Obama At Notre Dame: Render Unto Caesar What Is Caesar's and Unto the Lord What Is The Lord's

Update: 4 September 2009 From the Ny Times:

NATO Plans Inquiry After Afghan Strike Kills Scores
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and ABDUL WAHEED WAFA 21 minutes ago

Friday’s strike on two fuel tankers, which killed 80 or more people, came three months after Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal imposed stricter rules on airstrikes.

To engage in understatements, there are many positions taken by the Catholic church and/or their supports that I find completely mystifying; this from a one time Catholic. The current hubbub surrounding President Obama's scheduled commencement appearance at Notre Dame today represents a case in point.

I do understand the Catholic opposition to abortion and stem cell research . . .that's pretty clear; however, I don't pretend to understand the hypocritical pick-and-choose approach to the days great moral issues that seems to mark present day Catholic practice.

The death penalty, practiced by only a couple of this world's nations, doesn't make the moral screen many Catholics consult for guidance. Similarly US Military campaigns seem to get a free moral pass; they never seem to excite any protest; one looks in vain for even the mildest expression of concern. To be sure, the militaristic jingoism associated with the late Cardinal Spellman lives on undiminished in today's Catholic church. (I do not exclude from criticism other churches generally who practice the same sorta moral nihilism.) Today the NyTimes reports that the drone aircraft the United States is flying over Pakistan have killed something like 700-800 innocent civilians and killed, maybe, 14 terrorists.

Press reports suggest that over the last three years drone strikes have killed about 14 terrorist leaders. But, according to Pakistani sources, they have also killed some 700 civilians. This is 50 civilians for every militant killed, a hit rate of 2 percent — hardly “precision.” American officials vehemently dispute these figures, and it is likely that more militants and fewer civilians have been killed than is reported by the press in Pakistan. Nevertheless, every one of these dead noncombatants represents an alienated family, a new desire for revenge, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially even as drone strikes have increased. NyTimes 17 May 2009

The moral silence from the Catholic Church, when military atrocities occur, stands in sharp contrast to the hundred or so protesters who stand today in South Bend to protest President Obama's appearance as commencement speaker.

Folk singers used to ask, "Where have all the flowers gone?" Now one can legitimately ask, “What happened to selectively castrate Catholic moral outrage?” Let us not forget, the Pope and his advisers did issue a strong condemnation of the Iraqi War as immoral, and it had the moral effect of pissin' in the wind; there has not been any anguished moral out cry against the injustice, the inhumanity of that war.

Who will sing for us now? Where have the Barrigans gone? When did the Church become the Pentagon's Moral Storm Troopers?

And then of course, as I've noted before (http://thecrockettreport.blogspot.com/2006/12/excommunicatin-infidels-in-nebraska.html), the priest sex abuse scandal did not mark any occasion for great protest at any of the great Catholic Universities; no major Catholic prelate was the subject of overnight protest vigils such as those currently in progress at Notre Dame.


No, Church authorities handled such problems administratively by simply reassigning the offending clergy to new uninformed, unsuspecting parishioners without so much as a forewarning.

And as I written elsewhere on this blog, the few Bishops who condemned Democratic Party Presidential candidates because of gay issues, and the abortion issues, is nothing short of scandalous. Those Bishops seem incapable of seeing the really big moral questions. . .not the least of which is war and genocide in this world we live in. Ah, but when it comes to Presidential politics they’re real pros.

To cut to the quick here, the "Church" has not been able to differentiate between the righteous and the self-righteous. . . .on an ongoing basis the self-righteous has been inflicted upon us with a hubris heretofore unknown in the church.

If ever there was need to separate religion and politics now is the time. As Christ said to the Pharisee as he held up the coin, "Render under Caesar what is Caesar's and unto the Lord that which is the Lords."

Ever on the watch for ya,

Davy Crockett