Democrats Take On The Catholic Church

Via sisu:

Pope Benedict met artists from around the world in the Sistine Chapel on Saturday and urged them to inject spirituality into their work, saying contemporary beauty was often 'illusory and deceitful," reports Reuters. Compare Papa Ratzi's open invitation to engage in an expansive search for truth with President Obama's secretive, craven attempts to use the art community as a tool of the state to propagandize his own not-so-hidden statist agenda.

Apt analogy. But one notices that the Democrats (now that they have finally obtained absolute power) have not only dropped all pretensions of piety (what church do the Obamas go to, anyway?), but they are launching full-scale broadsides against the Catholic Church and its bishops as they wrangle over taxpayer-funded abortions in the Senate health care bill.

And how ironic that a Kennedy would be on the front lines, fighting against everything that is good and decent in this world. Baby Patrick started the battle, but it looks like the Church might win the war:

Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin has banned Rep. Patrick Kennedy from receiving Communion, the central sacrament of the church, in Rhode Island because of the congressman's support for abortion rights, Kennedy said in a newspaper interview published Sunday.

The dispute between the two men began in October when Kennedy in an interview on CNSNews.com criticized the nation's Catholic bishops for threatening to oppose a massive expansion of the nation's health care system unless it included tighter restrictions on federally funded abortion.

Kennedy's allies in Congress are fighting back against the powers of good, as Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) talks about denying the Church its 1st Amendment rights:

She also said that religiously-affiliated groups like the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which had pushed for the Stupak provision, should be shut out of the process.

"Last I heard, we had separation of church and state in this country," she said. "I've got to say that I think the Catholic bishops and all of the other groups shouldn't have input."

Note the contrast to the Sistine Chapel statement. The Pope asks artists to inject spirituality into their work, the Obami ask themselves to take spirituality out of their work. The Church looks to open its arms to all in the search for truth and beauty, while Congress has turned to strict partisanship in order to exert control and limit input and opposition.

It is no surprise that these two institutions find themselves at odds. Truthfully, of course, Congress is completely within its rights to ignore the Church's wishes, and the Church is completely within its rights to deny communion to rabid Congressman.

But will the American people take a side in this fight? Has the hubris (and Constitutional disregard) of the Democratic party reached the point where it feels it can control the state and the people's primary religious organization? Are they operating under the belief that they can take down the church and destroy the religious right in one fell swoop, thus increasing the odds of their dreams of a permanent majority?

Well, over-reaching has been their specialty these past eleven months. Will they take on American Catholicism, and pit God's law against their own?

That's the road they seem to be travelling on...let's just hope they don't drag the rest of the nation down into hell with them...