Obama's day: National Prayer Breakfast

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I think that Pres. Obama’s main goal was to differentiate peace-loving Muslims from the terrorist, jihadist murderers. I don’t believe he intentionally planned to insult Catholics. However, his comparison was quite misguided and I can fully understand and appreciate the sensitive response of Catholics and other Christians elicited by his remarks. If he had made a similar comment about Jews, many in the Jewish community would have been up in arms as well.
 
meltzerboy said:
I think that Pres. Obama’s main goal was to differentiate peace-loving Muslims from the terrorist, jihadist murderers. I don’t believe he intentionally planned to insult Catholics. However, his comparison was quite misguided and I can fully understand and appreciate the sensitive response of Catholics and other Christians elicited by his remarks. If he had made a similar comment about Jews, many in the Jewish community would have been up in arms as well.
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Great observation, Meltzerboy. I agree. President Obama…know not what he said.

However I must comment on your term “peace-loving Muslims”.

There were “peace-loving” Germans who stood by while non-peace-loving Germans slaughtered innocent peace-loving people.

There were peace-loving Russians who watched while other peace-loving Russians were
imprisoned, tortured and slaughtered.

There were peace-loving Japanese who stood by while peace-loving Chinese were slaughtered.

These “peace-loving people” did NOTHING to stop the evil that was perpetuated in their name. In short…if there really is such a thing as a "peace-loving-Muslim…they better show themselves and do something about the terrorists who bear their name.
 
meltzerboy said:
I think that Pres. Obama’s main goal was to differentiate peace-loving Muslims from the terrorist, jihadist murderers. I don’t believe he intentionally planned to insult Catholics. However, his comparison was quite misguided and I can fully understand and appreciate the sensitive response of Catholics and other Christians elicited by his remarks. If he had made a similar comment about Jews, many in the Jewish community would have been up in arms as well.
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I had a teacher once, who explained the holocaust away with a reminder that Jews used the skins of Romans they killed in a Roman rebellion to make purses and wallets.
The message came through loud and clear enough that Jews had no reason to complain or take a moral high ground over Germans, because when the tables were turned two thousand years before, Jews acted pretty much the same way.

The difference between that teacher and Obama is that the teacher lost every election he ran in, whereas liberals in America have elected and re-elected Obama time and time again.
 
meltzerboy said:
I think that Pres. Obama’s main goal was to differentiate peace-loving Muslims from the terrorist, jihadist murderers. I don’t believe he intentionally planned to insult Catholics. However, his comparison was quite misguided and I can fully understand and appreciate the sensitive response
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Right, highly charged blunder word, and the right radicals are up in arms. I never realized they are so radical.
Obama’s main goal was to differentiate peace-loving Muslims from the terrorist, jihadist murderers.
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And to remind the left and right to remain rooted in humility.
 
Obama allowed the comparison, he will have to accept the Islam and Isis implications. Which is the point which we have to reach to address the evil of Isis and its likes and how it developed within Islam. We need to counter the ideology not engage in senseless equivalence. But this senseless equivalence is historically of Islam and Christianity and now the criminal aspect of Islamic theology. Political Islam created this monster within themselves called Isis. There is a window of opportunity now as we see in Jordan and in Egypt to engage reformists to encourage internal change within Islam. Thats a good thing.
 
estesbob said:
dailycaller.com/2015/02/07/people-committed-terrible-deeds-in-the-name-of-democrats/
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Yes, the author makes a good point. Fair is fair. The Democratic Party of the 1800’s up until the 1920’s had some shameful ideas regarding slavery and discrimination against African Americans. Although not all Democratic leaders agreed with this, there is no doubt that it existed. The Ku Klux Klan was connected to the Democrats, primarily the so-called Dixiecrats, and NOT the Republicans. The Solid South could be counted on to vote against liberal causes.

However, my conclusions are slightly different from those of the author. While it is true that the past is the past and cannot be undone (although historians are rather found of reinterpreting past events due to the emergence of new information and the application of old biases) and that what is going on now should be our primary focus, I take from Obama’s talk that NONE of us–Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, Christian, Jew, or Muslim–has a monopoly on ethical behavior, good will towards others, and righteousness. I think THAT is the point Obama was trying, albeit clumsily and in a poorly-worded manner, to make in his talk at the national prayer breakfast. I also believe that those who say otherwise are not focusing enough on the INTENT of the speech but rather on the distasteful “food” which was served.
 
meltzerboy said:
Yes, the author makes a good point. Fair is fair. The Democratic Party of the 1800’s up until the 1920’s had some shameful ideas regarding slavery and discrimination against African Americans. Although not all Democratic leaders agreed with this, there is no doubt that it existed. The Ku Klux Klan was connected to the Democrats, primarily the so-called Dixiecrats, and NOT the Republicans. The Solid South could be counted on to vote against liberal causes.

.
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Up until the 20s??? How about up until this century-they had a former leader of the KKK as a Senator up until a couple of years ago. The Democrats are the ones who tried to scuttle the Civil Rights acts and the Voting rights acts. And Democrat policies have done more harm and killed more blacks than the KKK did in their wildest dreams.

More evil has been done by Democrats support of “choice” in the last 40 years than the deaths caused by Christianity in its 2,000 years of existence. But I doubt we will see the President making that comparison.
 
PeopleB4Things said:
I’ve never advocated abandoning our church’s teachings. I am after all an RE teacher. But I’m sympathetic when people point out that for all the intensive religious, moral and ethical training/counseling our priests received, it made no difference in the outcome. I do not know the reason for the failure. But because we don’t have a solution, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t acknowledge, research, highlight and put a lot of effort in determining our points of failure on this. We owe it to every child who suffered the pain and shame of rape in our rectories, in our pews, in our sacristies. It’s the only way we can figure this out. Finding the cause and correcting the problem is my expectation, my hope. And I would venture to say that most of my fellow parishioners feel that we all need to be better than good enough when it comes to this particular issue.
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What exactly, leads you to believe that it is not being acknowledged, researched, or that effort is not being put into it? You seem to be advancing a theory that nothing practical is being done, and I would like to see the evidence which causes this belief. If it is because the progress is not to your liking, then take a number. It is a difficult problem.
 
estesbob said:
dailycaller.com/2015/02/07/people-committed-terrible-deeds-in-the-name-of-democrats/
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Most liberals would say that whatever the sins of past Democrats, what’s relevant is where the party stands today. The same is true for the president’s history lesson: whatever sins have historically been committed in the name of Christianity, ISIS is setting people on fire right now.
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The United States abolished slavery in 1865. ISIS still practices it.
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Yes, we should resist the urge to dehumanize or make enemies of all Muslims. The Jordanian pilot brutally murdered by ISIS was a Muslim. His countrymen who are risking their lives in the fight against ISIS are Muslims.
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But we should also acknowledge that some of the things jihadists fight for, such as the death penalty for apostates, have much more popular support in the contemporary Muslim world than Timothy McVeigh, the Olympic bomber, the Ku Klux Klan or abortion clinic bombers enjoy in the United States.
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Obama has obfuscated consistently the full nature of the enemy we are faced with.
 
meltzerboy said:
Yes, the author makes a good point. Fair is fair. The Democratic Party of the 1800’s up until the 1920’s had some shameful ideas regarding slavery and discrimination against African Americans. Although not all Democratic leaders agreed with this, there is no doubt that it existed. The Ku Klux Klan was connected to the Democrats, primarily the so-called Dixiecrats, and NOT the Republicans. The Solid South could be counted on to vote against liberal causes.

However, my conclusions are slightly different from those of the author. While it is true that the past is the past and cannot be undone (although historians are rather found of reinterpreting past events due to the emergence of new information and the application of old biases) and that what is going on now should be our primary focus, I take from Obama’s talk that NONE of us–Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, Christian, Jew, or Muslim–has a monopoly on ethical behavior, good will towards others, and righteousness. I think THAT is the point Obama was trying, albeit clumsily and in a poorly-worded manner, to make in his talk at the national prayer breakfast. I also believe that those who say otherwise are not focusing enough on the INTENT of the speech but rather on the distasteful “food” which was served.
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That is a valid point. I suppose the same point could be made that none of us, Jew or Nazi, has a monopoly on ethical behavior.

It depends on how far one is willing to go down this road of moral equivalence, I guess.
 
sps49 said:
What exactly, leads you to believe that it is not being acknowledged, researched, or that effort is not being put into it? You seem to be advancing a theory that nothing practical is being done, and I would like to see the evidence which causes this belief. If it is because the progress is not to your liking, then take a number. It is a difficult problem.
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I guess we need to just stop trying to make ourselves look better by saying that we have the same rate of abuse as secular and other religious groups. It just makes us look as ineffective as everyone else when it comes to plowing a better road.
 
Zoltan_Cobalt said:
It was evaluated and solved…homosexuals are not admitted into Seminaries.
Code: 
"Regarding the Document of the Congregation for Catholic Education, 'Instruction concerning the criteria for the discernment of vocations with regard to persons with homosexual tendencies in view of their admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders', published by the same Dicastery on November 4, 2005, and following numerous requests of clarification made to the Apostolic See, it is clarified that the dispositions contained in said Instruction are valid for all the Formation Houses for the priesthood, including the ones which are linked to the Dicasteries for Oriental Churches [Seminaries of Eastern Churches], for the Evangelization of Peoples [Seminaries in Mission areas], and for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life [Seminaries of Religious Orders].

"The Supreme Pontiff approved this clarification on the 8th of April of the year of the Lord of 2008."
Published in today’s edition of L’Osservatore Romano

As an RE teacher I would think you should be aware of these things and would defend the Church accordingly.

Also things like the Inquisition, Crusades and the child abuse scandal do not justify the burning alive of a pilot. Wrongs do not make rights.
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I have never defended the burning of a pilot by ISIS. I would venture to say that ISIS’s claim to kill, torture and rape in the name of their god is much like our claims in the past. Thank goodness we have come so far since then. I can’t imagine Jesus smiling approvingly as we killed Muslims during the Crusades. I only hope ISIS realizes, very soon, that their god is not the blood thirsty monster their actions are making him out to be.

As far as weeding out homosexuals from the priesthood, that’s no answer. And that’s why I think we have not really put much effort or research into this. We know from various studies that homosexuals are less likely, not more likely than heterosexuals, to engage in inappropriate acts with children. Maybe if we weeded out the heterosexual priests, I’d give them some credit for trying but even that does not really fix the problem, does it? If a pedophile wants into the priesthood so badly, he could easily lie his way through any evaluations.

But I do think you are on to something. I would suspect that the priesthood is the ultimate destination for a person struggling with inappropriate thoughts. By going into a profession that demands a suppression of those feelings, one may feel like he’ll be better able to control them. Some may be successful at controlling them while others fail. We, as stewards, as parents, as friends, as parishioners, as teachers, we need to 1=be on the lookout for odd behaviors of our priests, strange requests, etc, 2=educate children about what is appropriate and what is not and 3=earn the love and respect of the kids around us because once they lose love/respect for us, the communication gulf widens. And a lot of abuse can happen in that gulf.
 
estesbob said:
Up until the 20s??? How about up until this century-they had a former leader of the KKK as a Senator up until a couple of years ago. The Democrats are the ones who tried to scuttle the Civil Rights acts and the Voting rights acts. And Democrat policies have done more harm and killed more blacks than the KKK did in their wildest dreams.

More evil has been done by Democrats support of “choice” in the last 40 years than the deaths caused by Christianity in its 2,000 years of existence. But I doubt we will see the President making that comparison.
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That is for sure!! Excellent post!
 
PeopleB4Things said:
I guess we need to just stop trying to make ourselves look better by saying that we have the same rate of abuse as secular and other religious groups. It just makes us look as ineffective as everyone else when it comes to plowing a better road.
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So if I understand you, we should not acknowledge a crucial piece of data regarding a phenomena that spans all demographics because you believe that it makes us look better? They (researchers) are not *saying * that our rates are similar, they are reporting the *fact *that it is similar. I am trying now to determine whether you are trying honestly to understand the phenomena so that it may be reduced in scope and magnitude, or you are just pounding on the Church for reasons unrelated.
 
Wonder why he overlooked the more recent example of the Yankee troops who invaded the South singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”?😉
 
The man has no insight at all; or does he ? After all if it were not for the crusades we all might be Muslims today.

God Bless:)
 
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