www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall CatholicVote intentionally ignoring Eastern Catholics?

There's a list at CatholicVote of all the US bishops who've spoken against the HHS mandate being maintained by the AmericanPapist Thomas Peters. He says at the bottom of the list "There are 195 dioceses in the U.S. So over __% of U.S. Bishops who are the head of a diocese have spoken out so far."

A number of Eastern Catholics commented on the article with their bishops' names, as the author asked people to do if their bishop wasn't listed but did speak out. The author is responding to others and actively adding bishops from comments, but he's ignored every Eastern Catholic.

I assumed oversight and goodwill, so I sent him a message on G+. He didn't respond, so I assumed he's not active on G+ and I went where I know he's active and responded to a Tweet. No response. I commented in the article again, sent another G+ message, and sent another tweet, but all are ignored without response, as were the messages from fellow Eastern Catholics.

I shared my frustration and an Eastern Catholic friend said she had a similar experience with the AmericanPapist Thomas Peters a couple years ago with him intentionally leaving out Eastern Catholics and refusing to respond to her and she's not followed anything he's done since.

I called CatholicVote and the lady wanted to know if the Eastern Catholic bishops were included in the 195 bishops he's listing. It made sense that they had to be if the military ordinariate was included, but I went to the USCCB website and counted all the dioceses.

http://www.usccb.org/about/bishops-and-dioceses/all-dioceses.cfm

My counting might be off, but I came up with 197. Either way, the Eastern Catholics have to be included among his 195 count. And yet he's refusing to publish American Catholic bishops' support on an American Catholic website about an American political issue even when he specifically included them in the count of potential respondents. It is false, misleading, and undermines his own cause. But CatholicVote confirmed that he intended to only list Roman Catholic bishops, making it appear his silence on the east was intentional shunning.

The lady at CatholicVote kindly told me that after talking to her, he'll now include Eastern Catholic bishops on the enumerated list. He's added more Roman Catholics, some 20 minutes after they are suggested, but he still hasn't responded to the Eastern Catholics or included them on the list.

After I posted the above, he updated his page with special rules for Eastern Catholics, many of whom have no web presence at all.

He's finally responded!

http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=640257

There is no apology and he stands by the requirement that the text must be online for Eastern Catholics. He also says that many other Eastern Catholics wrote him messages to make the same complaint.

Fr. Michael O'Laughlin, who has been on EWTN with Fr. Groeschel, tweeted him about Bishop Dino, but he and all the other Eastern Catholics mentioned since Bp. Kudrick are still not there. He said he is under time constraints, but later-mentioned Roman Catholics are still being added. He said, "Silence on a subject does not imply animus. Would that I had more time to sing the praises of the Eastern Rites."

I asked him to accept the word of Eastern Catholics, especially trustworthy ones like priests, without requiring an online copy. He would not discuss it publicly.

He did update the page's note to reflect the same stance with softer wording.

"NOTE: If you would like a statement by an Eastern Rite bishop to be included please send me the link/document or post it in the comments! Thank you. I’m trying to provide documentation for all the bishops I list and Eastern Rite bishops have been harder for me to find. Thanks for the understanding!"

And this attitude comes as a surprise to you?

Yes, the Cinderella story continues ...

I have to say, I'm not at all surprised now that Bishop John posted the letter on the main page of the Eparchy of Parma's website. I'm sure he figured out early on that his support for the cause would not be included in the official tally otherwise.

I'm spoiled.

Yeah, I can certainly understand how difficult it must be to track our 18 jurisdictions versus the 180 or so Latin ones.

Thank goodness the Copts, Ethiopians, Eritreans, Russians, Italo-Greek-Albanians, Slovaks, Croats, and Hungarians don't have their own hierarchs in the US - it would absolutely overwhelm the system. Pretentious twerp!

A NJ Roman Catholic bishop's link just goes to the bishop's bio. There's no mention of the HHS mandate at the link. He accepted the word of a parishioner for that Roman Catholic bishop, but still requires an online statement which he vets before he'll include an Eastern Catholic bishop.

He complained that after my attempts at private and direct contact that I posted publicly, telling me to email him like "your Eastern Rite friends," which I did at his request. He added Bp. Richard Stephen, but he didn't respond to any of my private messages, not even with an acknowledgement of receipt.

He says he thinks this is a fair "deal" for the "Eastern rite" and that he expects "more understanding and charity." In charity, I assume he doesn't understand that he's created an oppressive double standard.

He's lucky I haven't paid his site a visit. . . yet.

As I read the OP's latest post, I can't decide whether to be sad or angry. I guess anger is not appropriate as treatment by some within the Roman Rite led my family away from Eastern Catholicism three generations ago.

It does sadden me to see that there are still those, I suspect probably a majority of ill-informed people who nominally self identify themselves as Roman Catholic, who still have neither the consciousness of the existence in any real sense of the Eastern Catholic world, or if they do, they are more often than they should be either dismissive or condescending.

It's OK for the organizers of the March for Life to parade a few token Orthodox bishops to the podium with the Roman Catholic bishops and let them say a word or two, but would they do the same for your bishops? Probably not - they either wouldn't be aware of them and if they were, they would be afraid of alienating their new Orthodox friends.

I remember a local Irish Catholic politician my age from here who was well educated in Catholic schools and colleges and was aware of the bitter history between my Orthodox parish and the neighboring BCC church. He would tease me about belonging to the 'Junior Varsity along with your neighbors.' He thought he was being funny, but I always felt that under the surface that his culture and his Catholic education had programmed him to react that way without ever noticing how offensive that was.

We all make choices in life and as you know, I respect those of you who are able to be loyal to the Holy See and protective of your Eastern heritage. With that in mind, I would urge the OP and other Eastern Catholics who are equally perplexed by this to write the Nuncio in Washington, the Chairman of the USCCB and your own Diocesan bishops to protest this treatment and ask for better public education on your behalf.

In my mind's eye, I can't help but think of a joyous celebration back in 2008 in Johnstown, PA on the 25th anniversary of the late Metropolitan Nicholas' consecration as an Orthodox bishop. An image of his dear friends, the retired Roman Catholic Bishop Adamec of Altoona/Johnstown and the late Metropolitan Basil of Pittsburgh standing together as friends and colleagues at the end of the banquet came to my mind. Those are the things that count in the end, not the self-centered behavior of some activist with his own agenda.

Yes they do. Metropolitan Stefan Soroka spoke at the March a few years ago, so we are represented at least sometimes.



Another occasion to remember was the attendance of Cardinals Rigali and McCarrick on Philadelphia at the 100th Anniversary Liturgy for Bishop Soter Ortinsky's appointment.

Every year, Metropolitan Basil and the RC Bishop of Pittsburgh would get together to bless the Nativity display at Steel Plaza.

Alas, there are plenty of ignorant folks out there.

I didn't really want to get into this but I see the thread continues to make criticisms of this blogger and moving on to it somehow representing a general lack of respect for ECs, and Orthodox.

I encourage you to read the thread in CAF. Tom Peters/American Papist enters here: http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?p=8898226#post8898226 (I think CatholicVote is more like the host for Peters and other bloggers)

I think Tom is being unfairly represented.

He added a clear statement to his blog about how to facilitate getting EC Bishop's statements up. I found the statement an objective statement aimed at improving the representation of EC bishops.

When I looked this afternoon at the American Papist blog being referenced [catholicvote.org] I noted he had added "131. Archbishop-elect William Skurla, Eparchy of Pittsburgh (better link needed)" so I guess he was making the compromise of posting a Eparch where at this time there is no statement in evidence at all re the HHS, having searched the Eparchy site myself again just now.

I really don't want to fan the flames of division. I do encourage you to read Tom's response on CAF [forums.catholic.com] and consider if some charity would not be an appropriate response.

Well, I generally stay far away from CAF as I have always found it to not be a welcoming place for Orthodox - even us reasonable folks.

Frankly, I did not see any real response to the basic complaint raised by the OP here, rather a deflection to the ramblings of an agenda-driven Orthodox priest, Fr. Hans Jacobes and his friends at Monamarkos. When all else fails, quote a Catholic 'defector', Rod Dreher, who has his own agenda and found himself neck deep in internecine Orthodox in-fighting last year. Yeah,right....

I will be the first to concede that trying to get a joint statement out of the Assembly of Orthodox Bishops of North America on anything other than what day of the week it is, and even there the calendar issue would probably get in the way, is a real problem. However, the constant whining by the political conservatives within the Orthodox Church about the supposed 'liberalism' of the non-OCA Bishops on social and moral issues is a red herring and a pile of you know what.

Sorry, I appreciate that this isn't the place for me to air my wash on inter-Orthodox problems, but I felt that I had to comment since readers here were referred there.

Going back to the first point which started this thread, the OP really speaks to the respect issue - one which I know that many,many Eastern Catholics and Orthodox whose roots trace back to Eastern Catholicism face when dealing with the majority influences in our respective communions. Hence, I relate to the OP's concerns and share them in my own way.

None of this has anything to really do with the issue at hand, which is freedom of conscience and the short-sighted and scientifically misguided justification for the actions of HHS. I have little doubt that this rule will be checked by a Temporary Restraining Order and the ensuing litigation will probably attain landmark status.

Yes, time to bring in the lawyers! And as it directly relates to the spirit of the OP, I am quite certain that when it comes to funding this now inevitable legal effort, the Eastern Catholics will not be forgotten.