The trouble with the Democratic religious persecution of Catholics (Be honest—it’s bigger than just Obama. It even includes Catholics—a lot of them) is that it’s so in-your-face now. When it started to become visible—I’d estimate that time to be during the presidential campaign of 2008—we could just say, “Hmm. That Chicago preacher is such a hateful man. We must pray for him.” And we convinced ourselves that, after all, Obama himself didn’t say those hateful things—he just attended the church, even as we nervously asked ourselves, “…but why did he attend it?” That priest who often spoke there—what was his name? Felcher? Fletcher? Whatever—was an item of greater concern because he was just so embarrassing, you know, with his adolescent posturing and his public acting out of his MLK-like fantasies of himself. And people in the Church hierarchy praised Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden—so we knew that it must be that we just don’t understand some things, the problem must be with us, not with them…. It’ll probably all work out, we said. After all, Notre Dame is giving him an honorary degree…. They wouldn’t do that if they didn’t know some things that we don’t know.
Some stronger-minded Catholic bloggers demurred, like William Oddie in England, and now we get some some I-told-you-so’s—here, for example:
And others, less reactionary, perhaps, or more reflective, recalled rather striking similarities between contemporary Democratic political policy toward Catholics and the political policy toward German Jews prior to Kristallnacht, noting that even after that night visit from hell, placating rabbis and pooh-poohing prominent members of the Jewish community made excuses, condemned “reactionary” fellow Jews as fear-mongers, etc. But I think what they really objected to was that the persecution by their new German leader and his party had become impossible to ignore, and they couldn’t do that any more, and it upset them.
We all know that feeling, that resentment of someone else’s honesty—especially the honesty of those who wish us ill, or even do us actual ill—because it’s a greater honesty than our own. It’s as if we’re saying, “Okay, it’s all right with me if you despise me, if you assault my rights, if you even break the laws of our Constitution in order to harm me. It’s okay for you to hate me and to harm me as you will—it’s okay. Just don’t, don’t make me acknowledge it. Just please allow me to believe only good things. I don’t want to see this. That’s all I ask. Please lie to me—as you did when you said religious conscience would be protected in your new healthcare, as you lied to Archbishop Dolan when he visited you with a personal plea for your reassurance of that protection—and you gave it to him, and he went away happy. You lied, I know, but please give me an excuse to disregard it—maybe something like, okay, we have until August to sort this all out (even though I know it was supposed to be already sorted). I hate discord, you see. Anger is not just a sin; it’s uncomfortable, you know.
But last night at Mass, our priest read us a letter from our new bishop. We’ve been a little curious about him. We’re so accustomed to our former bishop of Savannah—such a nice man, very popular with the protestants here in the deep south, never said anything to disturb our peace and harmony. He didn’t talk about things like contraception or abortion—embarrassing things like that, you know—and certainly not political things. I don’t think he ever wrote us letters about anything except the annual Diocesan Appeal, which we always responded to very well—we liked him.
Our priest shrugged his shoulders a little and made no comment on the letter. Well, what could the poor man say? After all, he had to read the thing, you know—it was none of his doing. The letter addressed the mandate requiring Catholic employers to provide contraceptives and abortifacient drugs in their health insurance coverage. It even explained that escape hatches have been cut off: the law requires that health insurance be provided. You could hire only Catholics and get out of it, but then you’d be discriminating and you’d break that law. The letter left no doubt that all possibilities of escape have been systematically eliminated. It even used the phrase “direct attack” on our religious freedom.
Personally, I hate to say this, but I don’t think we’re going to like our new bishop.
Spot on, Dena Hunt! What you say re the Catholic liberal “Uncle Toms” applies here in Australia too, and probably in most of the rest of the world.
The Nazis could never have managed their extermination of the Jews so efficiently without the assistance of the Judenrat (Jewish councils) they set up in the ghettoes. These did all the organising on the Nazis behalf, including the supply of victims for the concentration camps, from a mix of self-interest and fear that if they didn’t even worse would follow — but they weren’t told the intended fate of those they rounded up.
Obama and his cronies’ anti-Christian and anti-Catholic persecuting is so blatant that the Catholic liberal Judenrat are having difficulty pretending it’s not happening. It’s as if the Nazis had revealed to the ghetto Judenrats their “solution” for the “Jewish problem” — but unlike Obama & Co. re the “Catholic problem” they kept their secret. How discomforting it must be for the liberal Catholic Judenrat! Nothing is so cherished by the wilfully ignorant than their “right” not to know.
Colin, here in the South we believe that it’s not nice not to be nice. Good Manners are like a religion here. Combine that with the national influence of Catholic Uncle Toms and I guess it’s just about impossible to expect much from a Catholic bishop. But as Gomer Pyle used to say, “Surprise, Surprise!”