Vatican Chief Justice: Obama policies "increasingly hostile toward Christian civilization"

It seems to me that Raymond Cardinal Burke- formerly the Archbishop of St. Louis, and now the Vatican's chief justice- pretty much has President Obama's number.

“It is true that the policies of the president of the United States have become progressively more hostile toward Christian civilization. He appears to be a totally secularized man who aggressively promotes anti-life and anti-family policies,” Burke told  Polonia Christiana magazine.

Cardinal Burke accurately accuses Mr. Obama of  trying to “restrict” religion:"“Now he wants to restrict the exercise of the freedom of religion to freedom of worship, that is, he holds that one is free to act according to his conscience within the confines of his place of worship but that, once the person leaves the place of worship, the government can constrain him to act against his rightly-formed conscience, even in the most serious of moral questions.”

Bingo. Mr. Obama- and the Left generally- just don't seem to "get" the idea that separation of church and state doesn't mean the separation of religion and state- an impossibility, insofar as religion reflects people's most deeply held beliefs and values. The movement to abolish slavery, child labor, the death penalty, as well as the Civil Rights movement and the various anti-war movements of the past half-century and, in fact, virtually every major social reform of our history, have all sprung from people's religious convictions.

As long as people who have those convictions urge them on religiously-neutral grounds- that is, on the basis of public policy rather than the content of specific, sectarian religious beliefs- secularists like Mr. Obama have no beef coming. In fact, even when they overstep that boundary, they are no threat; no nation as diverse as ours is apt to be swept away by a sectarian theocratic crusade, the paranoia of the Left to the contrary.

A secularist stifling of freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press, on the other hand, already seems to be taking place before our very eyes, as witness the policies Cardinal Burke comments upon.

Cardinal Burke, one of the few Catholic prelates with the guts to insist that Catholic politicians ought not to advocate policies contrary to the church's teachings, once denied pro-choice, pro-gay "marriage" John Kerry communion. According to the secular media, the current pope- who sometimes does seem to think that giving in to the enemies of the Christian faith within the church will somehow convert them- responded by not reappointing Cardinal Burke to the list of priests eligible to be bishops.

Or did he? Burke's career has bee mostly administrative rather than pastoral, and Pope Francis gave no explanation for his decision.

And a lack of facts has, after all, never deterred them before.

HT: Drudge