Catholics and Torture, cont...

Andrew Sullivan comes to some of the same conclusions that I did regarding the Catholic hierarchy's seeming reluctance to take on Thiessen's perversion of the Magisterium:

But I think the hierarchy's refusal to tackle this head-on has been a great and saddening failure. I noted when the Pope met with Bush that he made no statement whatever about the question of torture, and I am sorry to say I believe the silence of the hierarchy is a political silence, designed to promote one political party - not to defend a core teaching. If they can speak out in defense of illegal immigrants, and on the death penalty, they can surely speak out with blinding clarity on what the Bush-Cheney administration did to abuse, torture and rob imprisoned human beings of the last shred of human dignity they had - without even subjecting them to minimal standards of due process. They did this - and this is simply an incontrovertible fact - to the innocent as well as the guilty, and they made no serious attempt to distinguish between the two.

I think the Bishops and Cardinals in the US need to speak out directly and loudly and insistently on this and demand a Truth Commission to get to the bottom of it. I think we need a homily sent to every parish. I think we need in every state the kind of stand that the hierarchy has taken on a much more minor issue, like civil marriage rights for gay couples. And I believe it is a scandal - an absolute scandal - that the hierarchy has been so absent at a time when bearing witness to this intrinsic evil, conducted directly by the government itself, is so necessary for the future of our civilization and the integrity of this country.