– I don’t think much of President Obama but sometimes he even shocks me with what he’s willing to say.
CNS News reports that President Obama whose administration is being sued by multiple Catholic dioceses, universities, charities and family-owned businesses for violating their religious liberty, told a group of Muslims dining at the White House on Friday that freedom of religion is “foremost” among the God-given rights of man and that he intends to defend it both within the United States and abroad.
“Of all the freedoms we cherish as Americans, of all the rights that we hold sacred, foremost among them is freedom of religion, the right to worship as we choose,” said Obama.
Rhetoric and actions have absolutely nothing to do with each other. It’s almost like he’s just reading these words off a teleprompter or something.
August 14, 2012 at 4:57 pm
Yet he narrowly defines religion as only worship.
August 14, 2012 at 4:59 pm
the right to worship as we choose
There it is, and no need to be surprised. He wants to (re)define "freedom of religion" exclusively as "freedom to worship," stripping from the right any allowance for conscience or living one's faith.
August 14, 2012 at 5:10 pm
No, no, no (finger-wagging): It's not the freedom to *worship* as we please; it's the freedom to *PRACTICE* our religion as we please. Worship means that we can think our nice thoughts in church but to practice means to engage our society. (Mr. O doesn't think we notice . . .)
August 14, 2012 at 5:39 pm
Obama is working on a Communists' or Secularists' view of religion – very much akin to superstition. He has no notion of the rights of the Divine or the followers of God in the public square. He is suffering from a split-level theodicy, an ecclectic but compartmentalized zeitgeist hence devoid of an integration of faith and morals. He goes to Church on Sunday then would let his grandchildren be aborted on Monday. (Funny how a Harvard man can make such lame assertions. Did he by chance have a proxy in Harvard too? But I digressed.)
August 14, 2012 at 5:50 pm
Mr Liar in Chief tells people what he thinks they want to hear, then does what he wants. I can't believe the Muslims believed him.
August 14, 2012 at 8:35 pm
My first very cynical thought was, he tells the Catholics that they can't "impose" their religion in the secular world, but he tells the Muslims that freedom of religion is the foremost right. Uh-huh.
August 14, 2012 at 9:29 pm
Perhaps he is trying to inject humor – it's definitely a laughable statement.
August 15, 2012 at 1:04 am
Lenin promised the 79 who fomented the Bolshevic revolt that they would have freedom of religion. After the Czar was assassinated, the revolutionaries came to Lenin and Lenin laughed them out of his office. “Useful idiots” Lenin called them. In Russia, freedom of religion was granted to all who wanted to worship in church. The communists tore every church down within the whole of Russia. America has FREEDOM OF THE SOVEREIGN PERSON WHO ARE THE CONSTITUENTS OF OBAMA TO WORSHIP GOD, to worship God, to speak to God, to write about God and to assemble peaceably in response to God. This truly what the First Amendment to our Constitution really means. It is all about God. And the freedom from God. Obama was not elected, nor was Obama constituted to REDEFINE or REWRITE our “self-evident” truths. Let us not be “useful idiots”. VOTE FOR ROMNEY, RYAN at least these two men speak the same language as the common man, the rich, the poor and the holy.
August 15, 2012 at 1:10 am
…as opposed to THIS guy…
;D
Pax Christi,
Jeff H.
August 15, 2012 at 11:56 am
Obama does know that "freedom of worship" automatically screws Buddhists, right? Since, while Buddhism is a series of practices and beliefs…it has no worship whatsoever? (Strictly speaking, I suppose, one might choose to define their various ceremonial reverences toward the Buddhas as worship—but Buddhists take as much umbrage with that as Catholics do with the assertion we worship the saints.)
Then again, I doubt Obama cares, given his treatment of Chinese human-rights protesters (and for that matter, the Dalai Lama).