{"id":25923,"date":"2012-01-31T07:36:43","date_gmt":"2012-01-31T13:36:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=25923"},"modified":"2012-01-31T07:37:07","modified_gmt":"2012-01-31T13:37:07","slug":"25923","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=25923","title":{"rendered":"When Dogmas Collide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cliff Kincaid at Accuracy in Media reports that the Catholic Church – or parts of it, anyway – are up in arms (as it were) over the Obama administration’s mandates<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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\u2014not on the subject of the Obama Administration being evil, but on the matter of its abridgment of the constitutional right to freedom of religion.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If true, that’s great news – but I gotta say I’m not nearly as sanguine.<\/p>\n

I’m not Catholic – and in my observation, most Catholics outside the clergy and intelligentsia are as diligently observant of the Vatican’s rules as most Jews are of Kosher laws; birth control and hamburger on Friday are as common among Catholics as the odd bit of ham and Saturday shopping trips are among mainstream Jews.<\/p>\n

And I know – exceptions exist, including among readers of this blog. \u00a0But in my observation, there are vast swathes of the Catholic Church, in major cities, that either turns a blind eye to the inconvenient parts of the Vatican’s rules, or is willing to rationalize and ignore them in pursuit of a “progressive” political agenda – which accounts for a huge number of Catholic liberals I personally know.<\/p>\n

Oh, the Bishops<\/em>\u00a0will make a ruckus:<\/p>\n

The issue is what the Catholic Bishops have called a \u201cliterally unconscionable\u201d edict by the Obama Administration demanding that sterilization, abortifacients and contraception be included in virtually all health plans.<\/p>\n

At a time when the media are full of reports about who is ahead and behind in the polls, and who will win the next Republican presidential primary, this incredible uprising in the Catholic Church is something that could not only overshadow the political campaign season, but also may have a major impact on the ultimate outcome\u2014if Republicans know how to handle it. This matter goes beyond partisan politics to the growing perception of an unconstitutional Obama Administration assault on religious freedom. To hear the Catholic Bishops and Priests describe it, our constitutional republic and our freedoms hang in the balance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But if you go to St. Joan of Arc (to pick a far-left parish of my acquaintance), it’s all an un-issue, ignored for the “greater good”; many, perhaps the majority of Catholic parishes I know of in the Twin CIties would trade, at the clerical level as well as among a fair chunk of the laity, the Nicene Creed for single-payer health care and Cap and Trade.<\/p>\n

So am I wrong? \u00a0I’d especially like to hear from Catholics, here. \u00a0Does anyone at your parish – from your priests on down – care about Obamacare? \u00a0Has that “caring” been manifested in the form of “telling the congregation that it’s wrong, and that it’s going to screw with the what the Catholic Church supposedly holds dear?”<\/p>\n

I’d be interested in hearing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cliff Kincaid at Accuracy in Media reports that the Catholic Church – or parts of it, anyway – are up in arms (as it were) over the Obama administration’s mandates: 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,26,64,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-12","category-faiths-and-their-followers","category-president-obama","category-liberal-tyranny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25923"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25931,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25923\/revisions\/25931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}