Dr. Benjamin, a rural Catholic doctor from Alabama, has served on the board of the Catholic Health Association. She has also received the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice award from the Pope because of her example in her Catholic faith and in her medical profession, Monsignor Michael L. Farmer told the Catholic News Agency on Monday.On Wednesday, a White House spokesman touched on the matter but only said Dr. Regina Benjamin supports the president on "reproductive health issues." Isn’t that a nice and harmless way to put it? She supports the president on "reproductive health issues."
Well thank goodness for that -- for a moment there I thought she might be Pro-Abortion. Oh, wait a minute, that is what the left calls abortion -- silly me, I thought they were talking about something more along the lines of actually encouraging reproduction. There was a time in this country when that’s the only thing you would expect the medical field to be referring to, and some of us are old enough to find it difficult to imagine some in the medical field to be so anti-life. But what that really means is stopping reproduction, and championing the culture of death.
And you have to hand it to Obama here for coming up with a strategy to use Catholics to put forth his leftist, culture-of-death, agenda. I don’t want to imply that the Catholics that he is using are poor unsuspecting victims. They know who they are, and they know what they are doing. Who are they? Lets start with Douglas W. Kmiec, Caruso Family Chair and Professor of Constitutional Law at Pepperdine University School of Law. Because this is, in my mind, the first big defector for Obama and a big enough fish to lure American Catholics away from the Church’s camp and into Obama’s. And it worked like a charm. Here’s what Kmiec said during the presidential campaign back in 2008. "To some of my fellow Catholics, Senator Obama's answers on abortion make him categorically unacceptable. I understand that view, respect it, but find it prudentially the second-best answer in 2008." What was Kmiec’s reward? In July 2009, he was nominated by President Obama to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Malta.
Obama was endorsed by one of the nation's leading abortion advocates, Frances Kissling , former president of Catholics for a Free Choice. Joe Feuerherd, who once wrote for the National Catholic Reporter (a newspaper that supported Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004), has also helped to define Barack Obama in the eyes of Catholics. Feuerherd published an op-ed in the Washington Post in defense of his vote for Barack Obama in the Maryland primary. The list goes on and on.
The fact that Joe Biden, his choice for Vice President, being Catholic, was a calculating move, make no mistake about that. In fact, Obama has had a series of moves that has been as calculating in manipulating American Catholics, the likes this country has never seen before. There’s been his nomination and confirmation of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius to the secretary of Health and Human Services, despite wide spread opposition from Pro-Life, Catholic and non-Catholic, organizations throughout the planet.
Then there was his infamous commencement speech and honorary degree at the University of Notre Dame. Despite opposition from The Cardinal Newman Society, over 80 US Catholic Bishops and clear documentation in “Catholics in Political Life" declaring, "The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles,” The Rev. John Jenkins, Notre Dame's president, another complicit Catholic, allowed Obama to speak and receive an award. And so Obama calls for a fair-minded abortion debate … as long as you go along with his agenda, because that’s the only way you would be considered fair-minded.
What exactly has he done to limit abortions since he has taken office? Because from where I sit, all I’ve seen is policy to make getting and funding abortions easier. If you oppose his policies and dare to speak about it, all you get is a free roster spot on homeland security’s right-wing extremist list. Thank you, now believing in the sanctity of life makes you an extremist. Well there’s change for you, because again, I remember a time when this was the right thing to do. But somehow, this is now an extremist point of view, and Catholics are helping Obama send this message to the American people. After all, wasn’t it Catholic Janet Napolitano, Homeland Security Secretary, that issued a report summary by the Department of Homeland Security to local law enforcement officials across the country targeting abortion opposition, among other normative conservative viewpoints, as symptomatic of a potentially violent "right-wing extremism" back in April?
If Obama isn’t appointing or soliciting the assistance of a prominent Catholic, then there’s always one that’s seems willing to step forward and put forth Obama’s agenda for him. Take for instance Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, ex-Lieutenant governor of Maryland, and oldest of Bobby Kennedy, and the ever-friend to Catholics, everywhere, Newsweek magazine with their article asserting that Obama represents American Catholics better than the Pope. What she actually means is Obama represents liberal Catholics like her when she says American Catholics.
There are many more examples of how prominent so-called Catholics and “the media” is putting forth Obama’s agenda and manipulating American Catholics. You can blame Obama if you like, but what Obama and his advisors are doing, if you boil it down and analyze it to its core is really quite brilliant. It’s called “divide and conquer” and it works in war as well as politics, -- it always has. The real problem is with American Catholics in general. Most put more stock in worldly things than in Godly things, anyway. They are listening to the press when they should be listening to their bishops. And who despises the Catholic Church more than the press? Well, perhaps Hollywood, but that’s another story.
We have brilliant minds advocating for the Church, we recently lost a few in Richard John Neuhaus and Avery Cardinal Dulles, but we still have strong and vibrant voices like George Weigel and Archbishop Charles Chaput , among others. And they have made strong and cogent arguments in many cases. We need to pay closer attention to what they are saying, I’m afraid.
Archbishop Chaput said this on his reflection on how Catholics should think about the media.
A few excerpts:
Most of what we know about the world comes from people we’ll never meet and don’t really understand. We don’t even think of them as individuals. Instead we usually talk about them in the collective – as “the media” or “the press.” Yet behind every Los Angeles Times editorial or Fox News broadcast are human beings with personal opinions and prejudices. These people select and frame the news. And when we read their newspaper articles or tune in their TV shows, we engage them in a kind of intellectual intimacy in the same way you’re listening to me right now….
…The media’s power to shape public thought is why it’s so vital for the rest of us to understand their human element. When we don’t recognize the personal chemistry of the men and women who bring us our news – their cultural and political views, their economic pressures, their social ambitions – then we fail the media by holding them to too low a standard. We also – and much more importantly — fail ourselves by neglecting to think and act as intelligent citizens…
And so we come back to Obama's latest attempt to marginalize the Churches stand on life with yet another Catholic that supports the president on "reproductive health issues," Dr. Regina Benjamin. There are more examples but lets set that aside for now. I have no doubt that he will not stop here, because he knows that with the approval of Catholics, the largest voting block in America, he can do whatever he likes. Between his parade of Catholic supporters, and the media behind him, he continues to gain more control and more power. It’s not only the abortion debate that’s at stake here; it’s every aspect of government. As Thomas Jefferson once said, “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.”
No comments:
Post a Comment