Posted on 01/09/2013 3:42:31 PM PST by NYer
The next four years will not be good ones for practicing Catholics or, for that matter, anyone who subscribes to Judeo-Christian beliefs. I’m certain that in a short time from now, Catholics will look upon the recent “fiscal cliff” scuffle as merely the prelude to the president’s plan to impose his ideological will on the nation.
Although Obama won with only 51 percent of the vote – and is the first president re-elected to a second term receiving fewer total votes than in his first election – he actually believes he received a huge mandate last November. He rejects the notion that the nation is in effect evenly divided and is still center-right.
This misconception has caused the Narcissist-in-Chief to reveal his true self. Compromise for Obama means “my way or the highway.”
This ego-centric attitude should come as no surprise. Obama watchers have been sounding alarms for years that, because he spent most of his pre-presidential years talking to like-minded people and sycophants in his radical-chic Hyde Park, Chicago neighborhood, he believed he was an anointed one destined to lead a nation of dopes. This is the man who said: “Understand where the vision for change comes from, first and foremost. It comes from me.”
One major-league Chicagoan who dealt with state senator and U.S. Senator Obama recently told me that, in a typical one-hour meeting, Obama would talk for fifty-five minutes, then conclude by saying, “I guess we both agree.” When he was informed this was not the case, Obama would take offence and abruptly end the meeting.
The man who called for “hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord” has consistently broken the rules he championed and has gotten away with it because the high-minded, main-line people in the press – with their contempt for ordinary people – have looked the other way. They view Obama as a fellow member of the enlightened class. And like all narcissists, they look upon those disagree as dumb.
Time magazine’s Joe Klein, a leading member of the pro-Obama cheering section, best expressed the attitude he and his confreres have for those who oppose the chosen one’s policies: “American’s are flagrantly ill-informed. . .and, for those watching FOX News, misinformed. It is very difficult to have a democracy without citizens. It is impossible to be a citizen if you don’t make an effort to understand the most basic activities of your government. It is very difficult to thrive in an increasingly competitive world if you’re a nation of dodos.”
The Obama Administration believes, Ross Douthat has written, “that issues like health care and climate change and immigration are best worked out through comprehensive bills drawn up by enlightened officials. . . . It regards sexual liberty as sacrosanct and other liberties – from the freedoms of churches to the rights of gun owners – as negotiable at best.”
So, expect Obama’s second term to be an all-out effort to undercut the Church. He will strive to promote not freedom of religion, but freedom from religion.
If Congress dares to get in his way, he will implement his agenda through executive orders and regulations concocted by his ever-growing bureaucracy of experts.
The Catholic Church will most likely be out of the health-care business in the next four years. Obama wants the secular state, not religious institutions, to control the billions of tax dollars allocated annually to hospitals. Regardless of what the courts decide on religious liberty, the 159 new bureaucracies Obamacare creates will, by way of onerous regulations and decrees, drive bishops to throw their hands up in disgust and surrender the keys to their medical institutions to Big Brother.
As for the same-sex marriage battle, it’s lost. The next move will be to deny the Church its authority to legally sanction marriages.
It is only a matter of time before a same-sex couple, waving their Catholic baptismal certificates, file a federal suit alleging their civil rights were violated because a pastor has refused to marry them in his parish church. And don’t be surprised when the Obama Justice Department files a brief supporting the plaintiffs.
Expect America to become like France – where every couple has to be legally married by a government magistrate and, only afterwards, if they choose, may participate in a church wedding ceremony.
Obama makes war on the Church because for him there are no absolute truths, no objective moral laws that supersede the state. In his book, The Audacity of Hope, he wrote “Implicit. . .in the very idea of ordered liberty is a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology, or theology or ‘ism,’ any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course or drive both majorities and minorities into the cruelties of the Inquisition, the pogrom, the Gulag, or the jihad.” John Paul II and Benedict XVI have, of course, pointed to and rebutted the fallacy of thinking that democracy can survive without a commitment to truth.
For Obama all is relative. The basis of democracy is the ever-changing push and pull of diverse opinions and tastes. Beliefs in transcendent order, metaphysics, common law must be replaced with concepts that are workable, efficient, and materialistic. For Obama, liberty means obedience to the uncertain will of the managerial elite. For Obama, rights and liberties are bestowed by the state, not God.
A scary picture? Yes it is. And that’s why all Catholics, especially the hierarchy, cannot let down their guard and must be ready to perform heroic deeds to defend the Faith in the public square. We’ll probably lose, but we must at least go down fighting.
Catholic ping!
“The next four years will not be good ones for practicing Catholics....”
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Didn’t more than 50% of them vote for Obama the second time around?
Isn’t it that about 57% of Catholics have no objection to same sex marriage?
Then what seems to be the problem?
“The Catholic Church will most likely be out of the health-care business in the next four years”
—
We lost 6 Boston area Catholic Hospitals a couple of years ago to Seward Healthcare.Very sad.
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Inflation, as fostered by the Federal Reserve, steals from the pocketbooks of workers (and everyone else, too). The Catholic Catechism states that defrauding the worker of his wages is "a crime that cries to Heaven for vengeance." Yet where are the Bishops when the Fed keeps destroying the currency? Nowhere to be found.
As someone has said, Jesus told us we'd be persecuted. He didn't let us know it would be by our own Bishops.
You must have missed the word "practicing."
More that 50% of "them" found no reason to vote for either candidate and stayed home. Of the other 50% only half voted for Obama. That means only about 25% of self-identified Catholics voted for Obama. The actual number among practicing (regular Mass attendees) was considerably less.
Peace be with you
Was Romney mistaken in depending upon a high conservative Catholic turnout? I mean, he had a popular, up and coming star VP who was Catholic and all. What happened? Was it anti-Mormon bigotry?
Were Catholics swayed into a false sense of security due to the deal worked out between the church and the Obama administration regarding exemption from Obamacare? Why was turnout such a big dud? 50% after all the uproar here on FR and elsewhere? It’s pitiful. A 2% improvement over 2008.
I’d like to see this dissected and bandied about just as the purported “low” turnout of 81% among Evangelicals has been.
Most of the “practicing” Catholics that I know who voted for Obama the first time around did not change their choice the second time.
Many of them drive around with car stickers that say ‘Proud to be Catholic’ and ‘Keep Christ in Christmas’ and other inane slogans.
Yes, a majority of Catholics voted for Obama. Conversely, roughly 75% of Evangelicals voted against Obama.
It gets even worse when you factor race into the equation. A solid majority of "Hispanic Catholics" voted for Obama, and over 90% of self-identified "Black Protestants" voted for Obama.
Before the election I'd heard of grand plans to turn out a wave of evangelical Christians upset about Obamacare and gay marriage. But according to exits, Protestant (not all of whom identify as evangelical) turnout was lower this year (53 percent) than in 2008 (54 percent). Christianity Today notes that in swing states, self-described evangelical turnout was approximately identical to 2008, and less evangelicals voted for Romney (compared to McCain) in crucial states like Ohio.
Overall, 6 million Evangelicals voted for Obama's second term.
And among the Catholics, i's just stomach-churning. Even the USCCB "Fortnight for Freedom" which was supposed to alert Catholics about Obama's threat to Church institutions ---- pfft, I've seen reports that 78% of Catholics never even heard of the whole HHS/Anti-Conscience mandate thing. Activists did, to be sure, but "most self-identified Catholics" didn't. 50% of Catholic voters voted for Obama's second term.
It was, and is, a disaster all the way around. Catholics and Evangelicals share the responsibility for this appalling failure. And don't get me started on the Jews.
Yes. Romney “lost”. Obama and his brutal campaign slung mud. A lot of it, in the form of one or two words or a two second soundbyte, STUCK. When one man was asked why he wasn’t voting for Romney, he replied knowingly, “Bain Capital”.
Why, then, did Obama blubber and cry momentarily after his debate losses and just before the election? I think because he was not at all sure absolutely he was going to win, even with all the cheating that in my opinion went on. So, he did what babies do, he cried. When he “won”, he sauntered into the White House along with Michelle and the girls, grabbed his binky, and retired to his nap room to suck on the binky. When he has to leave, and he will, he will probably be curled up under a table in the fetal position and have to be physically removed. :o)
I agree. I am a fallen-away Catholic. I’m gonna enjoy watching them squirm.
You wrote:
“Didn’t more than 50% of them vote for Obama the second time around?”
Nope, not practicing Catholics - just CINOs.
“Isn’t it that about 57% of Catholics have no objection to same sex marriage?”
Nope, not practicing Catholics - just CINOs.
“Then what seems to be the problem?”
Too many CINOs.
Don’t get too comfy. Soon it will be your turn to squirm.
I bet if more conservatives banded with the Church to hold the line against the contreceptive mandate Obama might not be so eager to grab guns. ....1st they came for the Catholics and I did nothing....then they came for....
“Why was turnout such a big dud? 50% after all the uproar here on FR and elsewhere? It’s pitiful. A 2% improvement over 2008.”
From what I have been able to find, Obama lost the Catholic vote in CT, Fla, IL, IA, MI, NH, NJ, NY, NC, OH, PA, VA and WI. The states where Obama won the Catholic vote according to what I have found are CA, ME, NV, and NM.
As far as I know, Obama didn’t win the Catholic vote in any red state, but he lost the Catholic vote in many states that went blue. By the Catholic vote for the states I have found, the electoral breakdown is:
Romney 181
Obama 70
The Catholic vote varies by state, just like the Protestant vote.
Of the states that were polled, Romney got a higher % of the Catholic vote than Protestants in NC,WI,Ohio,Mi,NY,Va,Il,NJ, and Ct. Protestants gave Romney a higher % than Catholics in NH,FL,IA,Pa,ME,CA,AZ and NM. The biggest splits I have found was NY and NM. Catholics voted for Romney by 53% in NY, Protestants voted for Obama by 66% in NY. In NM Catholics voted for Obama by 64%, Protestants voted for Romney by 60%.
“I’d like to see this dissected and bandied about just as the purported “low” turnout of 81% among Evangelicals has been.”
This Catholic thanks God for the Evangelical vote.
Freegards
Your loving, Christian attitude towards persecution must have all of Heaven rejoicing.
And what could be more right than the 50-plus percent of Catholics who voted for Obama suffer at Obama's hands? The only thing that I can think of that could possibly give me more pleasure is watching the 70% of American Jews who voted for Obama whine as Obama continues to strangle Israel.
What is missing from this picture is a safe place from which to watch and gloat. That's why we need to secede. I'd like nothing more than to watch the Blue Counties suffer. We'd better do it soon, or we'll wind up taking too much of the heat ourselves.
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