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
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.
