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ARE SEAN HANNITY AND LAURA INGRAHAM HYPOCRITES?
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shoezacks
Joined: 26 Mar 2008
Posts: 1
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 Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 9:10 pm Post subject: ARE SEAN HANNITY AND LAURA INGRAHAM HYPOCRITES? |
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From JaaJoe.com
When I was four years old, our family lived just three houses up the street from a large Catholic family. Times have changed things a bit, but in 1964 if you used the words “large” and “Catholic” to describe a family, you were being redundant. In the summer of that year, I became friends with one of the boys in that family and and his name was Marty. Marty was six years old and of course, in the world of a four-year-old boy, a six-year-old friend is thought of as a very old and a very wise person indeed. The arduous kindergarten days were already a distant memory for Marty, and I was yet to experience the horror of the bony fingers of Miss French, the kindergarten teacher, ripping me from the comfort of my mother's arms.
Martin often talked of the peculiarities of his family's religion. I use the word “peculiarities” because words like “first communion,” “confirmation,” and “holy water” were peculiar to me. My parents were devout Baptists, and although I did not yet understand everything that was spoken about in the Walnut Park Baptist Church, I was fairly certain that I had never seen holy water before, not to mention being sprinkled with it.
As I became older, I came to learn that Marty was a bit mischievous. Actually, with the perspective of forty-three years that I now have, I would have to say that he could be accurately described as devious. But I was a naïve four-year-old, and with child-like faith I just simply accepted as fact everything that he said, and you can imagine the honor that I felt when one day Marty decided to tell me a secret.
Marty told me that he had followed a priest into one of the rooms in his church without the priest knowing about it, and that he had watched the priest make holy water. And then Marty told me how the priest made the holy water and it made perfect sense to me.
Can you imagine the smugness with which I approached my mother later in the day? For the first time in my short life, I knew something that she did not know. Marty had told me that this knowledge of holy water manufacturing was a secret to be kept just between the two of us, but what four-year-old boy can keep a secret from his mother?
“Mommy, I know how the priest makes holy water,” I proudly proclaimed.
“Well good for you, Honey,” my mother distractedly replied. She was busy cooking supper, but she always had time for conversation. “How does the priest make holy water?”
“He boils the hell out of it,” was my innocent reply.
My mother stopped and stared at me with a look of total confusion as she tried to compute what her little angel had just said. When she had taken a moment to digest my words, she began a very valiant effort to suppress a giggle that threatened to turn into a large scale belly laugh. Only her mother's love prevented her from laughing at me and allowing a moment of pride to turn into a moment of embarrassment.
When she was finally able to completely suppress the strange gurgling sounds emanating from her throat, she patted me on the head and told me that I probably should not share the secret with anyone else. I happily went off to play.
It was several years before I came to realize that Marty had tricked me into swearing in front of my mother. Up to that point in my life, I had heard the Baptist preacher and my Sunday School teacher talk about hell, and I knew it to be undesirable. In my four-year-old mind, it just made sense that if you wanted to make holy water, you would need to get the hell out of it, and boiling sounded like a good way of doing that.
Many years have past, and I have spent much time studying Catholicism along with numerous other denominations and religions. Even now I must say that the peculiarities of Catholics, the actual members of the Catholic Church, are more puzzling to me today than they were when I was four years old. Indeed, boiling the hell out of water in order to make it holy makes a great deal more sense to me than much of what I perceive to be going on with professing Catholics today.
I admit that my viewpoint is that of a life-long Evangelical, and I have attended numerous churches of varying denominations as I have moved about the country throughout my life. I was raised as a Baptist, but I currently attend an independent Presbyterian church and my doctrinal beliefs are more closely aligned with that denomination. There is a mind-set that is found in most Evangelicals like myself, but it is apparently a completely foreign concept to members of the Catholic Church and that is this: If we do not like the teachings of a particular church, and we find that we can do nothing to change those teachings, we simply leave the church. The freedom to worship with people whose beliefs are consistent with our own is so compelling and demanding that, if we are unable to find a church in our locality with teaching that is consistent with our own beliefs, we will start our own church. At one point in the life of my parents they did indeed become frustrated at being unable to find a like-minded church near their home, and they simply started a church in their living room. That's right. A truck driver and a house wife started a church. They eventually found a pastor, the church grew, and twenty years later that church has several hundred members and is still busy spreading the Gospel. The idea of starting a church without the blessing and direction of the Catholic Church hierarchy and without a priest, is an idea that would cause the mind of your average Catholic to default to the blue screen of death (for you Mac computer users, ask your Microsoft-using friends what the blue screen of death is).
And I guess that the real difficulty that I have with professing Catholics today is that they tacitly accept but ignore Catholic Church doctrine. This tacit acceptance with ignorance seems to border on hypocrisy and is seen in many areas but is most obvious in the matter of birth control. The Catholic Church says that the rhythm method is the only acceptable form of birth control, and yet over many years of friendships with literally hundreds of “devout” Catholics, I have encountered only one family that faithfully practiced that method of birth control. You may be interested to know that they currently have seven children in the family. The Catholic Church itself admits that less than 2% of American Catholics actually comply with Church doctrine in the matter of birth control.
Now let us return to my Evangelical pattern of behavior. If I ever attended any church and found that the pastor was teaching that use of the birth control pill, or tubal ligations, or condoms, or vasectomies, or even coitus interruptus was a sin, then I would try to convince that pastor of the error of his ways, and if he could not see reason, then I would never return to that church. An important function of any church is the teaching of morality, and if a church is teaching that a particular act is immoral and I attach no immorality to that act, then I can't in good conscience provide monetary support to that church. But Catholics seem to have no qualms of conscience in regularly performing an act that they are taught is immoral.
The main point of this article is not to discuss the divergence between the teachings of the Catholic Church and the practical beliefs of the average parishioner, but to point out an instance of blatant hypocrisy on the part of two radio talk-show hosts in the matter of Barack Obama's relationship to his pastor and his church. We are all by now aware of the somewhat maniacal and cravenly anti-American ravings of Pastor Jeremiah Wright, the pastor and mentor of Barack Obama. The well-publicized sermons of Pastor Wright include many offensive and racist comments. In one particular diatribe, he cleverly calls upon God to damn America rather than to bless America.
Pastor Wright's hateful rhetoric is indefensible, and to be sure, being the freedom-loving, independent-thinking Evangelical that I am, if I had ever happened to attend Pastor Wright's church when he was spewing his hatred, I would never have returned and the church would certainly never have received any more of my money. I certainly believe that Barack Obama should have behaved in the same manner as I would have, although I am very sensitive to the idea that this would be very difficult for Mr. Obama because, as Mr. Obama has said, Pastor Wright led him to Jesus Christ. It has been over forty years, but I still have a special place in my heart for the pastor who first introduced me to Jesus Christ, and I can certainly understand Mr. Obama's unwillingness to forsake the person who was instrumental in this life-changing experience.
But while we can condemn Pastor Wright's hateful speech and we can also condemn Mr. Obama's continued association with Pastor Wright, I reserve a much stronger condemnation for the hypocrisy of Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. Both of these people have popular radio talk shows and both purport to be devout Catholics.
Throughout the past week, both Hannity and Ingraham have repeatedly questioned Mr. Obama's long-time association with and membership in Pastor Wright's church. They pointed out that Mr. Obama was married in Pastor Wright's church, had children that were baptized by Pastor Wright, and that Mr. Obama had donated large sums of money to Pastor Wright's church. When Mr. Obama stated that he was not aware of the hateful speech that Pastor Wright had uttered repeatedly from his church's pulpit, his statement was met with skepticism by both Hannity and Ingraham. They insisted that Mr. Obama was either lying about his ignorance, or was aware of Pastor Wright's hate-speech and actually secretly agreed with it, or that Mr. Obama disagreed with the hate-speech and that he showed poor judgment in continuing to attend the church and contribute money to it.
If Mr. Obama is to be boxed into a logical argument corner where he can only admit to either lying, or secretly harboring racist and anti-American beliefs, or showing poor judgment because of continued association with Pastor Wright's church, then it is only logical that we can conclude that Hannity and Ingraham should be boxed into the same corner regarding their relationship to the Catholic Church. On the issues of birth control, all wars with American involvement, gun control, the death penalty, and illegal immigration, Hannity and Ingraham must admit that they are either lying, or actually secretly agree with the Catholic Church, or they must admit to possessing poor judgment in continuing to attend the Catholic Church and contributing money to it.
One of the more egregious teachings of the Catholic Church is the teaching that it is a sin to use any birth control method other than the approved rhythm method. I do admit to admiring Hannity's candor on this subject. He has openly and publicly expressed his disagreement with the Catholic Church on this matter, and as a result has been publicly denounced as a heretic by numerous Catholic priests. Which begs the question: Why would anyone continue to attend and support a church that considers him to be a heretic? I suspect that Hannity, like so many Catholics that I know, chooses to remain a Catholic because he was raised a Catholic and his family has always been Catholic. Putting aside my lack of regard for any person who chooses their church affiliation based solely upon family history, is not Mr. Obama allowed the same freedom as Mr. Hannity? Is he not allowed to disagree with Pastor Wright and still continue to attend Pastor Wright's church and contribute money to it?
ImageI have never heard Ingraham speak of her position regarding birth control, so I can only assume that she agrees with the Vatican's repeated attempts to force it's belief system on the world. The Vatican has repeatedly repressed and fought any efforts by the World Health Organization to provide birth control that is badly needed to third world countries. This is the moral equivalent of the Orthodox Jewish community insisting that all United Nations food distributions to the poor be blessed and deemed kosher by a rabbi. If the Catholic Church wishes to teach it's freely-attending members that birth control is a sin based on a convoluted interpretation of something that happened to a guy named Oman in the Old Testament, then that is their right. But the use of political influence by the Catholic church to force this convoluted interpretation upon people who badly need contraception is in itself immoral. Do Hannity and Ingraham support the Catholic Church's immorality?
The Catholic Church has never, in any circumstance, supported America's right to defend itself. The Catholic Church has been opposed to every war that the United States has waged recently and is, of course, against our current attempts to defend ourselves in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The Vatican is unable to stake it's opposition to our war efforts to any portion of Scripture, so they refer to St. Augustine's requirements for a just war, and it's broad interpretation allows the Vatican to oppose all war and declare all war as unjust.
Both Hannity and Ingraham have been very vocal and very public in their support for our war efforts and in their support for our troops. Their support has not been just in word, but also in deed and they are both to be highly commended for their unwavering support. But their actions and words are so diametrically opposed to the position of the Catholic Church that I become very confused about allegiances.
Both Hannity and Ingraham have repeatedly said on their talk shows that the most important issue that faces America today is the proper execution of the war on Islamic terrorism. Indeed, they give their begrudging support to John McCain only because they believe that he will properly execute this war on terror. I agree with Hannity and Ingraham on this issue, and that is why I am totally confounded by their continued support of and continued monetary donations to a Catholic Church that constantly opposes America's right to defend itself from Islamofascist terrorists. So are Hannity and Ingraham lying about their support of the war or just demonstrating poor judgment by their continued association with the Catholic Church?
In 2006, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican's representative to the United Nations, endorsed “the promotion of disarmament” and called for stiffer international control on the sale and possession of firearms. I personally think that the Vatican joining with the United Nations in an effort to suppress my second amendment right is an act that is dramatically more anti-American than any rhetoric spouted by Pastor Wright. So we ask the question again: Are Ingraham and Hannity just demonstrating poor judgment by their continued support of and association with the Catholic Church, or do they secretly agree with the Catholic Church's anti-American effort to dispossess me of my firearms?
It is well known that the Catholic Church would not support the death penalty for even an individual with as much innocent blood on his hands as Osama Bin Laden. I have heard both Ingraham and Hannity speak in support of the death penalty, and so we once again must ask whether they are just showing poor judgment in their continued support of the Catholic Church, or do they secretly regret Timothy McVeigh's execution?
The Catholic Church has long demonstrated a disdain for the sovereignty of the United States in protecting it's borders. Roger Cardinal Mahoney of Los Angeles has specifically instructed his priests not to obey laws associated with illegal immigration. Over eighty dioceses have launched their “Justice for Immigrants” campaigns in which they seek amnesty for illegal aliens. Catholic Churches are actually scheduling masses specifically for illegal immigrants. Do we once again assume that Hannity and Ingraham lack judgment?
In my humble opinion, the Catholic Church is much more invasive and blatant in their anti-American activities than Pastor Jeremiah Wright could ever hope to be. If Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity truly wish to be taken seriously when they attack Barack Obama for his association with a man who led him to Jesus Christ, then they must explain why they refuse to disassociate themselves from a church that persistently and aggressively pursues anti-American policies on a scale that the Trinity United Church of Christ could never hope to equal.
ARE SEAN HANNITY AND LAURA INGRAHAM HYPOCRITES? |
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