Tag: Georgetown

Obama Lectures Catholic/Evangelical Summit on “Faith and Family”…No, Seriously.

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics1 Comment

thQ67Q4JEBBack in April of 2008, Democrat Presidential Candidate Barack Hussein Obama, spoke the following words during a fundraiser in Pennsylvania:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them.

And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Yesterday, the same individual spoke on the importance of faith and family in front of a bunch of Christian Leaders.

My hypocrisy knows no Bounds. – Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer) to Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russeal, “Tombstone”, 1993

Seriously, boys and girls…you can’t make this stuff up.

The Christian Post reports that

President Barack Obama spoke Tuesday about the importance of faith and family during a panel discussion for the Catholic-Evangelical Summit on Overcoming Poverty at Georgetown University.
“Faith-based groups across the country and around the world understand the centrality and the importance of [poverty] in a intimate way — in part because these faith-based organizations are interacting with folks who are struggling and know how good these people are, and know their stories, and it’s not just theological, but it’s very concrete. They’re embedded in communities and they’re making a difference in all kinds of ways,” Obama said.

The panel was moderated by The Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne and also included Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, and Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam.

“When I think about my own Christian faith and my obligations,” Obama continued, “it is important for me to do what I can myself — individually mentoring young people, or making charitable donations, or in some ways impacting whatever circles and influence I have. But I also think it’s important to have a voice in the larger debate. And I think it would be powerful for our faith-based organizations to speak out on this in a more forceful fashion.”

Obama also noted that asking churches to speak out more on poverty may “sound self-interested” because there are other issues where he disagrees with “the evangelical community and faith-based groups,” such as abortion and gay marriage.

“But I want to insist,” he explained, “… [working to end poverty] is more just a broader reflection of somebody who has worked with churches and worked in communities.”

Obama also noted that he speaks about the importance of fathers to, for instance, students at Morehouse College, an all-male traditionally black college, more than Barnard College, an all-female college, because “I am a black man who grew up without a father and I know the cost that, I paid for that. And I also know that I have the capacity to break that cycle, and as a consequence, I think my daughters are better off.”

Having that conversation, he added, “does not negate my conversation about the need for early childhood education, or the need for job training, or the need for greater investment in infrastructure, or jobs in low-income communities.”

The summit was on its second of three full days of events. It was organized by Georgetown’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, and the National Association of Evangelicals. The goal of the summit is to “make overcoming poverty a moral imperative and urgent national priority.” Partner groups participating in the event represent both conservative and liberal evangelical and Catholic groups.

Obama said he has read Putnam’s new book, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, which argues that a rich/poor opportunity gap has grown wider in recent years, such that poor kids find it more difficult to find success through hard work.

After Obama pointed out that anti-poverty programs have reduced poverty by 40 percent since 1967, Putnam noted that those programs have reduced poverty for the elderly but they have not helped children much.

Increasingly, he said, opportunities for success are determined by who your parents are. Poor children can be just as talented and hardworking, but their “fate is being determined by things that they had no control over, and that’s fundamentally unfair”.

I disagree vehemently.

This is the greatest country on the face of the Earth.

God gave us Free Will. And, with His help, “all things are possible”. (Matthew 19:26)

You determine your own success.

It is not so much as to who your parents are, but whether they fulfill their Parental Responsibilities in your life or not.

For example, look at the case of Trayvon Martin’s Mother. The second thing she did, after getting Barack Obama and the Justice Brothers involved in her 17 year old thug son’s death, is to copyright his name, and begin to make money off of  his image as an innocent 12 year old, which, of course, he was not.

I have never been able to stomach mistreatment of children. I know it is because of my upbringing, in a stable Christian home. Nowadays, that familial situation, which my generation was so familiar with, is becoming more and more scarce. In fact, despite his speech at Georgetown, it’s on the Obama Administration’s Hit List.

You see, Liberals, Progressives, socialists, Alinskyites, worshipers of Molech, or whatever you want to call these yahoos, , want the “gub’mit”, good ol’ Uncle Sugar, to raise , educate, and pay for (with OUR tax money) their “chirren”.

Oh…they also want US to pay for the killing of their “inconvenient” babies, as well.

The strength and vitality of America does not come from the benevolence of a Nanny-state Federal Government.

As the greatest American President of my lifetime, Ronald Reagan said:

The nine words you never want to hear are: I’m from the Government and I’m here to help.

Being enslaved to the Government Dole steals one’s ambition. It takes away any impetus or desire to create a better life for yourself and your family, to challenge yourself to pick yourself up by your bootstraps and pursue the American Dream. It makes you reliant on a politically motivated spider’s web full of government bureaucrats who view you and your family as job security.

By eliminating the will to succeed in life, the Government has created and perpetuated a seemingly inescapable Cycle of Poverty, in which irresponsibility is rewarded with a Government Check.

And, if these adults don’t care about succeeding in their own lives, you certainly cannot expect them to give a hoot and holler about fulfilling their Parental Responsibilities, now, can you?

These “parents”, if they are not “Pookies”, sitting around on the couch, drinking Purple drank and smoking Blunts all day, while waiting on their “benefits”, are middle-class, self-absorbed , materialistic heathens, who are 30 year old adolescents, caring more about their own careers and social lives, than they are about leading a child “in the way in which they should go”.

The children, in both instances, are left to fend for themselves, and grow up thinking that the behavior they see on television and at home, is the behavior of every adult in America.

And, that is how we have gotten to the point where mobs of Black Youths are assaulting innocent people in cities from coast to coast.

In the church I grew up in, in one of the Sunday School classrooms, was a painting of Jesus, seated, with a child on his lap, surrounded by little children, smiling and talking to them.

As a child growing up, I thought to myself, how great that must have to been to have Him for a friend.

Then, as I became older, I realized that I already did.

It breaks my heart that these young people, not unlike Trayvon Martin, who was made a meal of by Race-Baiting Vultures, were not introduced to such a Friend.

He would have made all the difference in their young lives.

A Nanny-State Government enslaves.

Our God-Given American Freedom empowers.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

What Part of “Freedom of Religion” Does Obama Not Understand?

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics2 Comments

William Peter Blatty, accomplished author (The Exorcist) is calling Georgetown University out.

Why?

The 1950 Georgetown University Graduate is tired of the secularization of the University, which includes a recent visit by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius, Obamacare contributor and pro-abortion advocate.

On May 5, 2012, in a speech to American bishops, Pope Benedict XVI called on America’s Catholic universities to reaffirm their Catholic identity. The Pope noted the failure of many Catholic universities to comply with Blessed John Paul II’s apostolic constitution Ex corde Ecclesiae. The Pope said that preservation of a university’s Catholic identity “entails much more than the teaching of religion or the mere presence of a chaplaincy on campus.”

For 21 years now. Georgetown University has refused to comply with Ex corde Ecclesiaie (“From The Heart of the Church”), and, therefore, with canon law. And, it seems as if every month GU gives another scandal to the faithful! The most recent is Georgetown’s obtuse invitation to Secretary Sebelius to be a commencement speaker.

Each of these scandals is proof of Georgetown’s non-compliance with Ex corde Ecclesiae and canon law. They are each inconsistent with a Catholic identity, and we all know it. A university in solidarity with the Church would not do these prideful things that do so much harm to our communion.

Georgetown is being dishonest. Together, we need to end that! In very recent years, Georgetown has even created the impression that its Jesuit tradition can stand apart from its Catholic identity. I am told that in on-campus debates, students will divide over favoring either Jesuit or Catholic! After eight years of Jesuit education, – when Jesuits and their reputation were one and the same – I shudder at this deception. The great Jesuit theologian Avery Dulles anticipated and admonished his fellow Jesuit educators over this fomented confusion: “To be Jesuit is merely to be more intensely Catholic,” he said. Of course.

Many believe that to make Georgetown truly Catholic is to turn back the clock hands and somehow limit its very nature as a university, as if the notion of “Catholic” and “university” are new to each other, or inherently at odds. On the contrary, to make Georgetown “Catholic” is to move the clock forward; it is to make the University better than it now is! Of course, there are always those who are afraid of change, – who lack vision. They may need to step aside.

John Paul II exhorted us all to preserve for the Church the highest places of culture – our universities. Generations of alumni have long been seduced to “go along” by dinners, medals, and board seats (I accepted my John Carroll Medal too). We have all been negligent for too long: the laity, the clergy, and the bishops as well.

Blatty is not alone in his righteous indignation over the anti-life Healthcare Monster being imposed upon us by the Obama Administration and their Congressional sycophants.

Foxnews.com reports that:

Some of the most influential Catholic institutions in the country filed suit against the Obama administration Monday over the so-called contraception mandate, in one of the biggest coordinated legal challenges to the rule to date.

Claiming their “fundamental rights hang in the balance,” a total of 43 plaintiffs filed a dozen separate federal lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the requirement. Among the organizations filing were the University of Notre Dame, the Archdiocese of New York and The Catholic University of America.

The groups are objecting to the requirement from the federal health care overhaul that employers provide access to contraceptive care. The Obama administration several months ago softened its position on the mandate, but some religious organizations complained the administration did not go far enough to ensure the rule would not compel them to violate their religious beliefs.

A statement from the University of Notre Dame said the requirement would still call on religious-affiliated groups to “facilitate” coverage “for services that violate the teachings of the Catholic Church.”

“The federal mandate requires Notre Dame and similar religious organizations to provide in their insurance plans abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives and sterilization procedures, which are contrary to Catholic teaching,” the statement said.

Rev. John Jenkins, the president of Notre Dame, said in a message to the campus that the filing “is about the freedom of a religious organization to live its mission, and its significance goes well beyond any debate about contraceptives.”

The contraception rule does include an exemption for religious organizations — but that exemption does not cover many religious-affiliated organizations like schools and charities. Complaints about the narrowly tailored exemption prompted a stand-off between the Obama administration and religious groups earlier this year. As a compromise, the administration said insurers — and not the religious-affiliated organizations themselves — could be required to offer contraceptive coverage directly.

But many organizations were not satisfied with the plan. John Garvey, president of Catholic University, said in a statement Monday that “such a revision would not solve our moral dilemma.” He argued that the cost of contraceptive coverage would still be “rolled into the cost” of a university insurance policy.

“In the end the university, its employees and its students will be forced to pay for the prescriptions and services we find objectionable,” he said.

University of Notre Dame Law Prof. Richard Garnett said in a statement that the mandate could affect a range of religious institutions, including “schools, health care providers and social welfare agencies.”

On a separate track, officials at a Florida Catholic university decided Monday to drop student health care coverage, becoming the second school this month to make that call. The decision at Ave Maria University was based in part on objections to the contraception rule, but also on projected increased premium costs tied to new rules in the federal health care overhaul.

While I am not Catholic, as a Christian American Conservative, I applaud the stand made by these People of Faith.

For those of you who, like the president, do not understand, the phrase is “Freedom of Religion”.

Not “Freedom from Religion”.