Obama Continues Assault on Catholic Church, Moves to Close Vatican Embassy

Barack Hussein Obama's ongoing assault on the Catholic Church is doomed to failure and will ultimately discredit and undo the inept, Indonesian immigrant who illegitimately occupies the White House.  From Diocletian to Hussein Obama, persecutors have an astonishingly unbroken record of failure in their attempts to destroy the Church.  It can also be amusing to see all the many ways Obama drives his approval ratings down to historic lows.  Unfortunately, with his utter disregard for the Constitution, Obama and comrades will likely become more dangerous and destructive as his political situation deteriorates.  Now he is attempting to reverse another of President Reagan's initiatives - the US-Vatican partnership which facilitated the collapse of Soviet communism.

Obama’s call to close Vatican embassy is ‘slap in the face’ to Roman Catholics

The Obama administration, in what’s been called an egregious slap in the face to the Vatican, has moved to shut down the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See — a free-standing facility — and relocate offices onto the grounds of the larger American Embassy in Italy.

The new offices will be in a separate building on the property, Breitbart reported.

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SEE ALSO: Pope Francis takes veiled swipe at ‘progressive’ Democrats

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And while U.S. officials are touting the relocation as a security measure that’s a cautionary reaction to last year’s attacks on America's facility in Benghazi, several former American envoys are raising the red flag.

It’s a “massive downgrade of U.S.-Vatican ties,” said former U.S. Ambassador James Nicholson in the National Catholic Reporter. “It’s turning this embassy into a stepchild of the embassy to Italy. The Holy See is a pivot point for international affairs and a major listening post for the United States, and … [it’s] an insult to American Catholics and to the Vatican.”

Read more at The Washington Times >>

Archbishop Chaput Concludes Fortnight for Freedom with Call for Heroism "In the Face of Suffering and Adversity"

Delivered during mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, DC, July 4th 2012.

Philadelphia is the place where both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution were written. For more than two centuries, these documents have inspired people around the globe. So as we begin our reflection on today’s readings, I have the privilege of greeting everyone here today — and every person watching or listening from a distance — in the name of the Church of my home, the Church of Philadelphia, the cradle of our country’s liberty and the city of our nation’s founding. May God bless and guide all of us as we settle our hearts on the Word of God.

US Bishops Launch Major Offensive to Protect Religious Liberty

From Catholic World News

With a strong new statement on religious freedom, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has launched a nationwide campaign to protect “our most cherished freedom.”

“It is the first freedom because if we are not free in our conscience and our practice of religion, all other freedoms are fragile,” explain the US bishops in their statement, entitled Our First, Most Cherished Freedom. The USCCB statement, lengthy and strongly worded, signals the beginning of a major drive by the hierarchy to alert Americans to current threats to religious liberty.

Bishops Pledge to Intensify Efforts Against Obama Administration's "Unjust and Illegal" Mandate

The Administrative Committee of the US Catholic bishops said yesterday that they will intensify their fight against the Obama administration’s “unjust and illegal” contraception mandate.  The full text of their statement follows:

From the Pastor - Chaining Christian Conscience

A weekly column by Father George Rutler.

 Our many fellow Catholics now enchained for the Faith of our Fathers in such places as China, Syria, and Egypt are, as Father Faber’s hymn says, “in heart and conscience free.” But what happens when a government tries to chain the conscience itself?

A few weeks ago, in a remarkably unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the attempt of the present Administration in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC to restrict religious freedom. Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the Administration's argument that the First Amendment does not guarantee the right of a religious organization to choose its leaders, was an “extreme” infringement of the free-exercise clause.

Bishop Blasts Secularist Intolerance, Calls for ‘Assertive Action’ to Defend Church

Bishop Jenky's criticism of "remarkably passive" lay people in the pastoral letter referenced below, is a bit hard to take.  It certainly wasn't the American bishops who were in the forefront of America's massive pro-life movement in its early years.  Lay people have also been complaining for years about the very positive movie reviews, issued by the bishops' own organization, for sex-laden, violent and morally offensive movies. The bishops' own Campaign for Human Development has funded for decades the very leftist organizations that have militantly opposed Church teaching, including Obama's own ACORN in Chicago.  Finally, American bishops weren't leading efforts to stop the sexual molestation of young people; more than half of the American bishops covered it up.  But now with Obama's assaults on individual conscience, Catholic institutions, and most importantly to bishops like Jenky, the shut-off of the federal dollars spigot, they seem to have found their voice.  

Welcome, Bishop Jenky, to the culture wars; glad to have you finally with us.

From Catholic World News

Noting that “American Catholics have in recent decades become remarkably passive even in the face of relentless hostility from the media, the entertainment industry, and now from some politicians,” Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria has issued a pastoral letter on secularism.

The letter, issued on January 8, received a wider audience when it was published in the January 26 issue of Origins.

“The Catholic Diocese of Peoria now exists in a political reality that is increasingly secular in outlook and today is often specifically hostile to the convictions of our Faith,” the bishop wrote. “Atheists and secularists have long realized that the Church of Rome is perhaps the largest single institution that still stands in the way of a completely secularized society. In Illinois where politics are notoriously corrupt and whose governmental agenda is so singularly ineffective, intrenched political power happens to be concentrated in a single region that for generations has been immune to reform. This situation has given determined special interest groups a unique opportunity to impose their views on everyone else as they endeavor to exclude faith from any role in the public forum.”