Easy assumption to make.
You would be wrong nonetheless.
These far-out evangelicals believe that the Roman Church is the Great Whore of Babylon; obviously corrupt and devoid of truth. Usually when talking only among themselves, though some insane bits do dribble out, on occasion, to the public-at-large, the venom they aim at the "Jews" and the Roman Catholics is just as hateful, if not worse than what they say about gays in public. They have been this way for the last 50 years, to my knowledge and I, thank God, was not exposed to the looniest of the loons until much later in life, when I had patients who had suffered some major abuse at the hands of "religious authority." These folks can really do a number on a person's mind. They know that and, still somehow, some find a way to use the power they have for exploitation, a deeply scaring shame, a fear so great that it paralyzes the creative psyche and, thus, a despair so deep, the light of hope is faint and, seemingly distant.
Religious abuse runs the gamut from horrible sexual abuse to mind games aimed at twisting the mind into a pretzel and keeping the cash flowing.
They act like a people under siege because their leaders have told them that they are and they believe it. They must have something to wrap their minds around or they will fly to pieces, go postal, just melt into nothingness, fall into a void of nobodyness or some other horror.
Catholics Outraged by Palin Insults
Palin Continues to Smear Catholic Action
Catholics across the country continue to be outraged by Republican politician Sarah Palin who repeated her smear against Catholic Action by mocking Barack Obama’s service as director of a community group sponsored by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (an arm of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops) and led by eight Catholic parishes on the South Side of Chicago.
Catholics across the country continue to be outraged by Republican politician Sarah Palin who repeated her smear against Catholic Action by mocking Barack Obama’s service as director of a community group sponsored by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (an arm of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops) and led by eight Catholic parishes on the South Side of Chicago.
First, the Dallas Morning News gives us the facts on the background:
Starting at age 23, Obama ran a faith-based charity called the Developing Communities Project.
It was made up of eight Catholic parishes when he got there and had one staff member. He was its director, meaning he was in charge. He made decisions about it, including staffing, budgets, etc. And when he left in 1988 to go to law school, he had grown its budget from $70,000 to $400,000, its staff from 1 to 13 people. More important, he created a job training program for this community and a college prep tutoring program. As mayor [of Wasilla, Palin] built a hockey rink/rec center using eminent domain (because apparently there just isn't enough land in Alaska).
Now for the attacks on this Catholic sponsored social action initiative. At the Republican Party National Convention, Palin and ex-New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani mocked the work Barack Obama did for this group of churches that were concerned about their parishioners, many of whom had been laid off when the steel mills closed on the south side of Chicago. As for Barack Obama’s service as a community organizer, Giuliani even sneered “I don't even know what that is.” Palin, who was baptized but not raised Catholic and sought “re-baptism” in a Protestant Church can be forgiven for knowing little of the Catholic Church’s admirable witness for the poor and socially marginalized. But even a lapsed Catholic like Giuliani should know of the Catholic Church’s concern for the poor and oppressed.
Joe Klein’s take on this: This is what Palin and Giuliani were mocking. They were making fun of a young man's decision "to serve a cause greater than himself," in the words of John McCain. They were, therefore, mocking one of their candidate's favorite messages. Obama served the poor for three years, then went to law school. To describe this service--the first thing he did out of college, the sort of service every college-educated American should perform, in some form or other--as anything other than noble is cheap and tawdry and cynical in the extreme.
America magazine, the national Jesuit weekly, shared in the shock at this repeated attack on Catholic Action.
A Midwestern Catholic leader wrote: In an stunning insult to 76.9 million Americans, another politician continues the republican bias towards Catholics. Sarah Palin's acceptance speech scoffed at work that her opponent had done in the 1980s for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. She belittled Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's experience as a community organizer in Catholic parishes on the South Side of Chicago, work he undertook instead of pursuing a lucrative career on Wall Street. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has operated the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, its domestic anti-poverty and social justice program, since 1969. In 1986, the Bishops issued Economic Justice for All: Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the US Economy, which said, "Human dignity can be realized and protected only in community." Senator Obama worked in several Catholic parishes, supported by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, helping to address severe joblessness and housing needs in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods of Chicago.
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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
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