Catholic Carpet Bombing of President Obama

This morning on the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times is the headline,

“CARDINAL DEFIES OBAMA ON BIRTH CONTROL”

All capital letters.

This comes one day after the Chicago Tribune reported Obama’s popularity in Illinois has improved since last fall.

One might ask, “How’s that trend coming?”

In my analysis of why Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum won every county in the Missouri
primary, I suggested that the Catholic Bishop’s letter, read through his diocese the weekend before the election, might have motivate Catholics to go to the polls (even though it asked for letters).

How better to deliver a message to the President than to vote for the GOP candidate who is most Pro-Life?

It’s not just happening in the Joplin Catholic Church my brother-in-law attends.

At St. Thomas in Crystal Lake, I arrived early to register voters and heard part of the homily by Monsignor Daniel Hermes.

He was talking about the controversial decision by the Obama Administration.

I didn’t catch the exact words in the first part of the sentence, but the thrust was that he could see something good coming out of “all the stupid stuff coming out of the Federal government now.”

Immediately after, John McFadden, a teen in the congregation spoke movingly of his trip to Washington to take part in the Pro-Life march. He said he wanted to be able to tell his children that “when I was a kid I stood up for something.”

Parishioners fill the pews at this five o’clock service. I was told it was because the Super Bowl was the next day.

When I inquired if the youth spoke at every service, the Monsignor told me that there was a different teen speaking at each mass.

This was the second shot at the President at St. Thomas in two week.

The following letter from Rockford Diocese Bishop Thomas Doran was read the weekend before.

He writes of  “an alarming and serious matter that negatively impacts the Church in the United States directly, and that strikes at the fundamental right to religion liberty for all citizens.”

Doran points out that about 25% of Americans are Catholic.

He identifies the objectionable mandate as being forced to provide “sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs and contraception.”

The Bishop says that unless the ruling is overruled Catholics will have to either violate their consciences or “drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so).”

Among those penalties would be the forcing of Catholic citizens to buy health coverage containing the objectionable “services.”

“We cannot–and we will not–comply with this unjust law.  People of faith cannot be made second-class citizens.”

There’s more, of course, some along the lines of the Missouri Bishop’s letter.

The point to be made is that this was part of a one-two punch in Crystal Lake.

The Chicago Cardinal’s roundhouse makes three.


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