Originally posted at American Thinker. Blog
It’s already been firmly established that if a person, group or ideology disagrees with Barack Obama, he becomes fixated on them and then, any opportunity he gets, he makes provocative comments that could be interpreted as a warning shot. The message? Barack Obama doesn’t forget ideological unfaithfulness, and if he can, he’ll shut you up by shutting you down.
The president has imposed his bad attitude on, to name but a few: Conservatives, specifically of the tea party brand, right-leaning talk radio, Fox News, and the group the left views as the seat of pro-life advocacy, the Catholic Church.
Catholicism is a prime target because it’s an autonomous, self-governing entity that continues to insist on having the freedom to exercise the First Amendment right to freedom of religion, and has defied the administration by refusing to submit to Obamacare contraceptive and abortion directives.
So while in Northern Ireland for the G8 summit, Obama didn’t waste the opportunity to taunt Catholics worldwide by saying inflammatory things to schoolchildren. Despite the fact that just days prior, Vatican Prefect Archbishop Gerhard Müller told Scots that Catholic education is “a critical component of the Church,” Barack Obama, speaking to an audience of about 2,000 students at Belfast’s Waterfront hall, made what was described as “an alarming call for an end to Catholic education,” saying:
If towns remain divided-if Catholics have their schools and buildings and Protestants have theirs, if we can’t see ourselves in one another and fear or resentment are allowed to harden-that too encourages division and discourages cooperation.
It’s hard to recall, but when the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner was in Indonesia, Cairo or Turkey, did he also suggest to Muslims that schooling children in madrassas “encourages division and discourages cooperation?”
Of course not. And while the comparison may seem extreme, Barack Obama’s animosity towards Catholicism, although expressed in a more dignified manner, is eerily reminiscent of gay activist Dan Savage, founder of “It Gets Better” and Savage Love sex advisor.
In 2012, Savage was invited to give an anti-bullying speech at the National High School Journalism Conference. Instead of addressing bullying, Savage used the opportunity to make like Barack Obama and bash Christians.
Savage implied that people use the Bible as an excuse to bully gays and cited Leviticus and Romans, which both say that homosexuality is sinful. Then, the anti-bullying expert told the students to ignore all the bulls**t in the Bible. When 100 students walked out, Savage responded by heckling them and calling them “pansy-assed.”
Savage might as well have been speaking to Irish students about the evils of parochial school, because the effect was the same. Although Obama exhibits a bit more finesse when he insults Christians, he insults them just the same by implying that Catholic education fosters division – defying Archbishop Müller’s contention that Catholic education provides schoolchildren an exceptional setting where “intellectual training, moral discipline and religious commitment…come together.”
The truth is that it’s precisely the intellectual training, intrinsic morality, and commitment to faith that irritates secular progressive activists like Dan Savage and Barack Obama and drives them to exploit public appearances as platforms to vent their partisan hostility.
During his homily at St. Andrews Foundation for Catholic Teacher Education at Glasgow University, Archbishop Müller also said that Catholic education provides young people with a wonderful opportunity to “grow up with Jesus.” And after all, isn’t growing up with Jesus at the crux of the problem progressive ideologues, who support the gay lifestyle, facilitate premarital sex, and promote abortion, have with any kind of Christian education?
Müller stressed that Catholic schools should seek to promote “all that is good in the philosophies of societies and human culture,” concepts diametrically opposed to everything Barack Obama stands for. That is why the president is driven to weave into every public address he gives the message that, just as the IRS and NSA scandals have proven, if you disagree with Barack Obama, he wants to shut you down.
