Conspiracy uncovered! Shrieeek!!!

Today is the day that Notre Dame University, that US bastion of Catholic higher learning, bestows a honorary degree upon President Obama who will then deliver the commencement address.

Conservative Catholics have opposed the university's awarding of a degree to the President, whose views on abortion and stem cell research conflict with the teachings of the church. Their intolerance has provoked a backlash and made this cohort even more Catholic than the pope!

As Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne pointed out, "To the dismay of many conservatives, the Vatican's own newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, offered what one antiabortion Catholic blog called 'a surprisingly positive assessment of the new President's approach to life issues'." The reaction was so positive that a spokesman for the National Right to Life Commitee criticized Pope Benedict XVI's newspaper! Furthermore, two-thirds of Catholics approve of Obama's performance in office and, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll, 50 percent of Catholics think Notre Dame was right to invite the President.

Thus it's no surprise that fundamentalist Catholics claim to have uncovered a 'secret' conspiracy or connection that explains why Notre Dame is being led down the road to damnation.

Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., President of the University of Notre Dame, sits on the board of Millennium Promise, an anti-poverty organization which reportedly supports the distribution of condoms and encourages the establishment of abortion services where legal.

“Any Catholic university that supports a program to reduce poverty by eliminating poor children has a serious problem. No Catholic should be taking a leadership role in an effort that distributes contraception or promotes abortion," said Patrick Reilly, President of The Cardinal Newman Society. ...

Millennium Promise works to raise funds from the private sector for “Millennium Villages,” a group working with under-privileged African villages. While these “villages” seem to have laudable goals, a Millennium Villages handbook explains that "family planning and contraception services are critical to allow women to choose family size and birth spacing, to combat sexually transmitted infections, including HIV infection, and contribute to the reduction of maternal morbidity and mortality."

ShriEEEKKK!!!

No wonder those fundamentalist Catholic zygote zealots are going into shrieking paroxysms. It is a well-documented fact that the Vatican Taliban would rather uphold medieval ideology than save the lives of African women and children. In their rabid religious fanatical view, only embryos and fetus are worth saving.