“In the eyes of Obama backers, the Democratic incumbent was handed a political gift when Limbaugh…called Fluke a ‘slut’ because the 30-year-old Georgetown University student has been a vocal supporter of access to contraception.” Indeed, during the attack against health insurance coverage for birth control begun by the Catholic bishops on January 20, the president’s job approval ratings have only shot up.
So New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, prelate of Wall Street, president of the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops (USCCB), and prince of the Holy Roman Church announced this past Saturday there would be a change in tactics. He admitted that, “In the public square, I hate to tell you, the days of fat, balding Irish bishops are over” and that hiring a laywoman to speak against abortion was “the best thing we [the USCCB] ever did.” Dolan asserted that while clerics should “stick to principles, we leave a lot of the messiness of politics up to you [the laity].”
Lickety-split, first thing this morning, noted Catholic “scholar” George Weigel, head of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, “backed by the far-right Sarah Scaife Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and the Koch- backed Castle Rock Foundation, all well-known right-wing funders” posted an article in the National Review accusing the Obama administration of “using flacks like Senator Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to muddy the waters and divert attention from the manifest unconstitutionality and illegality of the [health insurance] mandate.” Mary Ann Glendon, Bush-appointed ambassador to the Vatican City State, board member of the Institute on Religion and Democracy which “promotes standard Religious Right fare and is especially active in anti-gay marriage activities” and is on the Board of Advisers for the notorious Bill Donohue’s Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, also posted an article this morning in America Magazine defending the Republican position by lying that “militant secularists are claiming that religious freedom is an unnecessary right.”
The Vatican is being sensible to show fewer Roman collars supporting its positions and sensitive to the possibility of an American backlash against the influence of not only Catholic bishops who promise to obey a foreign ruler but also cardinals who not only vow to obey that head of state but also “to not to reveal to anyone what is confided to me in secret, nor to divulge what may bring harm or dishonor to Holy Church” including information about the sexual abuse of children.