With fresh blood or I should say a fresh scalp (metaphor) of Bishop Bill Morris of Toowoomba on his belt, the Archbishop of the cesspool Archdiocese of Philadelphia emerges as Vatican spokesman on matters of a Catholic Institution’s entitled place on the landscape in secular America.
As Benedict XVI’s official hatchet man, apostolic delegate, an outsider, no doubt traveling on Vatican passport and privilege to Australia to do what Cardinal Pell did not have the balls to do and fire Bishop Morris. Bill Morris committed the unforgivable sin of using that indirect vagina word (women – Yuk!) in admitting that the laity in his diocese had (shut your ears) an opinion favorable to the dogmatically impossible concept of the ordination of “females”.
Since such cheap reactionary shots at good Men like Morris are rewarded greatly for traveling papal hatchet men, I can only assume that the Vatican has put full imprimatur on all things Chaput (bow your head!) past and present.
In what I consider a political mission of Charles Caphut, on orders from the Republican National Committee in the recent 2010 election cycle, I have reviewed one of Chaput's great triumphs in the fawning, drooling, dripping, Gollum like, catholic blogosphere.
And that is the revisionist history, and metaphoric necromancy, regarding the late (great?) President Kennedy and his speech in public, not behind closed doors, but to 300 Protestant ministers and his claim that he was an American first and a Catholic second, or some such nonsense in 1960.
In 1960, Kennedy sold the church out, sold his soul, and emphasized the famous Jefferson phrase of “separation of church and state” to verbalize his private, secular, political ambitions to be President of the United States.
WRONG!!! He was wrong according to this revisionist Burkite, of the Ray Burke fanatic fringe lobbying group centered in both Washington D.C. and the Vatican City State.
“Fifty years ago this fall, in September 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy, the Democratic candidate for president, spoke to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. He had one purpose. He needed to convince 300 uneasy Protestant ministers, and the country at large, that a Catholic like himself could serve loyally as our nation’s chief executive. Kennedy convinced the country, if not the ministers, and went on to be elected. And his speech left a lasting mark on American politics. It was sincere, compelling, articulate – and wrong. Not wrong about the patriotism of Catholics, but wrong about American history and very wrong about the role of religious faith in our nation’s life. And he wasn’t merely “wrong.” His Houston remarks profoundly undermined the place not just of Catholics, but of all religious believers, in America’s public life and political conversation. Today, half a century later, we’re paying for the damage…”
“The Houston remarks also created a religious problem. To his credit, Kennedy said that if his duties as President should “ever require me to violate my conscience or violate the national interest, I would resign the office.” He also warned that he would not “disavow my views or my church in order to win this election.” But in its effect, the Houston speech did exactly that. It began the project of walling religion away from the process of governance in a new and aggressive way. It also divided a person’s private beliefs from his or her public duties. And it set “the national interest” over and against “outside religious pressures or dictates.” –“
“For his audience of Protestant ministers, Kennedy’s stress on personal conscience may have sounded familiar and reassuring. But what Kennedy actually did, according to Jesuit scholar Mark Massa, was something quite alien and new. He “‘secularize[d] the American presidency in order to win it.” In other words, “[P]recisely because Kennedy was not an adherent of that mainstream Protestant religiosity that had created and buttressed the ‘plausibility structures’ of [American] political culture at least since Lincoln, he had to ‘privatize’ presidential religious belief – including and especially his own – in order to win that office”--“
“For his audience of Protestant ministers, Kennedy’s stress on personal conscience may have sounded familiar and reassuring. But what Kennedy actually did, according to Jesuit scholar Mark Massa, was something quite alien and new. He “‘secularize[d] the American presidency in order to win it.” In other words, “[P]recisely because Kennedy was not an adherent of that mainstream Protestant religiosity that had created and buttressed the ‘plausibility structures’ of [American] political culture at least since Lincoln, he had to ‘privatize’ presidential religious belief – including and especially his own – in order to win that office”--“
Secularism! Secularism! Kennedy started secularism! He was a bad catholic and worse than that a democrat! What a rare state Chaput had to have been in to, in good Chaput conscience, to examine the corpse of this failed catholic regime. Think of the opportunities lost for the one true faith to impose “religious freedom”, “catholic Sharia law”, and corporate tax breaks for holy mother church if JFK had been a better catholic - a real catholic?
How can any catholic vote for the secular democratic party of that womanizing male slut? I can only imagine the rare emotional state that poor father Chaput had to be in to have to dig up and examine JFK’s rotting corpse for the sake of the new GOP/God Party truth.
Saving the Catholic Kennedy. A Reply to Archbishop Chaput
”In other words, the Catholic Kennedy is alleged to have fostered a model of society inspired more by hostile French-style "laïcité" than by the "religious freedom" characteristic of America.”
“The dispute is not simply academic. Since Barack Obama became president, it has been at the center of the confrontation between his policies and the positions of the American Catholic episcopate, especially concerning life, the family, education.”
“It is a dispute that also reaches across and divides the Catholic world, in America and elsewhere. Is Chaput right in criticizing Kennedy so harshly?...”—“
“The dispute is not simply academic. Since Barack Obama became president, it has been at the center of the confrontation between his policies and the positions of the American Catholic episcopate, especially concerning life, the family, education.”
“It is a dispute that also reaches across and divides the Catholic world, in America and elsewhere. Is Chaput right in criticizing Kennedy so harshly?...”—“
“… Religious freedom – in the version of the Constitution and history of the United States, as in the British version or in that of "Dignitatis Humanae" – shows instead the possibility of a separation between political powers and religious powers without the indifference of political institutions, and without the public irrelevance of the Church.”
“Religious freedom refutes the very premises of "laïcité." Alexis de Tocqueville was probably the first European to understand how in the United States the Church "reigned" over consciences in a different way, because a reconciliation had taken place there between the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom that was unheard of in continental Europe….”
“Religious freedom refutes the very premises of "laïcité." Alexis de Tocqueville was probably the first European to understand how in the United States the Church "reigned" over consciences in a different way, because a reconciliation had taken place there between the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom that was unheard of in continental Europe….”
(That is it in a nut shell? With personal freedom of people in the USA already down the drain in the Plutocracy, the church is only concerned with staking out its entitlements in light of the reality of the new “secular” ruling corporations. It is every Republican man jack and bishop for himself in these end days of the end game of defunct democratic institutions?)
I also have to wonder if this newly uncloseted, once minority, now majority catholic opinion of JFK from 1960, may have in some way contributed to the assassination of that Catholic President in some minor way besides those already involved in that conspiracy to bring down an evil “secular” president in November 1963, aside from other political and power reasons.
“E Tu Brute” my catholic kinsmen ? (fascinating way of relooking at 1963 – is it not?)
Or is all this rhetoric and feigned Vatican style “scholarship” just more cannon fodder in the ongoing culture war in 2012 against another well loved “Secular” President and Christian in the form of Barack Hussein Obama.
Kansas, Chaput’s native state, went for Nixon in 1960. I dare say the attack on a disavowed Catholic President Kennedy, in the grave, is just a cheap parting shot in revisionist history against any democrat presently in power.
The regular GOP has been practicing this form of necromancy on FDR for decades. It works well on FOX NEWS for sniveling little cowards and demonizing pundits to kill air time. Now too apparently, the Burkite (Catholic), fringe wing of the GOP as well, has emerged after these many decades, and is actively part of the act.
Religious freedom involves respect. You get it if you give it my dear little padre from Denver. Comprende?
Whatever. Have a nice day.
