found here<\/a>, along with another creepy photo of Sheridan.) Some excerpts:<\/p>\nThis coming November we Americans will participate in one of the most important national elections in recent history. \u2026 I consider it my duty as your bishop to write to you about these matters so that you might go to the polls this fall with a well-informed conscience. \u2026<\/i><\/p>\n
The right judgment of conscience is not a matter of personal preference nor has it anything to do with feelings. It has only to do with objective truth. \u2026 As Catholics we have the further obligation to give assent to the doctrinal and moral teachings of the Church. \u2026<\/p>\n
Any Catholic politicians who advocate for abortion, for illicit stem cell research or for any form of euthanasia ipso facto place themselves outside full communion with the Church and so jeopardize their salvation. Any Catholics who vote for candidates who stand for abortion, illicit stem cell research or euthanasia suffer the same fateful consequences. It is for this reason that these Catholics, whether candidates for office or those who would vote for them, may not receive Holy Communion until they have recanted their positions and been reconciled with God and the Church in the Sacrament of Penance.<\/p>\n
For the record, I do not know of a single Catholic politician in the history of the United States who has \"advocated for abortion.\"<\/p>\n
Abortion, divorce and adultery are three things the Catholic Church opposes which remain legal in the United States. Most Catholic politicians do not advocate changing the law \u2014 and dispensing with the Constitution \u2014 in order to make these things illegal. Their position cannot said to be \"advocating for abortion\" any more than they can be said to be \"advocating for divorce\" or \"advocating for adultery.\" One can certainly agree with the Catholic Church's teaching that these three things are undesirable, even that they are sins,<\/i> while also agreeing that attempting to criminalize them would succeed only in producing additional grievous problems.<\/p>\n
Sheridan's real complaint is not with Catholic politicians or with Catholic voters, but with the wisdom of the American legal system and the Constitution. He's either not smart enough to realize this himself, or he is cynically shrewd enough to realize that a frontal assault on the Constitution might not play as well in the media as his clerical grandstanding. He's attacking the Constitution diagonally, as any bishop would.<\/p>\n
Let's be very clear: This poor man's Richelieu has commanded Catholics in his diocese to vote as he instructs them to on threat of eternal damnation.<\/p>\n
Diocesan spokesman Peter Howard says exactly this: \"Some people will accuse us of using this as a political maneuver to vote a certain way. It's for their own spiritual salvation.\"<\/p>\n
Howard does not deny<\/i> that Sheridan's commands to the 125,000 Catholics in his diocese are \"a political maneuver to vote a certain way.\" He only explains why<\/i> the bishop is commanding how they vote: \"It's for their own spiritual salvation.\"<\/p>\n
This sort of thing has lots of historical precedent. It's why my French Huguenot ancestors came here in the first place.<\/p>\n
You must vote according to conscience or be damned, the bishop says. Conscience is a matter of objective truth; objective truth is a matter of church teaching; church teaching is what I tell you it is. Therefore you must vote as I say or be damned.<\/p>\n
The next step \u2014 always \u2014 is \"Therefore you must vote for me<\/i>.\"<\/p>\n
Perhaps this ridiculous, impious little cross-dresser in Colorado Springs is not himself quite ambitious enough to take that next step. But someone<\/i> will if we don't convincingly shout down these foolish little Napoleon wanna-bes as they arise.<\/p>\n
That next step doesn't mean bishops ordering the faithful to elect a particular president. It means ordering the faithful to anoint a particular king.<\/p>\n
That's not Catholic. It's just medieval.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Colorado Springs, where at least three priests have been accused of sexual abuse, is headed by Bishop Michael Sheridan. Sheridan, The Denver Post reports, has recently found a way for his diocese to make national headlines about something other than the buggering of adolescent boys: The bishop of Colorado’s second-largest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13,57],"class_list":["post-757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evangelicals","tag-church-state","tag-clergy-abuse"],"yoast_head":"\n
Bishop's gambit<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Roman Catholic Diocese of Colorado Springs, where at least three priests have been accused of sexual abuse, is headed by Bishop Michael Sheridan.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/05\/15\/bishops-gambit\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bishop's gambit\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Roman Catholic Diocese of Colorado Springs, where at least three priests have been accused of sexual abuse, is headed by Bishop Michael Sheridan.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/05\/15\/bishops-gambit\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"slacktivist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-05-15T21:15:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-06-22T15:19:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/05\/15\/bishops-gambit\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/05\/15\/bishops-gambit\/\",\"name\":\"Bishop's gambit\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2004-05-15T21:15:09+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-06-22T15:19:50+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/0173c85e46e7e0951fef5752bed78b6e\"},\"description\":\"The Roman Catholic Diocese of Colorado Springs, where at least three priests have been accused of sexual abuse, is headed by Bishop Michael Sheridan.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/05\/15\/bishops-gambit\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/05\/15\/bishops-gambit\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/05\/15\/bishops-gambit\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Bishop’s gambit\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\",\"name\":\"slacktivist\",\"description\":\""Test everything; hold fast to what is good."\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/0173c85e46e7e0951fef5752bed78b6e\",\"name\":\"Fred Clark\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e23731809f5a2c785d0416fc4211a51e?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e23731809f5a2c785d0416fc4211a51e?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"caption\":\"Fred Clark\"},\"description\":\"Fred Clark is a graduate of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now called Palmer Seminary), of Eastern College (now called Eastern University) and of the fundamentalist Timothy Christian High School (still fundamentalist and still called Timothy Christian High School, but not really thrilled to have a snarky, liberal, tree-hugging, pro-choice, pro-GLBT, peacenik, commie, evolutionist as such a vocal alumnus). 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Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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