Buckley v. Mahony

[This is from dot.Commonweal:]

William F. Buckley vs. Cardinal Mahony

March 21, 2006, 11:43 pm

Look at the Right go. Yet another salvo from the National Review shot across the bow of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Buckley's conclusion is worth quoting in toto:

President Bush endorsed the House bill and asks the Senate to act on it. He hardly understands himself to be rejecting the canon of Christian behavior towards our fellow men by making the point that free and independent societies have the right to prescribe immigration codes, and need especially to reject such distortions of Christian dogma and practice as invite the wrong kind of attention to appropriate divisions between church and state.

It strikes me as a stretch to suggest that Cardinal Mahony's call for civil disobedience, should the bits of HR 4437 he finds objectionable be signed into law, is meant as an attack on the right of "free and independent societies...to prescribe immigration code." Likewise, no bishops have intimated that President Bush "understands himself to be rejecting the canon of Christian behavior towards our fellow men." The whole canon? Bit much. The concern, I think, is just the part about the works of mercy.

But I should let the cardinal speak for himself.

by Grant Gallicho
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