Why is Obama uniting Catholics?

It’s darn near impossible to unite this country’s 77 million liberal and conservative Catholics, but Obama has done this with his mandate through HHS that Catholic health care institutions and colleges (and other religious groups, mostly Christian) must provide contraception and abortifacients (also Plan B, morning after, etc.) in their insurance plans. We’re not stupid, sir. We know requiring them to perform abortions will be the next step—we’ve been watching how liberals do this inch by inch since by the yard it’s hard. And then it will be no prayers in the hospitals because it might offend their non-Christian patients!

Three years ago the liberal Catholics were all kissy face at Notre Dame with him as he assured his Catholic hosts that he would do nothing but respect their religious beliefs. He used the event to promote embryonic stem cell research, even though adult stem cell was the big news in medicine without a single success for embryonic. He used it as an opportunity to thumb his nose at the pro-life movement. Liberals let it slide—they had his promises about their precious institutional authority. Big Whoop! Then the Supreme Court, even with his liberal appointees decided 9-0 in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, that religious institutions have rights, too. The justices ruled that religious workers may not sue on the basis of job discrimination if it’s in the best interest of that institution that they not be employed. (The end result of going the other way would be Christian churches could be required to hire Muslims, and conservatives and Catholics forced to hire women pastors.) The knives have come out.

President Obama isn’t responsible for the declining membership of the churches—that’s been going on since the 60s—and the church has no one but itself to blame for catering to the culture and ignoring the gospel--but he seems to hope to be the one to make the church as helpless and weak as it is in Europe. Now with the rest of us, the liberal Catholics have had to wise up.

From the beginning of his candidacy, I have defended Obama as a Christian. I said he was a convert, not a Muslim; I read his testimony given at a UCC conference long before he became a candidate. It sounded heart felt and authentic. I said he can’t be held accountable for the sins of Rev. Wright. But as pointed out in the Gospel of Luke, even the demons know Jesus is the Christ—they knew before the general public did--they just don’t worship him. This action of the Obama Administration in an election year is so bizarre, so antagonistic to the largest Christian group in America, that it’s hard to any longer cling to this fragile evidence that he has any intention other than destroying Christianity.

Not only is he uniting Catholics, but conservative fundamentalist Christians are with them who’ve probably never stepped inside a Catholic church, and will be joining them in legal cases. So why would he do this, unite Christians against him, in an election year? Is the cost of law suits going to take money away from conservatives running against him? Will it divert attention, even temporarily, about his reelection? Have you got an explanation?