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The moral depravity of Andrew Cuomo & Friends

When Catholics dodge the abortion issue in conversation, they betray the Gospel and amplify the catechetical failures of the past and present.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks Nov. 13, 2018, during a news conference in New York City. (CNS photo/Jeenah Moon, Reuters)

Writing recently on women seeking the presidency and the “likability” factor in our politics, Peggy Noonan made a tart observation: “There are a lot of male candidates with likability problems. Some, such as Andrew Cuomo, a three-term governor of a large state, are so unlikable they aren’t even mentioned as contenders.”

Without contesting Miss Noonan’s point, I’d like to offer an addendum: Andrew Cuomo is too morally depraved to be the President of the United States — or the Governor of New York, for that matter.

Of all the obscenities surrounding Governor Cuomo’s January 22 signing of a bill whose title (“The Reproductive Health Act”) would make George Orwell gag, the most cringe-inducing was the signing ceremony itself. You can watch it on YouTube, if you’ve the stomach for it. The ceremony is replete with the self-congratulatory political blather to which many of us have become inured. What is truly sickening is the unholy glee with which Cuomo signed this sordid bill — a demonic mirth shared by the other miscreants on the platform with him.

Just what are these people celebrating?

The New York RHA declares abortion on demand, at any moment in a pregnancy, up to birth, a fundamental right. A healthy infant born in New York State today could have been legally killed yesterday, according to the RHA. And the killing would not be pretty. For third-trimester abortions involve either poisoning the unborn child or collapsing its skull by the grotesque procedure known as “dilation and extraction;” the mother then gives “birth” to a dead baby who’s been executed in a manner that would revolt anyone with an iota of feeling, were similar violence perpetrated on a dog or cat.

I recently met a young man who was born at 24 weeks of gestation, when he weighed a little over a pound. My young friend was considered a child, a living member of the human community, when he spent months in the neo-natal intensive care unit of his local hospital. The New York RHA permits children of the exact same gestational age to be surgically chopped up in the womb (“dilation and curettage”) — and its sponsors imagine this legal license to dismember a helpless human being while inflicting excruciating pain to be a civilizational advance, rather than the reversion to barbarism it is.

The gory-body-parts school of pro-life activism has never appealed to me, because women caught in the dilemma of unplanned pregnancy are looking for friends who will offer them compassion and assistance, not force them to watch the obstetrical equivalent of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. But the unprecedented nature of the New York RHA demands that Andrew Cuomo & Friends be confronted with the reality of what they wrought and what they celebrate — which is the legal butchery of innocent children.

There are over 3,300 crisis pregnancy centers in the United States. They embody the virtue of solidarity by offering women in crisis the life-affirming care of real medicine, not the death-dealing witchcraft of the abortionist. With humane alternatives readily available, it is ludicrous to claim, as Cuomo & Friends do, that access to abortion up until birth is an imperative of justice. Indeed, any such claim makes a mockery of any rational concept of justice, for the New York RHA legalizes the brutal exercise of raw power over an innocent human life.

Another facet of this awfulness demands attention: Andrew Cuomo, and all pro-“choice” politicians who self-identify as Catholics, bespeak a massive failure of catechesis and Christian formation in the Church in the United States. In the face of that failure, the people of the Church, ordained and lay, are called to a stringent examination of conscience. When bishops fail to declare, in the strongest and clearest terms, that support for immoral bills such as the New York RHA puts the legislator or executive in a gravely impaired position within the communion of the Church, their dereliction of duty compounds that catechetical failure.  When lay Catholics dodge the abortion issue in conversation because it’s too uncomfortable or might make them look “conservative” or “anti-feminist,” they betray the Gospel and amplify the catechetical failures of the past and present.

Moral depravity stalks the land. Calling it such is deemed “extremist” by United States senators. We all have work to do. And we all must summon the courage to do it.


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About George Weigel 483 Articles
George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington's Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies. He is the author of over twenty books, including Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (1999), The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy (2010), and The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform. His most recent books are The Next Pope: The Office of Peter and a Church in Mission (2020), Not Forgotten: Elegies for, and Reminiscences of, a Diverse Cast of Characters, Most of Them Admirable (Ignatius, 2021), and To Sanctify the World: The Vital Legacy of Vatican II (Basic Books, 2022).

32 Comments

  1. This is just beyond belief that anyone could perform such an act on a God given infant with a soul from the moment of conception. I realize there are inconvenient pregnancies, but there are other ways to deal with a live human being.

    • Sad to say but we will always have those among us who are fully capable of killing the unborn by whatever means. What is beyond belief are the number of epicene bishops who have ignored the actions of the politicos for so long that we can even have a “Catholic” Cuomo (or name your own Catholic office holder) who remains completely untouched by the Church. The silence of the bishops in question nationwide is deafening. To me that is what is beyond belief and it certainly calls into question the beliefs of the bishops as well as their moral courage.

      • Feb. 7th: I agree. Evil begets evil and our Shepherds, most of them, have never really stood strong against the mass slaughter of innocent human babies. Many stand with politicians instead of with Christ. And so evil advances across our land and has already claimed the lives of millions and millions of innocent babies – Shepherds: where are you? Where to you stand? Why are you not protecting these tiny members of your flocks? There will be an accounting! But there is still time…stand with Christ and His Church!! Or Christ will not stand with you.

    • I wish the Bishops would speak like Mr. Weigel…..I can still see the happiness of Dolan welcoming Biden to Palm Sunday Mass or the many pictures of Dolan hamming it up with Cuomo.

  2. How can 63,000,000 plus abortions since Roe be ignored, it can’t but the bishops have done just that. So now the extreme get more extreme and still the bishops do nothing. This is a huge stain on the Catholic Church. All the discussion and focus of the misconduct of some bishops and priests is a now used as a convenient means to ignore this abhorrent evil. Before that it was the illegal immigration, social justice etc anything that many bishops and priest can employ to avoid discussing the evil of abortion. I might add it’s an interesting irony that President Trump, with all his past moral baggage, is the only president to steadfastly stand up against abortion. The so called catholic politicians at the federal and state level for the most part are silent on this evil. So abortion laws get more extreme and the evil left triumphs.

  3. “But the unprecedented nature of the New York RHA demands that Andrew Cuomo & Friends be confronted with the reality of what they wrought and what they celebrate — which is the legal butchery of innocent children…Moral depravity stalks the land. Calling it such is deemed “extremist” by United States senators. We all have work to do. And we all must summon the courage to do it.”
    .
    Bringing a different reality up is a bit of a dicey matter as well. What about the mothers involved? Especially now? Say two babies are due on June 1. Mother #1 has a late term abortion on May 25th, ostensibly because she is not supported, is being pressured by her boyfriend, family is absent, etc. Perhaps the baby has a non-life threatening deformity that nevertheless is somewhat of a challenge to deal with (either emotionally, financially, etc). Two doctors sign off on her “need” for a late term abortion because the mother’s mental health is being affected. She pays someone to kill her baby–an abortion. Some time later on joins Rachel’s Vineyard, or some post abortion support group that is sympathetic to her broken heart.
    .
    Mother #2 on the other hand has her baby on June 1, but she kills the baby on June 7, ostensibly due to lack of support from her boyfriend, family, friends. The baby has a deformity that is non-life threatening but expensive to deal with, and she snaps.
    She kills the baby herself. She will probably goes to prison. At the very least there is a trial, her name in the paper, and she is forever considered a baby killer–a Google Search just won’t let her crime hide even if she is found innocent of killing the baby (some kind of insanity defense)
    .
    I am not sure there is much logic in treating these two woman differently. I confess to not knowing quite what the answer to this is, though.

    • Perhaps Cuomo’s gang did not consider this scenario. Since it doesn’t require a doctor why not let anyone do it. The natural extension, of course, includes killing your born children. What’s next?

  4. In response to the screams of the working class, in 1812 England a law was passed imposing the death penalty for anyone who destroyed a machine. Today, after two Progressive centuries, the brain-dead elites celebrate anyone who destroys a living child. Aztec incantations in suit and tie.

  5. The moral depravity of so many priests, bishops, and cardinals is not difficult to understand when you consider the fact that the Vatican has been run by heretics, apostates, and enemies of Christ for the last 50+ years. Corruption-financial, moral, theological, philosophical-permeates every part of the institution from the top man on down. Nothing is sacred any longer. Truth does not matter. This has been the teaching and practice of the entire hierarchy and so we have Cuomo who is simply a “son of the institutional church”, following its leaders and precepts.

    Since all are corrupt, no one is disciplined for dissent, for heresy, for spreading a false Gospel, for idolatry, for sacrilege, for blasphemy, particularly the “popes”!

  6. Today I attended a Holocaust Memorial Day event. One of the guest speakers was the son of Hans Frank, Hitler’s strongman in Poland who was executed at Nuremberg. I suggested to him that his father’s unbounded love for Hitler had blinded him to the wickedness of what he did. He replied that his father knew exactly that his crimes were evil, but that he was a careerist – he wasn’t a convinced Nazi – who’d take any job that came with a big house.

    Cuomo is exactly the same. He knows that he is acting against his conscience. He knows that for this he will burn in hell, and he is willing to do so as long as he burns for Planned Parenthood.

      • He knows, or certainly should, that abortion is a mortal sin (and saying, “Well, I don’t think it is…” doesn’t count, because he should also know that we don’t get to decide). Full knowledge.
        He is supporting it, freely. Full consent.
        It is a grave matter.

  7. Cuomo recently stated that he “is not [in government] to legislate religion.” This may be true, but he should certainly be in office to legislate humaneness. Humaneness is the virtue that guides a person to cause the least amount of harm to another person (or even to an animal). If Cuomo is not even capable of doing this, then he has no business legislating at all!

  8. The irony of it all G Weigel is the major premise of Mario’s Democrat Convention address that Republicans had adapted to a Darwinian Survival of the Fittest. Wrong here as well as elsewhere it was actually Brit phi sociologist Herbert Spencer who initiated the term years prior to Darwin’s writings following his HMS Beagle Galapagos expedition. Spencer like psychologists today analogized animal behavior with human and used Darwin to that end. The irony is son Andrew has adapted to animal behavior moreso than daddy approving imaginary animal instinct to human reproduction. The fact is Animals protect their young infinitely moreso than Democrats. Survival of the Fittest is the Creator’s Natural Law regarding animals not Men. Jesus Christ established the spiritual law of survival inherent in the Eternal Law of Goodness, of compassion, charity, love of the other. Andrew Cuomo is as bereft of intelligent appraisal of reality as was his father and even more depraved by his embrace of diabolic hatred of human life made in God’s image as negligible if weak, helpless, entirely dependent on him or others like him.

  9. The last sentence “We must all summon the courage to do it”, leaves open what we must do to stop this evil. Calling senators, having marches for life are certainly good things, but much more is needed. While not talked much in this blog site, we need the sword Christ has given us through his Mother, that is the Rosary. It is a powerful sword that can conquer evil. So a massive dedicated rosary brigade, where the rosary is preached and then said in all the parishes is a means we must use. The Rosary has conquered evil in the past and can do so now. A recent example of the power of the Rosary is that of Bishop Oliver Doeme in northeaster Nigeria where he had an vision of Christ to pray and preach the rosary to conquer the Boko Haram. (The complete story can be looked up on the internet). The Rosary, if we are willing to humble ourselves preach and pray it, can expel this evil

  10. I would not trust Andrew Cuomo to care for a plant. He might decide to compost it if he found its care too burdensome.

  11. In fairness to Mario Cuomo he had justifiable criticism of a Rep Party that radically cut social programs for the poor many run by Catholic rel orders, for drug addicts, the mentally compromised. Under Regan I witnessed destitute mentally ill men feeding out of garbage barrels in Battery Park NY some kneeling when the bells rang from the Chapel where St Elizabeth Ann Seton attended Mass and taught nearby.

    • Dear Father Morello – I would only add to this that the de-institutionalization that you refer to was a joint effort by conservatives and liberals and individual states: The first was looking for less expensive ways to manage mental health, the liberals wanted to integrate patients into the community (without consideration of the full consequences), and the states also wanted to close down many of their costly campuses. No doubt many had charity toward the mentally ill etc. in mind but even today the new non-profits cannot keep up with the chugging out of patients and addicts produced by the breakdown of the family and a corrupt culture.

    • While President Reagan was in office, Democrats controlled the House for all eight years. President Reagan and the Republicans always serve as the convenient whipping boys for the ill-informed. Tell me Peter, do you have anything negative to say about the long term adverse effects of the California legislature passing the veto proof Lanterman–Petris–Short Act? The SCOTUS decision in O’Connor v. Donaldson? The actions of Edmund G. Brown? The documented behavior of the ACLU in causing the problems many of us are forced to deal with on a daily basis? The dismal failure of the great society? The hypothesis that giving psychotropic drugs to mentally ill people who refused to take them and then releasing them onto the streets was a good idea? Come to Denver and you can lend a hand in dealing with the psychotic, criminal homeless who gravitate to the Cathedral every single day. When I caught people using the bathrooms in the narthex as shooting galleries, or rolling the elderly for their purses and wallets, there was never a Roman collar wearing bleeding heart around to witness and prevent what was happening. After you do that then you can go find one of John Hickenlooper’s parking meters scattered throughout the downtown area where you can dump your change into the money pit known as Denver’s “Road Home” that was supposed to be a 10 year project to get the homeless off the streets. Quite a few people got rich off of that program but homelessness actually increased during Hickenlooper’s tenure.

      Denver’s Road Home hits a dead end

      Denver’s Road Home Part II

      Denver auditor critical of program created to end homelessness

      Please tell us what you did to help the destitute you saw in Battery Park or did you simply gnash your teeth, wring your hands, complain, point the finger of blame and watch what was taking place?

      • A man who presumes he is morally superior and demeans the integrity of someone he knows nothing about except that he’s a priest to support his views is a moral coward. “When I ask my mental health colleagues about this, the one political figure that typically comes up is former President Ronald Reagan. It’s like an urban legend in our field. People say the reason so many people with mental illness are homeless or in jail—one-third of all homeless individuals and half of all people behind bars—is because of President Reagan. Really? What did he do? Let all of the mentally ill patients loose? Well, yes, that’s exactly what they say he did. Over 30 years ago, when Reagan was elected President in 1980, he discarded a law proposed by his predecessor that would have continued funding federal community mental health centers. This basically eliminated services for people struggling with mental illness. He made similar decisions while he was the governor of California, releasing more than half of the state’s mental hospital patients and passing a law that abolished involuntary hospitalization of people struggling with mental illness. This started a national trend of de-institutionalization. In other words, if you are struggling with mental illness, we can only help you if you ask for it. But, wait. Isn’t one of the characteristics of severe mental illness not having an accurate sense of reality? Doesn’t that mean a person may not even realize he or she is mentally ill? There certainly seems to be a correlation between the de-institutionalization of mental health patients in the 1970s and early 1980s and the significant number of homelessness agencies created in the mid-to-late 1980s. PATH itself was founded in 1984 in response to the significant increase in homelessness in Los Angeles. It’s ironic that a political leader who made such sweeping decisions affecting Americans with mental health issues ultimately came face-to-face with the dangers of untreated mental illness. In 1981, President Reagan was shot by John Hinckley Jr., a man suffering from several different types of personality disorders” (Richard Lyons 1984 NYT).

        • Father Morello:

          I am sorry for any personal attack against you. My post was only to point out that there were more players than Ronald Reagan in this. I had a turn working in social services (investigating Elder Abuse etc. for over 15 years) and my experience is that this whole situation is much more global than your friend reports to you. In fact, Reagan also was at the forefront of Medicaid expansion in the community through the waiver program which allowed monies once reserved only for elders for nursing home care to be used to keep elders in the community with extra services including home care and adult day health services; and I can tell you that the left was 200% behind that. I also remember him having a hand in Medicare, also expanding services in the community, including nursing oversight. The point is that during that time there was an effort by both (or all sides) to expand access to “community living”. Having also worked with developmentally disabled adults for many years (and having visited state institutions in that case)the quality of life for these individuals was very poor. Finally, I am always suspect when one person in American government gets blamed for something, as there is usually many other players involved

    • “justifiable criticism of a Rep Party that radically cut social programs for the poor many run by Catholic rel orders,”

      Your presumption is that the government should be paying for this. That’s not what charity is.

      “Under Regan I witnessed destitute mentally ill men feeding out of garbage barrels”

      It’s my understanding that a change in law that made it difficult to keep the mentally ill in institutions if they didn’t want to stay was largely to blame for the number of destitute mentally ill men living on the streets.

      • Leslie I respect your perspective and add the following not as a rebuttal. Rather as data for consideration:

        PENN STATE Ronald Regan and Federal Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill
        Author Elaine Carmen Guerra

        “Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, is well known for his fiscal policies that stimulated economic growth, cut inflation and pulled America out of a recession (Cannon, 2017). What Reagan is not readily known for is the long term effect of a law he repealed that essentially deinstitutionalized mentally ill patients at the federal level (Roberts, 2013). While some of his fiscal policies had a positive effect on the U.S. economy during the 1980s, his decision to deinstitutionalize mentally ill patients had a much more deleterious effect on these patients, their communities, and the agencies that were left to contend with these individuals’ mental health issues (Honberg, 2015).The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBRA) is the statute that repealed President Carter’s Mental Health Systems Act which was supposed to continue federal funding for mental health programs. Reagan gave the appearance of making a consequentialist ethical decision because he presented his repeal of OBRA as an action that would best serve American society and do more good than harm as a result. The OBRA gave mental patients a choice to seek treatment outside of a mental institution, an option to seek treatment at clinics at the state level, and the freedom to administer their own medication (PSY533, 2017) (Pan, 2013). However, Reagan was hasty in taking unsound advice to repeal OBRA because his real motive was to cut the federal budget (Roberts, 2013). He was a leader who ‘never exhibited any interest in the need for research or better treatment for serious mental illness’ (Torrey, 2017). To be an ethical leader, one must attempt to gather as much knowledge as possible when making decisions, especially if one has the power to affect so many lives (Toffler, 2009). The mentally ill are amongst the most vulnerable populations in society because most are unable to make sound decisions regarding their own care due to their mental state. The consequences of Reagan’s social policy can be measured by the fact that today one-third of the homeless population are suffering from severe mental illness which puts a burden on police departments, hospitals and the penal system which lack the training and resources to deal with psychiatric emergencies (Honberg, 2015). Reagan’s unethical choice to end federal funding for mental health programs was driven by the desire to cut the budget. As a result, he did much more harm than good (PSY533, 2017)”.

        • Father Morello,

          Care of the mentally ill is not one of the enumerated powers of the Federal government, and it makes very little sense to place the burden of it at federal level, to begin with.

          In any event, the deinstitutionalization had been going on for years before Ronald Reagan bcame president:

          “Deinstitutionalization

          “Another important event occurred in 1950. During the same time that the NIMH was successful in advocating for a public view of commitment as a necessary step to treatment, new medications were invented that challenged the assumption that institutionalization was necessary for the care of patients with mental illness. In this year, novel medications called antipsychotics arrived on the market.4,8,11 Chlorpromazine was invented and sold under the trade name Thorazine. The medication was so effective in treating psychosis that the idea of community-based outpatient treatment of individuals who were previously considered to be lifelong hospital cases seemed plausible.9

          “By 1960, state hospitals were being widely criticized. They were portrayed as places where “little effective treatment” was administered. They were described as run-down archaic establishments that simply housed the mentally ill.8 The United States government created Medicare and Medicaid in that year, and as a result society assumed a shared responsibility to pay for the care of people suffering from mental disorders.11 Americans started to believe that the cost of caring for the mentally ill in institutions was not worth the limited benefit that could be seen as a result of institutionalization.8 Additionally, the civil rights movement, which was gaining momentum in the United States at that time, lent to the public push for the abandonment of mental institutions in favor of more humane psychiatric care.4 American President John F. Kennedy signed the Community Mental Health Centers Act in 1963 as a means of facilitating the transitioning of patients from inpatient psychiatric hospitals out into communities.11 As a result of all of these factors, deinstitutionalization began. Huge numbers of state hospitals were closed all across the United States.7–12 The number of psychiatric inpatients declined precipitously from a high of more than 550,000 in 1950 to 30,000 by the 1990s.4
          Go to:
          Shift to Dangerousness Criteria as the Standard for Civil Commitment

          Along with the civil rights movement and deinstitutionalization came a shift in the legal standard for civil commitment away from a need-for-treatment model to a dangerousness model. In 1964, Washington, DC, instituted a standard for civil commitment that established that a person must be determined to have a mental illness before he or she could be hospitalized against his or her will. Second, the person had to pose an imminent threat to the safety of him- or herself or others or be shown to be “gravely disabled,” meaning that he or she could not provide for the necessities for basic survival.8 The district did not define the terms of the statute concretely, leaving some room for interpretation. However, it is commonly interpreted that dangerousness refers to physical harm to self (suicide) or physical harm to others (homicide), and that the requirement for imminence means that the threat must be likely to occur in the close future.13 California adopted a similar statute five years later.8 One by one, other states followed suit until the prevailing standard for civil commitment in the United States required the presence of dangerousness as a result of mental disease.8,13,16,17 Currently, there are only a few states that do not follow the trend. Delaware requires only proof that a person is not able to make “responsible choices” about hospitalization or treatment for that person to be committed. Iowa’s statute mandates only proof that a person is likely to cause “severe emotional injury” to people who are unable to avoid contact with him (e.g., family members).17″

          Each state’s civil commitment criteria also still reflect standards set forth in an important Supreme Court case—O’Connor v. Donaldson—in 1975.13 This case involved a man named Kenneth Donaldson who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and was held in a psychiatric hospital against his will for 15 years. When his release was repeatedly denied by the psychiatrist in charge of his care, despite the fact that he had not shown any evidence of suicidality or intentions to harm others, Mr. Donaldson argued to the court for restoration of his freedom. The case was eventually heard by the Supreme Court, who determined that Mr. Donaldson should be released. The Supreme Court laid out acceptable criteria for holding patients against their will. Justices stated that a mentally ill individual must either present a known risk of harm to him- or herself or others, be in such a state that he or she would be “hopeless to avoid the hazards of freedom,”13 or in need of psychiatric treatment. The court seemed to embrace the dangerousness model for civil commitment; however, they did also find that individuals with mental disorders could not be kept in institutions “without more.”8,13,18 The word “more” is generally believed to refer to treatment.4”

          There’s a *lot* more here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3392176/ You really can’t blame President Reagan for the crisis.

  12. Some 40 yr ago my wife and I sdopted 2 baby girls after we were not able to have more children. One was Hispanic and one was 50% African American. Today they have graduated from college. one is a teacher and one a teaching aide. We have 4 beautiful grandchildren all performing well in their schools. I can’t imagine these beautiful children not existing if their birth mothers had chosen abortion and not adoption. God Bless! “adoption not abortion”

  13. I think a great amount of legislation would change if a law were passed that before a vote is cast, the members would be required to watch an abortion, or at least a video and fill out a form with questions that showed they actually watched it without closing eyes. Most of these people are stupidly uneducated. Ignorance means choosing to ignore. Getting your tiny skull crushed, or being dismembered is not comfortable. Cuomo should have to see a baby, living, while the conversation proceeds, then watch while he is killed in such inhumane ways, while being kept comfortable. IS THIS AMERICA?? Are they in communion with the Church?? Archbishop Dolan?? Can you not tell them they are not??? We should get a group of kindergarteners to vote.

    • Pardon me, Cardinal Dolan, not Archbishop. It seems the more elevated title would not come to mind in this context, you understand.

  14. Io sono italiano e mi vergogno che un oriundo italiano come Cuomo abbia fatto questa scelta così sbagliata. Vergogna!

  15. If catechesis isn’t preceded or accompanied by conversion, the mind and heart are more easily hardened and subject to ideologies. There are lots of Catholics in public life and in our lives with 8 to 12 years of Catholic education who’ve rejected basic Church teachings. It begins today in late adolescence and early adulthood, swimming in a secular sewer. God only knows how to effectively mitigate this problem. Bishop David Konderla is attacking it head on by his pastoral strategy of strengthening the domestic church as the #1 priority. However, as long as the Church’s chief pastors continue to rescue couples and parents from their responsibility as primary (first, foremost, foundational) shapers of their children’s character by providing drop-off “faith formation” programs for their children, the conversion issue will remain the root problem in spite of heroic efforts by dedicated surrogate parents (catechists). A one hour religion class in parishes or Catholic schools cannot alone accomplish what a home can in partnership for our children’s souls. See Gravissimum educationis no. 3, Familaris consortio, nos. 17 ff, esp. 65, 70-71). But it would take a miracle and a courageous organizational revolution to re-structure faith formation in our parishes.

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