Posted on 08/08/2012 2:26:48 PM PDT by NYer
When it involves the fabled Al Smith Dinner in New York, all you have to do is invite President Obama:
By tradition, the storied Al Smith Dinner has provided a few hours of comic relief from the angry volleys of the campaign trail — a white-tie charity banquet held in the weeks before Election Day, hosted by the archbishop of New York and featuring speeches by the two presidential candidates on the condition that they lob nothing more than good-natured jibes.
But the Catholic hierarchy’s fierce feud with President Obama, abetted by the increasingly sharp tone of the 2012 elections, is threatening to invade this demilitarized zone and give New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan a case of pre-dinner agita.
Dolan has reportedly extended an offer to Obama (as well as his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney) to attend this year’s dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria, scheduled for Oct. 18, and reports say the president has accepted. That has mobilized abortion opponents, who view Obama as the worst thing since Roe v. Wade and an enemy of religious liberty because of his administration’s controversial birth control mandate.
The Rev. Frank Pavone, head of Priests for Life, a leading abortion opponent based in Staten Island, said Monday (Aug. 6) that “the polite putting aside of differences for a while amounts to scandal.”
“There comes a time when enough is enough and we can no longer afford to give people a reason to doubt our position as a Church,” Pavone wrote in an email. “So no, I don’t think the invitation is appropriate at this time.”
“Better to cancel the event than have it become another cause for scandal in the Catholic Church,” Randy Engel, head of the U.S. Coalition for Life, told LifeNews.com, an anti-abortion website.
The New York Archdiocese has not formally announced that Obama and Romney have been invited, or have accepted. But Meghan McGuinness Myers, executive director of the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation, which organizes the annual fundraiser on behalf of various children’s charities, told LifeSiteNews that Obama had been invited and had accepted.
UPDATE: The Associated Press indicates Obama has accepted the invite:
New York Roman Catholic Cardinal Timothy Dolan is suing the Obama administration, but he’s inviting President Barack Obama to dinner anyway.
Dolan has asked both Obama and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to attend the annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation charity dinner on Oct. 18, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York said Tuesday.
Romney has accepted. The Obama campaign hasn’t said publicly whether the president will attend, but Dolan’s spokesman, Joseph Zwilling, said Obama has accepted, too.
Despite his differences with Obama, Dolan held to the tradition of inviting the president because “this is not a partisan event,” Zwilling said. “It is an evening to put politics aside and come together in a spirit of civility.”
Thanks you for your thread, keep bringing this important subject up!
How does it look to the nation, the world, the man totally
against everything of Christ is invited to the Church
Christ established, asked by a consecrated Bishop to be the guest of Honor?!!!!!
Are we in the end times or what? Sin is not called sin,
evil is presented as something good.
I think you are correct. It’s hard to fathom this event will not bring a lot of attention to the regime’s war against the Church. Two weeks before the vote.
It will be a great time to remind Catholics and all Christians - and other faiths and no faiths - of one huge constitutional violation of Obamacare.
I would hate to be Obama’s speechwriter for this event.
What’s he gonna do, tell condom jokes?
I can just see Obozo at the dinner table, leaning back in his chair with his hand firmly planted on his face with the middle finger sticking up. I’m sure he’ll think it is a great photo-op, kinda similar to the other ones he’s done.
I sincerely hope the Archbishop puts a small bottle of Holy Water in his coat pocket. Perhaps he could sprinkle some on Obozo. Since has has already met him, I’m sure he knows he will be in the presence of evil. How he can stomach that, at a dinner no less, heaven only knows. Wonder if Obozo will bring the flies with him?
Attacks on the Church are attacks on the Bride of Christ.
Man-on-man anal penetration is a sin that crires out to God for vengeance.
And abortion is murder.
Puns, anyone?
Attacks on the Church are assaults on the Bride of Christ.
Proud, public affirmation of sexual perversion ("same-sex marriage") is a sin that cries out to Heaven for vengeance.
And abortion is murder.
Puns, anyone?
For me this is a betrayal of Cardinal Dolan’s flock and his flock is every practicing Catholic in the United States. The White House is laughing at the Catholic Church. Nothing can justify it for me. He might be the top bishop in the country, but he also panders to politicians. I have yet heard him speak out about the pro-abortion, pro-sodomite marriage endorsing Governor Cuomo. He needs to publicly rebuke this politician who is committing great scandal against the Church. The Church is under attack from all sides, and Dolan goes along with the attack instead of manning up and being a soldier for God. If only he had the courage of Archbishop Chaput.
This President isn't content to advocate abortion, he fully intends that every American become an accessory to murder both before and after the fact. Every American, no matter what they claim to believe, will then be able to share the joys of abortion not from the perspective of the mother, but from the perspective of the fathers.
We live in a “it wasn’t my fault” society so Mom, well, poor thing is misguided and was pressured. After the fact there’s a lot of sympathy for the mother who has an abortion even though many times the mom doesn’t deserve any sympathy at all. A significant percentage of the time, sure, there may have been pressure put on Mom and she may have been enticed into it in some ways, but still, the mother makes a conscious decision and the child is not aborted unless she physically participates. The fathers, though, are always just assumed to not be in the picture because it’s assumed they don’t care a bit. I know for a fact that in a good many cases, that’s not the situation at all. The reality is that Dad isn’t in the picture because dad never has a say in the matter, no matter what he may think. Well, with the HHS mandate everyone gets to be the Dad and see things from a situation far more common than most folks think.
You see, if Mom doesn't want kids "yet", the contraceptive she uses fails, and Mom decides there’s no way she’s ready to have kids, well, Mom gets to murder the child. Dad can't do a thing while his own child is savagely and painfully tortured to death. People I know who have tried ended up with having a peace warrant taken out on them so the mother wouldn’t have to listen to arguments and pleas. That's the same position Mr. President is dedicated to putting everyone who opposes abortion in, the role of the Dad who is forced to pay and otherwise stands idly by while the child is murdered. The HHS mandate reminds me the way the communists would send a bill to the family for the bullet used to execute a family member. Maybe some folks think that if all we play nice maybe Mr. President will let those opposed to abortion opt out of getting an itemized bill for the abortions they help fund.
Furthermore, this is the start, not the end of the plan. The end is going to be forced sterilizations and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that a great many have already taken place without the knowledge or consent of the woman who was sterilized. My wife’s family is almost all Cherokee and several of her elderly great aunts were sterilized without their knowledge in the course of surgery for something else when they were young. That shows you where the government will go if everyone goes along to get along so don't fool yourself into thinking this is anything other than the start of what’s on the way. That’s exactly the sort of fire the good Bishop is playing with and I very much hope he knows it. I can’t imagine he doesn’t so I simply give him the benefit of the doubt and figure he has a solid plan the Holy Spirit will help him properly execute. Intrinisic in that benefit of the doubt, of course, is the assumption that those opposed to abortion haven't been so lax that the Lord is giving us all what we deserve rather than further Grace and Mercy but that's another topic.
I would have advised against playing with fire in the first place, but who knows. A slight error on his part, a minor miscalculation that keeps whatever he has in mind from working out, anything at all intentional or otherwise that somehow helps King Barry, and everyone in this country who opposes abortion gets to be the Daddy. But it’s not like they have to be the sort of Dad who very much wants his own child is it? Folks can always just see it all as something distant and happening to strangers, so what’s the real risk?
I guess it’s just one of those little things that never seems to bother most folks anyway, but bear with me. If I'm not mistaken, being an accessory to murder is frowned on by the Church, correct? It’s not like paying tax and the defense department doing something that is wrong, this is a direct, specific dictate that each individual help pay for the murder of infants. What does one do when they're paying for abortions each and every day, go to confession daily? What about paying for other folks to have contraceptives which in reality work by causing very early term abortions? I'm very serious about this, exactly how is helping to pay for the murder of infants in the interest of going along to get along handled on a regular and ongoing basis? I wasn’t born Catholic, so maybe some of the cradle Catholics can help me out and tell me the proper approach to either confessing or ignoring routine cowardice in the face of the enemy.
People don’t give much thought to what the fathers of aborted children go through. I guess because it’s assumed that they’re not interested. In reality, I know of several folks who were married, wanted children, and had to deal with the wife they loved murdering the child they very much wanted. I know one such guy very well. He was a devout Protestant then became pretty much nothing for a decade or so mostly because the pastor he talked to back then only wanted to focus on why it was still wrong for him to divorce his wife. After quite a long time, they guy still weeps over that child on occasion. I suspect most folks this mandate forces to help pay for abortions won’t have that embarrassing tendency to weep, though, particularly those who already shrug off the use of contraception.
have a nice day
I’m fasting now. I am no good at fasting -— no good at all, what a farce -— but I’m fasting.
Fortunately for us we have a predominantly Protestant Christian nation where many a Catholic has "seen the light" and left the One True Church so we can be sure we'll have a brave Christian Congress to make tough choices down the road. Politically unpopular choices like means testing Social Security rather than popular ones like denying medical care to anyone on Social Security or that sort of outlandish and unthinkable alternative.
I wonder if this Dinner will be picketed?
I personally feel sick over this.
It's still being framed by the Archdiocese as a traditional festivity, a great fund-raiser, and a welcome evening of fun. Ass if to say, "Whatever could be the problem?" And yet it's still possible that Dolan will use this the way MOther Teresa used the famous National Prayer Breakfast back in 1994, when she solemnly denounced abortion and the whole damn Culture of Death in front of President and Mrs. Clinton and all their grimly smiling guests.
We should be fasting at Cdl. Dolan's front door. Who knows, in 9 weeks there might be quite a crowd.
If the courageous Mother Teresa were going to be at the dinner Obama would be a definite no-show.I will never forget Mother Teresa standing up to the Clintons.
Cardinal Dolan’s response below. He is trying to explain his lack of judgement in inviting the baby-killing Obama to the Al Smith Dinner. Notice in the letter he does not say he will refuse to have his picture taken than with the sodomite-loving Obama. Of course not, because he will, and the picture will be plastered all over the newspapers and internet, and most Catholics will think that Dolan has no problems with Obama trying to destroy the Catholic Church. This is a terrible decision on the part of Dolan. I cant believe he’s so naive as to believe Obama will not use the event TO HIS ADVANTAGE. He will.
http://blog.archny.org/index.php/al-smith-dinner/
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.