was a glaring public matter.
In 2011, Dolan pretty much did the same side-step when New York legalized same-sex marriage. Dolan spoke out against the legislation but took no action, causing the author of the blog “Queering the Church” to write: “the really interesting thing about the Catholic bishops and NY gay marriage is not how vigorously they fought against it (as the headlines would have it), but how lukewarm this opposition was overall, and how calm they have been in response.”
Appearing on Fox and Friends for Thanksgiving in 2010, Dolan, in an apparent attempt to be “a nice guy,” said that God could be a “him or her (or) whatever you want:”
“We're grateful to God. We're conscious that somebody, some call him or her, whatever you want, somebody beyond us is in charge and we are immensely grateful that it's not about us.” (Fox and Friends, Nov. 24, 2010).
At the time, Dolan wasn’t just the archbishop of New York, he was president of the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops and he said the God could be a “him or her” thing on national television. So you see why Candidate Harris isn’t much concerned about losing any Catholic votes by dissing Dolan’s invite.
Despite Dolan’s public pouting, Harris knows she can count on Dolan’s vote as well as the majority of New York and U.S. Catholics because most U.S. bishops appear to be more concerned over “mean tweets” than aborting babies up to delivery - which, by the way, is why Harris will win Guam’s straw poll. After all, we’re used to voting for pro-aborts.
Tim Rohr has resided in Guam since 1987. He has raised a family of 11 children, owned several businesses, and is active in local issues via his blog, JungleWatch.info, letters to local publications, and occasional public appearances. He may be contacted at timrohr.guam@gmail.com
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