Angry Tears Of Betrayal

by digby

Someone needs to alert the religion industrial complex that their “outreach” doesn’t extend to the highest reaches of the Catholic church:

Via CNN, Cardinal James Stafford:

“His rhetoric is post-modernist and marks an agenda nd vision that are aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic. Catholic weep over his words. We weep over the violence concealed behind the rhetoric of our young president-to-be. What should be do with our hot, angry tears of betrayal?”

I particularly like the charge that Obama’s rhetoric is post modernist. Considering the “culture ‘o life” split the stem cell, execution happy, warmongering approach of the truly post modernist Bush administration it’s saying something.

I think this really gets to the nub of the issue:

Stafford said the truest reflection of the love between the believer and God is that of the relationship between husband and wife, and that contraceptive use does not fit anywhere within that framework. According to Stafford, the inner dynamic of a spousal relationship is much like the body itself, which ‘speaks’ in terms of masculinity and femininity.

I understand that he is speaking in intellectual and metaphorical terms. But down here among the plebes, the “inner dynamic” of the pregnant body pretty specifically “speaks” in feminine terms. And the fact that that has no special bearing on the issue of even birth control is the essence of the problem. To him, a woman is the vessel for this reflection of love between man and God whether she wants to be or not. I don’t quarrel with anyone’s right to believe that. However, I don’t believe it. I believe that I have sole dominion over my own body and free will when it comes to the “inner dynamic” of the spousal relationship — certainly the state can’t possibly make such intimate and complicated decisions for me. (Why, next they’ll be telling you who you can marry too ….oh wait.)

Speaking of which, Andrew Sullivan said:

The Vatican hierarchy has become radicalized under Benedict and John Paul II – so much so that they see the West since the 1960s as entirely a creature of resistance to Humanae Vitae, the papal declaration that all non-procreative sex is a moral evil. But the notion that the recent election of Obama is a sign of the Apocalypse has, until now, been restricted to Protestant loonies.

Actually, seeing the West since the 1960s entirely as a creature of sexual immorality is pretty much what defines social conservatism. I don’t think the Catholics are the only ones. Obama was elected by people who don’t believe such things. Therefore, he is the anti-Christ. What could be more obvious?

The good news is that American Catholics didn’t see the Four Horsemen in the eyes of Barack Obama and a majority of them voted for him anyway.There goes that pesky free will again.