Catholics United, a progressive Catholic group, is firing back at conservative Catholic Bill Donohue for characterizing Barack Obama's Catholic advisory board as "Catholic dissidents." Here's the release it put out Friday:
Bill Donohue Still Playing on Karl Rove's Team
Attack on Obama's Catholic Advisory Committee Discloses His Partisan Agenda and Jeopardizes his 501c3 Tax Status
Washington- Today, Bill Donohue, the President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, a 501c3 tax exempt organization, issued a press release labeling Obama's Catholic advisors as Catholic dissidents. By issuing this statement, Donohue not only jeopardizes his tax exempt status but also raises larger concerns over the use of his organization for a partisan agenda.According to the book Onward Christian Soldiers by the Republican operative Deal Hudson, Karl Rove recruited Bill Donohue to participate in Republican organized efforts to court Catholic voters. By attacking the Catholic advisors of a presidential campaign at this moment, Bill Donohue is again engaging in partisan politics.
"When Bill Donohue talks about Catholic moral priorities and doesn’t mention war, torture or 47 million Americans without health insurance, he is clearly out of step with the Catholic church.” Said James Salt, communications director for Catholics United. “Bill Donohue criticizes Catholics that don’t agree with Bill Donohue, nothing more. To question whether someone is Catholic because they don’t agree with you is simply wrong and is a page straight out of Karl Rove’s playbook.”
“Ironically the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights pays Bill Donohue over $343,000 a year to defend the rights of Catholics – lay and clergy alike – to participate in American public life without defamation or discrimination.” Said Salt, “To ‘defame’ fellow Catholics because they have a different political affiliation is disingenuous to the mission of the Catholic League and undermines its tax exempt status.”
This is a good time to note how much more pro-active Democrats generally and Barack Obama specifically have been in parrying attacks from conservative Catholic groups than the party and the Catholic John Kerry were four years ago. Part of that is because Obama has fulltime Catholic outreach and religious outreach directors tasked with monitoring such attacks and responding to them. The Obama campaign responded to God-o-Meter with a statement within hours of the Catholic League's attack on Friday.
Kerry, by contrast, never had a Catholic outreach director. After she was attacked by the Catholic League, Kerry's religious outreach advisor was actually barred from responding to the press. The Kerry campaign was worried that the advisor would only generate more negative publicity by talking to the news media.
When Kerry came under attack by a handful of Catholic bishops in 2004--some said publicly that they'd deny him communion because of his support for abortion rights--he lacked a network of Catholic surrogates who could testify to his Catholic bona fides. Obama, by contrast, boasts an entire Catholic Advisory Board to come to his defense, even if it has come under attack by the Catholic League. Obama has plenty of prominent Catholics to give him street cred among Catholic voters.
Finally, Kerry had few, if any, progressive Catholic groups who could come to his defense like Catholics United has for Obama in the face of this most recent attack. Catholics United wasn't even officially incorporated at this time four years ago. Other progressive Catholic groups, like Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, didnt' exist. So the conservative Catholic League has a lot more competition than it did four years ago.
For all these reasons, God-o-Meter thinks the Catholic League's attacks against Obama and the rest of the Democratic Party will be less effective than they were in '04, when they were partly to blame for John Kerry's losing the Catholic vote.
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Obama, of course, has one huge advantage in this that Kerry does not have. He is not now, nor has he ever been, Catholic so the Bishops who attacked Kerry and threatened to withhold communion from him have no such leverage with Obama. Kerry, being Catholic, felt that he had to walk on eggshells while Obama can trod on them with hobnailed boots.
Kerry had a problem that any Roman Catholic would have running for the Presidency, if not for other office. If he were to be seen as embracing the conservative wing of the Catholic church the Protestants would distrust him intensely, though they might not admit it, and if he were to be to liberal the Catholics would not trust him.
ODE TO OBAMA (Second Ed.)
by Publius II
There once was a man named Obama
His life began with drama
An African Muslim father
And a wild white mama
Obama’s white grandparents
They gave him a charmed life
Raised on the beaches of Hawaii
Far from ghetto strife
He went to private schools
Fourteen thousand dollars a year
Working-class white folks
They were nowhere near
He attended Columbia
Then Harvard Law
A very soft and liberal upbringing
Something Americans eventually saw
He then went to Chicago
Nation of Islam, Farrakhan, Black Panthers and Jackson
The only friends he made
All from the extreme left-wing faction
He joined a radical church
His Pastor downright insane
Blacks and whites, he said
Think with different parts of their brain
His church praised a man named Cone
With hateful opinions he was filled
He said white people were “the devil”
And Gods who love whites must be killed
Obama first ran for State Senate
With permission from Chicago’s Marxist King
A domestic terrorist named Ayers
Obama kissed his ring
He wrote a book called “Dreams From My Father”
From start to finish a racist rant
After people finally read it
They later said: “Obama, no we can’t”
He wrote how he rejected his mother’s race
And that Malcolm X was a hero
People had a clear warning
Obama was a dangerous zero
He was then elected to the U.S. Senate
Obama’s ego grew very bold
He barely served a year
I will run for President was the story he told
He spent millions to stage rallies
The crowds would yell and cheer
But then it all fizzled after he said
Typical white folks cling to religion, guns and beer
His wife said America was mean
She was never really proud
Her Black Separatist thesis at Princeton
Became a campaign cloud
People said he was a Muslim
His supporters scoffed and jeered
Then his Black Liberation Church was exposed
And Obama’s ugly head was reared
He tried to recover in a speech on race
The radical left-wing media offered raves
But he said white folks had an “untrained ear”
And abolitionists in Pennsylvania turned over in their graves
He claimed to be a uniter
He would bring people together all at once
But after his speech in Philadelphia
He proved to be a demographic dunce
He tried once more to persuade whites
But his bowling was a mess
He rolled a 37
Like a 5-year-old girl in a sundress
He then played basketball
He drove the ball to the rack
But when all was said and done
He looked like an old man having a heart attack
He wouldn’t cover his heart
As the National Anthem played
It’s a meaningless gesture he said
But Americans felt betrayed
He wouldn’t wear a flag pin
It was against his One World view
It doesn’t matter he said
And the American people stewed
He first called terrorist Ayers his friend
Then said this man he didn’t really know
More deceit and cover-ups
Obama’s lies began to grow
Farrakhan, Jackson and Sharpton
Three of Obama’s greatest fans
He tried hiding them in the closet
So not to further offend the white man
Then came his anti-American Pastor
Obama’s mentor for 20 years
He preened, shucked and jived
White people rose up and sneered
NBC and the New York Times
They tried each day to save Obama’s campaign
But real Americans said “FU”
And Obama spiraled down the drain
The radical left-wing Democrats
A Presidential race lost once again
Is it really a surprise
They’ve lost 7 of the last 10?
Catholics United for who? Never heard of this group. Who are they? The Catholic League is a valid organization that has well known Catholic leadership involved. They were right to point out the hypocrisy surrounding Obama so called Catholic List. I would not call this striking back. A check on google will show the difference between the two groups and who is taken seriously.
The CL is the hypocrite; they have not wasted one drop of ink on denouncing Hillary Clinton, whose stance on abortion is identical to Obama's, or John McCain, who supports stem-cell research. Donahue outlined these as 2 of the 3 major issues he monitors, but did not malign the other 2 candidates for being out of touch with church teaching on them. That's hypocrisy.
It's also destructive for Donahue to parade himself as the voice of the church while clearly departing from the US Bishops' statement on faithful citizenship.
It's obvious to me the Obama campaign has taken a serious and good-will approach to bridging divides in this country; it's too bad that Donahue is trying to thwart such progress so that he can keep each pole seperated and leverage faith in the name of his narrow political agenda. A shame, indeed.
When will these fools with their Religious PACs get it? God is not a Republican or a Theocratic! They are all Pharisees and Sadducees. Legalistic and judgemental and Jesus would rebuke them as He did in Jerusalem.
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