Obama and US Catholics - Duped Again

President Obama has allies in important places and they are garnering more support for him for this next election. I suspected that recent statements by Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the US Congregation of Catholic Bishops, were next to useless and this article confirms those suspicions.

As it has been widely reported, Obama conferred with Sister Keehan before his announcement last Friday. Then, lo and behold, she praised his revision as an inspiring resolution to the thorny issue of "religious freedom" soon after the sham event concluded.

So let's get down to brass tacks. How much is Sister Keehan worth for such political interventions? The checkered Catholic hospitals Keehan represents as chief executive officer of the Catholic Health Association stand to receive gobs and gobs of cash from the federal government if Obamacare holds up past 2012. Consequently, the members of the association are more than happy to pony up huge salaries to executives skilled at manipulating the Catholic electorate for Obama.

According to the form, base compensation for "Daughters of Charity for Sr. Keehan" was $682,982. "Bonus and incentive compensation" was $136,000. "Other reportable compensation" -- which is the (B)(iii) to which the caveat refers -- was $131,888. Nontaxable benefits were $11,597. All this adds up to salary and benefits totaling $962,467.
Presumably, her 2011 salary and benefits will exceed $1 million, if the past is any measure. (Her 2009 salary and benefits fell in the $850,000 range.)

She spun Obama's "compromise" effortlessly, while the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) was caught flatfooted. In his tiresomely inane and people-pleasing way, USCCB president Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan initially praised Obama's con job as a first "step in the right direction." This gave the White House nearly a day of good publicity with which to confuse Catholics.

And while Sister Keehan is once again rallying Catholics to re-elect the most pro-abortion president in history, the Congregation of Bishops are issuing statements, that are too late and too weak.

Later that Friday, the USCCB issued a new statement pronouncing Obama's revision "unacceptable." But the damage was already done.

Keehan must chuckle at the cluelessness and doctrinal timidity of the bishops. The USCCB still can't decide if "Catholic" pols whipping the Church in America on issues like abortion and gay marriage should be denied Communion. This is too tough a call for the USCCB, so no uniform policy exists. (In a typical comment from the USCCB crowd, Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C. has said that he won't withhold Communion from Nancy Pelosi, as that "style" of confrontation makes him uncomfortable.)

Catholics simply do not get it. I think the bumper stickers on one person's car sum it all up: one sticker "You can't be Catholic and pro-choice" and on the other sticker: "Obama for President". Unfortunately that confusion is not limited to your ordinary everyday Catholics; the bishops too seem to think in the same confused manner.

In 2008, many bishops, priests, and nuns voted for Obama and they probably will again. At the end of the day, they are Democrats first and Catholics second. Besides, they agree with Obama on issues like birth control. They, too, view the Church's teachings as passé.

"Obama is not a pro-abortion president," Giovanni Maria Vian, editor of L'Osservatore Romano, said a while back, while former papal household theologian Cardinal Georges Cottier congratulated Obama for his "humble realism."

No doubt Obama will reassemble his "Catholic advisory committee" and continue to generate donations from Catholic colleges and universities. Last time around, the faculty at Jesuit Georgetown led all college faculties, religious and non-religious, in donations to Obama.

Several Jesuit schools joined Keehan in praising Obama for his HHS "compromise," which was awfully big of them since they never needed it in the first place, given that they already hand out condoms and contraceptives to their students.

- The Little Sisters of Limousine Liberalism, by George Neumayr

I have heard it said that whoever gets the majority of the Catholic vote wins the election. And Obama has more than 50% of the Catholic vote, according to recent polls. With continued weak leadership in the church, that isn't going to change. Bishops such as Dolan and Weurl need to step up and definitively put their beliefs on the line. No more trying to have it both ways, currying favour with politicians and guiding their flocks. You just can't have it both ways.

Immigrants are not the solution

“While it is true Canadians are living longer and having fewer babies, research shows that immigration has almost no impact on offsetting the costs of an aging population. Immigrants themselves grow old and draw on social support services while on average they have families as small as those of other Canadians,” says the CIPR.

“For immigrants to make a net contribution to the support of social services, they would have to pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits. In recent years this has not been the case as newcomers have usually earned substantially less than native-born Canadians and have drawn significantly more in social services than they have paid in taxes.”
Peter Baklinski on LifeSiteNews

When politicians try to entice immigrants to their provinces to bolster the sagging workforce, they are deluded since they don't understand this is really no solution in the long run.

Obama and Catholics Yet Again

From Boston.com

But not all employees of Catholic institutions are Catholics. Why should their employers impose their religious beliefs on them and deny coverage for birth control and other medical care? As long as those Catholic institutions are getting taxpayer money, they should follow secular rules. That’s the Obama administration’s argument, and it makes sense.

This shows yet again why the Catholic Church should voluntarily give up its charitable tax status. "He who pays the piper calls the tune."

If we were free from the state via the tax loophole, then Obama and his likes would have little power over the Church.

h/t Where the Rubber Hits the Road

Susan G. Komen with a black and blue ribbon

What we can usually expect from Mark Steyn, this time on the Susan G. Komen turnaround with Planned Parenthood. As Mark says:

Indeed. If you strike at the King, you must kill him. If you merely announce that, following a review of grant-eligibility procedures you're no longer in a position to make your small voluntary donation to the King, your head will be on a pikestaff outside the palace gates...
Congratulations! Planned Parenthood certainly raised Nancy's awareness. I wonder what color ribbon that comes with? Black and blue?

Read the full article here
Mark Steyn: Komen has its awareness raised

And this attack on the Susan G. Komen foundation is all for a contribution that is less than Cecile Richard's annual salary. The grants to Planned Parenthood are in the range of $580,000 annually, while the president of PP (Cecile Richards) receives over $600,000 in salary and benefits.

And the picture of Cecile Richards with Obama is there for a reason. The two are hand-in-glove.

More on Catholics and Obama

The latest Obama threat against the Catholic church - forcing Catholic organizations to pay for contraception and abortion with health plans - may be a political ruse on Obama's part.

Remember that he told Archbishop Timothy Dolan that the Catholics would have one year's reprieve before they would be forced to comply. Gosh, doesn't that coincide with the election?

So, the year passes or almost passes, and guess what? Obama will relent, just in time to catch all those Catholic votes to give him a second term.

This guy is politically devious and will stoop to anything to get votes. Just watch.

Graphic Images

I remember talking to someone who brought the GAP to Canada. She had been all over the place with the nasty pictures and heard every. single. complaint ...

She thought she'd heard it all until the day, at some university campus in Arkansas I think, when they got a call from the local pro-life pregnancy care volunteer centre ...

She was told that the GAPpers were causing them all manner of trouble and would they please knock it off with those pictures, for heaven sake?!

They were getting too many calls you see. All those university kids who had seen the pictures had changed their minds about abortion and, instead of calling the local abortion mill, were calling them and they just weren't used to such a high volume of work and didn't have the manpower for it...

Orwell's Picnic

As Angelina Steenstra (http://www.silentnomoreawareness.org) said to me the other day "abortion is THE problem on university campuses today."

Old Age Pensions and Children

Every time I turn on the radio or television, I hear someone discussing the pension problem that has been raised as a major issue in Canadian politics this week. Everyone agrees that the current system of old age pensions is unsustainable. And they all state the known facts: an aging population, longer life expectancy, the choice of 65 as the retirement age in a prior generation when people didn't live as long or as healthily as now. On and on they go, I keep waiting to hear someone state the bleeding obvious, but no one does.

People are not having sufficient kids to keep the number of tax payers that are required to maintain a society that depends upon social benefits. The old age pension is just one of those benefits, universal health care is another, unemployment insurance is another, disability insurance is another. Why can't they see this? And if they do, why does no one say it?

Are they afraid of stating that we simply aren't having enough children to have a healthy population demographic? Is there anyone out there willing to state what is politically incorrect? That this generation and the one before it has been so concerned with its own comfort that it has chosen to have one child or none. We have become so selfish that we think only of our own lives, and no longer give any thought to the future of our culture.

Someone please say it, someone please be willing to take the flack for saying what people need to know. Have children, people, have kids - if not for yourselves, have them for the future generations.