The Providence Journal reported that “a half dozen people” protested Bishop Thomas J. Tobin’s remarks about Nelson Mandela. Seriously. Half a dozen. That’s six to you and me. Six.
Dude, when I take my kids to Applebees we’re a larger number than that. Should the Providence Journal be reporting on us heading out from some chicken and fries?
All Bishop Tobin said was that while “there was much to admire” in Mandela’s “long life and public service,” there is also a part of his legacy “that is not at all praiseworthy, namely his shameful promotion of abortion.
The protestors claimed that the bishop’s remarks were “ill timed” and “uncalled for.”
Oddly, these same people did not protest the ill-timed and uncalled for selfie from the president during Mandela’s funeral, which, if you ask me, may have been a teensy bit more insulting to Mandela.
Then, of course, you had the inevitable attempt to put distance between any priest or bishop who mentions abortion and Pope Francis.
Concetta DiCenzo, of Cumberland, one of those who presented the petition Wednesday, told reporters that Pope Francis is reaching out to people, including young people who have lost their way, while, she argued, Bishop Tobin has been too concerned with a political stand.
“I mean, Nelson Mandela, he suffered,” DiCenzo said of the former president of South Africa who was imprisoned for years for his efforts to end that nation’s policy of apartheid. She added that “I am really tired of the church pushing the people away.”
Bishop Tobin reportedly responded by saying that Pope Francis “addressed the issue very clearly in his recent encyclical by writing: ‘Among the most vulnerable for whom the church wishes to care with particular love and concern are unborn children, the most defenseless and innocent among us. … It is not ‘progressive’ to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life.’”
Something tells me the half dozen protesters will not be swayed by that little reminder.
December 22, 2013 at 11:31 pm
"The protestors claimed that the bishop's remarks were "ill timed" and "uncalled for." That Nelson Mandela did not know or acknowledge that the human being, defined as an individual substance of a rational nature, composed of body and rational soul begins life as a one celled human body with his own unique DNA, a scientific discovery, is truly disheartening.
December 23, 2013 at 1:40 pm
"Ill timing". Anything that smacks of orthodoxy and truth to these morons is "ill timing."
December 23, 2013 at 2:11 pm
I remember when Clinton and bush were caught, just like Obama, at a funderal of some world leader displaying an attitude of who cares. This gets the award for stupidly among the three simply because bush and Clinton…at least at the funeral….didn't hit on anyone in reorient of their wife.
So much for Obama giving a crap about black issues and the alleged black heroes of the work as our narratives require…so he is like everyone else. No one really cared about this person or his struggles outside his own family.