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?

[darrellmaurina]

BonRad, I'm no liberal.

I'm also not a pentecostal or a charismatic and you'll get no disagreement from me on why tonguespeaking risks being led into seriously wrong paths. This is a Roman Catholic thread so I will respect the topic and not say more on the role of the Catholic charismatic renewal. That's an internal issue in your own church and I don't think what I might say would be helpful.

If my answers are "horsepucky," maybe you're right and I'm wrong about about why lots of black churchgoers who should be evangelical conservative Republicans vote for Democrats instead. Fine. If I'm wrong about the past, let's figure out a way to change the future.

My idea is to work with successful black businessmen who can show blacks that hard work will work for them, and with strongly committed black pastors (add black priests if you like, I have no objection) who will teach their parishioners to apply their faith to their life.

I'd love to see ten more Herman Cains and LTC Wests show up in the Republican Party as role models for the future. In the long run, regardless of how we got into this mess with black voters reflexively voting Democrat, the way out is to show good role models of black Republicans.

The church can and should play a key role in that.

[LomanBill]

[Slaves bred for labor? The Monks of the Middle ages did not such thing]

The Monks of the Middle ages were Egyptian Eunuchs?

[RobbyS]

No, Jefferson was not one of those planters who sold their surplus slaves “down south,” to the planters of South Carolina and Georgia who were always short of field hand. But neither did he free the children born to slave women. The law made this hard, but he was content with the status quo, in that he really didn’t know any other way. The cosmopolitan was a captive of his social order,or his own needs, of what he still thought of as a kind of sacred order.

[RobbyS]

If you are not branding THEM as such, why the rant on the Egyptians?

[dsc]

“But neither did he free the children born to slave women. The law made this hard, but he was content with the status quo, in that he really didn’t know any other way. The cosmopolitan was a captive of his social order,or his own needs, of what he still thought of as a kind of sacred order.”

He was not content with the status quo, at all. He was indeed a captive of his social order, but he definitely did not regard slavery as any kind of “sacred order.”

[stonehouse01]

Yes - the social justice Bishops (Howard Hubbard is a good example of this) got in bed with the democrats because they wanted the government money.

Very disturbing - catholic charity does not need government in any way shape or form to “help” them. Father Baker’s success with his Our Lady of Victory charity in Buffalo is a perfect example of this.

They should have chosen between their faith and the money long ago and I am annoyed with the USCCB sell outs.

[LomanBill]

>>why the rant on the Egyptians?

 

Because the temporal man-god perched atop your Middle-aged theocratic pyramid is nothing but a syncretic reiteration of the same thing the Egyptian/Babylonian eunuchs invented for the subjugation of those who were forced to worship their Pharaohs and Kings.

 

The syncretic vestigial remnant of the state-mandated Mary/Isis/Ishtar/Oster/Easter-worshipping Roman/Egyptian/Babylonian/Catholic royal mystery cult is what it is.

 

"...who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men [eunuchs], have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time;"

[RobbyS]

The term hierarchy means, “sacred order.” The social order in Virginia depended on a white/black division, with the large class class at the bottom. Edmund Morgan, the historian, has even argued that the democratic movement in Virginia, was a white movement based on the feeling of white equality. The plantation owners and the chattels were a threat to white land-owners in the valley and the west. Liberals such as Jefferson and Mason, knew the threat that slavery posed for Virginia, in large part because the number of blacks made emancipation impossible. British slave-traders has “dumped” surpluses in Virginia, which is the reason why Jefferson’s draft was so bitter against it. Still Jefferson had a low opinion of blacks as persons, comparing them unfavorably with the Indians. Virginia seemed locked into slavery by the nature of things, not the least of which was Jefferson’s estimate of blacks as “natural slaves.”

[LomanBill]

There is, however, another form of leftism-one that is rarely called by its name. This is theological leftism,

Right, and so in certain districts of Kurdistan, controlled by the Ezidi-militia, anybody who rejects the worship of fallen angels and whirling in dervish circles must be, Left... in a dialectic statist/religionst view of the world, anyhow.

 

Êzidî - Fire in the Mind of Men

"So saying, the Angel Peacock, Melek Taus as we call him, spread his wings and flew away over the inaccessible mountain-tops. That is why we Yezidi, the descendants of that compassionate shepherd, sing hymns to appease and glorify the Spirit of Evil to this very day. Our hymns are scorned by the rest of the world. Both Christians and Muslims alike hate and persecute us. They call us 'Muraddun'-- Infidels and Devil-Worshippers. Our priests, Qawasls, travel secretly and do not wear priestly robes. They carry with them, hidden away from Muslim and Christian eyes, the effigy of a peacock. When we pray, we do not turn towards Mecca like the Muslims but towards the Polar Star, the immovable source of light in darkness, the point of the axis round which the whole universe resolves."
http://www.songsouponsea.com/Promenade/Tale.html

NO SALE.

[RobbyS]

I suggest you take a look at a medieval historian like Norman Cantor before you start talking about the medieval papacy. The pope never acquired anything like pharaonic powers, because they are always engaged in a struggle with the secular power, whether Emperor or national kings for control of the Church. The desperation with which the papacy clung to the papal territories in central Italy, which gave the pope as land-base, and when he lost the protection of the French king and was forced to take refuge in Avignon, he lost huge prestige on the eyes of the rest of Europe. Never more was he than the “chief justice of Europe,” with a moral superiority that gave his standing in the
10,000 lay and monastic estates and free cities of Europe. In a world where the beyond was still everything, he superiority lay in the spiritual power, his standing as the vicar of Christ. But his power over events was somewhat like that of the Supreme Court in our system rather than that of the President. Even at the height of his financial power, with money rolling in from all over Europe, his court remained humble. Rome was a shrine city, a small remnant of the imperial capital of the Caesars.

[LomanBill]

>>The term hierarchy means, “sacred order.”

 

hi·er·ar·chy

noun
\ˈhī-(ə-)ˌrär-kē also ˈhi(-ə)r-ˌär-\

plural hi·er·ar·chies

Definition of HIERARCHY

1

: a division of angels

2

a : a ruling body of clergy organized into orders or ranks each subordinate to the one above it; especially : the bishops of a province or nation

 

...

Origin of HIERARCHY

Middle English ierarchie rank or order of holy beings, from Anglo-French jerarchie, from Medieval Latin hierarchia, from Late Greek, from Greek hierarchēs

First Known Use: 14th century

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hierarchyhttp://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hierarchy

 

 

So your assertion is that Thomas Jefferson held slaves because he believed himself to be a "holy being" - an Angel?

 

LOL.  FAIL.  Try harder.

[LomanBill]

Pffft.  How does Norman Cantor define Syncretism?

[Rome was a shrine city, a small remnant of the imperial capital of the Caesars.]

And Caesar was nothing more/less than the temporally invented god-man of Rome, the predecessor of the Holy Roman Empire’s Pope.

Meet the New Boss, same as the Old Ba'al

--The Who?

NO SALE.

Don’t need no indulgences from synretic Papist Pharisees who’ve perched themselves for doing bidness upon the temple steps, again.

 

And to caste the attention of the peanut gallery back upon the thread subject -- the AMERICAN thing to do, is to encourage all citizens, and recent Catholic immigrants --- to think for THEMSELVES, using their own mind which Almighty God hath created FREE.

[RobbyS]

. The charge of syncretism is one that comes from the comparative religion crowd , who have always looked upon Christianity and not Catholicism, as a blend of Greek and Jewish ideas, with the divinity of Christ as the main pagan idea adopted. But they also think that Judaism is syncretic. Moses is supposed to have got his idea of monotheism from Egypt. Genesis is supposed to be a variant of Babylonian myths. Heaven and hell, taken from the Persians. All of these suppositions being based on similarities.

Cantor is not into mythology as you are, so he only looks at the facts on the ground. The Church is unlike any previous religious organization, being more like an independent society based largely on Roman civil society and a theology steeped in Greek philosophy. Like the Jews, it was a nation inside the Roman Empire, but not enjoying as many rights. Like the Jews, not having an territorial base. Under Constantine, it because the state religion, but continued to enjoy consider autonomy apart from the state. The collapse of the empire in the West left the Church independent of the Emperor. Justinian’s failure to resecure control of Italy, the later attacks from Persia, the Muslim seizure of Syria and Egypt, left the Empire reduced to Asia Minor and Greece. There the Emperor dominated the Church, with the Patriarch as head of the hierarchy.

In the West, there was no state apparatus. The pope remained independent, the center, especially after Gregory I, of a vast, decentralized missionary effort conducted by the monastic orders. Charlemagne attempted a partial restoration of the Western Empire, but it was until the mid-10th century, that the German-Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, was established. But nothing like a centralized state developed in Latin Christendom. The pope's authority over the Church was contested by the Emperor in his lands, but the pope’s authority was more international, extended over all Europe. But never did he acquire anything like imperial authority.

[RobbyS]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieros

[dsc]

“Right, and so in certain districts of Kurdistan, controlled by the Ezidi-militia, anybody who rejects the worship of fallen angels and whirling in dervish circles must be, Left... in a dialectic statist/religionst view of the world, anyhow.”

You really don’t understand...anything, do you?

[dsc]

“The term hierarchy means, “sacred order.”

And the term “straw man” means “man made of straw.”

In 21st century America, hierarchy means “order.” Not one person in 10 million would think “sacred order” upon hearing that word.

That said, Mark Twain was very wise in saying, “To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man’s character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.”

Jefferson was not perfect. He was no saint. He was just exactly as bad and good as he really was, and straining to make him appear worse is not an ethical act.

[LomanBill]

I understand what theocratic tyranny is - and the role it has played throughout history.

It’s self-evident.

[LomanBill]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieros_gamos

[LomanBill]

[The charge of syncretism is one that comes from the comparative religion crowd ]

Isis
Ishtar
Oster
Easter

All variations of mother-goddess/spring fertility worship

Have any Ishtar Egg BBQ’s lately?

[LomanBill]

>>You really don’t understand...anything, do you?

I understand the relationship between Nebuchadnezzar and Lucifer in Isaiah 14.

Do you?