Vatican Newspaper: "Obama is Not a Pro-Abortion President"

Jeesh, while everyone else sleeps, AS is up late with another godsmack.
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Speaking for agnostics, secularists, and atheists everywhere (or just my own damned self), can I just say I don't give a flying F@CK what the catholics (of all stripes) think of our president or gov't, good or bad.

@jcapan
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That's like saying you don't give a damn about what Muslims think. And maybe you don't. But there's over a billion Catholics, there's a billion Muslims, and there's a billion Chinese (and probably close to zero overlap) so some people might be interested in the Vatican's take on this matter is, given it is theoretically in charge of 1/6th of the world population.

Red Raven,
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The difference, I suppose, is how one views the Vatican. I see it as a borderline terrorist organization (given the virulent impact of its policies in the developing world, particularly in Africa, it's horrible record of defending abusive priests et al). The institution of catholicism has (or sure as sh!t should have) lost all credibility. The fact that a billion people support a morally bankrupt insitution leaves me with little regard for their opinions. But hey, that's just me. I'm also one of those kooks who thinks a WH faith-based office, advising a donkey or an elephant, is unconstitutional.

[...] late, dollar short as usual, the Vatican officially declares President Obama “not a pro-abortion president.”  Of course, this comes well after all the protests at Notre Dame where the President recently gave [...]

Was this issue overhyped? I think it was.

Actually AS's specific observation can be made more generally.
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Obama's views on almost every subject are well within conventional mainstream mushy-middle Villager friendly America-is-a-center-Right-Country thought. Every suggestion that he is not a conventional mainstream mushy-middle Villager-friendly America-is-a-center-Right-Country President is based on consciously chosen, deliberate lies.
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The depressing part is the fact that these lies need to be fended off on a daily basis. Every time Obama says something to indicate his conventional mainstream mushy-middle Villager-friendly America-is-a-center-Right-Countryhood people act surprised.
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Its really quite ridiculous.

The abortion/Roe v. Wade debate is the "Taiwan Question" of domestic policy. An unsatisfactory but tolerated Status Quo for both sides of the debate.
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My respect for the institutions of the Catholic Church (not Catholics themselves) is zero right now.
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http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/05/20/ireland.catholic.report.abuse/index.html

"More catholic than the pope" is not just a saying.

What's that old saying, "More Catholic than the Pope".

"In Italy, for instance, both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have given communion to pro-choice politicians while letting Italian church leaders take the role of lecturing those Catholics on their dissent from church teaching."
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I'm speechless. Why are we giving the Catholic fundies air time when their own Pope can justify giving communion to people whose beliefs differ from church teachings?
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Heck, John Kerry should have sought communion from the Pope when his church treatened to withhold the sacrament from him.

AS - thanks for this news, which I probably wouldn't have gotten otherwise. At least, it will be interesting to see if Cnn et al. choose to report this. Not nearly as interesting as being able to show rabid one-issue Catholics going off the rails. I might have to reassess my view of the Vatican.
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sgwhite- I'm surprised anyone manages to be more catholic than this pope

Sorry for the double post.

Was this story overhyped and manufactored? I think so. Hand full of real protestors. Loudest squawkers given a free platform by the media and in turn we get a minor controversy that turns into weeks of mindless blogging and media stories. Catholics are a rather large constituency why were the actual protests so small? Was it because the majority of Catholics didn't give a crap truly just did not give a crap? Who cares now that's its past? Not me. By the way, I am a bad Catholic.

This is a solid post.... but as Paul Dirks points out, it's very old news. There was no "controversy among Catholics" over Obama speaking at ND; there was a bunch of Republicans throwing a hissy fit.
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Remember, "Catholic voters are not any less pro-choice than the rest of the population. The most recent good survey I could find on this subject, done by Pew in 2007, found that 16% of Catholics thought abortion should be legal in all cases, 35% thought it should be legal in most cases, 26% thought it should be illegal in most cases, and 18% thought it should be illegal in all cases. Those numbers are virtually exactly the same among the general public, where the percentage for each category is 17%, 35%, 26%, and 17%, respectively. According to that same poll, 59% percent of Catholics support stem research, as compared to 51% of the general population."
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Roe v Wade, which came out around the same time the Alabama football team integrated, is supported by almost 7 in 10 Americans. Freedom from excessive government involvement in early pregnancy decisions is a settled matter in this country, just like desegregation.

By the way-. Nice job Catholics.
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After a nine-year investigation, a commission published a damning report Wednesday on decades of rapes, humiliation and beatings at Catholic Church-run reform schools for Ireland's castaway children.
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The 2,600-page report painted the most detailed and damning portrait yet of church-administered abuse in a country grown weary of revelations about child molestation by priests.
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The investigation of the tax-supported schools uncovered previously secret Vatican records that demonstrated church knowledge of pedophiles in their ranks all the way back to the 1930s.
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Wednesday's five-volume report on the probe _ which was resisted by Catholic religious orders _ concluded that church officials shielded their orders' pedophiles from arrest amid a culture of self-serving secrecy.
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"A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from," Ireland's Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse concluded.
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Victims of the abuse, who are now in their 50s to 80s, lobbied long and hard for an official investigation. They say that for all its incredible detail, the report doesn't nail down what really matters _ the names of their abusers.
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"I do genuinely believe that it would have been a further step towards our healing if our abusers had been named and shamed," said Christine Buckley, 62, who spent the first 18 years of her life in a Dublin orphanage where children were forced to manufacture rosaries _ and were humiliated, beaten and raped whether they achieved their quota or not.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/20/AR2009052000191_pf.html

""Obama is Not a Pro-Abortion President""
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Next they will be claiming people who live in big cities are not anti-American. There are many things that are not true about right wing talking points and propaganda.

Ditto what Paul Dirks #6 said.

"Every time Obama says something to indicate his conventional mainstream mushy-middle Villager-friendly America-is-a-center-Right-Countryhood people act surprised."
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There is only one group he has shown any back bone toward and that is the Left. He must have some deal with the right and the centrist cult. The right calls him a leftist so they can manage keep their base living in fear, and the centrist cult gets to look condescendingly toward the left each time Obama breaks another promise. Many of us on the left have known Obama is a phoney progressive for a long time.

many conservative Catholics
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Really? How many? A dozen? 15?
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Code Pink should get such serious coverage. There are no doubt more members than there are people who believe this nonsense.
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These false narrative frames do real harm.

EE, good post, interesting numbers. It shows that religion, for most people, is more of a social network. And as far as the Vatican controlling 1/6 of the population, I think that's over reaching. I think a good percentage of that number could care less what the Pope says and with good reason. The Catholic church is just silly. It's traditions are silly, it's outfits are silly, it's expectations of priests are silly and it's history of treatment of children and non-believers is evil.

The Vatican is playing a very dangerous game here. If the Pope doesn't come out with a strongly worded condemnation of President Obama soon, he's going to risk losing the support of our evangelical fundamentalists.

I am glad that the Vatican is indifferent as compared to the Catholics in America. They know that in today's Catholic's policies one needs to be very careful...Catholicism in the past two or three decades have dreaded their own religion with too much conservatism and everything practiced is orthodoxical and indifferent to modernity. Thus if they keep moving to this route then other moderate Christian religions will then attract more to join them.

Do we need to go to Afghanistan to visit the Taliban? No, we do not as our backyard are sometimes full of Christian Talibans...only that they do not have beards and wore robes...but often they will start evangelizing you with various phrases or anecdotes from the Bible.

"A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from," Ireland's Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse concluded.
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Victims of the abuse, who are now in their 50s to 80s, lobbied long and hard for an official investigation. They say that for all its incredible detail, the report doesn't nail down what really matters _ the names of their abusers.
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I heard one small mention of this report on NPR yesterday. No comparison to the coverage and many clips of (mostly men) extolling the need for life for the unborn. As I have said before, once born, not so much.

they do not have beards and wore robes...but often they will start evangelizing you with various phrases or anecdotes from the Bible.
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I imagine "Love your neighbor as yourself" must sound particularly oppressive to you.
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I was fixing to go on one of my usual rants against AS's world-view (more like a "world-ViewMaster" with only one card), but I'm just not up to it today.
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That said, I certainly hope the placement of her chatty little post about Pope Rottweiler's newfound amity with Obama, opposite this truly nauseating further revelation of longtime abuse of children and you adults, is coincidental.

that's "young adults", although the typo works too.