Has Obama Lost the Catholic Left?

The Cardinal Newman Society | 01/22/12 | CNS Staff

[Brian Kopp DPM]

Has Obama Lost the Catholic Left?

Lyndon B. Johnson, after watching Walter Cronkite conclude a special broadcast which was heavily critical of the Tet offensive, said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.”

Well, this story isn’t exactly on the same level as that, but President Barack Obama may be losing the Catholic Left, with obvious implications for entrenched faculty on many Catholic college campuses. Michael Sean Winters, a lead writer for the National Catholic Reporter and vocal defender of the University of Notre Dame’s 2009 commencement honors for President Obama, wrote yesterday that he can’t see how he could ever support President Obama again after the administration’s ruling on religious exemptions for the contraceptive mandate.

Winters wrote:

President Barack Obama lost my vote yesterday when he declined to expand the exceedingly narrow conscience exemptions proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services. The issue of conscience protections is so foundational, I do not see how I ever could, in good conscience, vote for this man again.

One must wonder if President Obama might just be saying that if he’s lost the National Catholic Reporter, he’s lost the liberal Catholic vote. As you might remember, Obama won over the majority of Catholics in 2008, albeit mostly wayward Catholics.

Winters makes it clear he does not come at this issue as “an anti-contraception zealot.” In fact, he says plainly he comes at his decision “as a liberal and a Democrat” who defended the University of Notre Dame’s decision to honor the President.

That’s what makes this criticism sting a little more.

I accuse you, Mr. President, of dishonoring your own vision by this shameful decision.

I accuse you, Mr. President, of failing to live out the respect for diversity that you so properly and beautifully proclaimed as a cardinal virtue at Notre Dame. Or, are we to believe that diversity is only to be lauded when it advances the interests of those with whom we agree? That’s not diversity. That’s misuse of a noble principle for ignoble ends.

I accuse you, Mr. President, of betraying philosophic liberalism, which began, lest we forget, as a defense of the rights of conscience. As Catholics, we need to be honest and admit that, three hundred years ago, the defense of conscience was not high on the agenda of Holy Mother Church. But, we Catholics learned to embrace the idea that the coercion of conscience is a violation of human dignity. This is a lesson, Mr. President, that you and too many of your fellow liberals have apparently unlearned.

I accuse you, Mr. President, who argued that your experience as a constitutional scholar commended you for the high office you hold, of ignoring the Constitution.

Besides thinking Obama is constitutionally and morally wrong on this issue, Winters also complains that this action by Obama is just plain ol’ politically stupid and could imperil his presidency and destroy the progressive movement.

Winters seems to think Obama took this action to appease Planned Parenthood and NARAL. Winters wonders if Obama could have actually thought that these folks were going to vote Republican unless he did this? In short, Winters seems to believe that Obama took this action to gain the votes of those who were already voting for him.

Winters seems to feel spurned by Obama as well, saying:

I accuse you, Mr. President, of treating shamefully those Catholics who went out on a limb to support you. Do tell, Mr. President, how many bullets have the people at Planned Parenthood taken for you? Sr. Carol Keehan, Father Larry Snyder, Father John Jenkins, these people have scars to show for their willingness to work with you, to support you on your tough political fights. Is this the way you treat people who went to the mat for you?

Winters makes it clear he won’t be joining the GOP anytime soon but says he won’t be supporting President Obama either.

…as soon as I learned of this decision, I knew instantly that I also could not, in good conscience, ever vote for Mr. Obama again. I once had great faith in Mr. Obama’s judgment and leadership. I do not retract a single word I have written supporting him on issues like health care reform, or bringing the troops home from Iraq, or taking aggressive steps to halt the recession and turn the economy around. I will continue to advocate for those policies. But, I can never convince myself that a person capable of making such a dreadful decision is worthy of my respect or my vote.

We wonder, what does Notre Dame’s Father Jenkins think of all of this?

[LomanBill]

>Uhuh. By falible and uninspired meN who

[Mad Dawg]

The Catholic country Mexico was martyring Catholics less than a century ago. Many of the migrant workers in Central Virginia (legal and otherwise) think of themselves as Catholic but do not baptize their children or have much of a sacramental life themselves.

This is why I offer the distinction between cultural Catholics and intentional Catholics.

[ansel12]

A country that was, and almost still is purely Catholic is going to have a very Catholic people.

Of course our interest is in the immigrants flooding over to here, and how they vote.

[RobbyS]

And you mock those who come in monks robes, too instead of $1000 suits from Harts-Schafner-and Marx, and go home in their Mercedes-Benz. As for the “eunuch,” bit, the Gospel speaks of those who are eunuchs for the sake of the Lord. Many of the prophets were such, and so was Jesus. St./ Francis, who came from a middle-class family, did literally who Our Lord asked the rich young man to day, and lived the rest of his life as an intinerant, living with his followers as Our Lord has done. You claim to model Paul in all other ways, but you skip over the rest of the narrative that tells how he worked out his salvation in fear and trembling.

[LomanBill]

>>You claim to model Paul

Nope.

The only religionist model I’ll support is the American one - where the mind of the Individual was created FREE; and where Individuals can decide what constitutes, or doesn’t constitute, the relationship between themselves and their Creator.

[LomanBill]

>>I don’t know what an indulgence

An indulgence was a form of religious, state-mandated, extortion - constituting a relationship where, per Thomas Jefferson, “COMMERCE BETWEEN MASTER AND SLAVE IS DESPOTISM”.

Here, google it:
https://www.google.com/#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=”Selling+of+indulgences”+Luther

“And the Truth will make you free”

[ansel12]

LOL, you do get out there into the wild blue yonder.

[narses]

+

Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:

Add me / Remove me

Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.

[LomanBill]

Nah, I just like reading the writing on the wall for myself, as Thomas Jefferson and Co. intended.



It's in the language of the common American people - not hidden from them in Latin.

[LomanBill]

From the Augsburg confession:

 

Conclusion.

1] These are the chief articles which seem to be in controversy. For although we might have spoken of more abuses, yet, to avoid undue length, we have set forth the chief points, from which the rest may be readily judged. 2] There have been great complaints concerning indulgences, pilgrimages, and the abuse of excommunications.

The parishes have been vexed in many ways by the dealers in indulgences....

http://www.lcms.org/Document.fdoc?src=lcm&id=956

http://www.google.com/#q=indulgences+site:www.lcms.org

 

For folks so intent upon undoing the reformation, y'all sure seem ignorant of its causation. 

How would you differentiate between selling indulgences and the Mormon "baptizing" of the dead?

 

 

[LomanBill]

American anti-Catholicism has its roots in...

Well,  folks can read the writing on the wall and decide THAT, for themselves. 

 

"...and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them..."

The Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom

Thomas Jefferson, 1786   http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/sacred/vaact.html

 

[RobbyS]

The question is how “free” the human mind is. The sorry history of mankind shows that slavery, justified of not, is the usual thing, and if kings are accounted as divine, then it is because men are accounted as beats and burden. For a little balance, there might be a little tableau showing Jefferson as lord of the manor, waited at table by bowed figures dressed in his livery.

[LomanBill]

>>The sorry history of mankind shows that slavery,

You mean like the slaves bred for labor and profit by the Eunuchs vested with the power of the Egyptian theocratic man-god state?

Uhuh.

Like Moses said - "LET MY PEOPLE GO".... or better yet, Thomas Jefferson's version: "Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be FREE."

>>Jefferson as lord of the manor,

Au Contraire. Jefferson died in debt, having maintained his commitment and support of the American Declaration of Independence - toward which he and his fellow Americans pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

 

Shouldn't you be over on DU, bleating with the other subjugated Collectivists about how the American founders were just a bunch of slave owning anti-Catholoic capitalists who didn't want to pay their taxes (or their tithes)?

[RobbyS]

Slaves bred for labor? The Monks of the Middle ages did not such thing. The English monasteries and friaries confiscated by Henry VIII were in a declining state, ill-populated in some cases, but they definitely were better masters than the nobles to whom Henry gave these properties. Wolsey, himself the sonof a butcher, and like so many men who reached high power from low positions, was greedy and vain. But he was as Lord Chancellor was very fair man, often favoring in his court of equity, the poor tenant better than his master, even in the case of church holdings. Certainly his star-chamber was never as savage toward the king’s enemies as that of Thomas Cromwell.

But breed for labor? Jefferson did that, although not with desire to do so. He opposed the slave trade because it loaded Virginia with superfluous labor, for unlike in the West Indies, Africans thrived as much as the whites, each group enjoying a population boom never equaled since, during the years before the Revolution. But it is true that Jefferson and Washington, could never find a way to disencumber themselves of servants and not give up their life they enjoyed. Like Athens, Virginia was a republic founded on slavery.

[stonehouse01]

“He never had them...”

True many were Hillary’s people, but there are plenty of social justice type catholics of all genders such as my FIL in CT and others, especially in New England, Mass, etc. who happily voted for Obama. I call them Cino’s (Catholic in Name Only) and they abound, although my in laws, retired, are daily communicants!!

Their pastor pushes the social justice/democrat agenda and they felt very sanctimonious voting for Obama. There are plently like that, I hope they are actually waking up now, but it was pitiful that they allowed themselves to be deceived in the first place.

Sorry for the rant, I was clearly distressed by this. I am catholic, so this is not an anti catholic rant - it is an anti progressive/democrat/Kennedyesque catholic rant.

[dsc]

“If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.”

Are the CNS staff still unaware that Cronkite was a traitor?

[BonRad]

“I won’t discuss politics with my Catholic inlaws. Their politics comes right down from the pulpit, liberal to the core. But hey I also have ‘protestant’ relatives/inlaws, that are just as liberal wearing those WWJD bracelets. Right now it is the ‘mean’ bad Congress that is stopping progress. Deception is hip deep in many Christian churches.”

I live in New Hampshire and it is utterly hopeless. I’m in much same situation with prot split-offs through the family of otherwise lib ‘catholics’ and the ones who are put off altogether I’d venture by anything approaching organized religion.... though I haven’t seen the WWJD bracelet, not that I’m looking, but I’m astounded how the prots have slowly gone liberal. The pentecostal/evangelicals are around here are like mercury trying to give straight answers even though they might (I mean might) vote repub. Incredible softies on ‘the needy’. Of course once they experience ‘the tongues’ whatever they do is just duckie.

I don’t think I’ve heard in a dog’s age the old adage: “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.

[dsc]

When people speak of leftism, they are usually referring to economic leftism (which makes a people poor), political leftism (which enslaves a people), and social leftism (which robs a people of moral standards and artistic discernment).

There is, however, another form of leftism-one that is rarely called by its name. This is theological leftism, and it may be the worst of them all, as it leads one away from God while insisting on its own superiority to “outdated tradition.”

Now, we know that all leftism is of and from Satan. We observe how the proponents of leftism lie constantly, attempt to deceive, coerce those who won’t be deceived, and extol the tolerance of evil—including abortion, divorce, sodomy, promiscuity, and even mass murder. This is true as well of theological leftism. It seeks to foment disobedience to God by appeal to a “more modern,” and therefore superior, “understanding” of the Bible.

When we seek to discern whether a given premise or movement is theologically leftist, then, we can look for several telltale characteristics.
1. Does it claim an understanding of Scripture that is superior to what existed before?
2. Do its proponents rely extensively on falsehood when discussing differences?
3. Do its proponents engage in coercion, either inside our outside their own group?
4. Does it claim the moral superiority of the tolerance of evil, particularly that which allows the indulgence of the sin of lust (divorce, sodomy, promiscuity, etc)?
5. Above all, does it countenance the slaughter of the most innocent?

There are theological leftists within the Catholic Church, yes, but because its foundations are solid, they have been unable to bring it down. It appears that evil within the Church has reached its high-water mark, and is receding, laus Deo.

One need not look far to find churches that are totally under the sway of the five telltales listed above, and some within them display one more characteristic of theological leftism: blind, irrational hatred of the Catholic Church. When such people attempt to criticize the Church, they do so with all the hatred, illogic, and dishonesty shown by any other sort of leftist.

It is worth noting that one can be a theological leftist while retaining conservative beliefs in the economic and political realms. Whether such a person is or is not “a conservative” I don’t propose to say.

[dsc]

“But breed for labor? Jefferson did that”

I have seen no credible evidence that Jefferson ever compelled one person to have sexual relations with another for any purpose.

[BonRad]

[64 posted on Monday, January 23, 2012 5:33:45 AM by no dems: “How can Black Baptists go to church on Sunday and sing, clap, shout and dance and then go to the polls on Tuesday and vote for a man and a Party that espouses same-sex marriage and killing little babies?”]

Horsepucky to your answers. You sound like the libs. The blacks wouldn’t have voted for( or so continue to support) H Clinton in such huge numbers if she won nomination and followed exact same policies to this point.

Its overt racial pride fueled by: they are often pentecostals and they follow the devil’s ‘tongues’...they ‘got the spirit’ and it don’t matter what they believe morally...same with whites of the same stripe...
we Catholics call it “protestant emotionalism”, to be short.