The Pope's Karl Rove

It's nice to see the Vatican taking its strategic cues from the White House. This week Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo told a Catholic news magazine, "We worry especially that, with current laws, speaking in defense of life and the rights of families is becoming in some societies sort of a crime against the state." [WaPo]

Legal experts say that the chances of the Catholic church facing any legal consequences for its religious teachings are slim to none. The facts don't stop Trujillo from turning on the drama when he needs it.

It's all about riling up the base and convincing them that the evil secularists want to persecute the faithful with their international codes of justice.

Sounds familiar doesn't it?

Comments

[Ralph T. Gerwing]

"And the rights of families is becoming in some societies sort of a crime against the state."
A little ambiguity muddies
the water of clarity.
Like the sentence: Man! your brother has got a handsome sister. rtg.

[DAS]

Umm ... but this statement is true (although substituting "is" for "becoming") -- of course the Church itself is not going to pay for these "crimes" but some of its good members are.

Of course, taking the long view and viewing, as the Church does, what passes for a pro-family agenda in our country as only part of "the rights of families" (what about individual rights? does my family have rights over me?) or viewing, as I do, such an agenda as actually being detrimental to the rights of people which make up families, those states in which people are persecuted for defending human rights are some of the states that Bush & CO, for all their talk of supporting freedom, are backing up -- e.g. in central Asia.

Of course if the Church really cared about such rights, they might consider making common cause with us secularists over the likes of Rove.

[DAS]

Ooops ... I guess I should have checked the context of Trujillo's remark first -- people are gonna get arrested for speaking out against the use of embryonic stem cells? And such a use is somehow anti-family rights (what about the right to seek better health treatments for your family members)?

That is just plain ridiculous -- in an evil, secular/religious liberal baiting way.

And taking his remarks back out of context: women should be punished whenever one of their embryos gets destroyed? As some have already pointed out, it sounds like this guy wants to punish women for miscarrying? Don't these guys know anything about human reproduction? Given their obvious cluelessness on the subject, why does anyone proclaim their POV in this area to be "moral"?

[John]

I always thought Cardinal Alphonso "Fonzie" Lopez Trujillo was a good consigliere; he understands very well that you never take sides against the family. Ever. But this recent statement of his is bad for business. Paranoid remarks make the family look a little matto, capisce? Crazy talk keeps people out of the pews, and that keeps money out of the collection baskets. Someone needs to talk to the Holy Padre about Fonzie. He seems to have jumped the shark. It might be time to light a candle for the Cardinal, if you know what I mean.

[paperwight]

He hasn't jumped the shark. He is just adopting the rhetoric of the Republican Fundamentalists, because it's valuable in creating a sense of fake victimization, which in turn immunizes zealots from accusations of over-involvement in temporal affairs.

[mudkitty]

And yet Scalia voted to uphold the death penalty...

[Flint]

During the 2004 election, Rove had a booklet printed up that liberals were going to make the BiBle illegal. He then had it distributed in West Virginia and Arkansas.

This is on a par with the same sort of tactic and it is as rediculous. They love to play the "persecuted victim" even when there is not persecution... it gets 'em riled up in the pews.

Its a shame that the Vatican has sunk to such depths and it is a definite indicator of how the new Pope thinks, because nothing gets out like this without his approval.

[Flint]

If they were real Christians they would be talking about the how you need to support the families in the US and what a crime against God it is that:

1. The US ranks 33 in infant mortality in a recent study that said that access to health care was responsible for the high infant mortality rate.

Its the Children of the poor... you remember the poor, "the least of these."

2. The cuts in Medicare and Medicaid... which hits the poor, the elderly, and the disabled.

3. The fact that if an insured person goes to the ER for a broken arm it will cost roughly $500, but an uninsured poor person will be charged $1700 for the same services.

4. There are almost 50 million people without healthcare in the US. The United States is the only industrialized nation that does not guarantee access to health care as a right of citizenship. 28 industrialized nations have single payer universal health care systems, while 1 (Germany) has a multipayer universal health care system like President Clinton proposed for the United States.

This is real family values... do you hear the Church in America championing this?????????????????????

[Anonymous]

Trujillo's comments make perfect sense when you remember that "the right to freedom of thought and expression cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers."

(you can find this quote at http://newyorkmetro.com/news/imperialcity/15949/index1.html, among other places)

[Count Zero]

Flint, family values and morality stop at a child's birth. Past the child being born, religious zealots have no plan other than coveting more of their weatlth, exploiting the poor or somehow enslaving them, and building their empires on the poors backs.
The entire reason for being pro-life, anti-family planning, pro-corporate, and pro-entitlement for the wealthy. Mathematically they are driving us back into the dark ages of slavery, where inflation is far outpacing wages - wages they refuse to increase. Where the disparity between rich and poor is so huge, pay so insignificant to the poor, that they might as well be slave labor.

[Flint]

Yes Count Zero...

The Catholics do love those third world nations, so much that the Conservative Catholics have decided to turn the US into one with their current agenda.

I don't disparage all Catholics though... I know far too many who really have gotten the message of Christ. It is unfortunatel that the press doesn't give them equal time with the like of Peter King and that twit the head of the Catholics league.

JPII did speak out on the issues I mentioned, but Bennie.... Nah!

[mudkitty]

What is the difference between a real xian and an xian?