Shorter Christine Flowers, Annotated
“Catholics Who Support Obama Are Not Real Catholics.” I think she’s serious:
This is a swipe at prominent cafeteria Catholics and noted theologians like Nancy Pelosi who’ve tried to argue that Catholics shouldn’t be one-issue voters. Knowing that many Catholics tend to be squeamish about the party’s stand on abortion, Democrats have tried to appeal to this important demographic by playing bait-and-switch – if they can divert our attention from their support for the abortion lobby, we’ll be able to pull the lever for Obama.
I know Christine is a childless scold with an axe to grind, but I never knew she had been appointed the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The Daily News is lucky to have a writer who can identify true Catholics from false ones. And so unbiased and honest too!
That might work with the I’m-personally-against-but-don’t-want-to-impose-my opinion types. But they can’t hoodwink Joe the Bishop. Martino has enunciated the church’s beliefs by emphasizing that if you don’t respect life at its most defenseless and elemental, concern for the rest is meaningless.
Yes, children need health care. Yes, the education system needs to be overhauled. Yes, middle-class families deserve a roof over their heads, food on the table, the prospect of prosperity for the next generation. And immigrants need to be treated with respect and not like pariahs.
Embryos and fetuses matter more than the kids you already have.
But as Bishop Martino says, what does any of this matter if a woman’s right to choose to bear a child takes precedence over the child itself?
Embryos and festuses, who aren’t even viable human beings, should have more rights than adult women.
When sons and daughters become disposable, it’s irrelevant that they don’t have books to read or food to eat.
Master of tautology!
Letting women (and women alone – no fathers allowed) to make this choice effectively redefines the meaning of “life.”
Someone needs to get Christine a new editor because it’s clear Sandra Shea’s not doing her job, and not just in her typical “I’ll just let Christine spew her crazy lying blather” way. Any fool can see the editor either needs to change “letting” to “allowing”, or delete the “to”. That’s not even editing, so much as it’s “paying attention.”
Barack Obama, despite the backpedaling he’s done on the campaign trail, is NARAL’s best friend. While Joe the Senator is more reticent about his support for abortion rights, saying that, for him, life begins at conception, Obama has long made it clear that Roe is sacrosanct.
This graf is a hoot: Christine either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that NARAL’s primary goal is to self perpetuate itself. NARAL wins when people like Sam Alito get appointed to the Supreme Court, because they profit off the consistent state of emergency for reproductive choice, that’s why they did nothing to stop him, and indeed gave a pass to so-called pro-choice Republicans like Arlen Specter and Lincoln Chaffee who voted for him.
He voted to block legislation to mandate medical care for babies who survived botched abortions because he felt it infringed on the right to choose. He’s also promised to sign the Freedom of Choice Act if elected. Among other things, FOCA would let tax dollars be used for abortions, gutting the Hyde Amendment.
That’s a lie, a blatant lie, I’m not sure which is worse: Christine for purveying it or Sandra Shea for allowing it to be broadcast on the pages of her newspaper’s op-ed page. Ethics much? Factchecking much?
Bishop Martino is right that abortion is not just one life issues but the issue. Catholics who want to support Obama can do so, no priest has the right to control our vote. But conscience and elections are very different things.
Catholics can’t pretend to be in good standing when they cast a vote for a man who has been so devoted to abortion rights that he’d deny a child the right to medical care if it compromised a woman’s right to an abortion. (And if you think that’s hyperbole, go to www.ilga. gov/senate/transcripts/strans92/ST033001.pdf.)
Don’t bother clicking on this is a 103 page transcript (pdf) of the Illinois state senate dating to when Obama was a member: not only does Christine fail to provide any indication of where you might find this vote, HER STORY IS DEMONSTRABLY NOT TRUE Oh and don’t forget, Catholics who vote for Obama are bad Catholics.
Last week, a miracle came into my life. His name is Alexander Christian, and he’s my nephew.
Actually, he came into your sister’s wife. Live vicariously much?
He’s more precious than anything at the Barnes Foundation. I’m sure that if Obama had the chance to hold Alex, he’d flash that radiant smile of his and talk about my nephew’s right to a bright future.
I’m terrified of what Christine will teach her nephew
But Bishop Martino knows Alex had a right to that future even while nestled in my sister’s belly.
And while Catholics can run from that truth, they can’t hide.
At least not in Scranton.
The Church is never wrong and doctrine never changes.
The woman and her editor are a stain on the Daily News.
October 24th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Father Carty used to go on the “cafeteria Catholics” rants during the 1980s at St. Augustin’s Church, especially when then Demcoratic state rep Paul Crowley (RIP) was in the building with his family. How these politicians who took liberal stands were essentially “excommunicating themselves.” Most parishoners I knew shrugged it off and thought Carty was a loon.
October 25th, 2008 at 4:41 am
See – I think that any person of conscience has a duty to be “cafeteria” and not just drink the Koolaid – we (humans) get into the most trouble when we unquestioningly do what the charasmatic wingnut tells us to do. True religion/faith (or whatever path of conscience) does not grow unless we constantly assess whatever we do and see if WE think it is right and wrong
And – to keep in a religious framework – do these dodos think they get more points for doing what they are told versus a MLK who fought for what’s right, despite getting arrested (etc) for his fight. I can’t vision anyone’s version of St Pete rubberstamping the sheeple but giving a “whoa there big boy” to MLK
but hey, maybe I’m just nuts
October 27th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
In Christine Flowers Oct. 24 column, “One tiny vote for John McCain,” she spewed poison that Obama was “so devoted to abortion rights that he’d deny a child the right to medical care if it compromised a woman’s right to an abortion” yet Obama had previously pointed out that the “born alive principle was already the law in Illinois,” and the law already prohibited the conduct being addressed by the redundant bill that Flowers references (incidentally, the Illinois attorney general’s office said that allegations that fetuses were born alive at Illinois hospitals and abandoned without treatment were unfounded).
In her Oct. 10 column, “Obama Camp’s Racial Decoders,” she lies about which campaign was exploiting racial tensions: “[R]ace has become the not-so-secret weapon of the Obama camp” and “The Obama campaign has made it harder to talk about the economy, national security, health care, etc., without dragging in the murky and volatile factor that corrupts every debate.” With all the vitriol from the McCain camp, one example being Palin hissing to “take the gloves off” because Obama’s “not one of us,” it’s certainly not Obama who’s the perp (but in her reverse reality, not so much).
In her April 2007 column, “Who Are The ‘Extremists’ Now?”, about the new 2007 Robert’s Supreme Court’s precedent-reversing/overturning of the 2000 Supreme Court’s decision that struck down Nebraska’s ban on so-called Partial-Birth Abortion and upholding a Bush signed federal law banning the same procedure, Flowers, with a brushing-off type “what’s the problem” attitude, basically lied with this misdirection: She stated that the ruling STILL upholds the “life of the mother” exception when the BIG difference, the BIG problem was that she conceals that it now eliminated the “HEALTH of the mother” exception.
Her Sept. 16, 2006 column “A Scandal Goes Down in Plames,” where she was so full of herself and mocked her imaginary Liberal Conspiracy Theorists as having been repudiated in their belief about higher-ups in the administration bringing down Valerie Plame — because of new revelations — she wrote: “Novak’s source was actually Richard Armitage,” yet, to her bad luck, just a few pages before her column in that same DN issue, it was just revealed that higher-ups (above Armitage) in the administration were involved, but I don’t have a copy of that issue. But I remember the day because I was so full of MYself to see her (who has no shame) repudiated like that!
I guess to compensate for his paper having to endorse Obama, Tierney inflicts Christine, his co-Catholic on us.