Real Clear Politics / Real Clear Religion
September 12, 2012
Catholic Left Created Obama
By _George Neumayr_
(http://www.realclearreligion.org/authors/?author=George+Neumayr&id=14621)
Barack Obama rose to power not in spite of the Catholic Church but in part
because of it.
The archdiocese of Chicago helped finance his radicalism in the 1980s. He
actually began his work as a community organizer in the rectory rooms of
Holy Rosary parish on Chicago's South Side. The group for which he worked --
the Developing Communities Project -- had received tens of thousands of
dollars from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.
A surrogate for Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, Bishop Norbert Gaughan, put
pressure on priests to work with Obama, even leaving the impression in a
bullying letter that Obama's group enjoyed official status in the Church.
Referring to Obama's boss, Gerald Kellman, Gaughan wrote, "Mr. Kellman directs
a
program which addresses these problems for the Archdiocese."
So cozy was the relationship between Obama and Cardinal Bernardin that when
Obama went out to Los Angeles for a 1986 training session organized by
Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation he had the archdiocese pay for his
plane fare. The conference was held at a Catholic college in Southern
California, Mount St. Mary's, which to this day holds events for the
Industrial
Areas Foundation.
The Catholic left is proud of its role in nurturing the Church's destroyer.
This is why Chicago-area Catholics couldn't resist conferring an honorary
degree on him at Notre Dame even as he plotted in his first year of office
to pass laws that would break the Church.
Notre Dame's former president, Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, who had been close to
Monsignor John Egan, the Alinskyite who started the Catholic Campaign for
Human Development and sat on Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation board,
is notorious for having turned the Midwestern school into a cheerleader for
"progressive" causes and the Democratic Party. Notre Dame's board, composed
in part of Chicagoans enamored with Obama, was eager to show the elderly
Hesburgh that his secularized vision of American Catholicism had prevailed
and that the socialist community organizer he and his Alinskyite friends had
subsidized and supported over the years now occupied the most powerful
office in the world.
In turn, Obama used his address to Notre Dame's graduates to thank his
socialist Catholic patrons for inspiring him. While he was careful not to
mention that they had underwritten his training in Alinskyite radicalism, he
doffed his cap to them for their commitment to "social justice." Cardinal
Bernardin, who signed off on the grants and checks to Kellman and Obama, was
singled out by Obama for special praise.
Bernardin was not only a socialist in his economic views but also a
gay-friendly bishop supportive of the Democrats' moral drift. Bernardin was so
gay-friendly in fact that he requested that the "Windy City Gay Chorus"
perform at his funeral. Needless to say, he personified Obama's conception of
a
"good" bishop.
Now the Catholic left is making a final push for their protégé, as evident
in Sister Simone Campbell's appearance at the Democrats' convention in
Charlotte. The chattering class, which always like to prop up Catholic Fifth
Columnists for Obama, has pronounced her a "star."
The Catholic left's propaganda for Obama's reelection even goes beyond the
tired claim that his economic policies more closely approximate to "social
justice" than Romney's. According to The Weekly Standard, Catholic
academic Stephen Schneck _argues_
(https://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/tragic-extinction-pro-life-democrats_651700.html?page=2)
that Obama is better for the
unborn than Romney, drawing upon a convoluted computation about how
Medicaid prevents abortions: "Can a pro-life voter vote for Romney if it means
a
six, or a seven, or God forbid an eight percent increase in the number of
abortions in America? If it means thousands of new deaths among the unborn?"
Schneck offered up this whopper at the Charlotte convention of all places
-- an event so aggressively pro-abortion liberal pundit Cokie Roberts even
found it distasteful. "Safe, legal, and rare" -- the Clinton-era formulation
-- was notably absent from the party's platform this year and the
convention served largely as a celebration of abortion rights.
But the Catholic left doesn't care. Obama is their creation. They flock to
his events as proud patrons.
In July, Monsignor Marvin Mottet, who served as the executive director of
the Campaign for Human Development ("Catholic" was added to the group's name
later) around the time that Obama was cutting his teeth as a community
organizer in Chicago, showed up at an event for him in Iowa. "I had to choose
my words carefully to get the president's attention, so I mentioned the
Campaign for Human Development," Monsignor Mottet told the press afterwards.
The unholy alliance continues.
--
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