(LifeSiteNews) — Local Catholic bishops and lay Catholic figureheads across the U.S. have resoundingly condemned the Los Angeles Dodgers re-invitation to the blasphemous anti-Catholic drag “nuns” to receive a “Community Hero Award” during the team’s LGBTQ+ Pride Night.
Shamefully, (but not surprisingly) the @dodgers have been bullied into apologizing to & “re-inviting” a group of anti-catholic bigots
Today our great country is controlled by socio-political ruling elites who don’t just tolerate anti-Christian bigotry, they encourage &… https://t.co/YcVqkqaoDy
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) May 23, 2023
While the Dodgers had previously canceled their decision to grant the award to the mock order “The Sisters of the Perpetual Indulgence” due to outrage over the plans, including from CatholicVote and Senator Marco Rubio, they backtracked on Monday with an announcement that they apologized to the “sisters” and decided to honor them as previously planned.
The reversal came after LA Pride, which puts on the annual LA Pride Parade and Festival, and Los Angeles LGBT Center had warned they would skip the Dodgers’ Pride Night in protest, The Daily Wire reported. This year, the Dodgers’ “LGBTQ+ Pride Night” falls on the Feast of the Sacred Heart.
Following the re-invitation, Bishop Robert Barron, former Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, and Senator Rubio highlighted the group’s deeply blasphemous and offensive reenactment of Christ’s crucifixion, with a man “pole dancing” on the cross around the “Christ” figure.
The Los Angeles Dodgers have decided to honor the blasphemous anti-Catholic drag group, the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence”, with a Community Hero Award on June 16, the Feast of the Sacred Heart.
This blatant contempt for the Catholic faith cannot go unchallenged.
SIGN: The LA Dodgers must revoke their plan to honor these 'transgender nuns'
The Major League Baseball franchise said it had decided to honor the group — which engages in deliberately offensive sexualized burlesque mockeries of Catholicism — after initially canceling plans to do so when the public expressed outrage.
“After much thoughtful feedback from our diverse communities, honest conversations within the Los Angeles Dodgers organization and generous discussions with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the Los Angeles Dodgers would like to offer our sincerest apologies to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, members of the LGBTQ+ community and their friends and families,” the statement read.
In one move, you managed to turn off conservatives and slap Christians in the face with disgusting drag nuns. What a disgrace you’ve become. Was recently at a game. Won’t be coming back.
— Courrielche⚡️ (@courrielche) May 23, 2023
The baseball team said it will ask the sacrilegious group “to take their place on the field at our 10th annual LGBTQ+ Pride Night on June 16th.”
SIGN: The LA Dodgers must NOT allow this mockery to take place
The Dodgers’ Monday announcement comes after it previously agreed to dis-invite the group after outrage by Catholics and other conservatives.
Among others, Catholic Vote and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida vocally objected to the decision to honor the so-called “sisters.”
“Given the strong feelings of people who have been offended by the sisters’ inclusion in our evening, and in an effort not to distract from the great benefits that we have seen over the years of Pride Night, we are deciding to remove them from this year’s group of honorees,” the team said in a since-deleted May 17 announcement.
San Francisco’s Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone had previously thanked the Dodgers for their decision to roll back the invitation.
In its Monday statement, after apologizing for temporarily dis-inviting the anti-Catholic hate group, the Dodgers promised to “work with our LGBTQ+ partners to better educate ourselves, find ways to strengthen the ties that bind and use our platform to support all our fans who make diversity part of the Dodgers family.”
Make your voice heard NOW, before this blasphemy takes center stage.
SIGN: The LA Dodgers must not honor anti-Catholic, anti-Christian drag 'nuns'
Conservatives responded on social media by slamming the baseball team for caving.
“Yes, it is vital that the national pastime honor and support those who mock religion and decency,” reacted Daily Wire co-founder and podcaster Ben Shapiro.
“The Gay Mafia will always extract their payment for ‘protection,’ said Crisis magazine editor-in-chief Eric Sammons.
Some social media users hinted that the team should face the same backlash as beer company Bud Light, which is continuing to endure a massive boycott after its decision to honor transgender-identifying TikTok activist Dylan Mulvaney.
But the Dodgers weren’t always woke and divorced from traditional religious practice.
Former Dodgers great Sandy Koufax, a left-handed pitcher who was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in fame in 1972, famously refused to pitch during Game 1 of the World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur, the most important holy day in the Jewish calendar. He previously opted out of games that landed on Passover and Rosh Hashanah.
And Koufax wasn’t alone in living an active faith. Legendary announcer Vin Scully, the “Voice of the Dodgers” for 67 years, was a staunch Catholic. Scully, who passed away last year at age 94, was described by Catholic News Agency’s Jonah McKeown as “a devout Catholic who found in his faith a source of joy and comfort and sought to share it with others through personal kindness and philanthropy.” 
As LifeSiteNews previously reported, Scully was devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary and even narrated a two-CD audio recording of the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 2016.
SIGN & SHARE our urgent petition today - do not be silent as the Catholic faith is attacked!
Warning: disturbing content
Why are @Dodgers players platforming an anti-Catholic hate group? I can’t imagine @ClaytonKersh22 wants kids exposed to these bigoted drag performers. pic.twitter.com/KBKCFEvVCt
— @amuse (@amuse) May 23, 2023
“It’s hard to imagine anything more offensive than that,” remarked Barron, describing the “sisters” as an “anti-Catholic hate group” and noting that “Anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice in America.”
Friends, it’s hard to imagine anything more offensive than some of the behavior of the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” which I think can only be described as an anti-Catholic hate group. pic.twitter.com/VLZP28Soab
— Bishop Robert Barron (@BishopBarron) May 25, 2023
The bishop has also called upon Catholics to boycott the Dodgers, as have Catholic author and podcaster Dr. Taylor Marshall and other lay Catholics.
Editor and Navy intelligence veteran Jack Posobiec went a step further and called on “every Christian player on the LA Dodgers” to “boycott the Drag Nun award night.”
Barron, Rubio, and lay Catholic figureheads like Lila Rose question whether the Dodgers would ever honor a group that mocked and disrespected Muhammed and Islam, or Judaism and the Torah, the way the trans “sisters” have disrespected Christ and Catholicism.
“If the hate group “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” was anti-Islam instead of anti-Catholic there is zero chance the @Dodgers would be honoring them with a “Community Hero Award” next month,” tweeted Rubio.
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of the Archdiocese of San Francisco slammed the decision to honor a group that he suggested were indecent people because of their practice of routinely insulting honorable Catholic sisters.
“Our Catholic sisters devote themselves to serving others selflessly. Decent people would not mock & blaspheme them. So we now know what gods the Dodger admin worships. Open desecration & anti-Catholicism is not disqualifying. Disappointing but not surprising. Gird your loins,” Cordileone tweeted Tuesday.
Similarly, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Diocese of Orange responded to the decision by defending women religious as women to honor and not to denigrate. The former called upon Catholics to “show the world how much our women religious mean to us and our Church” with phone calls, letters, and social media messages, as well as donations to their orders or to programs they support.
“The decision to honor a group that clearly mocks the Catholic faith and makes light of the sincere and holy vocations of our women religious who are an integral part of our Church is what has caused…anger, and dismay from our Catholic community,” wrote the archdiocese in a statement.
Not all Catholics had unreserved condemnation for the drag “sisters” and the Dodgers decision to award them. Michael O’Loughlin, a self-identified “gay Catholic” who writes for the Jesuit-run America magazine, on Wednesday wrote that he had “complicated” feelings about the invitation. He argued that the group is “rooted in activism,” referring to their work with gay men afflicted with H.I.V. and AIDS, and that “Critics of drag… often fail to appreciate how the artform uses humor to poke fun at those who hold power…”
O’Loughlin did not express anger, dismay, or sorrow at the group’s obscene and blasphemous burlesques mocking Christ and the Eucharist, but rather was troubled that “their costumes mock women who wield relatively little power, especially in the church.”
Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote, told The Daily Wire’s Georgia Howe that the Dodgers have decided to “slap Catholics in the face.”
Burch has vowed to fight back with a “barrage” of advertising against the team across Los Angeles.
“We’re raising $1 million as fast as we can, and we will pummel this decision in advertising that the Dodgers can’t ignore,” Burch said in a statement.
“The more Catholics in Los Angeles learn about this, the more they will be really ashamed that their baseball team has chosen to honor” such a “vile” group, he told The Daily Wire.
After the Dodgers’ initial invitation to the “Sisters,” Burch had pointed out in a letter to MLB commissioner Rob Manfred that the move was “particularly galling” in the wake of the recent passing of Vin Scully, a legendary Dodgers broadcaster and devout Catholic.
“Vin and other members of the Dodgers family, including countless fans, would surely be appalled that the team they love would dishonor their faith in such a manner,” Burch wrote.
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