In Obama-Catholic Church Relations, the Rift Is Between the Church and Its American Followers
By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country
When it comes to the Obama administration's relations with the Roman Catholic Church, the real political rift isn't between the bishops and the president. It's between the church and its American flock.
That's the gist of my most recent God & Country column for U.S. News Weekly , just posted for all to see at usnews.com. Here's the top.
News that President Barack Obama will deliver this year's commencement address at the University of Notre Dame, a prestigious Roman Catholic institution, has triggered denunciations from at least nine American bishops. They oppose lending a platform to a politician who rejects the church's firm antiabortion stance. "Notre Dame didn't understand what it means to be Catholic when they issued this invitation," Cardinal Francis George, head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told a crowd of antiabortion advocates last weekend.
And yet Notre Dame's students appear to strongly back the university's invitation to Obama. The campus newspaper reports that 97 percent of the letters that have come in on the subject from graduating seniors are supportive.
It's just the latest example of the rift between the Catholic Church hierarchy and its American flock on a political matter. When President Obama lifted restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research last month, the bishops conference, the organizational body for American bishops, condemned the move as a "sad victory of politics over science and ethics." But an analysis this week by Gallup found that 63 percent of American Catholics consider embryonic stem cell research to be morally acceptable.
Indeed, as the bishops conference issues new critiques of the Obama administration on an almost weekly basis, it can be easy to forget that most American Catholics backed Obama at the polls last November. They supported him by 54 percent to 45 percent, a reversal from 2004, when more voted for George W. Bush than for John Kerry, a Catholic. Forty percent of Catholics with the most orthodox beliefs backed Obama, a 100 percent increase from Kerry's showing among those voters.
As U.S. bishops are becoming more emboldened in speaking out, they are spotlighting more than the differences between the church and the Democratic Party on key political issues. Increasingly, they are pointing out the differences between the church and its own American followers. "We have had a de facto schism in the church for the last generation," says Catholic League President Bill Donohue, an outspoken critic of Notre Dame's invitation to Obama and, generally speaking, of the Democrats. "The issue being forced upon the bishops is: What are they going to do to get their house in order?"
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Tags: Barack Obama | religion | Catholicism
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Reader Comments
Really Now!
First-there are no Vatican destined funds coming from the dioceses and archdioceses of the USA EXCEPT for Peter's Pence, when a collection is made throughout the USA to send to the Holy Father for him to then disteibute these funds to his favorite charities. FINIS! END! NO monioes are routinely sent to Rome! Second-just because a bishop is assigned to Rome, does nbot mean he loses his citizenaship and rights of free speech to criticize OR applaud a sitting Chief Executive! FACT: The HOLY fATHER gave President Obama a book when the US President visited Rome recently! Book TITLE: Bioethics! A gentle slam at President Obama for his stand approving abortion. FACT: American taxpayers subsidize Planned parenthood, to the tune of 375,000,000.00 per year! Benedict XVI is Not an American, but as a religious leader he has a responsibiloity AND a right to speak UP for human life, as does Bishop Burke! Oh, by the way-Peter's Pence, usually results in about 35,000,000.00 sent to Rome! NOT 357,000,000.00 as is the case for the INVOLUTARILY given monies by USA taxpayers, like it or not, to Planned Parenthood! AND, Infalibility was a UNIVERSALLY declared principle of all the Catholic bishops at Vatican 1 Council, NOT Vatican II! AND, that is ONLY in matters of faith and morals and WHEN the Holy Father speaks as hread of the Church and declares this as such! iT HAS ONLY BEEN USED TWO-THREE TIMES! not routinely! PLEASE educate yourselves before condemning beliefs you have only heard from some bible thumping hate filled preacher or "teacher"THIS REMINDS ME OF CRITICISM THAT THE CHURCH REFUSED TO ALLOW CATHOLICS TO READ THE BIBLE BECAUSE THEY CHAINED THEM UP! YUP! Juast like the phone company chained up the phone directories in pay phone booths so the people would not walk off with them! DUH!!!!!! Ring any bells yet folks? Costumes? They are called vestments! Please TRY to sound
educated before you hang yourselves with your yoke of illiteracy and ignorance!
LAL
Obama's Catholic Plan
Obama's "Catholic Plan" is the title of a recent TV episode from RealCatholicTV.com. The video is part of a daily commentary on politics, religion and the Church. RealCatholicTV is a new Internet television network which focuses on authentic Catholic programming. Daily news segments cover Catholicism and Politics. The "Obama Catholic Plan" video has been seen by 183,000 viewers.
http://www.governmenttv.us/pb/wp_71194748/wp_71194748.html
Reality
Those church officials who hatefully preach the legalisms of an 'infallible' church as opposed to the teachings of Christ (i.e., the individuals with effective control of the church) insist that God will cast you into hell if you don't obey them. In essence, they function as the devil's disciples on earth by their diligent efforts to usurp the word of Christ for their own glorification and benefit.
The officialdom of the church has, for the last 30 years, made every effort to purge the church of about three-fourths of its members because those members have demonstrated insufficient obedience to the corrupt church hierarchy. In fact, that hierarchy has now reached a point of condemning those church leaders who don't follow the most radical, divisive and decidedly unholy brand of orthodoxy. This ongoing purge has now reached critical mass and will likely result in the complete destruction of a church which already finds itself eliminating parishes because of disappearing parishioners, disappearing revenues, and disappearing recruits to the priesthood. The rulers of the church have become the very people Jesus spoke against.
You can follow some so-called Christian sect or other straight to its hell, or you can listen to Jesus...and Jesus alone, not the corrupt, self-aggrandizing, arrogant 'holy men' in costumes, not the usurpers who appeared after Jesus, particularly the one known as 'Paul the Apostle' - who was obviously not an apostle at all since he never met, saw or heard Jesus, even though the Roman Catholic church and most of the rest of so-called Christianity effectively trumpets his pronouncements above those of Jesus - and not the Torah either (except for the historical context, much of which was clearly opposed by Jesus).
As a side note, not only do these self-aggrandizing loudmouths care nothing for ACTUAL life as opposed to POTENTIAL life (war and its attendant murder and mass murder is good and might even be holy, but preventing conception is a mortal sin), but the birth control and abortion issues were simply not issues at all until the papacy began to be alarmed by a reduction in the birth rate of France in the 19th century. That alarm arose from a rapid reduction in the money being sent from the churches in France to the papacy...and France was its greatest source of money at the time. Suddenly, birth control and abortion were mortal sins and/or excommunicable offenses and the pope became 'infallible' (that last one an incredibly amusing concept which the various VERY fallible popes had not dared to assert for the first 1800 years of the church's existence). Until the 'crisis in France', the church followed the teaching of Thomas Aquinas regarding human life - that it began at the quickening, which occurs from about 18 to 22 weeks into pregnancy. Once the pope became 'infallible', though, Thomas Aquinas and all of the other theologians, saints, apostles, and even Jesus himself became irrelevant.
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