Obama is not a Friend of Catholics

You can understand that the liberal Catholics would want to find a way to support Barack Obama.  After all, he believes in a lot of the same stuff they do: social justice, and solidarity.  So it's not surprising that they would support Obama in 2008.

But now they are finding out that Obama isn't returning the compliment.  William McGurn in The Wall Street Journal:

Now, suddenly, we have headlines about the president's "war on the Catholic Church." Mostly they stem from a Health and Human Services mandate that forces every employer to provide employees with health coverage that not only covers birth control and sterilization, but makes them free. Predictably, the move has drawn fire from the Catholic bishops.

Less predictable—and far more interesting—has been the heat from the Catholic left, including many who have in the past given the president vital cover. In a post for the left-leaning National Catholic Reporter, Michael Sean Winter minces few words. Under the headline "J'ACCUSE," he rightly takes the president to the woodshed for the politics of the decision, for the substance, and for how "shamefully" it treats "those Catholics who went out on a limb" for him.

The problem is that under ObamaCare Catholic charities will have to provide health insurance with birth control and sterilization.  No exemption.  No opt out.  Which rather signals that Obama and his crew aren't interested in helping their liberal friends in the Catholic Church.

McGurn says that this is a shame.

Conservatives may enjoy the problems this creates for Mr. Obama this election year. Still, for those who care about issues such as life and marriage and religious liberty that so roil our body politic, we ought to wish Catholic progressives well in their intra-liberal fight. For we shall never arrive at the consensus we hope for if we allow our politics to be divided between a party of faith and a party of animosity to faith.

 Of course, this rather misunderstands the problem.  Our politics is not divided "between a party of faith and a party of animosity to faith."  Our politics is divided between a party of transcendental faith and a party of secular faith.  On this view the liberal Catholics are fools to be supporting the party of secular faith.  Unless, of course, their real faith is the secular faith of big government and the subordination of civil society to the political sector.  Either way, liberals don't like any civil society organizations that are not subordinate to the liberal establishment, and they work, every day, to marginalize them and subordinate them to political power.

It's my view that the election this year is going to be a lot bigger than we think.  Because our mainstream media is so liberal, the discomfort with Barack Obama is still inchoate.  As the Republicans begin to campaign more vigorously against the president and get more bandwidth, I think we will see the needle start to move against the president.  When it does, our liberal friends will be shocked.  They will go into denial. They will not be able to deal with it.