Friday 28 November 2008

Obama Skips Church Following Election



Why not come to Mass, Barack? The US could do with a Catholic president since the last one got popped off...you may not be so popular but at least little babies would get a chance to live.

From EWTN

President-elect Barack Obama has skipped church services since his election to the presidency, using Sunday to work out at the gym.

His habits differ from his two immediate predecessors President George W. Bush and President Bill Clinton, who both consistently attended Sunday church services following their election victories.

An Obama aid explained to Politico.com that the Obamas did not wish to disrupt churchgoers with their large entourage.

“Because they have a great deal of respect for places of worship, they do not want to draw unwelcome or inappropriate attention to a church not used to the attention their attendance would draw," the aide reportedly said, adding the family “look[s] forward to finding a church community in Washington, D.C.”

While campaigning, Obama infrequently attended church services aside from a series of appearances in the pews and pulpits of South Carolina churches ahead of its primary.

For two decades, Obama and his family attended Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, but resigned his membership following controversies regarding its pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hail, the Bones, permission to board?

Let us pray every day for his conversion to Catholicism! Let us ask our Lady to take him under her mantle.

Speaking of prayer--do you and I really believe in it? Really believe in it? It's required for salvation, apparently.

I am reading (second pass, now) Baptism of Desire: a Patristic Commentary, from Angeles Press, and one of the points--I shall trim mercilessly--is that there are two things that anyone, anyone at all, must believe to be saved, from some hypothetical kid raised by pagans in the heart of the most dismal modernist cell of a home, to a true barbarian in say, Alpha Centauri (they didn't say that in the book, that Alpha Centauri part). I'm referring to people who either never heard of Christ, or who heard such a demented, twisted version, or whose vision of Him is colored by the horrible clerical homosexual scandals of recent years, or they heard about Him from people who never learned to punctuate and spell and compose whole sentences, as on the net.

We must believe, bottom line, in One God (not multiple!) who rewards--or rather as St. Thomas said it, a God who can deliver mankind.

According to the citations in the text, St. Thomas as well as earlier patristics, taught that God puts the grace to believe these simple things in every single heart, and will intervene in even the laws of nature--which He otherwise does not like to do, apparently--to make sure every single person has the understanding to begin to believe in one God, the creator and father. From then on, the person has a choice to take the next step, to bow the proud head, and to what, then? To pray.

They don't say that last part, they just say, the next step is the person's, but would not the proof of that, besides sorrow for sin, be prayer? And I do not know if I have found the narrow way, there, myself. I pray, of course. Whether I truly, deeply, madly believe that God is listening is a whole nother thing. I want to, though.

I recommend the book, by the way. It's by SSPX, that's Angeles Press, and you know how conservative they are, but in this book they (surprisingly, to me) flog both extreme sides of this issue, which is a large issue in the Church today. I plan to write about it on my own blog, relative to our apostolic mission. (My interest is this:If 'everyone is saved,' what's our role there? I'm really talking to my oldest son, who says he believes in God but seldom reaches out to others to share it--and the Church today, at least in the US and Mexico, seems likewise passive, at times. Where is the apostolic zeal of other generations?) Hint from the book: this baptism 'by desire' and not by water does not give the soul the mark that baptism by water does, even though God makes up the rest to fully justify the person so they can get to heaven. Nor does it give the help of the sacraments. That's our job, to offer the rest, to love mankind enough to try.

Knowing the two basic things that are absolutely bottom line essential, though, has served rather like a triage heuristic, giving an apostle a place to start: to our new pagans, I just work on the one God part first, pointing out the difficulties of believing in many little gods (one such person exclaimed in understanding, recently: oh yeah, it would be like having to please many wives!). If we could get an unbeliever to that point, then we can get them to prayer to Him, and from then on it's--Thanksgiving gravy!

I don't know if Barack is even to that stage, yet. It's pretty clear from how he wasn't listening to the sermons at his own church, that he was going just for votes. And now he WON'T go, after his election, for the same reason--might inconvenience somebody with the secret service guys and lose a vote, hell to saying thanks to God.

Anonymous said...

I suppose it would be untoward of me to thank you for linking to an image hosted on my blog, while also noting that my blog is written and hosted by....an atheist. I suppose also that to point out that the image you link to was referenced in a post made in support of the Blogswarm Against Theocracy would also contain more irony than you are likely willing to bear in light of the content of the post to which I currently comment.

Regardless, thank you for sharing your delusions with me today. It was a welcome respite from my current work queue.

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