…Obama’s vaunted praise of Cardinal Bernardin and his proselytizing alliance with the Catholic Church are not what they appear to be (or what the New York Times makes them out to be).
Obama and his organizing mentors were simply running Alinsky’s game on the Catholic Church, promising to help advance its goals, while in reality coopting the clergy to leftist political ventures, at odds with their intent.
While there is no indication that Francis knows the writings of Bernardin, who died in 1996, many say the pope’s remarks repeatedly evoke Bernardin’s signature teachings on the “consistent ethic of life” – the view that church doctrine champions the poor and vulnerable from womb to tomb – and on finding “common ground” to heal divisions in the church.
Ironically, the re-emergence of Bernardin — a man who was admired by a young Chicago organizer named Barack Obama — is exposing the very rifts he sought to bridge, especially among conservatives who thought his broad view of Catholicism was buried with him in Mount Carmel Cemetery, outside Chicago.
Editor’s note: Pope Francis’ ill considered rhetoric has already alienated a good part – the most consistently faithful part – of the Catholic Church.
No “seamless garment” is going to be able to patch that up.
At least the late Cardinal Bernadin (who was my archbishop, as well as a working associate of Barack Obama/Barry Sotero) managed to conduct his nefarious business without insulting huge numbers of Catholics and that’s probably why he was such a remarkably effective operator.
Thank God he died before they could elect him pope!
Various members of this informal cadre advised JFK, welcomed the 1967 rebellion of Catholic universities against Church authority led by Notre Dame, and carefully managed the reputation rehab of Teddy Kennedy after he killed Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick two years later.
A key player in the leftward descent of the Catholic Church since the 1960s emerged during the same era. Bishop Joseph Bernardin, who eventually became Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, was the major influence guiding the Catholic bishops’ conference from 1969 until his death in 1996.
At Notre Dame in 2009, Barack Obama repeatedly invoked Cardinal Bernardin, whom he had first met at a community organizing meeting on Chicago’s South Side. Bernardin had a “profound influence” on his life, he later told journalists.
Bernardin also had a profound influence on the life of Bishop Lynch. Russell Shaw, longtime spokesman for the USCCB, identifies Lynch as a key player among the “Bernardin Bishops.” Lynch joined Bernardin at the headquarters of the bishops’ conference in 1972, and served as his alter-ego there for a quarter-century. He became bishop of St. Petersburg the year that Cardinal Bernardin died.
by Doug Lawrence
After the failure of LBJ’s “Great Society” welfare program, where single moms received a bigger and bigger monthly check from the government, the more children they had … so long as there was no husband/father at home … the government turned to abortion and baby-killing in order to save money by reducing the number of poor people on the government dole.
Catholic politicians hired crooked theologians to fabricate policies and excuses that would permit abortion under almost every circumstance, and most non-Catholic politicians willingly went along.
The Supreme Court did their part with the trumped up and totally phony Roe v Wade, while the Catholic hierarchy … thanks primarily to the late Cardinal Bernardin, was both complicit and almost totally negligent in their lack of a sufficient, timely, and moral response to all of the above.
Planned Parenthood was subsequently given a huge annual subsidy by the federal government, along with generous supplemental funding from many of the states. Making birth control available to the masses was said to be the official objective, but abortion on demand, across the land, was always the real goal.
Abort as many black and hispanic babies as possible
in order to cheaply and efficiently
solve the poverty problem in the United States
through attrition.
It would be several years before the American public took notice of this particular paradigm shift, and by then it had gone way too far to be stopped.
Forty years later, Planned Parenthood still receives nearly a million dollars a day in federal subsidies. Abortion is still legal, still protected and still officially sanctioned by the U.S. Government.
Even though the God-fearing Democrats are known to absolutely love abortion, this is not strictly a partisan issue.
When the the Republicans recently controlled both houses of Congress as well as the Presidency, they made no real effort to outlaw abortion. All we got were a few “feel good” incremental restrictions and a short phone call from the President, to help kick off the annual Washington, D.C. March for Life.
The current fight to defund Planned Parenthood and further restrict abortion typically goes no further than the Democrat controlled Senate , where bills quickly meet their demise in committee … and even if, by some miracle, a solid anti-abortion measure got approved by both the House and Senate … Barack Obama … the Abortion President … would surely exercise his veto privilege … in order to kill it.
In light of all these years of political play acting … by politicians of both parties … I’m willing to bet anyone … $10 … that should we ever again have a Republican controlled House, Senate, and Presidency … they will still … somehow … fail to pass a comprehensive federal ban on abortion.
Any takers?
CHICAGO — In a meeting room under Holy Name Cathedral, a rapt group of black Roman Catholics listened as Barack Obama, a 25-year-old community organizer, trained them to lobby their fellow delegates to a national congress in Washington on issues like empowering lay leaders and attracting more believers.
“He so quickly got us,” said Andrew Lyke, a participant in the meeting who is now the director of the Chicago Archdiocese’s Office for Black Catholics. The group succeeded in inserting its priorities into the congress’s plan for churches, Mr. Lyke said, and “Barack Obama was key in helping us do that.”
Editor’s note: This is a truly wide ranging bio on the President – probably much more revealing than Mr. Obama would prefer. And now, he may have another willing collaborator in Pope Francis.
While there is no indication that Francis knows the writings of Bernardin, who died in 1996, many say the pope’s remarks repeatedly evoke Bernardin’s signature teachings on the “consistent ethic of life” – the view that church doctrine champions the poor and vulnerable from womb to tomb – and on finding “common ground” to heal divisions in the church.
Ironically, the re-emergence of Bernardin — a man who was admired by a young Chicago organizer named Barack Obama — is exposing the very rifts he sought to bridge, especially among conservatives who thought his broad view of Catholicism was buried with him in Mount Carmel Cemetery outside Chicago.
Editor’s note: You never get a second chance to make a good first impression and only six months in, Pope Francis’ ill considered rhetoric has already alienated a good part – the most consistently faithful part – of the Catholic Church. No “seamless garment” is going to be able to patch that up, and the scheduled 2014 canonization of Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II is likely to only make things worse.
At least the late Cardinal Bernadin (who was my archbishop, as well as a working associate of Barack Obama/Barry Sotero) managed to conduct his nefarious business without insulting huge numbers of Catholics and that’s probably why he was such a remarkably effective operator. Thank God he died before they could elect him pope!
Pope Francis by comparison, has so far acted more like the humble, likable, but almost totally inept former American President Jimmy Carter – the guy who got Egyptian President Anwar Sadat killed – and by his timely gutting of the CIA and abandonment of the Iranian Shah – lit the fuse of the powder keg which promptly exploded into today’s Middle East.
All the more reason to pray fervently for Pope Francis!
If you ever visit the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN, make sure you get a glimpse of the campus’ loveliest bit of architecture, the iconic St. Thomas arches. Built in 1947, these arches stand proudly astride the administrative building and the liberal arts center, displaying a statue of the university’s patron.
At one time, the buildings were known as Aquinas Hall and Albertus Magnus Hall. It was a beautiful pairing, which left the university’s signature landmark gracefully bridging the gap between the Angelic Doctor and his inspired teacher. In 1999, however, the university renovated Albertus Magnus Hall, at which time it was renamed “the John Roach Center.”
John Roach was the archbishop in the Twin Cities from 1975 to 1995. I never knew him, so be assured that there is no personal animus behind this one little thought: I do not think he contributed as much to the Church as Albert the Great. And it saddens me to realize that, with the loss of his building, a majority of UST students will surely graduate without so much as hearing the name of St. Thomas’ great mentor.
Imagine a world in which Catholic universities named their landmarks with an eye to the students’ good, and not to university politics…
Editor’s note: Archbishop Roach reputedly had little regard for either of the above saints, but he was a great friend and close associate of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin. See the linked article – starting about 3/4 of the way down the page.
by Doug Lawrence
After the failure of LBJ’s “Great Society” welfare program, where single moms received a bigger and bigger monthly check from the government, the more children they had … so long as there was no husband/father at home … the government turned to abortion and baby-killing in order to save money by reducing the number of poor people on the government dole.
Catholic politicians hired crooked theologians to fabricate policies and excuses that would permit abortion under almost every circumstance, and most non-Catholic politicians willingly went along.
The Supreme Court did their part with the trumped up and totally phony Roe v Wade, while the Catholic hierarchy … thanks primarily to the late Cardinal Bernardin, was both complicit and almost totally negligent in their lack of a sufficient, timely, and moral response to all of the above.
Planned Parenthood was subsequently given a huge annual subsidy by the federal government, along with generous supplemental funding from many of the states. Making birth control available to the masses was said to be the official objective, but abortion on demand, across the land, was always the real goal.
Abort as many black and hispanic babies as possible
in order to cheaply and efficiently
solve the poverty problem in the United States
through attrition.
It would be several years before the American public took notice of this particular paradigm shift, and by then it had gone way too far to be stopped.
Forty years later, Planned Parenthood still receives nearly a million dollars a day in federal subsidies. Abortion is still legal, still protected and still officially sanctioned by the U.S. Government.
Even though the God-fearing Democrats are known to absolutely love abortion, this is not strictly a partisan issue.
When the the Republicans recently controlled both houses of Congress as well as the Presidency, they made no real effort to outlaw abortion. All we got were a few “feel good” incremental restrictions and a short phone call from the President, to help kick off the annual Washington, D.C. March for Life.
The current fight to defund Planned Parenthood and further restrict abortion typically goes no further than the Democrat controlled Senate , where bills quickly meet their demise in committee … and even if, by some miracle, a solid anti-abortion measure got approved by both the House and Senate … Barack Obama … the Abortion President … would surely exercise his veto privilege … in order to kill it.
In light of all these years of political play acting … by politicians of both parties … I’m willing to bet anyone … $10 … that should we ever again have a Republican controlled House, Senate, and Presidency … they will still … somehow … fail to pass a comprehensive federal ban on abortion.
Any takers?
Cardinal Bernardin’s “Seamless Garment” later renamed the “Consistent Life Ethic,” like “The Many Faces of AIDS,” is another illustration of how Bernardin helped to advance the agenda of the Homosexual Collective. The Seamless Garment strategy set out by Bernardin in the 1980s sought to broaden the pro-life tent by expanding the movement’s opposition to abortion, euthanasia, population control and school sex instruction to include other “social justice” issues such as war and peace, opposition to the death penalty, welfare reform and civil liberties. One of the immediate effects of the Seamless Garment ethic was the increase of power and financial resources of Social Justice offices at the diocesan level where the Homosexual Collective has always been strongly represented.
Since the Homosexual Collective has been extremely successful at framing the homosexual question in terms of a “civil rights” issue, the Bernardin strategy opened the NCCB/USCC and diocesan Social Justice Departments (and their considerable resources and manpower) to further exploitation by the Collective. At the same time the Collective benefited from the neutering effect the Seamless Garment strategy had on pro-life/pro-family forces within the Church that had become the backbone of public opposition to the political and social agenda of the Homosexual Collective. The Bernardin strategy served to breathe new life into the languishing Democratic Party and its pro-homosexual platform as well as promote the “big tent” inclusive policies of the Republican Party that sought to capitalize and exploit the political talents and financial wealth of the Homosexual Collective in America.
“The president said he had fond memories of Cardinal Bernardin and that when he started his neighborhood project, they were funded by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development,” he said. “After the first question, from the National Catholic Reporter‘s Joe Feuerherd, the president jokingly asked, ‘Was there really [a controversy at Notre Dame]?’”
“The president spoke about how during Cardinal Bernardin’s time the U.S. bishops spoke about the nuclear freeze, the sanctuary movement, immigration, and the poor, but that later a decided change took place,” added Father Kearns. “He said that the responses to his administration mirror the tensions in the Church overall, but that Cardinal Bernardin was pro-life and never hesitated to make his views known, but he had a consistent ‘seamless garment’ approach that emphasized the other issues as well. The president said that that part of the Catholic tradition continues to inspire him. Those issues, he said, seemed to have gotten buried by the abortion debate.”
(Editor’s note: President Obama, having personally witnessed the weak and misguided leadership of the USCCB and particularly, the Chicago Archdiocese … which gave him large sums of money to promote non-Catholic and anti-Catholic activities … with absolutely no oversite and no strings attached … has absolutely no respect for the Catholic Church … since no other person, group, or church … and certainly no political party … would ever do anything that obscenely foolish and/or ridiculous.
It’s no wonder Obama still can’t figure out what happened at Notre Dame, or why.
As faithful Catholics, it is our responsibility to keep the pressure on President Obama without respite, until he realizes that “the good old days” he enjoyed under Cardinal Bernadin are no more, and can never be again.
This is not the time for dialogue. This is the time for action. Tens of millions of innocent lives have already been lost to abortion.The lives of millions more hang in the balance.
Mr. President, stop the killing! Then we can talk.)
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