Posted on 01/25/2012 8:21:39 AM PST by oblomov
When Barack Obama secured his party's nomination for president in 2008, one group of Democrats had special reason to cheer.
These were Democrats who were reliably liberal on policy but horrified by the party's sometimes knee-jerk animosity to faith. The low point may have been the 1992 Democratic convention. There the liberal but pro-life governor of Pennsylvania, Bob Casey Sr., was humiliated when he was denied a speaking slot while a pro-choice Republican activist from his home state was allowed.
With Mr. Obama, all this looked to be in the past. In 2006, the Illinois senator delivered a speech declaring that "secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering the public square." He followed up by appearing at fund-raisers for the anti-abortion Bob Casey Jr. during Mr. Casey's successful run for Sen. Rick Santorum's senate seat.
Sen. Casey went on to co-chair Mr. Obama's National Catholic Advisory Council. Sixteen years after the snub to his dad, he was given a prime-time speaking slot at the 2008 Democratic convention. And Mr. Obama would go on to capture a majority of the Catholic vote.
Now, suddenly, we have headlines about the president's "war on the Catholic Church." Mostly they stem from a Health and Human Services mandate that forces every employer to provide employees with health coverage that not only covers birth control and sterilization, but makes them free. Predictably, the move has drawn fire from the Catholic bishops.
Less predictable—and far more interesting—has been the heat from the Catholic left, including many who have in the past given the president vital cover. In a post for the left-leaning National Catholic Reporter, Michael Sean Winters minces few words.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Thankfully, my parish is extremely conservative.
I must be Catholic. He offends me too.
I like the way they try to make politics and religion seperate. Cowards not to take a stand.
Forced charity at gunpoint? Yep, it’s called the government hiding behind religions such as Islam in order to carry harassment of the free people via such mercenarian stratagems of preferential treatments. However, this is inviting chaos as Machiavelli aptly warned.
Didn’t think it was POSSIBLE for Obama to offend left-wingers who are at best only nominally Catholic (think Ted Kennedy, Nanacy Pelosi, John Kerry), as they are the ones who built him up to such a lofty stance to begin with.
Now if you are talking about the blue-color, urban-dwelling, line worker in a unionized manufacturing plant, who has never in his life been in contact with anything BUT Democrat ward heelers, and was given the Democrat line about being the party of the working people along with his mother’s milk, Obama might be losing them.
But where have they got to go? They have a choice of two, either get out of the ghetto in which they have suddenly discovered they have been living all their lives, or to incur the wrath of the union bosses who have been such a significant part of his life, awake, asleep, at work, in his own home, or even in the church he attends.
Those union bosses did not get to where they are by being nice people. They will employ personal physical muscle to encourage “agreement” with the aims and aspirations of the union creed, and apply enormous pressure both on the job and in the target’s own neighborhood for compliance in contributions and in the voting booth, for the “favored” political agenda.
The “favored” political agenda, or course, is taken right out of the Saul Alinsky rules for radicals, and boils down to being either on strike, or threatening to strike, if demands are not met immediately. Once the demands are met (often resulting in lowered productivity and higher costs), the bar is again raised and even more is demanded of management. This is what pretty much killed the originally constituted General Motors and Chrysler, both of which have been so vastly transformed, they are no longer the same organizations.
FDR, Truman, LBJ, and now Obama have appropriated religious language and concepts to further their statist aims. They are continuing Bismarck’s Kulturkampf, which was a direct attack on Catholic church influence in Prussia. One of his most successful attacks was the establishment of the Wohlfahrstadt, the welfare state.
They are surprised that the secular pro-muslim party is also against Catholics?
Leftist “Catholics” offend Catholics who follow their faith. If Catholicism is examined closely the beliefs that liberals favor i.e. abortion and gay marriage are strictly prohibited by the Catholic Church. Maybe if we didn’t have uber liberal bishops and priests the congregation could understand what it meant to follow their faith. But, there are some very good parishes and priests, the only Catholic parish that I attend is a conservative one that very carefully follows the beliefs of the CC, if you can find one of those, you’ll find that you’ll get aggravated a lot less. jmo
oh well...I’m a rightwing catholic that has been offended by the catholic left for years.
Join the club lefties....crybabies - you helped get us in this mess!
There are plenty of left winged priests also.
A couple of weeks ago during the homily, Father Ned Flanders(he looks like Ned Flanders) ranted on how Cuba has a better health care industry and nationalized health care works great in Canada.
I bit my tongue during the homily until Father Ned Flanders claimed 50 million Americans have ZERO access to health care. I then did my best Samuel Alito impersonation and said “That’s Not True” loud enough for many around me to hear.
Many looked and silently nodded in agreement while others shot dirty glares.
We conservative Catholics are going to have to engage these lefties face on if we are going to take our churches back.
Consider the mission of Dorothy Day. Although she never appealed for government action of any kind (in fact, distributism requires small government), many left-wingers have been inspired by her example to use the Church as a vessel for advancing their political agenda. Of course, they have to adopt the Church’s social position on abortion, contraception, etc., but these left-wing Catholics see this as a reasonable compromise.
I’m basing this on my personal experience, and my own reading.
Re Father Jenkins: Obama finally bit the hand that fed him.
Did you engage Father Flanders after Mass?
Did you engage Father Flanders after Mass?
My wife was dragging me out of Church(so I wouldn’t create a scene) but I gave Father Ned Flanders a “if Looks could Kill”
glare.
He got the point.
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