My column this week will only be available on my website….

You would never know Sean Hannity is a pro-life Catholic by his interview March 9 with Fr. Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International.
Euteneuer is a highly respected leader in the pro-life movement and a priest. He appeared on Fox’s Hannity and Colmes by invitation to challenge Hannity on his unorthodox support of contraception. Euteneuer said he previously wrote Hannity in 2004 an unanswered request to meet.
Euteneuer was prompted to publicly denounce Hannity’s departure from Catholic (and sola scriptura as well, I believe) teaching after listening to Hannity’s March 2 radio show when Hannity glibly apologized for accidentally eating meat on a Lenten Friday.
Euteneuer responded in a newsletter…

If apologies are the order of the day, then the repentance I would like to hear out of Sean Hannity’s mouth is for his shameless – even scandalous – promotion of birth control. Yes, I have heard him personally say, “I have no problem with birth control. It’s a good thing.” (Another bit of profound theological reasoning.)….
The moral of the story is that Catholic men and women in the media need to be truly Catholic or at least stop being hypocrites.

… which is what prompted the call to appear on Hannity and Colmes.
If you haven’t watched the video, you should.

I was appalled not just by the disrespect Hannity showed Euteneuer but also by the same cheap shots he dispensed toward Catholic leaders as would a liberal. After all that, Hannity bizarrely challenged Euteneuer to a credentials duel….

Hannity began by invoking, “Judge not lest you be judged,” certainly the best known and most abused verse in the Bible, solely flaunted by those being called to account. Any year now I expect “Matthew 7:1” signs to replace “John 3:16” signs behind football goalposts.
In context this verse means not to judge hypocritically or self-righteously. In actuality, the Bible cautions us to judge carefully between good and bad people and things.
I’m sure Hannity does this all the time. When his daughter begins dating, for instance, Hannity will certainly “judge” poorly the boy knocking at his door dressed in Goth with a nose ring and pupils the size of pinheads.
Hannity then hit below the belt: “Maybe you ought to spend a little more time that our Church covered up one of the worst sex scandals and I wasn’t involved in it. And the fact that public people after that are willing to still be Catholic is something you should be applauding. Considering the levels of corruption at the highest levels of the Church was frankly embarrassing to every person.”
I could not provide a clearer or meaner example of the psychological defense mechanism called deflection – when someone mentions something that embarrasses another person, and that person redirects the conversation to someone else as bad or worse.
In other words, Hannity was saying the Catholic Church has no moral standing because amongst its leaders have been found sinners, for which it has repented, by the way. Hannity’s rule would silence every Christian church since Jesus ascended.
Does Hannity really want his Church to reward those who stuck with it during a nasty time by going silent on sin? Apparently so, at least Hannity’s sin.
Then Hannity switched gears as if to say he knew as much or more on the topic than Euteneuer anyway: “Do you know that I went to a seminary? Do you know that I studied Latin? Do you know that I studied theology?”
I’ll tell you something. I never went to seminary, I never studied Latin, and I’m not even a Catholic. But I have studied Catholic doctrine on contraception, and I get what the Catholic Church is saying about it and its connection to abortion. And I have to wonder how Hannity spent his time in seminary.
Hannity finally pulled a combo “everybody’s-doing-it/lesser-of-two-evils” line from the liberal playbook: “Understanding there are self control issues for all in society, understanding that people don’t share the Catholic faith… would you not rather they use birth control than abortion, sir?”
Euteneuer pointed out 60% of aborting mothers are using contraception. Had he been given time, I’m sure he would have also said some methods of contraception actually cause abortions.
There was more to the conversation, but Hannity’s closing salient question was, “Why don’t you work on real important issues instead of superfluous issues?”
In simplest terms, contraception means “anti-conception.” The contraception mentality is merely the embryonic form of the abortion mentality.
This is not a superfluous issue.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...