Repenting and Living the Gospel Can Save Religious Liberty from Obama Overreach
The United States of America does not have an official religion, of course, but Obama is trying very hard to make secular extremism its de facto public religion by prohibiting religious people from exercising their constitutional right to the free exercise of religion.
The Ash Wednesday message is "Repent and live the Gospel."
It is vitally important for the sake of America and the cause of freedom throughout the world that this message be accepted now.
Sadly, many of my fellow baptized Catholics have been a big part of the problem. They should repent and work assiduously to set matters right by living the Gospel instead of either enthusiastically embracing or meekly accepting the replacement of religious-based traditional American values with rampant secular extremism.
In “The Catholic Betrayal of Religious Freedom,” George Weigel notes that “liberal Catholics” have chosen to “play court chaplain to overweening and harshly secularist state power” and thus have “betray[ed] their own noblest heritage.”
May they repent and live the Gospel.
A glorious opportunity to help reverse the progress of secular extremism is coming: Easter.
it is a fact that many people who do not regularly go to church do so on two days: Christmas and Easter.
Priests and ministers must seize the opportunity to address these people.
This year Easter Sunday is April 8.
This time the homilies should emphasize America's religious heritage and the need to defend religious liberty.
Preaching to the choir is fine, by preaching to others is critically important, for their sakes and the sakes of America and freedom.
In 2008 the most pro-abortion president in American history won the "Catholic" vote.
Many were gulled, but others must have known better, or surely should have known better and thus were culpably ignorant.
It seems shocking now, but the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) funded radical, pro-abortion ACORN for years.
That was good for their attorney and hope, Obama.
When soon to be elected president Obama said that his goal was to "fundamentally transform" America, he really meant it.
There is outrage in the liberal media when it is suggested that Obama may not be a Christian.
But Ann Coulter was on target when she said that Obama is not a Muslim, he's an atheist.
Note that Obama's father was born a Muslim, but became a Marxist.
The evidence before us today shows clearly that Obama is a secular extremist.
In 2006 Coulter's Godless: The Church of Liberalism was published.
The product description for Coulter's book begins:
"If a martian landed in America and set out to determine the nation's official state religion, he would have to conclude it is liberalism, while Christianity and Judaism are prohibited by law.
"Many Americans are outraged by liberal hostility to traditional religion. But as Ann Coulter reveals in this, her most explosive book yet, to focus solely on the Left's attacks on our Judeo-Christian tradition is to miss a larger point: liberalism is a religion—a godless one.
"And it is now entrenched as the state religion of this county.
"Though liberalism rejects the idea of God and reviles people of faith, it bears all the attributes of a religion. In Godless, Coulter throws open the doors of the Church of Liberalism, showing us its sacraments (abortion), its holy writ (Roe v. Wade), its martyrs (from Soviet spy Alger Hiss to cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal), its clergy (public school teachers), its churches (government schools, where prayer is prohibited but condoms are free), its doctrine of infallibility (as manifest in the 'absolute moral authority' of spokesmen from Cindy Sheehan to Max Cleland), and its cosmology (in which mankind is an inconsequential accident)."
Coulter understand, but not Obama shill Chris Matthews, who purports to accept Obama's claim to be a Christian because Obama says so and barks like an attack dog against any who dares to question that instead of blindly accept it.
Now President Obama is determined to deny by federal regulation and/or executive order the First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion and make people of faith and religious-based institutions provide insurance for contraception, sterilization and abortion, even though providing it would violate their fundamental religious beliefs and make them complicit in grave sin.
The United States of America does not have an official religion, of course, but Obama is trying very hard to make secular extremism its de facto public religion by prohibiting religious people from exercising their constitutional right to the free exercise of religion.
Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.
Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.
The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.
Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.