The University of Notre Dame invited President Barack Obama and Catholics were stunned. Georgetown honored HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Catholics everywhere were horrified.
Meghan Myers, the Executive Director of the annual fundraiser for Catholic Charities, told LifeSiteNews that U.S. President Barack Obama was invited to keynote the Al Smith dinner by New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
And for the life of me I can’t see why Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s invitation to President Obama to the Al Smith dinner is any different. I know the Church isn’t honoring Obama but come on. Right on the home page of the Al Smith event is this picture:
Horrifyingly, you can go to the Al Smith foundation right from the Archdiocesan website
and then just click on “dinner” and you’ll see this pic.
Why is this invitation different than Notre Dame or Georgetown’s invitations? You can say that it has nothing to do with politics and that it’s a fundraiser for children but didn’t Georgetown and Notre Dame say that it wasn’t about politics and that it was all about the students?
I’ve been to two religious freedom rallies with my kids in Philadelphia. I traveled down to Baltimore for the kickoff Mass of The Fortnight for Freedom with Archbishop Lori. And yeah, this ticks me off.
When millions of Catholics who prayed and protested for religious freedom see the pictures that will surely surface from the event with Cardinal Dolan and Obama how will they feel? Pray tell what will that do to the morale of millions of Catholics? What will that do to the pit of their stomachs?
It’s just unserious. We can say it’s all for a good cause. But its just unserious. Either those 50 million babies count as human beings or they don’t. Either marriage is worth fighting for or it’s not. Either religious freedom must be preserved or not. To say we’re taking a “time out” from politics a few weeks before election day is just unserious. And it says to millions of Catholics that we can take a time out from those important issues to yuck it up. I hope and pray that this invitation is rescinded. I’m serious.
