Two Reasons.
Knowledgeable African Americans, some of whom attend Trinity United Church of Christ, tell me that there are two reasons why the former pastor Jeremiah Wright is punishing Barack Obama and endangering his campaign for the presidency by Wright’s racist vitriol.
Central is the fact that Wright has now gained a national media presence which means (a) a book with lavish proceeds, (b) paid speeches and (c) folklore celebrity as the nation’s angriest black. Up to now Wright was the well-received minister who is not entirely singular in the black community since hating whitey is a sure-fire way to build a congregation. The proceeds from a prospective book and the lavish honoraria he can draw would make Wright a very-very rich angry black man.
Second, I am told that Wright has a definite animus now against Obama. The bad blood started when Obama cancelled an appearance by Wright at Obama’s announcement. Wright got the impression that Obama wanted it both ways—to capitalize on black anger at whitey in order to set the African American grassroots afire…and distance from Wright so that Obama can continue as the moderate, the youthful member of the post-civil rights generation typifying a new day dawning in race relations.
The thought that Obama and Wright are close today is totally unrealistic, especially after Wright’s continuing to stir up race animosity as with his incendiary speech to the NAACP where he spoke before an audience that included Marion Barry, Cornel West, Malik Zulu Shabazz of the New Black Panther party and Jamil Muhammad of the Nation of Islam. In the speech Wright praised Louis Farrakhan, announced that Zionism is racism, branded the U. S. as a terrorist nation and reiterated his view that the government created the AIDS virus to cause the genocide of racial minorities. He wants nothing less to capture the role of chief spokesman for the black church in America.
He dissed Obama by implication, referring to Obama’s Philadelphia speech saying “we both know that if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected.” About Louis Farrakhan he said: “Louis said 20 years ago thqt Zionism, not Judaism, was a gutter religion. He was talking about the same thing United Nations resolutions say, the same thing now that President Carter is being vilified for and Bishop Tutu’s being vilified for. And everybody wants to paint me as if I’m anti-Semitic because of what Louis Farrakhan said 20 years ago. He is one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century. That’s what I think about him….Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy. He did not put me in chains; he did not put me in slavery and he didn’t make me this color.”
What Now?
It is obvious that Obama made a grievous mistake in handling the Wright crisis. In his Philadelphia speech he ambiguously disengaged from the ranting racist minister while at the same time refusing to disown him, saying that he could no more disown Wright than he could disown the black community.
The time has come when if Obama wants to save his campaign from extinction in the general election, he has to disown Wright and disown those who agree with Wright. With many churchgoers like those crowding into Trinity and into the NAACP, a rant like Wright gives an occasion to act like children when a fellow classmate taunts the school principal—jump up and down, bounce off the walls and play mistreated rabble, specious in hyperbole (“in chains”) and self-hatred (“he didn’t make me this color”). And white radicals share in this as well, witness our blond act-up adolescent, Fr. Michael Pfleger. In fact it is a childish and churlish behavior produced by a subset that has had far too much done for them and far too many allowances made for misbehavior—the trademarks of the white, affluent guilt-ridden liberal. I shucked my liberal guilt a long time ago. The Democratic party, held captive by angry militants, is becoming a worthless vehicle by tolerating this Wright-Farrakhan-anti Semitic stuff.
The ball is in Obama’s court. We’ll see what he’s made of…this man who presents himself as the leader of the future. You have said you’re going to lead us to a new unity when you are president, Barack. Well you’re not president yet but already you’ve got a revolution of bigotry and racism on your hands—and what are you going to do about it? Straddle? Waffle? Or what?
Mary, the Mother of God?
To imply that Mary cannot be the Mother of God because Sacred Scripture does not use those explicit words is an unsatisfactory explanation. The Trinity, for example: nowhere is it found in the Bible, yet it is the preeminent doctrine of Christianity. Beyond that, using pure logic, “Bookworm” is right. Mary is the Mother of God because Jesus Christ, her Son is God. Moreover the prophetic text of Isaiah 7:14 just about covers it. Written more than 700 years before the birth of Christ, it prophesied that the Messiah was to be born of a woman and yet he was to be “God with us.”
Anticipating a future question, when I say Mary is the Mother of God does this mean that “if God is Trinity and Mary is the Mother of God, she is the Mother of the Trinity?” Nope. By saying Mary is the Mother of God, we are not saying Mary is the source of the divine nature among the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity—nor is she the source of the divine nature of the second Person of the Trinity incarnate. Here’s an analogy. My wife Lillian is the mother of our four children—but this is no way implies that she is the source of their immortal souls. God directly and immediately created their souls as He does with every human being. Nor does this mean that Lillian is merely “the mother of their bodies.” She is the mother of all four, period. She did not give birth to a body but to human persons who are body and soul composite. Meaning that though Mary did not provide Jesus with His divine nature of His immortal human soul, she is still his Mother because she did not give birth to a body, a nature or even two natures—she gave birth to a Person. And that one Person is God. Thank you Thomas Aquinas!
When did the Oughton family move from Dwight to Chicago?
ReplyDeleteDo you now understand, just a little, that you and many blacks live in two different worlds? You berated me publicly for telling you so earlier. Time for you to rethink?
Why does the United States always have to kiss the behinds again and again and again of the pet minorites such as blacks, hispanics, homosexuals, feminists, or leftwing jews (Streisand, Rosanne Barr, Maher, etc.)? Everyone has to walk on egg shells around them and their liberal views. Everyone has to be so "nice" to them. I am sick of it already. Should they be so insulated from criticism?
ReplyDeleteI am sick of them hiding behind their so called religious leaders like the REVERAND Sharpton or the REVERAND Jackson or the REVERAND Wright.
And that goes for scumball Pfleger too.
Isn't it time these self appointed goof balls were told off?