Major Jesuit James Martin Misleads Millions On Repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell

I came across this post on Christmas Eve and decided not to saying anything on it till after Christmas day. The whole piece got my blood boiling. Which was one reason I needed to set it aside till after the Feast Day.

Father Martin is well known and among other things has wrote The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything. He is also the cultural editor at America magazine where he wrote this unfortunate piece Will Catholics Rejoice over the Repeal of DADT?.

Now that piece is bad enough if he had stayed over at America on its blog. However it got reprinted in the the very big Huffington Post.

One could say technically there was no Catholic position on the repeal of DADT. In fact I would be the first to say that a Catholic in good standing could support the repeal tooth and nail. However Father's piece is misleading because he only tells half the story.

Further a huge important voice is absent. That is Archbishop Timothy Broglio, Archbishop for the Military Services in the United States of America who was very much against the repeal!! It is indeed strange that America and perhaps Father Martin that urges us too look to the Bishops that have expertise in certain areas would just pretend the Archbishop of the largest Diocese of the World does not exist. I wonder how Broglio felt when reading this article.

Does Father Martin think Broglio is just some play acting Bishop down the road?

As I have stated one can be for the repeal of Don't Ask Don;t Tell and still be a faithful Catholic. However Father Martin is practicing deception here by just focusing on line of the Catechism as to unjust discrimination. I say deception because it is deliberate. Father Martin is very AWARE of the Document by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith issued in 1986 by Cardinal Ratzinger. That is LETTER TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
ON THE PASTORAL CARE OF HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS.

Ratzinger talks about "unjust discrimination". Read it all.

Again in 1992 Cardinal Ratzinger and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued SOME CONSIDERATIONS CONCERNING THE RESPONSE TO LEGISLATIVE PROPOSALS ON THE NON-DISCRIMINATION OF HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS .

I am pretty darn sure Father Martin aware of this. The future Pope again talks about the issues above in EVEN MORE DETAIL. In fact the Congregation wrote:

11. There are areas in which it is not unjust discrimination to take sexual orientation into account, for example, in the placement of children for adoption or foster care, in employment of teachers or athletic coaches, and in military recruitment.

Now note the Church is not saying that people with same sex attraction cannot be in the military. When I have talked about this issue I made the point that the above statement cannot be taken as Church teaching that the Military must ban homosexuals from the military. I just wish Father Martin would have been more honest and open as I have. Especially since no one reads my blog and millions have read his piece no doubt.

I think one could be a very devout Catholic in the public square and support the repeal of Don't Ask Dont' Tell. See Congressman Cao of New Orleans. You can also make the case that in the particular circumstances in the USA that maybe this was "unjust" discrimination. However Martin just assumes it and does mot make the case. He very much felt free to ignore the major concerns of the Archbishop of the Military.

That has got me really upset about this article. It is not the underlying issue of DADT so much but the deception of Father Martin. I don't always agree with Father martin but I respect him. Now he goes on a list of people who again I will have to double check a lot more in order to see what he leaving out.