What Kind of Country Do I Want to Live In?
by Thomas A. Droleskey
After having stayed up last night to watch (via the notebook computer on which these articles are written) the revolting parade of the in-your-face, pro-abortion, pro-perversity statist speakers at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, whose boldness I had explained to you two days ago would be in contrast to the silence on the "social issues" from the Republicans at their soiree in Tampa, Florida, I had absolutely no intention of doing so again last night.. I had to endure enough of William Jefferson Blythe Clinton's speeches and press conferences in the 1990s. I wrote article after article about him for The Wanderer and, for a brief time, in the Arlington Catholic Herald. There are many articles on this site that have rehashed the Clinton record of lies and disinformation and narcissism. What could the penultimate liar and weasel to disgrace the Oval Office of the White House say that he has not said a zillion times before?
Well, as it turned out, I was awake and working on an article as the the forty-second president of the United States of America followed the Democratic Party's senatorial nominee in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Elizabeth "I a Cherokee" Warren, a darling of the "hard left," onstage at the Time-Warner Arena in Charlotte, North Carolina, deciding to suffer as Der Schlickmeister articulated his usual blather of lies and demagoguery, at which he is superb in delivering. Indeed, the speech, which is going on and on and on at 11:15 p.m., very reminiscent of Clinton's endless State of the Union addresses between January 20, 1993, and January 20, 2001.
After much feigned "nervousness" on the part of those close to the reigning caesar, Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetero, with whom Clinton clashed in early-2008 as his wife, then United States Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-Illinois-Arkansas-New York), challenged the young Illinois senator for the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nomination, Clinton has finally submitted his speech to the vetters in the Obama campaign, seeing fit to release a few excerpts prior to the speech, which is being given as this is written {although the length of Clinton's unfocused speech, which he wrote out in longhand himself, may be justifying the concerns of Obama's campaign operatives):
“In Tampa the Republican argument against the President's re-election was pretty simple: We left him a total mess, he hasn't finished cleaning it up yet, so fire him and put us back in.
“I like the argument for President Obama's re-election a lot better. He inherited a deeply damaged economy, put a floor under the crash, began the long hard road to recovery, and laid the foundation for a more modern, more well-balanced economy that will produce millions of good new jobs, vibrant new businesses, and lots of new wealth for the innovators.
“The most important question is, what kind of country do you want to live in? If you want a you're-on-your-own, winner-take-all society, you should support the Republican ticket. If you want a country of shared prosperity and shared responsibility — a we're-all-in-this-together society — you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.” (Clinton: Give Obama time to clean up GOP 'mess'.)
What kind of country do I want to live in, Willie Boy? Not one where sixty-nine percent of the people in it think highly of you, an out-and-out pro-abort who has told lie after lie in his public career. Not one where facts are distorted and misrepresented and as one statist policy after another is promoted in the name of "fighting for the middle class."
Here is a review of some of the lies told by Billy Boy during his eight years in office:
1. Bill and Hillary Clinton lied in 1992 about Gennifer Flowers. Mrs. Clinton called Flowers's accusations against her husband to be nothing other than "trash for cash," although her husband admitted in their famous 60 Minutes interview with Ed Bradley that he had caused "pain" in their marriage. Hillary Clinton did this repeatedly throughout the White House years, thereby demonstrating that she, the "woman of change," would crush any woman who had been used and/or abused by her husband in order to have her own chance to serve as President of the United States of America.
2. Travelgate and Vince Foster.
3. Filegate.
4. Whitewatergate.
5. Billing records-gate. Does anyone not believe that Mrs. Clinton did not leave the billing records from the Rose Law Firm in the White House reading room?
6. Monicagate, which resulted ultimately in Bill Clinton's copping a plea agreement with Independent Counsel Robert Ray on January 19, 2001, just before he left office. It should also be noted that the Clintons were ruthless in attempting to destroy the reputation of anyone and everyone who sought to criticize them or to investigate them, making Richard Nixon's "Plumbers' Unit" seem like a band of amateurs. Take a look at a very partial list of some of the names of Clinton "enemies" who were "exposed" as having their own personal problems during the midst of Monicagate: United States Representatives Bob Barr, Henry Hyde, Dan Burton, and Bob Livingston. Ah, yes, the compassionate Clintons? Just don't get in their way. They take no prisoners.
7. Serbiagate: the bombardment of the Serbs to favor the Kosovo Mohammedans in the former Yugoslavia, a bombardment that Clinton directed despite the fact that he had no authorization from the Congress of the United States of America to do so. Thousands of innocent Serbians were killed as a result of the bombing, conducted under the auspices of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (N.A.T.O.)
8. Chinagate. A few words need to be written about this betrayal of American national security.
9. Pardongate, which also involved Clinton's Deputy Attorney General, a man by the name of Eric Holder (see Memo to Eric Holder: There Is No Affirmative Action Program In Heaven.)
Yes, the man whose sordid history of abusing women (Gennifer Flowers, Paula Corbin Jones, Juanita Broaderick, Monica Lewinsky, Kathleen Willey) is well-known and who had to enter into that plea agreement with Independent Counsel Robert Ray on January 19, 2001, has a "favorability rating" of sixty-nine percent. What a country. What a country.
Nothing that this sad, sordid self-seeker said last evening was "new." Indeed, there is very little "new" that has been underway for two days now, which is why Remaining Unapologetic In Support Of Evil was very easy to write.
Why?
Well, permit me to serve as your cyperspace memory bank.
Far from being the first convention of the organized crime family of naturalism of the false opposite of the "left" where speeches have been given that talked about women being able to "control their bodies," it was twenty years ago that the then Governor of the State of New York, Mario Matthew Cuomo, who remains in perfectly "good standing" in the counterfeit church of conciliarism despite supporting the chemical and surgical assassination of innocent preborn children under cover of the civil law, said the following when placing in nomination the name of the man who is speaking this evening in Charlotte, North Carolina, William Jefferson Blythe Clinton) on July 15, 1992, at Madison Square Garden in the Borough of Manhattan in the City of New York, New York:
America needs Bill Clinton for still another reason. We need a leader who will stop the Republican attempt, through laws and through the courts, to tell us what god to believe in, and how to apply that god's judgment to our schoolrooms, our bedrooms and our bodies. (Nominating Speech by Mario M. Cuomo)
Indeed, nothing has really changed, save for the fact that a new generation of pro-abortion Catholics in public life have risen to national prominence (Los Angeles, California, Governor Antonio Villaraigosa, San Antonio, Texas, Mayor Julian Castro and his twin brother, who is running for a seat in the United States House of Representative from San Antonio, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, who shepherded a "gay marriage" bill through the Maryland State Legislature this year, and, of course, one who is but a mere sixteen years younger than the now octogenarian Mario Matthew Cuomo, United States Secretary of State Kathleen Sebelius, Unite States Secretary of the Interior Kenneth Lee Salazar, Illinois Governor Patrick Quinn, former Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine, United States Representatives Nancy Pelosi, Rosa De Lauro, Xavier Becerra and Nydia M. Velázquez, Connecticut Governor Daniel Malloy, former First Daughter Caroline Kennedy, Boston, Massachusetts, Mayor Thomas Menino, United States Senator Barbara Mikulski an United States Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilscak). Is it any wonder that even the generic, Judeo-Masonic conception of God that has passed for social acceptance in this country since July 4, 1776, was booed three times in Charlotte, North Carolina, last evening. There were, among others, Catholics in perfectly good standing in the conciliar structures, who joined in the booing (there will be an article about this at some point later today).
We did not get to this situation overnight. It has been developing for nearly five centuries now since the Protestant Revolution overthrew the Social Reign o Christ the King.
The Americanist predecessors of the American conciliar "bishops" in the Catholic Church who indemnified anti-Catholic, pro-statist career politicians, such as Presidents Thomas Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, at almost every turn. Many also were the true bishops, such as the late Joseph "Cardinal" Bernardin, in the counterfeit church of conciliarism who helped to "reproduce" themselves, if you will, by training their non-bishop successors to be full-throated supporters of the statist policies (War on Poverty, Great Society) of President Lyndon Baines Johnson even as most of them opposed American involvement in the Vietnam War.
The mixture of true bishops and faux bishops that existed in the 1970s refused to discipline Supreme Court of the Untied States of America Associate Justice William Brennan, a Catholic, for his vote in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, January 22, 1973, and then enabled one Catholic office-holder after another of the Democratic Party who switched his position from "pro-life" to pro-death. Among the most prominent of these Catholics were the late United States Senator Edward Moore Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), then United States Senator Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. (D-Delaware), and United States Representative Hugh Leo Carey (D-Brooklyn, New York). There were many others.
Prominent Jesuits were in the vanguard of trying to find a way to indemnify the Kennedy clan in 1964 as to how they could adopt a pro-abortion position while remaining members of what they thought to be the Catholic Church:
In some cases, church leaders actually started providing "cover" for Catholic pro-choice politicians who wanted to vote in favor of abortion rights. At a meeting at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, Mass., on a hot summer day in 1964, the Kennedy family and its advisers and allies were coached by leading theologians and Catholic college professors on how to accept and promote abortion with a "clear conscience."
The former Jesuit priest Albert Jonsen, emeritus professor of ethics at the University of Washington, recalls the meeting in his book "The Birth of Bioethics" (Oxford, 2003). He writes about how he joined with the Rev. Joseph Fuchs, a Catholic moral theologian; the Rev. Robert Drinan, then dean of Boston College Law School; and three academic theologians, the Revs. Giles Milhaven, Richard McCormick and Charles Curran, to enable the Kennedy family to redefine support for abortion.
Mr. Jonsen writes that the Hyannisport colloquium was influenced by the position of another Jesuit, the Rev. John Courtney Murray, a position that "distinguished between the moral aspects of an issue and the feasibility of enacting legislation about that issue." It was the consensus at the Hyannisport conclave that Catholic politicians "might tolerate legislation that would permit abortion under certain circumstances if political efforts to repress this moral error led to greater perils to social peace and order."
Father Milhaven later recalled the Hyannisport meeting during a 1984 breakfast briefing of Catholics for a Free Choice: "The theologians worked for a day and a half among ourselves at a nearby hotel. In the evening we answered questions from the Kennedys and the Shrivers. Though the theologians disagreed on many a point, they all concurred on certain basics . . . and that was that a Catholic politician could in good conscience vote in favor of abortion." (WSJ.com - Opinion: How Support for Abortion Became Kennedy Dogma.)
"A Catholic politician could in good conscience vote in favor of abortion." That, as our friend Mrs. McOsker is wont to say, is quite a statement.
Let's see what Pope Pius XI had to say about that contention:
Those who hold the reins of government should not forget that it is the duty of public authority by appropriate laws and sanctions to defend the lives of the innocent, and this all the more so since those whose lives are endangered and assailed cannot defend themselves. Among whom we must mention in the first place infants hidden in the mother's womb. And if the public magistrates not only do not defend them, but by their laws and ordinances betray them to death at the hands of doctors or of others, let them remember that God is the Judge and Avenger of innocent blood which cried from earth to Heaven. (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930.)
Petty politicians, including those of the libertarian bent, who have traded their Faith for the blood votes of the mob or for what so many consider to be an admirable adherence to a false concept of human liberty that does not recognize and accept the fact that true human freedom comes only from the Cross of the Divine Redeemer and that it can be maintained only by a submission to the Deposit of Faith that He, Christ the King, has entrusted to His true Church, scoff when such words are presented before their eyes. They know better. They have the approval of the crowd. They are doing the "will" of the "people," who are, after all, the "sovereign" whose "will" must be obeyed above all "denominational" considerations. They hold judgeships. They have prestigious academic seats and grants. The immutably binding Social Teaching of the Catholic Church does not bind their consciences. Why? Because they say so.
Such people believe in diabolical myths. They will answer to God at the moment of their deaths for their betrayal of Catholic truth and their active propagation of the belief that Catholicism is not the singular foundation of personal and social order. They can enjoy their "heaven" here. The words of Pope Pius XI apply to them. Let them heed the warning and reform and quit their false beliefs and their indifference to, if not active participation in, the daily slaughter of the innocent preborn under cover of the civil law that occurs in the "land of the free." "Liberty and justice for all"? Not for the preborn, and, for that matter, not for the rest of us (see King George III Is Looking Pretty Good These Days).
One of those who was heedless of Pope Pius XI's warning was the very Archbishop of Boston in whose archdiocesan boundaries the conference of abortion apostates had taken place in the summer of 1964. Richard "Cardinal" Cushing, the Archbishop of Boston from September 25, 1944, to September 8, 1970, gave full episcopal blessing to the "personally opposed" position that had been condemned by Pope Leo XIII in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885 (see the passage included the material about Mario Cuomo earlier in this article), when he made the following remarks in radio interview at a time when the Massachusetts General Court (the state legislature) was debating a bill that had been introduced by State Senate Michael S. Dukakis (yes, that's right, M-1 Mike) to permit the sale of contraceptive pills and devices:
Early in the summer of 1965, the Massachusetts legislature took up a proposal to repeal the state's Birth Control law, which barred the use of contraceptives. . . . In a state where Catholics constituted a voting majority, and dominated the legislature, the prospects for repeal appeared remote. Then on June 22, Cardinal Cushing appeared on a local radio program, 'An Afternoon with Haywood Vincent,' and effectively scuttled the opposition. Cardinal Cushing announced: 'My position in this matter is that birth control in accordance with artificial means is immoral, and not permissible. But this is Catholic teaching. I am also convinced that I should not impose my position upon those of other faiths'. Warming to the subject, the cardinal told his radio audience that 'I could not in conscience approve the legislation' that had been proposed. However, he quickly added, 'I will make no effort to impose my opinion upon others.' So there it was: the 'personally opposed' argument, in fully developed form, enunciated by a Prince of the Church nearly 40 years ago! Notice how the unvarying teaching of the Catholic Church, which condemned artificial contraception as an offense against natural law, is reduced here to a matter of the cardinal's personal belief. And notice how he makes no effort to persuade legislators with the force of his arguments; any such effort is condemned in advance as a bid to 'impose' his opinion. Cardinal Cushing conceded that in the past, Catholic leaders had opposed any effort to alter the Birth Control law. 'But my thinking has changed on that matter,' he reported, 'for the simple reason that I do not see where I have an obligation to impose my religious beliefs on people who just do not accept the same faith as I do'. . . . Before the end of his fateful radio broadcast, Cardinal Cushing gave his advice to the Catholic members of the Massachusetts legislature: 'If your constituents want this legislation, vote for it. You represent them. You don't represent the Catholic Church.' Dozens of Catholic legislators did vote for the bill, and the Birth Control law was abolished. Perhaps more important in the long run, the 'personally opposed' politician had his rationale." (Catholic World Report, 2003. Many of you have seen this news item quoted on this site in the past. There is a purpose for my doing so yet again.)
There it is. An Americanist bishop, one who enabled the political careers of the Kennedys at every turn, invited Catholics who served in the Massachusetts General Court to betray the Faith in order to please their constituents and thus save their precious careers. It is all right there.
Cushing even supported Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy's plans to enter into a sacramentally invalid marriage with a divorced man, Aristotle Onassis, a member of the heretical and schismatic Greek Orthodox church, asking "Why can't she marry whomever she wants?"(please see the appendix below). It's a matter of time before such a cavalier attitude leads to a Catholic named Julian Castro to state openly without fear of being excommunicated by the conciliar "archbishop" of San Antonio, Gustavo Garcia-Siller, or by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI:
It doesn't just pummel the middle class—it dismantles it. It dismantles
what generations before have built to ensure that everybody can enter
and stay in the middle class. When it comes to getting the middle class
back to work, Mitt Romney says, "No." When it comes to respecting
women's rights, Mitt Romney says, "No." When it comes to letting people
marry whomever they love, Mitt Romney says, "No." (Julian Castro's DNC Keynote Address.)
Why shouldn't clueless revolutionaries of Modernity such as Michelle Obama and her husband support social evils when Catholics, such as the Mayor Julian Castro and Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives are permitted to do so with utter impunity?
Will Salvatore Cordileone, the newly appointed conciliar "archbishop" of San Francisco, California, discipline Nancy Pelosi for saying the following last night?
The hard-won rights of women are on the ballot. Democrats trust the
judgment of women. We reject the Republican assault on women’s health.
It’s just plain wrong. When you go the polls, vote for women’s rights.
Vote for President Obama! (Nancy Pelosi's DNC Speech.)
Don't hold your breaths for "Archbishop-elect" Cordileone to discipline Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi.
Yes, serving as your cyberspace memory bank and admitting that there have been many other elements at work in the world for the past half of a millennium that have contributed to our present state of affairs, it is nevertheless true that the conciliar revolutionaries, whose "pope" may very well issue a mutual "mea culpa" with followers of Martin Luther on the five hundredth anniversary of his posting those ninety-five theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, in the United States of America have made it more possible for the forces of hell to be let loose, forces that their conciliar liturgical rites have been and will continue to be not only worthless in retarding but have aided and assisted at almost every turn.
This is what helps to explain a situation wherein many Catholics, ranging from anywhere to forty percent to fifty percent in number can even consider supporting candidates for elected office who support grave moral evils under cover of the civil law, including the likes of those who have been speaking at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Most Catholics alive toady believe that the the common temporal good, which must be pursued by those who hold the reins of civil government as to advance the Last End of men (the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven), as they favor temporal welfare over the binding nature of eternal truths. It is necessary for such Catholics to read the words of Silvio Antonio Cardinal Antoniano as quoted in Pope Pius XI's Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929:
The more closely the temporal power of a nation aligns itself with the spiritual, and the more it fosters and promotes the latter, by so much the more it contributes to the conservation of the commonwealth. For it is the aim of the ecclesiastical authority by the use of spiritual means, to form good Christians in accordance with its own particular end and object; and in doing this it helps at the same time to form good citizens, and prepares them to meet their obligations as members of a civil society. This follows of necessity because in the City of God, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, a good citizen and an upright man are absolutely one and the same thing. How grave therefore is the error of those who separate things so closely united, and who think that they can produce good citizens by ways and methods other than those which make for the formation of good Christians. For, let human prudence say what it likes and reason as it pleases, it is impossible to produce true temporal peace and tranquillity by things repugnant or opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity. (Silvio Cardinal Antoniano, quoted by Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)
Come on, look at the reality. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI personally offered a
"blessing" on Barack Hussein Obama and "all his work" on July 10, 2009. Part of that "work" includes having issued executive orders to use our tax dollars to kill babies at home and abroad, both by chemical and surgical means. And that's just part of his evil work. A blessing?
You think that "Pope" Benedict XVI is going to upbraid Julian Castro or any other other pro-aborts who have spoken at the Democratic National Convention. Fine. You do know, of course, that there is a certain bridge, opened in 1883, that crosses the East River from what is now the Borough of Brooklyn (named the City of Brooklyn at the time of the bridge's completion and opening) to the Borough of Manhattan in the City of New York, New York, that just might be for sale? Why don't you check that out and get back to me? You've got as much chance of having Julian Castro upbraided by "Pope" Benedict XVI for having abortion and "gay marriage" if you purchasing the Brooklyn Bridge from the pro-abortion Mayor of the City of New York, Michael Bloomberg (although with Bloomberg, however, the bridge might be for sale!)
The conciliar revolutionaries are not faithful servants of Christ the King, who distort the nature of dogmatic truth itself in order to justify outrages against the Faith, including direct Mortal Sins, objectively speaking, against the First and Second Commandments by the likes of "Pope" Benedict XVI himself. And this is the point that so many actual, living, breath "pro-life "conservatives" and "papal" enthusiasts do indeed miss repeatedly: it is far easier for Catholics to get accustomed to the daily slaughter of the preborn their "pope" teaches them to accept the esteeming of the symbols of false religions and the terming of their places of false worship as "sacred." One cannot be, to alter a popular phrase, pro-eternal life and pro-sacrilege. Offenses against God Himself make it easier for sinful men to sin against others, including the innocent preborn.
What kind of country do I want to live in, President Clinton?
One in which Christ is King and men such as yourself are found in very short supply rather than in the plenitude of today.
One in which civic officials stand beneath Crucifixes and seek to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End.
One in which those in civil power and true Catholic bishops jointly organize and participation public processions in honor of the Holy Mother of God.
One in which parents are recognized as the principal educators of their children.
One in which those who kill babies by chemical and surgical means are punished, not protected, by the civil law.
One in which free rein is not given to error under the cover of slogans such as "free speech" and "freedom of the press."
One in which men recognize that the Holy Cross of the Divine Redeemer, Christ the King, as It is lifted high by His Catholic Church as the one and only standard of true human liberty and thus of social order.
That's the kind of country we must pray and fast and plant the seeds to create as the consecrated slaves of Christ the King through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, not the country of the false opposites of the naturalist "right" and the naturalist "left."
We need to keep praying your Rosaries and offering up your sacrifices and sufferings in reparation for your own sins and those of the whole world, including those of the conciliarists, giving everything with joy and gratitude to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!
Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?
Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.
Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.
Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us
Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.
See also: A Litany of Saints
Appendix
Richard Cushing's Endorsement of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy's Invalid Marriage to Aristotle Onassis
"This idea of saying she's excommunicated, that she's a public sinner—what a lot of nonsense. Only God knows who is a sinner and who is not. Why can't she marry whomever she wants?"
The speaker defending Jackie Kennedy's marriage to Aristotle Onassis was no gossip columnist or pundit—indeed, few society reporters were so disposed. He was Richard Cardinal Cushing, Archbishop of Boston, Prince of the Holy Roman Church and—as it turned out last week—foremost a friend in need.
The cardinal made his defense of Jackie at a meeting of Boston's Caritas Guild, composed of the city's licensed beverage executives, and he chose that platform to stress caritas—charity. As Cushing knows, it is one of the most elusive of virtues. Two days after his speech, he announced that the volume of hate mail he had received as a consequence, some of it "in the language of the gutter," had persuaded him to resign his see at the end of this year instead of his previous target date, August 1970.
The emotional defense of Jackie by Cushing—who had presided at her first wedding in 1953 and at John Kennedy's funeral ten years later—was not very well received in Rome either. Before Cushing spoke out, the Vatican's chief press officer, Monsignor Fausto Vallainc, had expressed the church's official view that Jackie had "knowingly violated the law of the church" and was ineligible to receive the sacraments. Although reluctant to dispute a cardinal, Vatican theologians simply reiterated their interpretation of the church's law after Cushing's statement
.
Totally Unpredictable. In announcing his decision to resign well ahead of schedule, Cushing complained that 98% of the mail he had received since his statement to the Caritas Guild had condemned his stand. The cardinal sentimentally pointed out that his own sister had married a Jew outside the church and that, while Mrs. Onassis might not be able to receive the sacraments, "she should continue all the private devotions she had as a Catholic."
It was the third time that Cushing had publicly announced his intention to resign. A product of Boston's once-Irish urban ghetto, he was named Archbishop of the city in 1944, and subsequently proved to be one of the great school and church builders of American Catholicism. Affectionately human and totally unpredictable, Cushing was, more importantly, a pioneer ecumenicist in the open style of Pope John, a maverick prelate who found it possible, at various times, to endorse both the John Birch Society and the N.A.A.C.P. In poor health for many years—and, at 73, only two years away from the age limit suggested for episcopal resignations by Pope Paul—Cushing had good reason to ask to be relieved of duty. The Pope is said to have a high regard for Cushing and may well decide to refuse his resignation. On the other hand, if the cardinal mentioned illness or fatigue in his formal request to Paul, that might persuade the Vatican this time to accede to his wishes. (Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article.)
[Thomas A. Droleskey note: Cushing's resignation in 1968 was not accepted by Giovanni Montini/Paul VI at the time. Cushing did not retire until September 8, 1970, after he had turned seventy-five years of age. He died nearly two months later, on November 2, 1970. Oh, by the way, Cushing endorsed the John Birch Society because of its anti-Communism and because its leading founder, the late Robert Welch, believed that Communism had to be fought with Americanism, not, of course, the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King as we pray Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary in fulfillment of her Fatima Message to defeat the anti-Incarnational forces at work in the work. Cushing, a thorough Americanist, thought that this was all just peachy keen swell. ]
