Just plain jerks
by digby
Can you believe this crapola?
On Thursday, President Barack Obama will attend the annual Al Smith fundraising dinner in New York City. Also in attendance will be Cardinal Dolan, setting the scene for a potential clash, say conservatives.
Obama’s new health care mandates, under Obamacare, have angered plenty of conservative Catholics, even leading Cardinal Dolan to sue the Obama administration in August.
According to The New York Post, many conservative Catholics will attend in anger. “They’re going in hopes that the cardinal’s going to slam him,” said state Sen. Marty Golden, a Brooklyn Republican attending the annual Al Smith Dinner. “It’s insulting that [Obama is] coming. What he’s doing to the Catholic Church — forcing them to do things against their beliefs — it’s reprehensible.”
A source close to Cardinal Dolan told the Post that, “The cardinal himself wonders whether he made the right decision” in inviting Obama. “He knows the president wants this for one reason, and that’s the photo.”
The Al Smith dinner, named for the late New York Democratic governor who in 1928 became the first Catholic nominated for president by a major party, is historically attended by presidential nominees. Mitt Romney will also be on hand at the black-tie, $2,500-a-plate affair.
Now, conservatives are concerned that Obama’s appearance at the Al Smith dinner this week could be interpreted as the Church endorsing his candidacy.
Nearly all presidential candidates have attended the annual dinner since 1945. However, in 1996, Cardinal John O’Connor didn’t invite President Bill Clinton, who had vetoed a partial-birth-abortion ban, nor his challenger Sen. Bob Dole; and in 2004, Edward Cardinal Egan passed over John Kerry, a Catholic who is pro-choice, as well as incumbent President George W. Bush.
I honestly can’t get over these Catholic conservatives complaining that someone is making laws that go against their beliefs. Too bad for the employee who doesn’t happen to hold with Catholic teachings. (And, by the way, even a vast majority of Catholics use birth control.) I guess if you take a job with a religious institution, you’ve signed on to its hierarchy’s orders. That’s what we call religious liberty in America today.
Here’s that great guy Dolan, ranting about exorcising Satan from the body politic. By Satan I mean secularism, of course:
Timothy Cardinal Dolan of New York took his case against the Affordable Care Act’s new rule requiring insurers and employers to provide preventive care services — including contraception — at no additional cost to Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly. The Catholic Church is fighting the requirement against the tide of public opinion and despite being specifically exempt from providing birth control to its members.
Dolan pulled no punches, however, going so far as to imply that the requirement would undermine the “American enterprise” and spread “secularism” throughout the nation:
DOLAN: You’re a better historian than I am Bill, you know that every great movement in — in American history has been driven by people of religious conviction. And if we duct tape the churches — I’m just not talking about the Catholic Church — if we duct tape the role of religion and the churches and morally convince people in the marketplace that’s going to lead to a huge deficit a huge void.
And there are many people who want to fill it up, namely a new religion called secularism, ok, which — which would be as doctrinaire and would consider itself as infallible as they caricature the other religions doing.
So to — to see — to see that morally-driven religiously-convinced people want to exercise their political responsibility, I think that is not only at the heart of biblical religion, it is at the heart of American enterprise.
This is just utter wingnut sophistry and beneath the dignity of someone in his position.
I will be nice and hold my tongue about this because I’ll just start cursing:
Cardinal Dolan criticized a legislative proposal that would, for a year, drop the statute of limitations for filing civil claims for sexual offenses, allowing for lawsuits by people who say they were abused long ago. The cardinal said he was concerned that a flood of lawsuits over abuse by priests could drain the church of money it is using for charitable purposes.
“I think we bishops have been very contrite in admitting that the church did not handle this well at all in the past,” he said. “But we bristle sometimes in that the church doesn’t get the credit, now being in the vanguard of reform. It does bother us that the church continues to be a whipping boy.”
Let’s hear some more lectures about political responsibility from these people, shall we? Their credibility is so great.
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