By now everyone is familiar with the Roman Pope’s attempts to change the direction of Catholic moral outrage from people’s underpants to more global problems, such as poverty, war, and the like.  They’re still going to care, mind you, about abortion and gay marriage, they’re just not supposed to talk about that to the exclusion of every other notion.

Chicago’s local pontiff, Cardinal Francis George, has not gotten the memo.  Several days ago, he issued an order defunding several immigration rights organizations that supported gay marriage.  Some background (from the Chicago Tribune):

When a statewide immigrant-rights coalition endorsed same-sex marriage this past spring, 11 groups were given a stark choice by a Roman Catholic anti-poverty program: Leave the coalition, or lose their Catholic funding.

Eight of the groups decided to stick with the Illinois Coalition for Immigration and Refugee Rights. Another group broke with both. All told, the nine groups gave up grants totaling nearly $300,000 from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. This week, some began scaling back projects that address domestic violence, affordable housing and immigration rights.

In what can only be described as an hilariously puzzling choice of words, the Cardinal argued:

“Jesus is merciful, but he is not stupid,” George said in a letter defending the Campaign’s decision not to fund members of the coalition. “He knows the difference between right and wrong. Manipulating both immigrants and the Church for political advantage is wrong.”

This suggests that Jesus merely knows the difference between right and wrong–He doesn’t have any special access (Euthyphro problem solved) or relationship to the answer. Second, and more importantly, though He is merciful, he won’t be duped into anything gay on that account.  No pity gayness for him.