Saturday, November 10, 2012

Based on GOP campaigning it's not just atheists that come in for the wrath of God. I just don't think the saner heads in the GOP are going to be able to take back their party from the rabid 'Chri$tian$.


The following excerpt is by Anthea Butler over on Religion Dispatches.  I love Anthea's writing because she doesn't pull any punches, isn't afraid to point out the emperor has no clothes, and she has a preferential option for taking on all hypocrites of any persuasion. The following starts about half way through her essay on Tuesday's take down of the Republican Party.


Election Takeaway: Fake God Talk Doesn’t Cut It with Americans 

Anthea Butler - Religion Dispatches - 11/7/2012
......From Akin’s “legitimate” rape to Richard Mourdock’s “semi-omnipotent God,” the party looks like a version of Inherit the Wind without the monkeys to provide levity. No matter how much Glenn Beck believed that Romney could win, or Billy Graham’s pretense that he never believed Mormonism was a cult, nothing will take away the demographics that are against the party, or their religious conservatives. To top it off, the Catholic Bishops threw their lot in with this bunch, knowing that much of what they believe is not compatible with Catholic theology. (That is a very telling move on the part of our bishops.)

After four years of hearing the refrain “Let’s take our country back,” it is clear that 2012 is not only, as Sarah Posner writes, a religious realignment, but also a moral realignment.

Fake God talk doesn’t cut it with Americans. Everyone sees through it. For Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, and a host of others, the last four years have been a confidence game, a careful calculation that if they could just promote themselves, their god, their America, and Obama as a socialist just enough, the tide would turn their way and the money would flow. It didn’t. Many Americans want gay people to have the right to marry, recognize that rape is rape, and view women’s reproductive rights as important. (The one thing the millennials- a demographic the GOP lost big time- are not looking for is more fake God talk. This generation has a well tuned hypocrisy meter. PO and the Dems better pay attention to this as well.)

Americans are tired of racist remarks and the denigration of the office of the President of the United States simply because an African American with a dual heritage and a white mother cracked and decoded the American dream.

While President Obama won decisively, he also must be held to account. Reelection does not mean that the president cannot be judged. The drone war, the continued level of poverty (especially in the African American community), and the injustices of Guantanamo Bay are just a few of the issues we citizens need to hold the president accountable for. Having a black president doesn’t mean that everything is wonderful.  (No one is entitled to a free pass on accountability just because of their skin color. A lesson for all, not just for 'angry white males'.)

In the end, Mitt Romney was the right candidate for the Republicans. His good looks, his CEO cred, and his ability to lie at the slightest turn were tailor-made for what the Republican party and its religious operatives have become: a bunch of capitalistic prosperity grifters who have turned their backs on the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the Gospel of Ayn Rand. Even his running mate, Catholic Paul Ryan, was eager to grift by proposing an untenable budget. Rather than “do unto others,” they raised millions to disenfranchise, to sow hatred, and to bask in a smug cocoon of self-reliance while Americans suffered foreclosures, job losses, and anguish. Now, they have lost.

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At this point I have no hope that the GOP will seriously reevaluate it's positions on much of anything. There is way too much money and energy invested to allow for much of a change of direction.  At best we will see a change of emphasis, a kind of reshuffling of the deck.  The one thing they will not be able to fix easily is the utter lack of trust in anything they say, which will be the lasting legacy of the GOP primaries and Romney's run for the presidency.  The hidden agendas which called for this lack of transparency may no longer be hidden, but like in Roman Catholicism, the use of secrecy and half truths will continue unabated.  They will continue unabated because the reliance on this strategy is founded in a need to not see any real importance for speaking the truth.  Instead it's founded in a belief that lies serve their truth. It's amorality masking as morality. 

The USCCB has the same problem.  For them the pressing issue is not 're evangelizing' lost Catholics, it's restoring the lost trust in their own offices. But again, the momentum is such that I don't think we are going to see any such acknowledgement coming out of Baltimore.  I believe we will see the beginning of a concerted campaign to deny this issue tomorrow when Bishops Sartain, Paprocki, and Blair meet with LCWR leadership. It's hard for me to imagine that three bishops who were overly involved in GOP politics are going to admit problems to the leadership group whose Nuns on the Bus campaign was far more effective than all the USCCB politicking combined.  That fact too, is a matter of who is trusted.  I expect the bishops will once again attempt to use authority to overcome mistrust.  Big mistake.  More Fake God Talk.

1 comment:

  1. "To top it off, the Catholic Bishops threw their lot in with this bunch, knowing that much of what they believe is not compatible with Catholic theology."

    I don't understand the US bishops. By normal Catholic standards, Mormonism is not Christian in any sense, but totally opposed to anything even resembling mainstream Christianity. Islam is much closer to Christianity than Mormonism, which has a "God" who is a formerly human polygamous adulterer who has a one-night stand with the BVM. She's a virgin until "Elohim" stops the foreplay, anyway. The Mormon Mary is a two-timing slut, and the Mormon Jesus is a bigamist.

    My knowledge of Catholic theology & doctrine is incomplete, but I submit that Mormon "theology" - "old-time polytheistic religion" in a 19th-century US dress would be more accurate - is further removed from Catholicism than any "liberal" ideas. Mormonism makes Catholic "liberalism" look like die-hard ultra-Traditionalism by comparison.

    Why did the Catholic bishops not warn Catholics against voting for someone whose "theology" makes the Mother of God into a two-timing slut ? How is abortion a worse error in doctrine than believing that "Elohim" engaged in penetrative coitus with someone they supposedly honour ***very*** highly ? Yet they issued no such warning. This is by any orthodox Catholic standard - & they are supposed to care a lot about orthodoxy - a disgrace. The message sent is, that Obama is such a bad thing, that Catholic dogma can be sacrificed, if that is what is needed to prevent his re-election. If that does not prove that abhorrence of abortion has been allowed to pervert Catholic dogma, what will ?

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