Real Catholic Blog

This was the real controversy of the weekend: Henry Knox, an appointee to President Barack Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, said Pope Benedict XVI a is “hurting people in the name of Jesus” because he upholds Catholic teaching against birth control, pre-marital sex and homosexuality. It prompted a segment featuring Thomas Peters and Brent Bozell on Sean Hannity’s Fox News Channel show Friday night. 

According to an April article at CNS.com, Knox is:

a self-professed Christian who holds that the New Testament’s teaching that homosexual behavior is unnatural and wrong —which is found in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans — “is not true.”

(He) has also said that Obama’s decision to invite the Rev. Rick Warren to say a prayer at the Inauguration “tainted” the ceremony and that Pope Benedict XVI is a “discredited leader.”

Knox (is) a professed gay Christian who is director of the religion and faith program at the Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual rights group. …

Here’s the video from CNS.com of Knox’s more recent comment lie about the Pope. When confronted with the Truth, he sticks to his slander. It’s time President Obama, who claims to want friendly relations with the Vatican and Catholics, put an end to appointing people such as Knox to his administration. It’s another example of how leftists use the power of government to try to shut down and shut up people, through discrediting them, people who have a different point of view.

Hint, Mr. Knox: The Pope isn’t interested in your politically intolerant governance. He’s perpetuating the Truth of God. You might not agree, but your tactics won’t work.

Another radical leftist, homosexual activist in the Obama administration: Henry Knox takes every chance he gets to disparage Pope Benedict for upholding the Truth.

I found this doing some research on something else, and if this isn’t the world turned upside down, I don’t know what is: A year or so prior to the controversy over Notre Dame conferring an honorary doctorate to pro-abortion President Barack Obama, and allowing him to speak at its commencement, a university in Rome tried to keep Pope Benedict XVI from speaking there! Unbelievable! Maybe it’s a translation thing, but the definition of tolerance has one strange meaning in Italian. 

From CatholicNewsAgency.com/YouTube.

Let’s get this straight: One college protested the Holy Father’s appearance because of his teachings, while one welcomed with open arms a president who contradicts them?

President Barack Obama must be on the defensive. In fact, he’s publicly quoting Bible verses now, saying some are “bearing false witness” against his health care “reform” legislation. He’s even found time to preach, calling his health care plan a “moral obligation” (see CNSNews.com). However, he particularly detests people who are bringing to light the truth about how this bill will fund abortion on demand.

One of those people is Cardinal Justin Rigali, Archbishop of Philadelphia and chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Pro-Life Activities. The president said in a radio interview today that anyone who says the bill will cover abortion services is committing a “fabrication.”  (If so, then why is Planned Parenthood in on the crafting of this bill?)

This is what Cardinal Rigali wrote in his pastoral letter (see entire letter here):

Because some federal funds are authorized and appropriated by this legislation without passing through the Labor/HHS appropriations bill, they are not covered by the Hyde amendment and other federal provisions that have long prevented federal funding of abortion and of health benefits packages that include abortion. The committee rejected an amendment to extend this longstanding policy to the use of federal subsidies for health care premiums under this Act. Instead the committee created a legal fiction, a paper separation between federal funding and abortion: Federal funds will subsidize the public plan, as well as private health plans that include abortion on demand; but anyone who purchases these plans is required to pay a premium out of his or her own pocket (specified in the Act to be at least $1.00 a month) to cover all abortions beyond those eligible for federal funds under the current Hyde amendment. Thus some will claim that federal taxpayer funds do not support abortion under the Act.

But this is an illusion. Funds paid into these plans are fungible, and federal taxpayer funds will subsidize the operating budget and provider networks that expand access to abortions.

When the president spoke at Notre Dame this past spring, he waxed on about coming together with Catholics, finding areas of agreement and respectfully disagreeing when necessary after honest dialogue. It looks here as if Cardinal Rigali knows more about the president’s own bill than the president does. But it doesn’t sound like the president truly is interested in honest dialogue.

So, for his respectful disagreement and research on the issue, this is how the leader of the free world reaches out to one of the American Church’s leaders. Just who is fabricating here, Mr. President?