Category: Catholic Buffoons

Antonin Scalia | Catholic Fascist Manipulates Supreme Court To Shamelessly Enforce Catholic Political Ideologies

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Catholic Bigotry, Catholic Buffoons, Catholic Censorship, Catholic Fanatics, Catholic Fascism, Catholic Fascist, Catholic Fascist Antonin Scalia, Catholic Power, Catholic Reich

Scalia says abortion, gay rights are easy cases

By MARK SHERMAN | Associated Press – 4 hrs ago

  • FILE - In this March 8, 2012 file phoo, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia speaks at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. Scalia says his method of interpreting the Constitution makes some of the most hotly disputed issues that come before the Supreme Court among the easiest to resolve. Scalia calls himself a “textualist” and, as he related to a few hundred people who came to buy his new book and hear him speak in Washington the other day, that means he applies the words in the Constitution as they were understood by the people who wrote and adopted them. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill, File)

    Enlarge PhotoAssociated Press/Jessica Hill, File – FILE – In this March 8, 2012 file phoo, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia speaks at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. Scalia says his method of interpreting the …more Constitution makes some of the most hotly disputed issues that come before the Supreme Court among the easiest to resolve. Scalia calls himself a “textualist” and, as he related to a few hundred people who came to buy his new book and hear him speak in Washington the other day, that means he applies the words in the Constitution as they were understood by the people who wrote and adopted them. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill, File)  less

WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Antonin Scalia says his method of interpreting the Constitution makes some of the most hotly disputed issues that come before the Supreme Court among the easiest to resolve.

Scalia calls himself a “textualist” and, as he related to a few hundred people who came to buy his new book and hear him speak in Washington the other day, that means he applies the words in the Constitution as they were understood by the people who wrote and adopted them.

So Scalia parts company with former colleagues who have come to believe capital punishment is unconstitutional. The framers of the Constitution didn’t think so and neither does he.

“The death penalty? Give me a break. It’s easy. Abortion? Absolutely easy. Nobody ever thought the Constitution prevented restrictions on abortion. Homosexual sodomy? Come on. For 200 years, it was criminal in every state,” Scalia said at the American Enterprise Institute.

He contrasted his style of interpretation with that of a colleague who tries to be true to the values of the Constitution as he applies them to a changing world. This imaginary justice goes home for dinner and tells his wife what a wonderful day he had, Scalia said.

This imaginary justice, Scalia continued, announces that it turns out “‘the Constitution means exactly what I think it ought to mean.’ No kidding.”

As he has said many times before, the justice said the people should turn to their elected lawmakers, not judges, to advocate for abortion rights or an end to the death penalty. Or they should try to change the Constitution, although Scalia said the Constitution makes changing it too hard by requiring 38 states to ratify an amendment for it to take effect.

“It is very difficult to adopt a constitutional amendment,” Scalia said. He once calculated that less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, residing in the 13 least populous states, could stop an amendment, he said.

In a lengthy question-and-answer session, Scalia once again emphatically denied there’s a rift among the court’s conservative justices following Chief Justice John Roberts‘ vote to uphold President Barack Obama’s health care law. Scalia dissented from Roberts’ opinion.

“Look it, do not believe anything you read about the internal workings of the Supreme Court,” he said. “It is either a lie because the press knows we won’t respond — they can say whatever they like and we won’t respond — or else it’s based on information from someone who has violated his oath of confidentiality, that is to say, a non-reliable source. So one way or another it is not worthy of belief.”

“We can disagree with one another on the law without taking it personally,” he said.

___

The issue of gay rights, or more specifically same-sex marriage, is expected to be a big one in the term that began this week. While the justices initially were scheduled to discuss the topic at their private conference in late September, it now appears likely that they will not make a decision about whether to take up a gay marriage case until after the presidential election, which would mean arguments would not take place until the spring.

The justices have a variety of pending appeals they could choose to hear that deal in one way or another with gay marriage.

One set of cases looks at whether same-sex couples who are legally married can be deprived of a range of federal benefits that are available to heterosexual couples. Another case deals with California’s constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and federal court rulings striking down the amendment. An Arizona case deals with a state law that revoked domestic partner benefits, making them available only to married couples. Arizona’s constitution bans gay marriage.

___

The audio of Roberts reading a summary of the health care decision is available online through the Oyez.org website at http://www.oyez.org/cases/2010-2019/2011/2011_11_400

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The Twisted Twins | Catholic Fascist Warmongers Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Catholic Buffoons, Catholic Crazies, Catholic Crusader Newt Gingrich, Catholic Crusaders, Catholic Empire, Catholic Fascist Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich Adulterer, Newt Gingrich Catholic Fascist

Bomb! Bomb! Bomb!!!!!!!  . . .   Bomb! Bomb Iran!!!!! (Christian Warmongers, Good Catholic Boys Div.)

by Rev. Paul McKay

SANTORUM & GINGRICH HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH TORTURE AND THE CASUAL DROPPING OF BOMBS THAT WILL DESTROY THE LIVES OF SCORES OF INNOCENT MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN; THESE ARE A COUPLE OF REALLY, REALLY VIOLENT, HATEMONGERING, WARMONGERING CATHOLICS AND WE CANNOT LET THESE PEOPLE GET US INTO ANOTHER CATASTROPHIC AND VIOLENT WORLD EVENT; SPEAK OUT, PEACEMAKERS: SPEAK OUT LOUD AND CLEAR AGAINST THIS MADNESS WITH ME

For Catholics who purport to care so deeply and passionately for the sanctity of life–for Catholics who claim to be all about the Catholic Church’s teachings–the Rick Santorums and Newt Gingriches of the world sure do talk casually about nuking people.

Pope John Paul II and the Catholic Church were adamantly opposed to the mere invasion of Iraq, remember? So much so that the Pope dispatched an old Bush family friend and Catholic clergyman to try to persuade Bush that invading Iraq could in no way be justified on any Christian or moral grounds whatsoever.

At least President Bush heard out the old family Catholic friend before dismissing him with that typical Bush absolutism. (Absolutely to the right on war and peace.) Bush, a United Methodist (who left the Episcopal Church largely because of Laura’s Methodist ties and because “the Episcopalians kneel too much! he! he!”), turned a totally deaf ear to the United Methodist Bishops who joined every other mainline Protestant denomination in virtually begging him not to go venturing off on an unjust and unnecessary war.

Now, the Santorums and Gingriches of the world talk casually about dropping bombs–nuclear, no less–on Iran with no evidence to justify such draconian action (Ron Paul is right about that–walleyed crazy Ron Paul is right about a lot of things, not that I could ever vote for him except as a protest vote).

It seems to be lost on these Catholic politicos that their own Catholic Church, which they say they love and they defend so vigorously, extends the sanctity of life to all life–not just to life in the womb. It’s why the Vatican predictably speaks out loud and clear and justifiably every time there is a scheduled execution of a death row inmate in this country. It’s why the Vatican consistently opposes torture which Santorum and Gingrich have no prob with.

For all their problems and all the weird and twisted theology they have, in my humble opinion–as I noted in a recent posting, the theology of “every sperm is sacred” ain’t my deal–the Catholics at least are consistent on the sacredness of life and viewing a life as created in the very image of God. Santorum and Gingrich seem to think a lot of lives are born in the image of a literal Satan that doesn’t even literally exist (again, that opinion is my own humble and theologically informed opinion–send your nasty disagreements to revpaulmckay@gmail.com and put your name on your nastiness if you want to tell me how misguided a Christian I am because I don’t believe in a ridiculous literal Satan).

The Santorums and Gingriches speak as if they have no respect for their own church’s teachings and preachings whatsoever when they start fanning the flames of war. They speak of bombing without so much as any moral perspective. You won’t hear them say, “As much as I hate war, as much as I would tremble at the heavy responsibility of taking lives and wreaking havoc in the world, I would do it out of moral concern for the greater good of saving other lives.”

Nope, you won’t hear that kind of moral and Christian equivocating, acknowledging that people will suffer and die—living, breathing human beings outside of wombs–will be maimed if not killed and killed in the most gruesome way possible with nukes melting their bodies down. They won’t approach their violent positions on countries like Iran with any perspective on of the scores of innocent men, women and children who will be left starving, without shelter or clean water to subsist on.

And of course, they are clueless as to how kids growing up in Iran will see the U.S. as maybe being “the Great Satan” that their crazy ass dictator loud mouth clowns portrayed.

Kids in Iran want American Apple gizmos and cool blue jeans.

Bomb the country and kids in Iran will hate America’s guts because the Santorums and Gingriches didn’t give a shit if they and their loved ones lived or died.

I’m sorry, but Santorum and Gingrich are some really twisted sisters and haters.

And we can’t let the haters win.

Speak your voice.

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The Catholicization of the American Right

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Catholic Buffoons, Catholic Censorship, Catholic Crazies, Catholic Crusaders, Catholic Demagogues, Catholic Empire, Catholic Fanatic, Catholic Fanaticism, Catholic Fanatics, Catholic Fascism, Catholic Fascist, Catholic Fascists, Catholic Hitler, Catholic Inquisition, Catholic Lunatics, Catholic Power, Catholic Right, Catholic Supremacism

The Catholicization of the American Right

Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison

In the past two decades, the American religious Right has become increasingly Catholic. I mean that both literally and metaphorically. Literally, Catholic writers have emerged as intellectual leaders of the religious right in universities, the punditocracy, the press, and the courts, promoting an agenda that at its most theoretical involves a reclamation of the natural law tradition of Thomas Aquinas and at its most practical involves appeals to the kind of common-sense, “everybody knows,” or “it just is” arguments that have characterized opposition to same-sex marriage. There is nothing new about Catholic conservative intellectuals — think John Neuhaus, William F. Buckley, Jr. What is new is the prominence that these Catholic thinkers and leaders have come to have within the domains of American politics that are dominated by evangelical Protestants. Catholic intellectuals have become to the American Right what Jewish intellectuals once were to the American Left. In the academy, on the Court, Catholic intellectuals provide the theoretical discourse that shapes conservative arguments across a whole range of issues. Often these arguments have identifiable Thomistic or Jesuitical sources, but most of the time they enter the mainstream of political dialogue as simply “conservative.”

Meanwhile, in the realm of actual politics, Catholic politicians have emerged as leading figures in the religious conservative movement. Again, there is nothing new about Catholic political leaders nor Catholic politicians, although from Al Smith through John Kennedy they were more often Democrats than Republicans (Pat Buchanan is an exception). What is new is the ability of self-identified Catholic politicians to attract broad support from the among the evangelical Protestant religious right.

Rick Santorum is a case in point. Santorum’s is a specifically Catholic form of faith. The recent flap over contraception is only an example of a much deeper phenomenon. As observers have noted, he talks frequently about natural law, but rarely quotes the Bible directly — his arguments draw on a theologically informed view of the nature of the world, not a personal relationship with the text.

Indeed, in the past Santorum has been quite forthright about the fact that he does not look to the Bible for guidance, he relies quite properly on the guidance of the Church. There is obviously nothing wrong with that … but it sits very curiously with traditional Evangelical Protestant attitudes.

It is important not to overstate the significance of Santorum’s success. For all Santorum’s recent ascendancy, here is the breakdown of actual Republican votes cast thus far: Romney, 1,121,685; Gingrich, 838,825; Santorum, 431,926; Paul, 307,975. The count of awarded delegates produces a somewhat different result: Romney, 99; Santorum, 47; Gingrich, 32; Paul, 20 (The difference among those numbers reflects what political scientists call “malapportionment.”)  But two facts remain: one, with 1,144 delegates required for the nomination this thing is nowhere close to a resolution, and will not be even after Arizona, Michigan, and Super Tuesday; and, two, thus far in the Republican primary campaign, a majority of the votes cast have been for Catholic candidates. It’s not just Santorum; before him it was Gingrich, after all. At the national level, Catholic politicians have emerged as leading figures in the GOP… and  evangelical Protestants are flocking to follow their lead. Why?

The answer is not that evangelicals have become any less Protestant.  In a 2011 American Values Survey, 93% of white evangelicals say it is important for a candidate to have strong religious beliefs, versus 69% for Catholics saying the same thing. And 36% of white evangelical voters said they would be uncomfortable voting for a candidate who had strong religious beliefs that were different from their own, up from 29% in 2010, a change that may reflect the effects of a prominent Mormon candidate in the mix. In other words, evangelical voters care a great deal that a candidate’s religion accord with their own… and they are supporting Catholic candidates.  So what is going on?

To understand what is going on, we need to move from the role of Catholic individuals to a broader, more metaphorical idea of a Catholic style of political reasoning. “Catholic” in this exercise means responding to leadership; focusing on outcomes (think “doctrine of works”); and a Manichean view of the world in which the Church — as opposed to mere churches — stands as a bulwark against equally great opposing forces, so that outside the Church there can be only chaos. In this sense a Catholic Republican voter would be someone looking for a commanding general to lead Christian soldiers on a crusade, would care about a candidate’s policies rather than his soul, and respond to a call to view the Republican Party as the last bastion of civilisation in a howling wilderness.  Extending the metaphor, a “Protestant” conservative should reject the idea of leaders in favour of grass roots communalism; local self-direction in the congregationalist model; care about character and personal values more than specific stances or doctrines; and see the world as a mass of sinners who are to be judged  individually by the quality of their soul rather than by their enlistment in one party or the other.

In this metaphorical sense, the “Catholic” political style is strongest among evangelical Protestant voters, not actual Catholics. The eagerness of Catholic bishops to jump into a fight over contraception, for example, does not reflect that attitudes of their parishoners, but it gets strong support from evangelicals. Similarly, in one recent poll more than two-thirds of Catholic voters supported some sort of legal recognition of gay couples’ relationships, with 44% favoring same-sex marriage; in very sharp contrast, an outright majority of evangelical voters said there should be no legal recognition of a same-sex relationship.

In political terms, the evangelical Protestant Right has become Catholicized. They do not see Catholicism as a religion very different from their own because it leads to the same positions on the battlefield, call it Fortress GOP. It is a political worldview that is singularly well suited to negative politics. Who cares whether your guy is actually a bit of a nut-case or has some sleaze in his history if he will defeat the forces of darkness? Liberals tolerate venality in their candidates if they believe they will do good; “Catholic” conservatives tolerate venality if they believe their candidates will defeat evil.  (Ironically, all of this has moved the American religious Right in the direction of becoming more and more like a traditional European right-wing political movement, rather than a populist movement in the American Jacksonian tradition.)

In this metaphorical sense, the one person who did the most to push the Catholicization of conservative politics was Newt Gingrich back in the 1990s, long before his personal religious conversion. The most obvious illustration was the infamous GOPAC memorandum entitled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control” that instructed Republican candidates to describe their Democratic opponents using words like “destructive,” “sick,” “pathetic,” “they/them,” “betray” and ” traitors” (relying on the research of the almost incomprehensibly amoral Frank Lutz). That kind of rhetoric and the scorched earth, anyone-who-is-not-with-must-be-destroyed tactics that go with it has been the defining style of Gingrich’s brand of politics ever since. And who Gingrich’s man in the Senate in those heady days of unabashed viciousness? Rick Santorum. And not just as an ally — Santorum was Gingrich’s hatchet man, the one who did the “dirty work” as one Republican congressman put it. Or in the words of a Republican staffer at the time, “[Santorum] is a Stepford wife to Gingrich… If you took the key out of his back, I’m not sure his lips would keep moving.” (These quotations appear in a 1995 Philadelphia Magazine article — you can find a link to the pdf file here

Can this carry Santorum to the nomination? Probably not. There are already signs that Santorum is slipping, as the extremity of his religious dogmatism becomes evident to voters, which may eventually force evangelicals to recognize the differences between the tenets of his faith and their own. The fit with Tea Party conservatives is even more tenuous, as that movement is an expression of a deeply “Protestant” brand of politics that sit uneasily with the rhetoric and worldview of “Catholic” conservatism. And Santorum has yet to be called out for his role in the 1990s; if people really want to vote for Gingrich’s old pet attack dog, why not simply vote for the owner? With time, Romney’s claim to be the only electable candidate (and adult) in the field may regain its traction. Meanwhile, Gingrich is looking ahead to the South, and possibly even as far as Texas and California. It has been a campaign of suddenly arising candidates who flamed out just as quickly, and Santorum shows signs of being the latest in that line — as I said, even after Super Tuesday there is going to be a long way to go.

There is the potential for deep divisions appearing in the GOP along an axis of “Protestant” versus “Catholic” religious conservatism. But regardless of what happens next, the rise of first Gingrich and now Santorum as the candidate of choice for the Religious Right is a profound sign of how Catholic the American religious right has become.

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The GOP’s Race to the Dark Ages

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Catholic Buffoons, Catholic Fascist, Rick Santorum is Gay, Santorum

The GOP’s Race to the Dark Ages

Rick Santorum thinks Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 case that invalidated criminal bans on contraception, was wrongly decided. He’s off the deep-end on this one, and completely out of touch even with his fellow Catholics, but his statement provoked an exchange at last night’s debate about whether states should be permitted to ban birth control.

  • Mitt Romney feigned surprise — and emphasized that he would be absolutely, positively against banning birth control — but the moderators failed to ask him about his enthusiastic support for “personhood” bills that would effectively ban certain kinds of birth control (not to mention fertility treatments). Santorum turned the question to be all about the Griswold ruling on a “penumbra” of rights created under the constitution, anathema to conservatives because of how it underpins Roe v. Wade, and, as Chris Geidner points out, Lawrence v. Texas. They claim these rights are not actually found in the Constitution but were created by “activist judges” — this from the people who think the 14th Amendment guarantees equal protectionto fertilized eggs.It seemed that the moderateors, George Stephanopolous and Diane Sawyer, threw out those questions for sport: after all, criminalizing birth control would require either the passage of a “personhood” bill, which couldn’t be pulled off even in Mississippi, or the overturning of Griswoldcombined with the political will in a state to pass a ban on birth control, quite possibly one of the most popular inventions in the history of the world. (Don’t you think Big Pharma makes a bundle on birth control pills? They’d squash such a thing faster than you can say progestin.)That’s not to say that Santorum’s, or any of the Republicans’ views on this issue aren’t dangerous, or to minimize the absurdity that in 2012, we had a presidential debate about whether to ban birth control. For real? Well, yes, for real. Some conservative think tankers argue there has been a “war on fertility.”

    But there was another question, which garners far less notice, that raises far more immediate concerns about the Republicans’ designs on birth control, and how they exploit religion to create political conflicts where none do or should exist. In answering a question about gay marriage, Newt Gingrich said:

    You don’t hear the opposite question asked. Should the Catholic Church be forced to close its adoption services in Massachusetts because it won’t accept gay couples, which is exactly what the state has done? Should the Catholic Church be driven out of providing charitable services in the District of Columbia because it won’t give in to secular bigotry? Should the Catholic Church find itself discriminated against by the Obama administration on key delivery of services because of the bias and the bigotry of the administration?

    The bigotry question goes both ways. And there’s a lot more anti-Christian bigotry today than there is concerning the other side. And none of it gets covered by the news media.

    Oh, wah, wah. Gingrich’s complaints have been covered here at RD, and a throrough investigation of his claims reveal them to be an effort to create a right that doesn’t exist in the Constitution. (Gasp!) Gingrich’s first reference was to Catholic Charities shutting down its adoption services entirely rather than risk having to place a child with a same-sex couple. Just like Jesus would’ve done. But his second reference goes more to the contraception question. He’s referring to the Department of Health and Human Services decision not to renew a contract with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to provide services to victims of sex trafficking, because the Bishops would not refer victims, many as young as 12 and brutalized by rape, for a full range of reproductive care, including contraceptives, sterilization, and abortion. Conservatives jumped on this decision as supposed proof of the Obama administration’s anti-Catholic bias. Catholics beg to differ.

    The right to free exercise of religion, a First Amendment right, does not entitle a religious organization to a government contract. Nor does it entitle religious organizations to have every one of their beliefs accommodated by the government. The USCCB wants the Obama administration, for example, to exempt all colleges, universities, and hospitals from the requirement under the Affordable Care Act that their health insurance provide employees co-pay-free birth control, even though churches themselves are already exempt. A Catholic and an evangelical university have sued HHS over the rule, citing “religious liberty.”

    Republicans have been making their intentions on access to birth control clear since they began campaigning to eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood. They say it’s about federal funding going to abortions, but that’s already banned by the Hyde Amendment. The funding they’d eliminate is funding for family planning services (which would help prevent unintended pregnancies and abortions, but who cares). They say this, too, is a matter of religious conscience, because they want no taxpayer money going to Planned Parenthood just because it does perform abortions, even if the money doesn’t directly fund them.

    After the Mississippi personhood measure failed, anti-choice fans of an “incrementalist” approach cheered. They fear a personhood measure would be a faulty challenge to Roe should one reach the Supreme Court, damaging their efforts to end legal abortion. They prefer slowly chipping away at access to abortion through the record number of restrictions enacted at the state level last year.

    There’s an incrementalist approach to restricting access to birth control, too. It hinges on the “religious liberty” argument, and Gingrich is right about one thing: this tactic deserves more scrutiny than it has received.

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