"We've Had Enough Of Exhortations To Be Silent! Cry Out With A Hundred Thousand Tongues. I See That The World Is Rotten Because Of Silence." ~ St. Catherine of Siena
Helmet tip to Karen over at Some Have Hats Novak Fed Up with Vatican Newspaper: "We asked Rome for Bread they Give us Stones"

NEW YORK, May 26, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A recent string of "star struck teenage" articles praising US President Barack Obama by the Vatican daily newspaper is scandalizing Catholics around the world, according to a prominent American conservative commentator. Michael Novak, a US Catholic writer, philosopher and diplomat, wrote on the website of the National Review magazine today that the editors of L'Osservatore Romano have failed to grasp either "the full threat Obama poses for the American Catholic conscience" or the "immense scandal" they are causing the Church by praising him.

Novak, regarded by many as a "moderate conservative," wrote in an editorial titled "All the Confusion Fit to Print," that "L' Osservatore Romano seems not to grasp the fundamental realities of abortion politics in America."

In the last month, the Vatican's daily newspaper, largely in its Italian daily edition, has produced a set of articles about President Obama that have downplayed his pro-abortion and anti-family policies, ignored his 100 per cent pro-abortion voting record and reported with little criticism his appearance at Notre Dame University.

In its reportage of Obama's appearance at Notre Dame University last weekend, Novak identified five "crucial facts" of which Vian's newspaper, "like a blind observer of faraway events," seems "completely ignorant."

Novak said that the paper ignored the fact that the US bishops had issued a public declaration that no politicians who oppose "fundamental moral principles" were to be honoured by any Catholic institution in the US. It has also failed to distinguish between the 40 percent of practising US Catholics who support the Church's teaching on abortion, and the US Church's barely practising members who support legal abortion. This failure to distinguish, Novak said, put L'Osservatore Romano into the same ranks as the mainstream liberal secular press.

Novak concludes by asking, "Why on earth, then, does L'Osservatore Romano side with the abortionists, and against the besieged, struggling minority of churchgoing Catholics who find abortion abhorrent, and an intrinsic and unrationalizable evil?"

He laments, "We ask Rome for bread, and L'Osservatore Romano gives us stones."Besides this, let's not forget Cardinal "Above The" Law hightailed it out of Boston one step ahead of an indictment by the District Attorney. As many of us remember, he was assigned to the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome during the summer of 2004.

Pope John Paul II made it exceedingly clear -- justice for someone who protected kiddie-rapists is trumped by protecting a member of the Good Ol' Boy Network.