R
Raymond
Guest
It is a sad state of affairs when a pastor stands up and delivers a
much needed message, and some in the congregation are so offended they
leave the
church. ....".someday they will meet God, and then they will know the
meaning of God's will and God's grace."
Catholic Priest Delivers Pro-Life Homily - Some Parishioners Walk Out
San Diego News Notes ^ | December 2003
Posted on 12/27/2003 6:55:15 AM PST by NYer
SOME PARISHIONERS WALKED OUT during a homily given by Father Walter J.
Quinn, O.S.A, of New York City-based Priests for Life at Sacred Heart
Parish in Coronado the weekend of November 14-16. In his hard-hitting
homily, Father Quinn chided apathetic Catholic laity, particularly
Catholic politicians, for voting their finances instead of their
faith. The following are excerpts from the homily Father Quinn gave at
the 9:00 a.m. Mass, for which he received a hearty ovation.
"...There is nothing in our society that destroys more lives than
abortion: not crime, sickness, disease, natural disasters, not even
war. There are more lives taken in this country by abortion in one
single year than all the wars that the United States ever fought, from
George Washington right up to the present. The figures don't even come
close. Death by abortion in one year is 35 times greater."
"...There are two generations of Americans who have grown up,
especially if they went to public schools, hearing that abortion is
somehow some kind of a right, and everybody else has to pay for it
with their tax dollars. Most Americans seem to be unaware, and might
be quite shocked to learn, that there are 4,400 abortions in this
country every 24-hour period. That's more than [died in] the World
Trade Center every single day.?
..Cont'd
..http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1047243/posts
Wright From the Beginning
Pastors do offend people and they do not need to walk out of their
church.
Why every candidate, not just Obama, is bad on religion
The furor over Obama's church is the result of a blurring of the lines
between faith and politics
David Weigel | March 21, 2008
Barack Obama deserves to take heat for his relationship to his former
pastor Jeremiah Wright, the man who's lit up many a TV screen and
Internet tube with his claims that "America's chickens are coming home
to roost" and "the government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a
means of genocide against people of color."
Indeed, Obama deserves at least as much heat as every other candidate
for president since Jimmy Carter. Let me explain.
When Barack Obama chose to join the congregation of Trinity United
Church of Christ back in 1987, his decision was partly spiritual,
partly calculated. As Obama tells it in his 1995 autobiography Dreams
from My Father, he was seeking two things. He was seeking salvation.
He was also seeking a secure perch in the volcanic politics of black
Chicago. In his interview with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama spoke
plainly about his political concerns and Wright spoke back in his own
language. "I'll try to help you if I can," Wright said. "But you
should know that having us involved in your effort isn't necessarily a
feather in your cap. Some of my fellow clergy don't appreciate what
we're about. They feel like we're too radical. Others, we ain't
radical enough."
Wright was not talking about his rhetoric that has since become the
stuff of heavy cable rotation. Wright was talking about the church's
flashiness and reputation for a more upper crust following in the
black community. But Wright assured Obama that the church had a real
presence in Chicago's South Side and that its "Black Value System,"
which Obama read that day, revealed the church's goals: To keep blacks
in the community and to keep them from scattering to the suburbs.
"While it is permissible to chase 'middle-incomeness' with all our
might," reads the statement, "we must avoid the third separation method
--the psychological entrapment of Black 'middleclassness.'" Here were
the makings of a political base.
But Obama's decision to join the church was not simply a political
calculation. Uncertain and struggling with his faith, he was moved to
tears when he stopped in one Sunday and heard Wright preach on the
"audacity of hope" (a phrase that later became Obama's signature). He
found Christ in that church. That's the perversity of this scandal.
Deciding to stay in Trinity United after 1996, when he had won a perch
in the state Senate, was the end of Obama's calculation. Staying in
the church through this presidential campaign, fully cognizant that
Wright and his doctrine could become a liability (talk radio was
shredding the "Black Value System" a full year ago), was not craven.
Obama seemed whipsawed by the reaction to Wright in a way he has never
seemed so far in this race. In hs attempt to explain Wright before the
"More Perfect Union" speech, Obama wrote that he "has never been my
political advisor; he's been my pastor." This was true, strictly
speaking. But Obama has straddled the line between politics and the
pulpit in his meteoric political career. His rise had a lot to do with
his ease at talking about religion, which seemed to Democrats like--
pardon the pun--manna from heaven after the debacle of John Kerry's
campaign. In his 2006 "Call to Renewal" speech, a key moment in his
rise, Obama told religious liberals gathered in D.C. that "secularists
are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door
before entering into the public square." He called for progressives to
understand and utilize religious speech to push their agendas. And he
called for more than speeches:
Across the country, individual churches like my own and your own are
sponsoring day care programs, building senior centers, helping ex-
offenders reclaim their lives, and rebuilding our gulf coast in the
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. So the question is, how do we build on
these still-tentative partnerships between religious and secular
people of good will?
Obama's speech was, in some ways, a concession speech. He was saying
that the advocates of closer church-state coordination were right, and
it was time for progressives to understand that. And both Bill and
Hillary Clinton had beaten him to the punch. Bill's administration
pioneered the faith-based initiative, the federal grant for religious
charitable programs: "Well-designed partnership between government
agencies and religious bodies which can, at least in theory, unleash
the underutilized compassionate energy of religious civil society," as
Clintonite and Harvard Professor Mary Jo Bane has written. Hillary
sang the praises of faith-based initiatives early on in this campaign.
Faith-based initiatives are not at the root of religious politics;
they are an outgrowth of them. Of all the bizarre rituals that are
followed by politicians and no one else--seizing infants from strangers
and posing for pictures with them, taking camera crews on hunting trips
--probably the most alien is church tourism. Presidential candidates
are expected to visit, glad-hand, and even make sermons in churches
all over the country they're itching to rule. "The presence of
Democrats in black churches right before elections has nothing to do
with religion," says Amy Sullivan, an editor at Time and the author of
a book (The Party Faithful) about Democrats and religion. "They just
see churches as a convenient way to reach a big number of black voters
at one time." But Democrats do pay back these congregations and their
leaders when they get into office, in the form of careful federal aid
and in the form of access. Just ask Lewinsky-era White House guest
Jeremiah Wright.
This is a strange bargain between the candidates and the country. Up
to now, no one has demanded that a candidate renounce his pastor as
the punditocracy suggested Obama do. No one demanded it of George W.
Bush, no one demands it of Hillary Clinton, and no one demands it of
John McCain. But it is expected that Clinton and McCain, like Bush,
will sweep into countless churches without ever asking what their
pastors say. They will go to some churches, like Rod Parsley's World
Harvest Church or John Hagee's Cornerstone Church, where the pastors
are on the record demanding "the false religion" of Islam be
"destroyed," or that New Orleans was pummeled by hurricanes because
"it had a level of sin that was offensive to God." McCain's occasional
criticism of religious right leaders did not prevent him from going to
Liberty University and asking Falwell and his students to support the
war in Iraq. But if McCain's experience so far is a guide, all the
candidates will have to do is disagree with the bad stuff and they'll
get a free pass to campaign.
Why is that? Why is Barack Obama's 20-year fellowship a mark on his
character but the drive-by and politically motivated fellowship of
every presidential candidate simply expected? I understand the
argument that Obama might have been influenced by Wright in the pews.
I understand it and I don't buy it. The candidate has had 12 years in
government to demonstrate his Wright-inspired AIDS conspiracism or
race hatred, and he hasn't done anything of the kind. The only
possible conclusion is that he disagrees with Wright's occasional
outbursts. After the senator's "More Perfect Union," former Bush
speechwriter Michael Gerson argued that the fair-weather support of
Republicans for Jerry Falwell was excusable in a way Obama's
relationship was not, because those Republicans "didn't financially
support [Falwell] and sit directly under his teaching for decades."
That's a red herring. Republicans, led by George Bush, gave Falwell
political access: visits to the White House, jobs for Liberty
University graduates, actions that amplified his voice and
strengthened the bonds between church and state. The financial aid
that Obama gave Wright was a part of his private faith. The attention
lavished on Falwell, one among many religious-cum-political leaders
who built bonds with the Bush White House, had a public effect on who
sits on federal benches, on which charitable organizations get
taxpayer cash, and on how much credibility we give to ideas like
abstinence education.
The furor over Obama's church is the result of a blurring of the lines
between faith and politics. "What this reveals," says Amy Sullivan,
"is that we've really gotten warped in last 20 to 30 years in so
closely linking politics and religion and assuming somebody who's your
spiritual leader is your advisor as well. If everybody quit when their
pastor gave a sermon that offended them, no one would stay in the same
church." The stakes for "everybody" are not so high, though. You quit
a church, and that's one less donation per week and one less pair of
hands to clean up after a fellowship dinner. You are not trying to
butress the bridge between religion and government.
Pastors do offend people. Pastors have a complicated relationship with
their parishioners. That relationship should be private, and even
though Obama was a bit player in the great "warping" that Sullivan
talks about, and even though his relationship with Trinity United
started with realpolitik, I feel for him here. Every candidate for
this office for 30 years has been playing a game with religion. He
shouldn't be the only one who loses.
David Weigel is an associate editor of reason.
Discuss this article online.
much needed message, and some in the congregation are so offended they
leave the
church. ....".someday they will meet God, and then they will know the
meaning of God's will and God's grace."
Catholic Priest Delivers Pro-Life Homily - Some Parishioners Walk Out
San Diego News Notes ^ | December 2003
Posted on 12/27/2003 6:55:15 AM PST by NYer
SOME PARISHIONERS WALKED OUT during a homily given by Father Walter J.
Quinn, O.S.A, of New York City-based Priests for Life at Sacred Heart
Parish in Coronado the weekend of November 14-16. In his hard-hitting
homily, Father Quinn chided apathetic Catholic laity, particularly
Catholic politicians, for voting their finances instead of their
faith. The following are excerpts from the homily Father Quinn gave at
the 9:00 a.m. Mass, for which he received a hearty ovation.
"...There is nothing in our society that destroys more lives than
abortion: not crime, sickness, disease, natural disasters, not even
war. There are more lives taken in this country by abortion in one
single year than all the wars that the United States ever fought, from
George Washington right up to the present. The figures don't even come
close. Death by abortion in one year is 35 times greater."
"...There are two generations of Americans who have grown up,
especially if they went to public schools, hearing that abortion is
somehow some kind of a right, and everybody else has to pay for it
with their tax dollars. Most Americans seem to be unaware, and might
be quite shocked to learn, that there are 4,400 abortions in this
country every 24-hour period. That's more than [died in] the World
Trade Center every single day.?
..Cont'd
..http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1047243/posts
Wright From the Beginning
Pastors do offend people and they do not need to walk out of their
church.
Why every candidate, not just Obama, is bad on religion
The furor over Obama's church is the result of a blurring of the lines
between faith and politics
David Weigel | March 21, 2008
Barack Obama deserves to take heat for his relationship to his former
pastor Jeremiah Wright, the man who's lit up many a TV screen and
Internet tube with his claims that "America's chickens are coming home
to roost" and "the government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a
means of genocide against people of color."
Indeed, Obama deserves at least as much heat as every other candidate
for president since Jimmy Carter. Let me explain.
When Barack Obama chose to join the congregation of Trinity United
Church of Christ back in 1987, his decision was partly spiritual,
partly calculated. As Obama tells it in his 1995 autobiography Dreams
from My Father, he was seeking two things. He was seeking salvation.
He was also seeking a secure perch in the volcanic politics of black
Chicago. In his interview with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama spoke
plainly about his political concerns and Wright spoke back in his own
language. "I'll try to help you if I can," Wright said. "But you
should know that having us involved in your effort isn't necessarily a
feather in your cap. Some of my fellow clergy don't appreciate what
we're about. They feel like we're too radical. Others, we ain't
radical enough."
Wright was not talking about his rhetoric that has since become the
stuff of heavy cable rotation. Wright was talking about the church's
flashiness and reputation for a more upper crust following in the
black community. But Wright assured Obama that the church had a real
presence in Chicago's South Side and that its "Black Value System,"
which Obama read that day, revealed the church's goals: To keep blacks
in the community and to keep them from scattering to the suburbs.
"While it is permissible to chase 'middle-incomeness' with all our
might," reads the statement, "we must avoid the third separation method
--the psychological entrapment of Black 'middleclassness.'" Here were
the makings of a political base.
But Obama's decision to join the church was not simply a political
calculation. Uncertain and struggling with his faith, he was moved to
tears when he stopped in one Sunday and heard Wright preach on the
"audacity of hope" (a phrase that later became Obama's signature). He
found Christ in that church. That's the perversity of this scandal.
Deciding to stay in Trinity United after 1996, when he had won a perch
in the state Senate, was the end of Obama's calculation. Staying in
the church through this presidential campaign, fully cognizant that
Wright and his doctrine could become a liability (talk radio was
shredding the "Black Value System" a full year ago), was not craven.
Obama seemed whipsawed by the reaction to Wright in a way he has never
seemed so far in this race. In hs attempt to explain Wright before the
"More Perfect Union" speech, Obama wrote that he "has never been my
political advisor; he's been my pastor." This was true, strictly
speaking. But Obama has straddled the line between politics and the
pulpit in his meteoric political career. His rise had a lot to do with
his ease at talking about religion, which seemed to Democrats like--
pardon the pun--manna from heaven after the debacle of John Kerry's
campaign. In his 2006 "Call to Renewal" speech, a key moment in his
rise, Obama told religious liberals gathered in D.C. that "secularists
are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door
before entering into the public square." He called for progressives to
understand and utilize religious speech to push their agendas. And he
called for more than speeches:
Across the country, individual churches like my own and your own are
sponsoring day care programs, building senior centers, helping ex-
offenders reclaim their lives, and rebuilding our gulf coast in the
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. So the question is, how do we build on
these still-tentative partnerships between religious and secular
people of good will?
Obama's speech was, in some ways, a concession speech. He was saying
that the advocates of closer church-state coordination were right, and
it was time for progressives to understand that. And both Bill and
Hillary Clinton had beaten him to the punch. Bill's administration
pioneered the faith-based initiative, the federal grant for religious
charitable programs: "Well-designed partnership between government
agencies and religious bodies which can, at least in theory, unleash
the underutilized compassionate energy of religious civil society," as
Clintonite and Harvard Professor Mary Jo Bane has written. Hillary
sang the praises of faith-based initiatives early on in this campaign.
Faith-based initiatives are not at the root of religious politics;
they are an outgrowth of them. Of all the bizarre rituals that are
followed by politicians and no one else--seizing infants from strangers
and posing for pictures with them, taking camera crews on hunting trips
--probably the most alien is church tourism. Presidential candidates
are expected to visit, glad-hand, and even make sermons in churches
all over the country they're itching to rule. "The presence of
Democrats in black churches right before elections has nothing to do
with religion," says Amy Sullivan, an editor at Time and the author of
a book (The Party Faithful) about Democrats and religion. "They just
see churches as a convenient way to reach a big number of black voters
at one time." But Democrats do pay back these congregations and their
leaders when they get into office, in the form of careful federal aid
and in the form of access. Just ask Lewinsky-era White House guest
Jeremiah Wright.
This is a strange bargain between the candidates and the country. Up
to now, no one has demanded that a candidate renounce his pastor as
the punditocracy suggested Obama do. No one demanded it of George W.
Bush, no one demands it of Hillary Clinton, and no one demands it of
John McCain. But it is expected that Clinton and McCain, like Bush,
will sweep into countless churches without ever asking what their
pastors say. They will go to some churches, like Rod Parsley's World
Harvest Church or John Hagee's Cornerstone Church, where the pastors
are on the record demanding "the false religion" of Islam be
"destroyed," or that New Orleans was pummeled by hurricanes because
"it had a level of sin that was offensive to God." McCain's occasional
criticism of religious right leaders did not prevent him from going to
Liberty University and asking Falwell and his students to support the
war in Iraq. But if McCain's experience so far is a guide, all the
candidates will have to do is disagree with the bad stuff and they'll
get a free pass to campaign.
Why is that? Why is Barack Obama's 20-year fellowship a mark on his
character but the drive-by and politically motivated fellowship of
every presidential candidate simply expected? I understand the
argument that Obama might have been influenced by Wright in the pews.
I understand it and I don't buy it. The candidate has had 12 years in
government to demonstrate his Wright-inspired AIDS conspiracism or
race hatred, and he hasn't done anything of the kind. The only
possible conclusion is that he disagrees with Wright's occasional
outbursts. After the senator's "More Perfect Union," former Bush
speechwriter Michael Gerson argued that the fair-weather support of
Republicans for Jerry Falwell was excusable in a way Obama's
relationship was not, because those Republicans "didn't financially
support [Falwell] and sit directly under his teaching for decades."
That's a red herring. Republicans, led by George Bush, gave Falwell
political access: visits to the White House, jobs for Liberty
University graduates, actions that amplified his voice and
strengthened the bonds between church and state. The financial aid
that Obama gave Wright was a part of his private faith. The attention
lavished on Falwell, one among many religious-cum-political leaders
who built bonds with the Bush White House, had a public effect on who
sits on federal benches, on which charitable organizations get
taxpayer cash, and on how much credibility we give to ideas like
abstinence education.
The furor over Obama's church is the result of a blurring of the lines
between faith and politics. "What this reveals," says Amy Sullivan,
"is that we've really gotten warped in last 20 to 30 years in so
closely linking politics and religion and assuming somebody who's your
spiritual leader is your advisor as well. If everybody quit when their
pastor gave a sermon that offended them, no one would stay in the same
church." The stakes for "everybody" are not so high, though. You quit
a church, and that's one less donation per week and one less pair of
hands to clean up after a fellowship dinner. You are not trying to
butress the bridge between religion and government.
Pastors do offend people. Pastors have a complicated relationship with
their parishioners. That relationship should be private, and even
though Obama was a bit player in the great "warping" that Sullivan
talks about, and even though his relationship with Trinity United
started with realpolitik, I feel for him here. Every candidate for
this office for 30 years has been playing a game with religion. He
shouldn't be the only one who loses.
David Weigel is an associate editor of reason.
Discuss this article online.