Archive for the ‘Catholic Church’ Category

White tie and jokes: Top ten Obama, Romney zingers from Al Smith dinner (VIDEO)

Friday, October 19, 2012 by:richard.dunham@chron.com (Richard Dunham)
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BY KYLE CAMPBELL
Hearst Washington Bureau

President Barack Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney have exchanged personal attacks, argued policies and questioned each other’s political records during this debate season, but the two candidates implement a new strategy when they took the stage of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York — humor.

Both exchanged quips, zingers and personal attacks last night at the 67th annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner, an event held every year by the Archdioceses of New York that gives political candidates a chance to showcase their entertainment abilities.

Each candidate presented a nine-minute speech tweaking their opponent, caricaturing themselves and poking fun at the political process. Guests paid upwards of $2,500 per plate and the event raised an estimated $5 million for Roman Catholic charities.

Texas on the Potomac has wrangled up the top five one-liners from each candidate:

Mitt Romney

5. As President Obama surveys the Waldorf banquet room, with everyone in white tie and finery, you have to wonder what he’s thinking. ‘So little time, so much to redistribute.’

4. In the spirit of Sesame Street, the president’s remarks are brought to you tonight by the letter O and the number 16 trillion.

3. Don’t be surprised if the president mentions, this evening, the monthly jobs report, there was a slight improvement in the numbers. He knows how to seize a moment, this president, and already has a compelling new campaign slogan: ‘You’re better off now than you were four weeks ago.’

2. Campaigns can be grueling, exhausting. President Obama and I are both luck to have one person who’s always in our corner, some who we can always lean and someone who’s always a comforting presence without whom we wouldn’t be able to go another day. I have my beautiful wife, Ann. He has Bill Clinton.

1. Your kind hospitality here tonight gives me the chance to convey my deep and long-held respect for the Catholic church. I have special admiration for the apostle, St. Peter, to whom it is said ‘Upon this rock, I will build my church.’ The story is all the more inspiring when you consider that he had so many skeptics and scoffers at the time who were heard to say, ‘If you’ve got a church, you didn’t build that.’

Barack Obama

5. Earlier today I went shopping at some stores in midtown, it’s my understanding that Gov. Romney went shopping for some stores in midtown.

4. Monday’s debate is a little different because the topic is foreign policy. Spoiler alert: we got bin Laden.

3. Some of you know, I went to school here in New York, had a wonderful experience here. I used to love walking through Central Park, loved to go to old Yankee Stadium, the house that Ruth built, although he actually did not build that. I hope everyone is aware of that.

2. World affairs are a challenge for every candidate. Some of you guys remember, after my foreign trip in 2008 I was attacked for being a celebrity because I was so popular with our allies overseas. I have to say, I’m impressed at how well Gov. Romney has been able to avoid that problem.

1. Everybody take your seats, otherwise Clint Eastwood will yell at them.

Reversal of fortune: The Tweets talk Biden

Thursday, October 11, 2012 by:joelconnelly@seattlepi.com (Joel Connelly)
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If there was an undisputed winner in last night’s Joe Biden vs. Paul Ryan debate, it was moderator Martha Raddatz of ABC News.

Beyond that, the blunt, aggressive Joe Biden will be at the vortex of the debate-over-the-debate tonight and Friday, and on talk shows during the weekend, and when the next batch of polls roll in next week.

“Obama just called Biden and asked what coffee he uses,” tweeted comedian Albert Brooks.

Jon Ralston, Nevada’s premier political reporter, summed it up with this tweet:  “People who like Biden will think this is the greatest debate ever:  Folks who don’t will find him at his most obnoxious.”

The widest audience since 2008 saw last night what other Democratic candidates found out during endless debates among Democratic presidential candidates in late 2007 and early 2008.  Biden takes the argument to his opponent.

And, last night, commentators on the right — and the Republicans’ presidential nominee — were doing the grousing, very much as ldeft pundits were moaning after President Obama’s performance last week.

Dick Morris, the Romney victory soothsayer on FOX News, tweeted:  “Ryan sounds vague and double talking about withdrawal date (from Afghanistan) even though he is right.”

SuperPAC mastermind and “Bush’s Brain” Karl Rove groused at Biden’s aggressiveness talking about Social Security and the voucher plan that Ryan proposed in Congress to take the place of Medicare.

“Biden is out of control and Raddatz appears to have given up trying to rein him in.”

Mitt Romney was heard with old-school haughtiness in the new medium of Twitter.  “It is a shame that Joe Biden, our vice president, is conducting himself in such an unprofessional and rude manner,” the Republican nominee opined.

And this was from the guy who interrupted Jim Lehrer 30 TIMES in last week’s debate between the presidential candidates.

The question already debated, during the Biden-Ryan face off, was whether Biden was making points with his voice — e.g. forcing Ryan to admit he asked for stimulus dollars s — or losing support with his constant doubting facial expressions.

“Is Veep better talking than smiling:  Not sure the look he flashes is making this point as aptly as his words,” tweeted Scott Simon, the National Public Radio weekend host.

Albert Brooks delivered a qualified — and very funny — upbeat assessment of the Veep:  “I actually like Joe Biden even though when he smiles he reminds me of the guy that sold me my worst car.”

Republican nabobs were trying — hard — to reassure themselves that Joe was blowing it.  “Ryan: Serious, sober, steady, Biden: Smirking, mocking, immature,” tweeted senior Romney adviser Eric (“Etch-a-Sketch”) Fehrnstrom.

“Biden is too hot — not effective,” claimed former Bush press spokesman Ari Fleischer.

Nicholas Kristoff, the New York Times scribe, saw a subtle skill in the Biden performance:  “Biden is pretty good at being sarcastic and lacerating without coming across as nasty.”

Biden clearly accomplished one goal.  He re-energized the Democratic base and the pro-Democratic pundits of cable TV.  He was a fighter who used words like “malarky” and “bluster” and the inelegant phrase:  “This is a bunch of stuff.”

Biden even managed, during foreign policy talk, to ratchet down a notch and say:  “Lets calm down a little here.”  He registered strong positive marks among undecided voters watching CNN and recording their reactions to the candidates.

The tweeters at The Stranger, Seattle’s very left alternative newspaper, reacted to the Vice President’s debating skills with ecstasy, the emotion and not the drug.

“What a moment:  Biden makes Ryan admit he asked for stimulus dollars,” tweeted Markos Moulitsas, proprietor of the daily kos website, a secular political Bible for the nation’s liberals.

Why the moments?  The same aggressiveness that a blunt Biden was showing in Democratic candidate debates five years ago while Obama was coming across like the law professor he once was.

Again, however, Biden took it down a notch with a Catholic’s I-won’t-impose-my-view-on-others position on abortion.  “Most Catholics in America will side with Biden, I suspect,” wrote blogger, social conservative and fiscal liberal Andrew Sullivan.

Chris Kissel, a Seattle University grad and journalist, now working radio in New York, tweeted of Ryan’s response:  “Is it a moral obligation to make moral choices for others?”

The objective?   “Pretty clear that Biden’s strategy tonight is to do everything Democrats wish Obama did last week,” tweeted Ezra Klein, the New York Times pundit tracking day-by-day developments in the 2012 presidential race.

An opposing view:  “Weird, inappropriate and condescending,” said Monica Crowley, an aide to former President Richard Nixon during his last years of self-rehabilitation.

Nixon knew a thing or two about losing a debate.

Santorum: Gay marriage will destroy church, family

Wednesday, October 10, 2012 by:joelconnelly@seattlepi.com (Joel Connelly)
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Ex-Sen. Rick Santorum entered the campaign against same-sex marriage in Washington state on Tuesday with an apocalyptic warning about its potential consequences on America’s families and churches.

The former Republican presidential candidate spoke to a closed-door Spokane fundraiser for the Family Policy Institute of Washington.  He was preceded to the podium by U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers, a leader in Mitt Romney’s state campaign and member of the House Republican leadership.

“This is a turning point in American history and, yes, the state of Washington,” Santorum argued.  A video of Santorum’s address was obtained by SeattlePI.com.

“The movement you are fighting is the most important movement to win,” Santorum added.  He said it is even more important that the movement to block abortion in America.  He warned that marriage will “disintegrate” along with the American family if same-sex marriage becomes legal.

“This issue will destroy and undermine the church in American more than any other movement,” said Santorum.

Washington, Maryland and Maine are voting on marriage equality in November.  No state has ever approved same-sex marriage at the polls, but opinion polls in all three states have shown marriage equality in the lead.

Joseph Backholm, head of the Family Policy Institute of Washington, is the chief spokesman against Referendum 74, the measure which would make Washington the seventh state to adopt marriage equality.

Opponents are “on the side of truth,” Santorum told his audience, “You folks are in the front line.  You folks are in the foxhole.”

Supporters of marriage equality have amassed an $8.9 million campaign war chest.   They have aired TV spots featuring Methodist and United Church of Christ ministers.  A group of 63 former Roman Catholic priests is scheduled to endorse Referendum 74 at a Thursday morning news conference.

As in California four years ago, hover, opponents are rallying late in the campaign.  They have reserved $1.5 million in TV time.  The Catholic Bishop of Yakima, the Rt. Rev. Joseph Tyson, issued a pastoral letter on Referendum 74, claiming:  “It endangers our religious liberty and the right of conscience.”

A longtime critic of gay rights — he even raised the issue of bestiality after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling that threw out Texas’ anti-sodomy law — Santorum charged that foes of marriage equality are being “cast as bigots.”

In Santorum’s words, “a secular revolution, a Godless revolution” has swept across every Western European country, which he said “is why they are declining.”

The revolution threatens to cross the pond, he argued.  If successful, it will “destroy the institutions of America’s foundation, destroy the American family,” Santorum said.

The former Republican presidential candidate noted that the percentage of Americans who are married has declined from 72 percent to 51 percent in recent years.

He talked of a movement of “normalization, acceptance, tolerance” of the gay/lesbian lifestyle that has grown up since the mid to late 1990′s, aided by “elites” and the “popular culture.”

“This will be the norm in America,” he said.  “This is what you are fighting.  You are on the front lines.”

63 ex-Catholic priests in Washingon: We back gay marriage

Monday, October 8, 2012 by:joelconnelly@seattlepi.com (Joel Connelly)
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Sixty-three former Roman Catholic priests in Washington state will announce on Thursday that they support Referendum 74, which would make Washington the nation’s seventh state to legalize marriage between same-sex couples.

The stand comes as the state’s four Catholic bishops intensify a campaign of pastoral statements and videos urging parishoners to vote against marriage equality.

In the latest pastoral letter,  Bishop Joseph J. Tyson of the Diocese of Yakima told his 41 parishes that Referendum 74 “jeopardizes freedom rather than expands it” and “endangers our religious liberty and the rights of conscience.”

“Once marriage is redefined as a genderless contract, it will become legally discriminatory for public and private institutions such as schools to promote the unique meaning of marriage . . .This law will challenge our right to educate about the unique value of children being raised by his or her own mother and father in a stable home,” Tyson wrote.

The 63 former priests, with collectively more than 800 years of service to the Church, beg to differ.

“We are uneasy with the aggressive efforts of Catholic bishops to oppose R-74 and want to support the 71 percent of Catholics (Public Religion Research Institute) who support civil marriage for gays as a valid Catholic position,” they said in a statement.

Former priest Pat Callahan, who organized the statement, added:  “This is the first public action we’ve taken.”  Callahan was in the Catholic priesthood for 15 years.

Washington, Maryland and Maine will vote on marriage equality this November.  Minnesota is voting on a constitutional amendment that would enshrine marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman.

The ex-priests in Washington are taking a lesson from the playbook of their counterparts in Minnesota.

Minneapolis-St. Paul Archbishop John Nienstedt has warned any active priests opposing the gay marriage ban to keep their feelings to themselves.  With no threat of ecclesiastical retaliation, three retired priests and dozens of former priests have made public statements against the proposed amendment.

In Washington, ecclesiastical shepherds are finding a lot of trouble herding their flocks.

Same-sex marriage legislation passed last winter.  It was championed by Gov. Christine Gregoire, a Catholic:  Its chief legislative sponsor was State Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, a practicing Catholic and long-partnered gay.

A group called Catholics for Marriage Equality-Washington was prominent in Seattle’s Pride Day march last June.

Several major Catholic parishes — including Seattle’s St. James Cathedral — refused Archbishop J. Peter Sartain’s request to serve as collection center for petitions to force a vote on same-sex marriage.

With same-sex marriage fueled by an $8.5 million campaign warchest, the Catholic bishops are taking their case to the pews.

“Although our surrounding popular culture may define human identity by the terms ‘gay’ and ‘straight,’ our church has a deeper and more accurate understanding of human identity based on male and female — sexual difference,” Tyson argued.

The bishop, a young and outspoken conservative, wrote of “recent attacks on churches, businesses and nonprofit organizations that express their conscientious objection to the redefinition of marriage.”

Tyson even published a picture of his mother and father at their marriage more than a half-century ago.

“I opened this letter with a wedding picture of my parents,” he wrote.  “I close by asking you to consider what kind of picture of marriage you desire to give to the next generation.  If you and I don’t uphold marriage as the union of a man and a woman, who will?”

Washington’s faith community is divided over same-sex marriage.  Episcopal Bishop Gregory Rickel has endorsed Referendum 74 as a “conservative proposal” consistent with basic Christian teaching and the Christian life.  Two prominent Methodist pastors appear in TV ads backing marriage equality.

Catholics for Marriage Equality, in a statement this weekend, said:  “We are shocked when we read the language and examples used by our bishops to incite fear in our Catholic brothers and sisters if Referendum 74 passes.  The message of Jesus is love and compassion, not fear.”

Same-sex marriage has never won a statewide vote, although Washington voters approved civil unions in a 2009 referendum.

But the statewide Elway Poll last week pegged support for Referendum 74 at 57 percent.