{"id":419,"date":"2009-04-14T11:51:30","date_gmt":"2009-04-14T11:51:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/04\/obama-at-georgetown-blasts-a-c.html"},"modified":"2009-04-14T11:51:30","modified_gmt":"2009-04-14T11:51:30","slug":"obama-at-georgetown-blasts-a-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/04\/obama-at-georgetown-blasts-a-c.html","title":{"rendered":"Obama at Georgetown blasts a culture of “instant gratification”"},"content":{"rendered":"

His speech at the Jesuit university today on the economy (he is speaking as I write<\/a>) evokes the themes of personal responsibility and the similarly “old-fashioned”–dare I say conservative?–values that he has reiterated since his inauguration. (It has been an interesting shift, his campaign rhetoric of hope–which was often derided as shallow–to the governing language of responsibility. It is well done, in my view, and a natural development.) <\/p>\n

Politico has a report and excerpts of the speech<\/a>, titled “A New Foundation,” and the NYT has the full text<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In the speech, Obama also gets scriptural, saying the nation “cannot rebuild this economyl on the same pile of sand.” Is he channeling the Messiah again?! Actually, he may be channeing Muhammad. He follows the Sermon on the Mount reference with an exposition of the “five pillars” of the new economy. Five pillars<\/a>?! Yikes. I expect a spike in that Obama-is-Muslim stat<\/a>.  <\/p>\n

In any case, these are the kind of opportunities we as a church would miss if the “bar Obama” voices were to prevail. But they keep on keeping on. Randall Terry et al planned to lead protests<\/a> at Georgetown:<\/p>\n

\n
“The University has deliberately poked its finger in the eye of the Bishops and faithful Catholics who have condemned President Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame. But far worse – they have cast aside the unborn who will perish under President Obama’s policies. They have put prestige ahead of life. Georgetown’s attitude seems to be: Germany’s leaders built great roads in the 1930s, they helped save the banks, and they rebuilt the economy. Let’s focus on their economy – not that whole genocide thing.”<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Just finished listening. Good speech. Very good. <\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

His speech at the Jesuit university today on the economy (he is speaking as I write) evokes the themes of personal responsibility and the similarly “old-fashioned”–dare I say conservative?–values that he has reiterated since his inauguration. (It has been an interesting shift, his campaign rhetoric of hope–which was often derided as shallow–to the governing language of responsibility. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}