• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Right-wing billionaires are attempting a hostile takeover of the U.S. Catholic Church

Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Staff member
Premium Member
The Rise of the Catholic Right


How right-wing billionaires are attempting a hostile takeover of the U.S. Catholic Church


TIMOTHY BUSCH IS A WEALTHY MAN with big ambitions. His version of the prosperity gospel, Catholic in content and on steroids, is a hybrid of traditionalist pieties wrapped in American-style excess and positioned most conspicuously in service of free market capitalism.

Busch’s organization, the Napa Institute, and its corresponding foundation are among the most prominent of a growing number of right-wing Catholic nonprofits with political motivations. Such groups, some more extreme than others and all on the right to far-right side of the political and ecclesial spectrum, have in recent years muscled in on territory that previously was the largely unchallenged domain of the nation’s powerful Catholic bishops...

Busch’s Catholic Right brand of American libertarianism aligns with some far-right leaders based in Italy who oppose Pope Francis and appear interested in joining forces to fashion an alternative to official Catholic leadership structures, which in this country means the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

The Napa Institute—with its mission, according to its tax forms, to “equip Catholic leaders to defend and advance the Catholic faith in the ‘next America’”—is one of several Catholic nonprofits that have become forceful players within the church and at the intersection of religion and politics, and one of the most active. Some groups are aggressively involved in aligning Catholic thought with libertarian economic theory while others are devoted to defining Catholicism for the culture by exceptionally conservative theology and practice.

Newer groups—including the Napa Institute, Legatus (launched by Domino’s Pizza founder Thomas Monaghan), and the Acton Institute—use the nonprofit designation to push an extreme libertarian economic agenda. Their devotion to individualism, unrestricted capitalism, and diminishment of government services, especially to the poor and marginalized, runs counter to the central tenets of Catholic social teaching.

“I think we’re in a kind of brave new world where these groups really are setting themselves up as authorities above the authorities,” said Stephen Schneck, former director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at the Catholic University of America (and a Sojourners board member). “I don’t know how else to say that. They’re challenging the legitimacy of existing structures of authority and trying to fill that space with their own agenda and their own people.”

The decline of the bishops

The eruption of independent groups may not have been that surprising in the Protestant world where evangelical leaders and their movements, taking up issues on the margins of society and church, often exercised a degree of suspicion about mainline denominations.

In the rigidly hierarchical Catholic world, on the other hand, dissent was often smothered beneath the rubric of Catholic unity. Since its founding in 1917 (as the National Catholic War Council) to ensure Catholic support for World War I, the U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference has been one of the most powerful religious organizations in the country. Until recently, the Catholic clerical culture, particularly at the bishops’ level, was able to present a united and authoritative front when speaking on social and political issues.

The phenomenon of independent organizations challenging the established Catholic authority emerged in the 1980s, just as the U.S. bishops were at the apex of their power as a teaching body, addressing major issues of the day. In 1983, the bishops released a far-reaching pastoral on modern warfare, the result of broad consultation with lay experts. They followed in 1986 with a pastoral letter titled “Economic Justice for All,” a document anchored in a century of Catholic social teaching and highly critical of President Ronald Reagan’s economic policies—and completely unwelcome to the 1980 vice-presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party, David H. Koch.

The ascendancy of the Catholic Right, Schneck said, is rooted in the bishops’ letter on economics. Countering the pastoral letter, he said, marked “the beginning of the conservative efforts to create their own magisterium [teaching authority] on the side.”

Attacking Pope Francis

During previous pontificates, Busch was all-in on loyalty to the pope and the teaching authorities of the church. In the era of Pope Francis, however, he has associated himself with right-wing Catholic efforts to discredit the pope using the largely debunked accusations of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former papal ambassador to the United States. In one of several letters criticizing the pope, Viganò urged Francis to step down.

The case could be made that Viganò is merely a disgruntled employee striking back at the home office. When Francis visited the United States in 2015, it was Viganò who arranged the awkward surprise meeting between the pope and Kim Davis, a county clerk in Kentucky who refused to sign marriage licenses of same-sex couples. Viganò was later removed from the diplomatic post by Pope Francis, under a cloud of controversy.

But Viganò’s complaints—including accusations that Pope Francis ignored warnings about Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was removed from active ministry in June after numerous allegations of sexual abuse over 50 years—rose above the level of an unhappy bureaucrat. Viganò shared his letter ahead of time with several far-right Catholic leaders, including Busch.

Viganò’s letter calling for the pope’s resignation was distributed through a subsidiary of EWTN, the largest religious media network in the world with a claimed reach of a quarter-billion households in 140 countries. EWTN, which was launched in the early 1980s by nun-magnate Mother Angelica, who was committed to promoting “traditional social values,” also owns the Catholic News Agency and the National Catholic Register newspaper, through which Viganò’s accusations against the pope were distributed.

Viganò has since moderated his claims, and they have been strongly refuted by Vatican officials, but Busch told The New York Times that the archbishop “has done us a great service. He decided to come forward because if he didn’t, he realized he would be perpetuating the cover-up.” Later, Busch added, “Viganò has given us an agenda. We need to follow those leads and push that forward.”

A right-wing phenomenon

Since their emergence in the 1980s, right-wing Catholic groups, with their deep alliances among the bishops themselves, have achieved a prominence that essentially makes them an alternative to the U.S. bishops’ conference. Schneck said that it has become “increasingly difficult to identify the line between this conservative Catholic deployment of organizations and the official institutions of the church in America.”

In a bizarre turn, we now have Catholic groups accusing the pope of betraying the church and calling for him to resign, as well as initiating what amounts to hate group activity against gays and others in church settings. Money, and the power of U.S. nonprofits, has given extreme-right Catholics new means of communicating to the wider world what they think the Catholic narrative should be. That generally, but not always, is confined to sexual issues—abortion, gay rights, the rights of divorced and remarried people within the church.

Schneck believes there is a qualitative difference today in the challenge to the structure of Catholic hierarchy than there was in the 1980s. “Then, they were trying to respond to the letter on the economy, but they weren’t challenging the authority of the bishops, they weren’t challenging the authority of the pope,” Schneck said. “They weren’t really trying to involve themselves in religion as much as trying to push the church in the direction of being more accommodating to capitalism and free market solutions.”

Today, he said, “These groups are increasingly trying to change the church itself.”

 

Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Staff member
Premium Member
A looming schism in the Church, particularly in America, has for a considerable period of time been brewing.

These lay Catholic, far-right libertarian groups are enormously wealthy and powerful and extremely anti-papal, even anti-clerical.

As the article correctly says, they are challenging the hegemony of the U.S. episcopate (clerical hierarchy) and attempting to form their own parallel governing institutions, to divide the loyalties of the faithful.

Pope Francis is enemy number one, of course, and in collusion with his foes at home in Italy, these American billionaires have been trying with everything in their power to "de-throne" him from the Chair of St. Peter, the papacy.

Since the Pope has sole prerogative over the appointment of new bishops and elevation to the cardinalate, and he has naturally been selecting persons amenable to his own vision for the church, they have essentially given up on the idea of establish a strange-hold over the USCCB and College of Cardinals. They now want to create a sort of 'alt-church' within the church.
 
Last edited:

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
A looming schism in the Church, particularly in America, has for a considerable period of time been brewing.

These lay Catholic, far-right libertarian groups are enormously wealthy and powerful and extremely anti-papal, even anti-clerical.

As the article correctly says, they are challenging the hegemony of the U.S. episcopate (clerical hierarchy) and attempting to form their own parallel governing institutions, to divide the loyalties of the faithful.
Yep, and some of the right-wing bishops seem to be all too happy to oblige them as they want to make the Church in their image, not Jesus'. Unfortunately, throughout the Church's history there has always been this element and, unfortunately, sometimes they won out-- at least for a while.

IOW, "money talks ...", and that's hard to fight, but fight we must do.
 

Stanyon

WWMRD?
Another vast right wing conspiracy, rich people and the so called far-right ruining your day, the next thing you know it will be that they are employing Nazi GBM (Greater Black Magic) rituals and calling upon dark forces. If the public weren't already saturated with this kind of bunk it might be profitable to write a coffee table potboiler about it but it might be funnier to spoof it.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
Another vast right wing conspiracy, rich people and the so called far-right ruining your day, the next thing you know it will be that they are employing Nazi GBM (Greater Black Magic) rituals and calling upon dark forces. If the public weren't already saturated with this kind of bunk it might be profitable to write a coffee table potboiler about it but it might be funnier to spoof it.
And besides, it would be nice to see a Church less anti-capitalist.
Of course, this is the end of the world to the socialist faithful.
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
Another vast right wing conspiracy, rich people and the so called far-right ruining your day, the next thing you know it will be that they are employing Nazi GBM (Greater Black Magic) rituals and calling upon dark forces. If the public weren't already saturated with this kind of bunk it might be profitable to write a coffee table potboiler about it but it might be funnier to spoof it.
Are you a Catholic? If not, what business is this of yours? :p
 

joe1776

Well-Known Member
A looming schism in the Church, particularly in America, has for a considerable period of time been brewing.

These lay Catholic, far-right libertarian groups are enormously wealthy and powerful and extremely anti-papal, even anti-clerical.

As the article correctly says, they are challenging the hegemony of the U.S. episcopate (clerical hierarchy) and attempting to form their own parallel governing institutions, to divide the loyalties of the faithful.

Pope Francis is enemy number one, of course, and in collusion with his foes at home in Italy, these American billionaires have been trying with everything in their power to "de-throne" him from the Chair of St. Peter, the papacy.

Since the Pope has sole prerogative over the appointment of new bishops and elevation to the cardinalate, and he has naturally been selecting persons amenable to his own vision for the church, they have essentially given up on the idea of establish a strange-hold over the USCCB and College of Cardinals. They now want to create a sort of 'alt-church' within the church.
No need to worry. Pope Francis personifies the ecumenical movement which is simply one aspect of humanity's drive toward global harmony. He's respected by good people of all faiths and even those of us without faith. There's no amount of money that can derail humanity's moral progress.
 

Stanyon

WWMRD?
Are you a Catholic? If not, what business is this of yours? :p

Being an original member of the vast right wing conspiracy (I have the coffee mug to prove it) as coined by Hillary Clinton and having used occult means to employ the help of the Goetic Demon Andras in what I called the "Andras Werking" to facilitate the rise of the far-right a number of years ago I find it is my solemn duty to mock and attempt to undercut any exposure of the Final Solution.
The Ritual involved a Nazi flag and an original Indo-Persian Demon head mace.
 

Saint Frankenstein

Wanderer From Afar
Premium Member
Being an original member of the vast right wing conspiracy (I have the coffee mug to prove it) as coined by Hillary Clinton and having used occult means to employ the help of the Goetic Demon Andras in what I called the "Andras Werking" to facilitate the rise of the far-right a number of years ago I find it is my solemn duty to mock and attempt to undercut any exposure of the Final Solution.
The Ritual involved a Nazi flag and an original Indo-Persian Demon head mace.
So you're a neo-Nazi? ONA?
 

Brickjectivity

Turned to Stone. Now I stretch daily.
Staff member
Premium Member
The Rise of the Catholic Right


How right-wing billionaires are attempting a hostile takeover of the U.S. Catholic Church


TIMOTHY BUSCH IS A WEALTHY MAN with big ambitions. His version of the prosperity gospel, Catholic in content and on steroids, is a hybrid of traditionalist pieties wrapped in American-style excess and positioned most conspicuously in service of free market capitalism.

Busch’s organization, the Napa Institute, and its corresponding foundation are among the most prominent of a growing number of right-wing Catholic nonprofits with political motivations. Such groups, some more extreme than others and all on the right to far-right side of the political and ecclesial spectrum, have in recent years muscled in on territory that previously was the largely unchallenged domain of the nation’s powerful Catholic bishops...

Busch’s Catholic Right brand of American libertarianism aligns with some far-right leaders based in Italy who oppose Pope Francis and appear interested in joining forces to fashion an alternative to official Catholic leadership structures, which in this country means the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

The Napa Institute—with its mission, according to its tax forms, to “equip Catholic leaders to defend and advance the Catholic faith in the ‘next America’”—is one of several Catholic nonprofits that have become forceful players within the church and at the intersection of religion and politics, and one of the most active. Some groups are aggressively involved in aligning Catholic thought with libertarian economic theory while others are devoted to defining Catholicism for the culture by exceptionally conservative theology and practice.

Newer groups—including the Napa Institute, Legatus (launched by Domino’s Pizza founder Thomas Monaghan), and the Acton Institute—use the nonprofit designation to push an extreme libertarian economic agenda. Their devotion to individualism, unrestricted capitalism, and diminishment of government services, especially to the poor and marginalized, runs counter to the central tenets of Catholic social teaching.

“I think we’re in a kind of brave new world where these groups really are setting themselves up as authorities above the authorities,” said Stephen Schneck, former director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at the Catholic University of America (and a Sojourners board member). “I don’t know how else to say that. They’re challenging the legitimacy of existing structures of authority and trying to fill that space with their own agenda and their own people.”

The decline of the bishops

The eruption of independent groups may not have been that surprising in the Protestant world where evangelical leaders and their movements, taking up issues on the margins of society and church, often exercised a degree of suspicion about mainline denominations.

In the rigidly hierarchical Catholic world, on the other hand, dissent was often smothered beneath the rubric of Catholic unity. Since its founding in 1917 (as the National Catholic War Council) to ensure Catholic support for World War I, the U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference has been one of the most powerful religious organizations in the country. Until recently, the Catholic clerical culture, particularly at the bishops’ level, was able to present a united and authoritative front when speaking on social and political issues.

The phenomenon of independent organizations challenging the established Catholic authority emerged in the 1980s, just as the U.S. bishops were at the apex of their power as a teaching body, addressing major issues of the day. In 1983, the bishops released a far-reaching pastoral on modern warfare, the result of broad consultation with lay experts. They followed in 1986 with a pastoral letter titled “Economic Justice for All,” a document anchored in a century of Catholic social teaching and highly critical of President Ronald Reagan’s economic policies—and completely unwelcome to the 1980 vice-presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party, David H. Koch.

The ascendancy of the Catholic Right, Schneck said, is rooted in the bishops’ letter on economics. Countering the pastoral letter, he said, marked “the beginning of the conservative efforts to create their own magisterium [teaching authority] on the side.”

Attacking Pope Francis

During previous pontificates, Busch was all-in on loyalty to the pope and the teaching authorities of the church. In the era of Pope Francis, however, he has associated himself with right-wing Catholic efforts to discredit the pope using the largely debunked accusations of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former papal ambassador to the United States. In one of several letters criticizing the pope, Viganò urged Francis to step down.

The case could be made that Viganò is merely a disgruntled employee striking back at the home office. When Francis visited the United States in 2015, it was Viganò who arranged the awkward surprise meeting between the pope and Kim Davis, a county clerk in Kentucky who refused to sign marriage licenses of same-sex couples. Viganò was later removed from the diplomatic post by Pope Francis, under a cloud of controversy.

But Viganò’s complaints—including accusations that Pope Francis ignored warnings about Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was removed from active ministry in June after numerous allegations of sexual abuse over 50 years—rose above the level of an unhappy bureaucrat. Viganò shared his letter ahead of time with several far-right Catholic leaders, including Busch.

Viganò’s letter calling for the pope’s resignation was distributed through a subsidiary of EWTN, the largest religious media network in the world with a claimed reach of a quarter-billion households in 140 countries. EWTN, which was launched in the early 1980s by nun-magnate Mother Angelica, who was committed to promoting “traditional social values,” also owns the Catholic News Agency and the National Catholic Register newspaper, through which Viganò’s accusations against the pope were distributed.

Viganò has since moderated his claims, and they have been strongly refuted by Vatican officials, but Busch told The New York Times that the archbishop “has done us a great service. He decided to come forward because if he didn’t, he realized he would be perpetuating the cover-up.” Later, Busch added, “Viganò has given us an agenda. We need to follow those leads and push that forward.”

A right-wing phenomenon

Since their emergence in the 1980s, right-wing Catholic groups, with their deep alliances among the bishops themselves, have achieved a prominence that essentially makes them an alternative to the U.S. bishops’ conference. Schneck said that it has become “increasingly difficult to identify the line between this conservative Catholic deployment of organizations and the official institutions of the church in America.”

In a bizarre turn, we now have Catholic groups accusing the pope of betraying the church and calling for him to resign, as well as initiating what amounts to hate group activity against gays and others in church settings. Money, and the power of U.S. nonprofits, has given extreme-right Catholics new means of communicating to the wider world what they think the Catholic narrative should be. That generally, but not always, is confined to sexual issues—abortion, gay rights, the rights of divorced and remarried people within the church.

Schneck believes there is a qualitative difference today in the challenge to the structure of Catholic hierarchy than there was in the 1980s. “Then, they were trying to respond to the letter on the economy, but they weren’t challenging the authority of the bishops, they weren’t challenging the authority of the pope,” Schneck said. “They weren’t really trying to involve themselves in religion as much as trying to push the church in the direction of being more accommodating to capitalism and free market solutions.”

Today, he said, “These groups are increasingly trying to change the church itself.”

As someone who is unfamiliar with this publication and its editor I don't know what to make of it. They don't provide much help in finding their sources, but they do say their name is Tom Roberts, editor of the National Catholic Reporter. That is, if I implicitly trust Tom Roberts than I can take this to the bank but otherwise its a rumor.
 

Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Staff member
Premium Member
As someone who is unfamiliar with this publication and its editor I don't know what to make of it. They don't provide much help in finding their sources, but they do say their name is Tom Roberts, editor of the National Catholic Reporter. That is, if I implicitly trust Tom Roberts than I can take this to the bank but otherwise its a rumor.

It coheres with many past reports of influence from this network of organisations, like the Acton Institute and NAPA Institute, and my own talks with American Catholic friends.

Granted, what you say is true - but I think it deserves a hearing.

See, this published last month in one of the UK's most respected Catholic newspapers, The Tablet:


The university, the Koch brothers and the ‘right kind’ of Catholic


The Catholic University of America is a flagship of the Church, but with newly restrictive conservative values and shadowy billionaire backers, is it losing sight of its original purpose?

Tim Busch is mentioned in this article as well as a major donor (through a paywall though, unfortunately).

See likewise:

Meet the Southern California Lawyer Shaking Up the Catholic Church | The Recorder

And:

Who's who in drama of cover-up accusation against Pope Francis?

American lawyer Tim Busch

Busch is a prominent Catholic conservative in Orange County, California, and an attorney who owns luxury hotels and the Napa-based vineyard Trinitas Cellars. He’s also the founder of the “Napa Institute” and holds a yearly meeting at his Napa Valley resort for several hundred wealthy Catholic philanthropists, with speakers generally representing a “who’s who” of the conservative Catholic world.

In 2017, he hosted a meeting for conservative Catholics in Trump Tower in Washington, D.C.

Soon after the Viganò letter was released, Busch told the New York Timesthat he had been made aware of the missive two weeks before its release.

Busch - who was also a co-honoree with Viganò at the Rector’s Dinner of the North American College, the national seminary of the U.S. hierarchy, in 2016 - has publicly praised Viganò for the great service he provided the Church in the release of his letter.
 
Last edited:

Stanyon

WWMRD?
So you're a neo-Nazi? ONA?

I almost put in fine print at the bottom of my post "for entertainment purposes only", it was a spoof. I have nothing to do with ONA, if I did you would know it because I would be posting 20 paragraphs of materiel that could easily be summed up in three sentences.
 

Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Staff member
Premium Member
And besides, it would be nice to see a Church less anti-capitalist.
Of course, this is the end of the world to the socialist faithful.

Not likely to happen this side of hell, IMHO :p

While money certainly talks and Tim Busch is able to exert considerable sway on account of the fact that he is the The man behind Catholic U’s largest donation ever – Catholic World Report and this is significant because the 'Catholic University of America' is the only pontifical university in the U.S. (educational institute approved directly by the Vatican), there are major doctrinal bulwarks in the way of this effort to 'capitalize' Catholic Social Teaching.

For one, as the Israeli historian and professor Yuval Noah Harari noted in his 2017 sequel to the world bestseller Sapiens, humans cannot at will change the commandments of God for Catholics:


"Christianity spread the hitherto heretical idea that all humans are equal before God, thereby changing human political structures, social hierarchies and even gender relations. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus went further, insisting that the meek and oppressed are God’s favourite people, thus turning the pyramid of power on its head, and providing ammunition for generations of revolutionaries...

Religions differ of course in the details of their stories, their concrete commandments, and the rewards and punishments they promise. Thus in medieval Europe the Catholic Church argued that God doesn’t like rich people. Jesus said that it is harder for a rich man to pass through the gates of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, and the Church encouraged the rich to give lots of alms, threatening that misers will burn in hell...

The communist laws of history are similar to the commandments of the Christian God, inasmuch as they are superhuman forces that humans cannot change at will. People can decide tomorrow morning to cancel the offside rule in football, because we invented that law, and we are free to change it. However, at least according to Marx, we cannot change the laws of history [or for the church the laws of God]" [Homo Deus, p. 149 & p.277]
 
Top