Who's Behind the "Matthew 25 Network?"

From Catholic Citizens of Illionois, by Stephanie Block

A 'Who's Who' of Left-leaning "Catholics" Who Embrace Saul Alinsky's Marxist Strategies

The words are all about feeding the hungry, freeing sex slaves, caring for AIDS orphans - the stuff, more or less, of Matthew 25, in which Jesus exhorts those who hope to inherit the kingdom to help, in very practical, material ways, their fellow men.

And these are the right words, used to craft a message to Christian voters in terms Christians find familiar and comforting. The purpose for using them, however, is to narrow the "God gap" between Republicans, who have a long-standing advantage among religious voters, and Democrats.

Whose bright idea was this? Any of a number of people have noticed and decried this "gap" but it's only been in the last four years someone has developed an effective way to bridge it. That someone is Mara Vanderslice, who has formed the political action committee called the Matthew 25 Network to "coordinate grassroots mobilization in these Christian communities, develop credible religious surrogates in the media, respond to negative faith-based attacks, and communicate directly with undecided voters through paid advertising and direct mail." [Background authorized and paid for by The Matthew 25 Network and published at here (PDF)....]

...Democrat candidates needed "a new language to use in talking about faith and values, aimed in part at neutralizing hot-button issues."....

[And] The tactic works. According to one report, candidates coached by Vanderslice did 10 percentage points or better than Democrats nationally. They're getting elected....

The Matthew 25 Network has a good number of Catholic "endorsers" -

Ron Cruz, former Director of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Office of Hispanic Affairs;

Sharon Daly, former Vice-President of Catholic Charities;

Delores Leckey, Senior Fellow, Woodstock Theological Center and Former Director of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat for Family, Laity, Women and Youth;

Vince Miller of Georgetown University;

David O'Brien of College of the Holy Cross; and

Sr. Catherine Pinkerton, who serves on the board of Faith in Public Life and works for NETWORK, a Catholic social justice lobby.

A number of these people - Sr. Catherine, Ron Cruz, Sharon Daly, Vincent Miller, and David O'Brien - are on Obama's Catholic National Advisory Council....

Professed Catholics are at war with Christ and His Church...Pray for them and for those who become infected by their insidious disease.