The “War on Religion”: GOP Still Placating The Hard Core Base
Is anyone who doesn’t already hate Obama for the usual right-wing reasons really going to believe the new Romney ad, that Obama’s health-care law wages a “war on religion”? I doubt many people will. It’s just right-wing fever-swamp rhetoric that I think your average person will, in his or her bones, recognize as such, because we’ve now reached the point in history where we’ve heard a lot of this, and it no longer shocks or traduces the way it once did.
Romney is still placating the hard-core GOP base. It’s getting a little late for that, isn’t? August isn’t really the time to be trying to nail down the scary-lazy-black-people and the Democrats-hate-God voting blocs. August is when you start making your pitch to swing voters.
This is starting, just starting, to remind me of the Rick Lazio 2000 Senate campaign against Hillary, when he, under the brilliant hand of Mike Murphy, made a crucial mistake conservatives are naturally prone to make. He confused “regular New Yorkers” with “right-wing Hillary haters” and thought they were functionally the same thing. Thus he couldn’t for the life of him understand why middle-of-the-road New Yorkers weren’t impressed and persuaded when he and the state GOP accused the First Lady of the United States of sympathizing with the terrorists who blew up the USS Cole. The Romney camp is edging into the same territory.
If Romney wants to talk about wars on religion, I really hope he names Paul Ryan as his veep. The Catholic Bishops called the Ryan budget “immoral.” Unfortunately, the Democrats probably wouldn’t even point this out, wouldn’t want to lean on the bishops. And this raises a problem with today’s Democratic Party.
I’d love to see the party become less skittish about using religion to defend and support its policies. Many elected Democrats, indeed most, are religious people. Obviously, their religious beliefs inform their political views, and vice versa. They ought to be more comfortable talking about it.
Why should Republicans be the only ones to invoke Jesus, and only for conservative reasons and ends? I think it would be delicious if Democrats started quoting more Scripture in behalf of liberalism. After all, a lot of Scripture is liberalism. I’m not religious myself, but I think it’s a shame that liberalism is so guardedly secular.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, August 9, 2012
“Saintly And Crafty”: After Papal Crackdown, We Are All Nuns
Catholic nuns are not the prissy traditionalists of caricature. No, nuns rock!
They were the first feminists, earning Ph.D.’s or working as surgeons long before it was fashionable for women to hold jobs. As managers of hospitals, schools and complex bureaucracies, they were the first female C.E.O.’s.
They are also among the bravest, toughest and most admirable people in the world. In my travels, I’ve seen heroic nuns defy warlords, pimps and bandits. Even as bishops have disgraced the church by covering up the rape of children, nuns have redeemed it with their humble work on behalf of the neediest.
So, Pope Benedict, all I can say is: You are crazy to mess with nuns.
The Vatican issued a stinging reprimand of American nuns this month and ordered a bishop to oversee a makeover of the organization that represents 80 percent of them. In effect, the Vatican accused the nuns of worrying too much about the poor and not enough about abortion and gay marriage.
What Bible did that come from? Jesus in the Gospels repeatedly talks about poverty and social justice, yet never explicitly mentions either abortion or homosexuality. If you look at who has more closely emulated Jesus’s life, Pope Benedict or your average nun, it’s the nun hands down.
Since the papal crackdown on nuns, they have received an outpouring of support. “Nuns were approached by Catholics at Sunday liturgies across the country with a simple question: ‘What can we do to help?’ ” The National Catholic Reporter recounted. It cited one parish where a declaration of support for nuns from the pulpit drew loud applause, and another that was filled with shouts like, “You go, girl!”
At least four petition drives are under way to support the nuns. One on Change.org has gathered 15,000 signatures. The headline for this column comes from an essay by Mary E. Hunt, a Catholic theologian who is developing a proposal for Catholics to redirect some contributions from local parishes to nuns.
“How dare they go after 57,000 dedicated women whose median age is well over 70 and who work tirelessly for a more just world?” Hunt wrote. “How dare the very men who preside over a church in utter disgrace due to sexual misconduct and cover-ups by bishops try to distract from their own problems by creating new ones for women religious?”
Sister Joan Chittister, a prominent Benedictine nun, said she had worried at first that nuns spend so much time with the poor that they would have no allies. She added that the flood of support had left her breathless.
“It’s stunningly wonderful,” she said. “You see generations of laypeople who know where the sisters are — in the streets, in the soup kitchens, anywhere where there’s pain. They’re with the dying, with the sick, and people know it.”
Sister Joan spoke to me from a ghetto in Erie, Pa., where her order of 120 nuns runs a soup kitchen, a huge food pantry, an afterschool program, and one of the largest education programs for the unemployed in the state.
I have a soft spot for nuns because I’ve seen firsthand that they sacrifice ego, safety and comfort to serve some of the neediest people on earth. Remember the “Kony 2012” video that was an Internet hit earlier this year, about an African warlord named Joseph Kony? One of the few heroes in the long Kony debacle was a Comboni nun, Sister Rachele Fassera.
In 1996, Kony’s army attacked a Ugandan girls’ school and kidnapped 139 students. Sister Rachele hiked through the jungle in pursuit of the kidnappers — some of the most menacing men imaginable, notorious for raping and torturing their victims to death. Eventually, she caught up with the 200 gunmen and demanded that they release the girls. Somehow, she browbeat the warlord in charge into releasing the great majority of the girls.
I’m betting on the nuns to win this one as well. After all, the sisters may be saintly, but they’re also crafty. Elias Chacour, a prominent Palestinian archbishop in the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, recounts in a memoir that he once asked a convent if it could supply two nuns for a community literacy project. The mother superior said she would have to check with her bishop.
“The bishop was very clear in his refusal to allow two nuns,” the mother superior told him later. “I cannot disobey him in that.” She added: “I will send you three nuns!”
Nuns have triumphed over an errant hierarchy before. In the 19th century, the Catholic Church excommunicated an Australian nun named Mary MacKillop after her order exposed a pedophile priest. Sister Mary was eventually invited back to the church and became renowned for her work with the poor. In 2010, Pope Benedict canonized her as Australia’s first saint.
“Let us be guided” by Sister Mary’s teachings, the pope declared then.
Amen to that.
By: Nicholas Kristof, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, April 28, 2012
“Guns Are People Too”: The Right To Bear Arms But Not To Get Birth Control
At his speech to the National Rifle Association convention this afternoon, Mitt Romney brought up the alleged infringement on religious freedom by the Obama administration:
Now, the Obama administration has decided that it has the power to mandate what Catholic charities, schools, and hospitals must cover in their insurance plans. It’s easy to forget how often President Obama assured us that under Obamacare, nothing in our insurance plans would have to change. Remember that one? Well, here we are, just getting started with Obamacare, and the federal government is already dictating to religious groups on matters of doctrine and conscience.
In all of America, there is no larger private provider of healthcare for women and their babies than the Catholic Church. But that’s not enough for the Obamacare bureaucrats. No, they want Catholics to fall in line and violate the tenets of their faith.
As President, I will follow a very different path than President Obama. I will be a staunch defender of religious freedom. The Obamacare regulation is not a threat and insult to only one religious group – it is a threat and insult to every religious group. As President, I will abolish it.
Of course when he was governor of Massachusetts, Romney made no effort to shield religious institutions from a very similar rule. According to the Boston Globe, there was a substantially similar requirement in Massachusetts, and when proposing his own overhaul of the state’s health insurance system, he made no effort to change it based on the religious objections of Catholic institutions.
As I noted yesterday, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and their allies are ramping up the “religious freedom” wars for the campaign season. Romney has taken up their cause before, but never in such an unlikely venue. He somehow wrapped the Bishops’ “religious freedom” complaints in the same packaging as gun rights. (And, for good measure, his wife Ann made a special appearance to assure one of the most powerful special interest groups in Washington that women are “special” but not a “special interest.” Ba-dum-bum.) Funny how owning a gun is now a more important right than health care and how the “culture of life” rationale of the Bishops’ opposition to birth control gets play at a convention celebrating guns.
By: Sarah Posner, Religion Dispatches, April 13, 2012
“Faith-Based Budgeting”: The New Testament According To Disciple Paul Ryan
Probably everyone has heard the New Testament story in which Jesus entered the temple and told the money changers, “You know, if you got a massive tax break, the benefits would probably benefit poor families eventually.” Or something like that, right?
That seems to be the message I’ve been hearing from the right this week. Over the weekend, evangelical megachurch pastor Rick Warren said the Bible “says we are to care about the poor,” but he also said he opposes “wealth redistribution,” adding, “When you subsidize people, you create the dependency.”
He’s not the only one adopting this theological approach.
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), whose budget plan recently passed the House in a party-line vote, says his faith contributed in shaping the proposal, which he says is consistent with Catholic teachings.
“A person’s faith is central to how they conduct themselves in public and in private,” Ryan said in an interview released on Tuesday by the Christian Broadcasting Network. “So to me, using my Catholic faith, we call it the social magisterium, which is how do you apply the doctrine of your teaching into your everyday life as a lay person?”
To be sure, Ryan’s spiritual beliefs are his own business, and his religious beliefs are between him and his conscience. I’m not going to pretend to be a theologian or try to interpret Scripture for him.
I can, however, point out the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops — the leaders of Ryan’s faith tradition — have urged Republicans to adopt a budget strategy that “requires shared sacrifice by all,” including additional tax revenues and eliminating unneeded military spending. In a letter last year, the bishops also characterized “massive cuts” to programs that benefit the poor as unacceptable. “The needs of those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty should come first,” the bishops said, articulating a principle that the Ayn Rand acolyte considers ridiculous.
I can also point out that Ryan’s budget plan is simply brutal towards the poor.
The House Republican agenda gets “at least 62 percent of its $5.3 trillion in non-defense budget cuts over ten years from programs that serve people of limited means,” while also “giving a massive tax break to the wealthy.” This means redistributing wealth in the wrong direction — taking money from SNAP, Medicaid, and education, and redirecting that money towards those who are already rich.
If his read on the New Testament is that Jesus would cut food stamps while giving millionaires a tax break, Paul Ryan has a far more creative mind than I do.
I hate to break it to the right-wing Budget Committee chairman, but praying that dubious numbers will somehow add up doesn’t count as a budget shaped by faith.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 12, 2012
“No Liberals Allowed”: Catholic College Cans Vicki Kennedy Speech At Bishop’s Request
A small Massachusetts Roman Catholic college rescinded its invitation to Vicki Kennedy to speak at its graduation ceremony this spring, saying the local bishop objected to honoring the widow of the liberal lion Senator Edward M. Kennedy.
A spokesman for Worcester Bishop Robert McManus declined to say why exactly he objected to the choice of Kennedy, a member of the most prominent U.S. Catholic family in politics.
“Bishop McManus is acting, he feels, consistently with what all of the U.S. bishops asked colleges or higher institutions to do going back to 2004, that they not honor … Catholics who take a public stance or position on issues contrary to things that the Church is trying to teach,” said Raymond Delisle, a spokesman for the diocese.
Kennedy said she was “disheartened” by the public rebuke.
“I am a lifelong Catholic and my faith is very important to me,” she said in a statement. “I have not met Bishop McManus nor has he been willing to meet with me to discuss his objections.”
She said that by opposing her appearance at the college, the bishop “has made a judgment about my worthiness as a Catholic.”
Senator Kennedy, a Democrat, was a liberal standard-bearer during his nearly 47 years in office and an advocate for abortion rights — a stance that ran afoul of church teachings. His brother John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic president of the United States, was assassinated in 1963.
The school, Anna Maria College of Paxton, Massachusetts, apologized to Kennedy.
“As a small, Catholic college that relies heavily on the good will of its relationship with the Bishop and the larger Catholic community, its options are limited,” it said in a statement.
The Catholic church has been increasingly vocal on political issues over the past year, particularly regarding the use of contraception, which the church opposes.
In February, clergy around the United States were asked to read statements at the pulpit calling on the administration of President Barack Obama to exempt religious employers from paying for insurance coverage of contraceptives.
Following Edward Kennedy’s death in 2009, the clan has slowly faded from the political spotlight, though Joseph Kennedy III — grandson of Edward’s brother Robert, who also served in the Senate — has announced plans to run for Congress.
By: Scott Malone, Reuters, March 30, 2012
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