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Know Nothings

Know Nothings

 

 

Christopher Johnson, a non-Catholic who has taken up the cudgels in defense of the Church so frequently that I have named him Defender of the Faith, has a memorable fisk at his blog Midwest Conservative Journal of Jamie Stiehm’s anti-Catholic rant, that I fisked here.  Here is Christopher’s fisk:

 

In a case involving the Little Sisters of the Poor, US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotamayor recently issued a temporary stay against the implementation of that DemocraticPartyCare provision that forces religious entities that consider it to be a grave sin to pay for their employees’ birth control or to facilitate such payment.

I’m not a lawyer but I imagine that Supreme Court justices issue these sorts of stays all the time against quite a few laws for a variety of procedural reasons.  These justices may eventually find that these laws are entirely constitutional while nevertheless insisting that everything be done decently and in good legal order.

But that’s not how Jamie Stiehm saw it in Useless News & World Distort.  According to Stiehm, Sonia Sotamayor is not a leftist “wise Latina” but a Vatican Trojan horse:

Et tu, Justice Sonia Sotomayor? Really, we can’t trust you on women’s health and human rights? The lady from the Bronx just dropped the ball on American women and girls as surely as she did the sparkling ball at midnight on New Year’s Eve in Times Square. Or maybe she’s just a good Catholic girl.

And we’re off.  Get yourselves something good to drink, folks, because this is going to be a wild ride.

The Supreme Court is now best understood as the Extreme Court. One big reason why is that six out of nine Justices are Catholic.

What should Obama do about it?  Declare war on the Papal States or something?

Let’s be forthright about that. (The other three are Jewish.) Sotomayor, appointed by President Obama, is a Catholic who put her religion ahead of her jurisprudence. What a surprise, but that is no small thing.

A hundy says Jamie’s an Episcopalian.  That issue-a-result-I-don’t-like-and-you’ve-put-your-religion-ahead-of-your-jurisprudence take is a dead giveaway.

In a stay order applying to an appeal by a Colorado nunnery, the Little Sisters of the Poor,

Kind of like saying that St. Peter’s is just another Roman parish church but do go on.

Justice Sotomayor undermined the new Affordable Care Act’s sensible policy on contraception. She blocked the most simple of rules – lenient rules – that required the Little Sisters to affirm their religious beliefs against making contraception available to its members. They objected to filling out a one-page form. What could be easier than nuns claiming they don’t believe in contraception?

Might that have something to do with the fact that most people figured out a long time ago that the United States government has absolutely no business whatsofreakingever issuing ANY rules about religious doctrine to any religious groups at all because of that First Amendment doohickey, you simple-minded bucket of spit?

Sotomayor’s blow brings us to confront an uncomfortable reality. More than WASPS, Methodists, Jews, Quakers or Baptists, Catholics often try to impose their beliefs on you, me, public discourse and institutions. Especially if “you” are female.

This explains why capital punishment in this country is rare to non-existent these days and why this country’s had universal health care for decades now.

This is not true of all Catholics – just look at House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.

An EWDKIY (an Episcopalian Who Doesn’t Know It Yet).  Then there’s the fact that Sotomayor’s a sex traitor. 

But right now, the climate is so cold when it comes to defending our settled legal ground that Sotomayor’s stay is tantamount to selling out the sisterhood. And sisterhood is not as powerful as it used to be, ladies.

At the rate she’s going, Stiehm should break out “greaser” real soon.

Catholics in high places of power have the most trouble, I’ve noticed, practicing the separation of church and state. The pugnacious Catholic Justice, Antonin Scalia, is the most aggressive offender on the Court, but not the only one. Of course, we can’t know for sure what Sotomayor was thinking, but it seems she has joined the ranks of the five Republican Catholic men on the John Roberts Court in showing a clear religious bias when it comes to women’s rights and liberties. We can no longer be silent about this. Thomas Jefferson, the principal champion of the separation between state and church, was thinking particularly of pernicious Rome in his writings. He deeply distrusted the narrowness of Vatican hegemony.

It says up at the top of the link that Jamie’s “a weekly Creators Syndicate columnist.”  And it’s facts like that one and paragraphs like the previous one that make me wonder about God sometimes.  Why should someone that bonecrushingly stupid have a syndicated column while I have to blow through my father’s inheritance just to pay rent, put food on the table and keep the heat going?

Here’s a historical question for you, Jamie.  Do you know what group basically motivated all of Jefferson’s various proposals for religious liberty, against official church establishment, for the seperation of church and state and all the rest of it? 

I’ll give you a hint; amazingly, it wasn’t the Roman Catholics.  There weren’t that many of them around here back then.  It was the Anglicans, the ancestors of that pseudo-spiritual entity that’s currently run by a woman and that’s suing people out of their meeting houses because of what they believe.  Starts with an E, I think.

The seemingly innocent Little Sisters likely were likely not acting alone in their trouble-making.

DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!

Their big brothers, the meddlesome American Roman Catholic Archbishops are bound to be involved. They seek and wield tremendous power and influence in the political sphere.

Yeah, sure they do.  There should be a “Whore of Babylon” along any second now.

Big city mayors know their penchant for control all too well. Their principal target for years on end has been squelching women and girls – even when they should have focused on their own men and boys.

You do realize what you’re implying there, don’t you, Jamie? 

In one stroke with ominous implications, there’s no such thing as Catholic justice or mercy for women on the Supreme Court, not even from a woman. The rock of Rome refuses to budge on women’s reproductive rights and the Supreme Court is getting good and ready to strike down Roe v. Wade, which became the law of the land 40 years ago.

Really?  I’ll take your word for it.  But exactly how a Supreme Court decision can become the “law of the land,” since the Supreme Court doesn’t pass laws but only rules on their constitutionality, completely escapes me.

The Anchoress has a far better evisceration of this idiocy than mine so be sure to check it out.  Thanks to Fuinseoig for the heads-up.

Go here to read the comments.  While you are over there you might wish to hit the Paypal button and throw in a few dollars.   Christopher is a librarian in his fifties and recently unemployed, due to the downsizing going on with most libraries.  I would appreciate it if you could all pray that he will find employment commensurate with his talents.  He is in the Saint Louis area and if any of you are in a position to recommend a good librarian for a position, please keep him in mind.

 

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anzlyne
anzlyne
Thursday, January 9, AD 2014 12:01pm

“This explains why capital punishment in this country is rare to non-existent these days and why this country’s had universal health care for decades now.”
Reminds me to ask does anyone know where there is a great short list of Catholic contributions to American government

Jon
Jon
Thursday, January 9, AD 2014 2:57pm

While there are no easy answers to politics and economics, Christians can bring Scripture to bear upon these aspects of life. I do believe governments have the right to practice capital punishment. I do not beleive they must do so, however. We are not bound by Old Testament law, obviously, and we certainly wouldn’t want to transfer Old Testamnet law wholesale. We are not under that dispensation, which was assigned to Israel as a nation. But we can glean insihgts from GOd’s laws to discern righ from wrong and to get a sense of what is just. Reflecting upon O. T. law, I consider that universal healthcare and regard for society’s welfare in general is a good thing. But we must decide, in practical and relevant ways, how to implement all of this in our own context.

trackback
Friday, January 10, AD 2014 12:02am

[…] Shaw, CWReport How To Be A Biblical Literalist – JoAnna Wahlund, Catholic Stand The Know Nothing Jamie Stiehm – D. R. McClarey JD, TACatholic What I Thought of Sheryl Sandberg’s, “Lean In” – M. […]

Nancy D.
Nancy D.
Saturday, January 11, AD 2014 8:37am

If it is true that The Supreme Court is getting ready to strike down Roe v. Wade, it is because they recognize the self-evident truth, that we, every son or daughter of a human person, were created before we came forth from the womb, or became “viable”. From the moment of conception, nothing is added to or subtracted from the DNA of the son or daughter residing in their mother’s womb, thus from the moment of our conception, every son or daughter of a human person is wholly human; a human person can only conceive a human person.

Mary De Voe
Saturday, January 11, AD 2014 11:11am

“I do believe governments have the right to practice capital punishment. I do not beleive they must do so, however.”
“But when a man kills another after maliciously scheming to do so, you must take him even from my altar (compassion, mercy) and put him to death.” Exodus 21:14 Capital One Homicide. Premeditated murder. The condemned murderer must expire with grief over his crime. The victim’s innocence is impugned. Did the victim deserve to be put to death? The victim’s life is taken from him. The victim’s innocence must be vindicated. The only way to ban capital punishment, the death penalty, for capital one murder is to expunge homicide.

Mary De Voe
Saturday, January 11, AD 2014 11:47am

“From the moment of conception, nothing is added to or subtracted from the DNA of the son or daughter residing in their mother’s womb, thus from the moment of our conception, every son or daughter of a human person is wholly human; a human person can only conceive a human person.”
DNA is scientific proof that a newly begotten sovereign person is a member of the human race, an individual substance of a rational nature according to St. Thomas Aquinas. The will to live of the human soul is the state’s right to life. Dead things do not need abortion. The burden of proof that the new person was not a person was never met by Sarah Weddington, the attorney of Roe.
Nancy D. I really appreciated your calling the new persons sons and daughters.
Isaiah 43:6-10 “Bring back my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth: everyone who is named as mine, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.
Lead out the people who are blind though they have eyes, who are deaf though they have ears.
Let all the nations gather together, let the people assemble!
Who among them could have revealed this, or foretold to us the earlier things?
Let them produce witnesses to prove themselves right, that one may hear and say: “It is true!”
You are my witnesses, says the Lord, my servants whom I have chosen to know and believe in me and understand that it is I.
Isaiah 50:4c-9a
“If anyone wishes to oppose me, let us appear together. Who disputes my right? Let that man confront me. See, the Lord God is my help; who will prove me wrong?
If anyone wishes to oppose me, let us appear together. Who disputes my right? Let that man confront me.” : Habeas Corpus, a person must be confronted by his accuser in a court of law. No trials in absentia. “See, the Lord God is my help; who will prove me wrong?” Two witnesses will establish a judicial fact. One witness is no witness. The Magna Carta and The U.S. Constitution based on Judeo-Christian principles found in Isaiah.

Jack Benedict
Jack Benedict
Saturday, January 11, AD 2014 11:50am

Last time I checked (which was some time ago) US News was owned by Morton Zuckerman. He owns Atlantic Monthly also which a few years ago (the last time I was reading it) often ran articles insulting to faithful Catholics. It was clear that there was an agenda then. I suspect there still is.

anzlyne
anzlyne
Saturday, January 11, AD 2014 12:24pm

Yes there is an agenda!
Zuckerman is betraying our Judeo Christian heritage.
The Know Nothings haven’t learned much in the last 148 years (going by the date on the marker pictured at the top of this post).
You might call them the “Stubbornly Know Even Less”, refusing to grow and learn despite all the great ecumenical efforts, the communications set forth by people of good will from so many truly earnest religious people. Some people refuse the truth.

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