Catholics Need Not Apply

Father Rutler: Extremism

Father George W. Rutler

The foundational documents of our nation were influenced by Catholic political philosophers such as Aquinas, Suárez, Báñez, Gregory of Valencia and Saint Robert Bellarmine, who wrote before theorists like Hobbes and Rousseau. This contradicts a popular impression that democracy was the invention of the Protestant Reformation. Luther and Calvin considered popular assemblies highly suspect. The concept of the Divine Right of Kings, which was a prelude to what we call “statism” and “big government,” was systematized by the Protestant counselor to King James I of England, Robert Filmer.

For all his vague Deism, Thomas Jefferson might have acknowledged those Catholic sources, if obliquely, in his eloquent phrases. The Constitution’s First Amendment guarantee of the free exercise of religion and Article VI’s prohibition of religious tests for public office were developments rooted in the Thomistic outlines of human rights and dignity declared in the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Arbraoth.

This was lost on some senators who have violated Constitutional guarantees by subjecting judicial nominees to religious tests. One senator complained to a Catholic nominee for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that “the dogma lives loudly within you.” Two other senators said that the President’s nominee for a federal district court in Nebraska was unsuitable because his membership in the Knights of Columbus committed him to “a number of extreme positions.” Members of their political party consider opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion “extreme.” This would characterize the Pope as an extremist, but at least he is not a judicial nominee.

In the Statuary Hall of our nation’s Capitol are sculptures portraying heroes who represent the best of the history and culture of each state. They include Saint Junípero Serra of California, Saint Damien de Veuster of Hawaii, Declaration of Independence signer Charles Carroll of Maryland, Father Eusebio Kino of Arizona, General James Shields of Illinois, Chief Justice Edward Douglass White of Louisiana, Father Jacques Marquette of Wisconsin, Patrick McCarran of Nevada, Dennis Chavez of New Mexico, John Burke of North Dakota, John McLoughlin of Oregon, Mother Joseph of the Sacred Heart Pariseau of Washington, and John Edward Kenna of West Virginia, all of whom were Catholic. These canonized saints, statesmen, soldiers, jurists and pioneers would be extremists unworthy of public office in the estimation of some current senators for whom subscription to natural law and obedience to the Ten Commandments are violations of what they fantasize as the norm of moral being.

The coruscating illiteracy of such senators burlesques reason. At every performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, audiences wait for the fifth scene of the second act, when the haunting statue of the Commendatore comes alive and knocks on the door to the sound of trombones. Would that all those statues of some of our nation’s greatest figures might come down from their pedestals and challenge the vacant minds of those inquisitorial senators to explain what constitutes extremism.

Catholic Church Rejects Surrender Terms from Obama

It gives us no pleasure that at long last the institutional Church and our coreligionists are finally seeing Obama and his regime as a manifestation of the pure evil that they are ... an evil that can only be overcome with solidarity, resistance and political action that is rooted in prayer and fasting.  There was a reason we chose to post this work from Chopin on Inauguration Day, 2009.  If Obama's war on and persecution of the Catholic Church opens the eyes of fools, and causes the majority of Catholics who voted for Obama to be more discerning and vote more prayerfully in the future, our Church and nation will be far better off.

From NewsWithViews

By Cliff Kincaid

My Catholic priest, Father Larry Swink, delivered a homily on Sunday that I told him would make headlines. In the toughest sermon I have ever heard from a pulpit, he attacked the Obama Administration as evil, even demonic, and warned of religious persecution ahead. What was also newsworthy about the sermon was that he cited The Washington Post in agreement—not on the subject of the Obama Administration being evil, but on the matter of its abridgment of the constitutional right to freedom of religion. 

What is happening is extraordinary and unprecedented. The Catholic Church is in open revolt against the Obama Administration, with Fr. Swink noting from the pulpit that priests across the archdiocese were joining the call on Sunday to rally Catholics to resistance against the U.S. Government. He said we are entering a time of religious persecution and that Catholics and others will have to make a final decision about which side they are on.

Obama Offends the Catholic Left

A contraceptive mandate provokes an unnecessary war.

From The Wall Street Journal

By William McGurn

When Barack Obama secured his party's nomination for president in 2008, one group of Democrats had special reason to cheer.

These were Democrats who were reliably liberal on policy but horrified by the party's sometimes knee-jerk animosity to faith. The low point may have been the 1992 Democratic convention. There the liberal but pro-life governor of Pennsylvania, Bob Casey Sr., was humiliated when he was denied a speaking slot while a pro-choice Republican activist from his home state was allowed.

With Mr. Obama, all this looked to be in the past. In 2006, the Illinois senator delivered a speech declaring that "secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering the public square." He followed up by appearing at fund-raisers for the anti-abortion Bob Casey Jr. during Mr. Casey's successful run for Sen. Rick Santorum's senate seat.

Obama's Catholic Strategy in Shambles

Obama's Brownshirts

Father Jay Scott Newman, Pastor of St. Mary's Church in Greenville, South Carolina, had the following important pastoral advice for those Catholics who were foolish enough to vote for their own persecution three years ago.  Now they have no excuse but invincible ignorance.

"Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ's Church and under the judgment of divine law. Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation."

From Real Clear Politics

By Michael Gerson

In 2009, Notre Dame University set off months of intra-Catholic controversy by inviting a champion of abortion rights to deliver its commencement address. When the day arrived, President Obama skillfully deflated the tension. He extended a "presumption of good faith" to his pro-life opponents. Then he promised Catholics that their pro-life convictions would be respected by his administration. "Let's honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion," he said, "and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded not only in sound science, but also in clear ethics, as well as respect for the equality of women."

Rick Perry Just Wrote Off the Catholic Vote

From The Star-Ledger

By Paul Mulshine

Rick Perry made it plain he doesn't care if he gets any votes from what is by far the biggest religious group in America when he invited the anti-Catholic John Hagee to address that prayer rally of his.

Here's what the Catholic League had to say of Hagee back in 2008 when he was backing John McCain for president:

When he meets with Catholics, he is going to be asked about his ties to Hagee. He should also be asked whether he approves of comments like this: ‘A Godless theology of hate that no one dared try to stop for a thousand years produced a harvest of hate.’

“That quote is proudly cited by David Brog in his recent book, Standing with Israel. Both Brog and Hagee clearly identify the Roman Catholic Church as spawning a ‘theology of hate.’

Hagee has since backed away a bit from those remarks, but anyone paying close attention to this sort of thing has to realize that's just politics. His writings indicate a deep hatred for the Catholic Church. If you doubt that, look at this book excerpt:

When General Titus came marching from Rome in 70 A.D, the Jews were crucified on Roman crosses while their wives and children were forced to watch. This bloody demonstration of mass crucifixion was brutal proof that no one could resist mighty Rome and live!

What happened to the family of our Lord when Hadrian came from Rome in 135 A.D. to crush the Second Revolt? How dare these stubborn monotheistic Jews, loyal to the God of Abraham, refuse to bow their knees to a pagan culture that served hundreds of gods? The sons of Israel fought valiantly until one half million perished at the point of Rome's sword!

Constantine, a Roman emperor who ruled in 306-337 A.D., "Christianized" the Roman Empire. In one day, with one swing of the pen, he made Rome's version of Christianity the official state religion.

That religion was and is full of idolatry!

The monotheistic Jews refused to worship statues of men, birds and animals. The words of God as given through Moses still rang in their ears,

"Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one" [Deuteronomy 6:4].

"Thou shalt have no other Gods before me" [Exodus 20 3].

The theology of the devout Jews was more than pagan Rome could understand and certainly more than it would tolerate. The Roman conclusion was;

"The Jews are just stubborn, rebellious people!"

Constantine and his clergymen at the Council of Nicea quickly began enacting a series of restrictive edicts against the Jewish people.

There's a lot more where that came from, but basically what Hagee is trying to do here is the same thing many Muslim fanatics try to do: Paint their own religion as the sole monotheistic faith while describing other religions as pantheistic in nature.

In that regard, what really drives Hagee and other Protestant fundamentalists people crazy is the "Roman" part of the Roman Catholic Church. They believe that when the church found a base in Rome it got corrupted by Roman civilization, i.e. by the most successful and inventive civilization in human history. All of that knowledge and learning that was passed down from Plato to Aristotle to the great Catholic thinkers like Aquinas and Augustine was really the work of Satan - something Hagee has said in almost as many words.

Anyway, he's certainly free to believe that sort of thing. But why Perry would want to be anywhere near him is a mystery - unless it means Perry's not in the running for president.

Let's hope that's the case. Our tolls are already high enough.

Why Barack Obama Has to be Seen as an Enemy of the Catholic Church

 We need to be alert: he is not without influence, even on this side of the pond

President Barack Obama waves when he came to the graduation ceremony at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana in 2009 (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

From The Catholic Herald (UK)

By William Oddie

Is Barack Obama the most anti-Catholic American president in living memory?

I don’t mean, of course, that he has openly attacked the Church (though it was noted that, at his inauguration as president, contrary to normal practice there was among the clergy invited to attend not one single Catholic, though he made a point of inviting the controversial — because openly and actively homosexual — Episcopalian (i.e. Anglican) bishop, Gene Robinson).

What I mean, though, is that across the whole spectrum of contemporary moral issues, he is passionately committed to a series of views which run directly contrary to those of the Church. All this has caused at least one Catholic bishop (there are probably others) to call him anti-Catholic.

The Most Anti-Catholic Political Ad You'll Ever See

From The National Catholic Register
By Matthew Archbold

A Democrat Party supporting independent non profit group has sent out perhaps THE most anti-Catholic political advertisement I’ve ever seen. Sometimes there’s a little subtlety to anti-Catholic political rhetoric but not this time. This is in your face anti-Catholicism. A postcard was sent out to voters with a photo shopped picture of a Catholic priest wearing a campaign button saying: “Ignore the Poor.”

As you can see the pic takes up nearly the entire length of the postcard. It’s anti-Catholicism is not one point of many. It’s the point.

According to its website “The Minnesota DFL supports and works to enact the ideals and principles of the Democratic Party and strives to sustain the foundations in our Party’s grassroots history.”

One of the more worrisome things about this is that this group must believe that there’s enough of an anti-Catholic vote that this would pay dividends. Could that be true?

Never mind the factual basis the charge that the Church ignores the poor is absolutely ridiculous because the Church is THE most charitable organization on the planet. But this postcard has nothing to do with the poor. What this is about is the fact that the Church stands strong against abortion and gay marriage. And that makes some very angry.

This election season has been a nasty one. And this may be its low point.

Archbishop Dolan on the Bigotry of the New York Times

New York's valiant new Archbishop, Timothy Dolan, has had enough of the virulent anti-Catholicism served up daily by the New York Times. Many Catholics have come to accept that anti-Catholicism is the one socially acceptable bigotry in the United States, particularly among those who fancy themselves "intellectuals" and part of the "elite." But enough is enough. In his personal blog, Archbishop Dolan has called ignorance and hatred by their proper names. The Archbishop's column follows:

More from the Times

I know, I should drop it. “You just have to get used to it,” so many of you have counselled me. “It’s been that way forever, and it’s so ingrained they don’t even know they’re doing it. So, let it go.”

I’m talking about the common, casual way The New York Times offends Catholic sensitivity, something they would never think of doing — rightly so — to the Jewish, Black, Islamic, or gay communities.

Two simple yet telling examples from one edition, last Friday, October 15.

First there’s the insulting photograph of the nun on page C20, this for yet another tiresome production making fun of Catholic consecrated women. This “gleeful” tale is described as “fresh and funny” in the caption beneath the quarter-page photo (not an advertisement). Granted, prurient curiosity about the lives of Catholic sisters has been part of the nativist, “know-nothing” agenda since mobs burned the Ursuline convent in Boston in the 1840’s, and since the huckster Rebecca Reed’s Awful Disclosures made the rounds in the 19^th century. But still now cheap laughs at the expense of a bigoted view of the most noble women around?

Maybe I’m especially sensitive since I just came from the excellent exhibit on the contributions of Catholic nuns now out on Ellis Island. These are the women who tended to the homeless immigrants and refugees, who died nursing the abandoned in the cholera epidemic, who ran hospitals and universities decades before women did so in the non-Catholic sphere, who marched in Selma and today teach our poorest in our inner-city schools. These are the nuns mocked and held-up for snickering in our city’s newspaper.

Now turn to C29. This glowingly reviewed not-to-be missed “art” exhibit comes to us from Harvard, and is a display of posters from ACT UP. Remember them? They invaded of St. Patrick’s Cathedral to disrupt prayer, trampled on the Holy Eucharist, insulted Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger when he was here for a conference, and yelled four letter words while exposing themselves to families and children leaving Mass at the Cathedral. The man they most detested was Cardinal John O’Connor, who, by the way, spent many evenings caring quietly for AIDS patients, and, when everyone else ran from them, opened units for them at the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center and St. Clare’s Hospital. Too bad for him. One of the posters in this “must see” exhibit is of Cardinal O’Connor, in the form of a condom, referred to as a “scumbag,” the “art” there in full view in the photograph above the gushing review in our city’s daily.

Thanks for your patience with me. I guess I’m still new enough here in New York City that the insults of The New York Times against the Church still bother me. I know I should get over it. As we say in Missouri, it’s like “spitting into a tornado.”