So what was accomplished?

Liberal Catholics got exactly what they wanted. They are now able to feel good about voting a pro-death canidate because he wants to lessen the need for the holocaust (opps I mean abortion). Barrack Obama understands that the debate over abortion will continue but hopes that we can work together to end poverty and war, and just agree to disagree about slavery (opps I did it again). Hopefully we can remain civil in our debate and accept the fact that people of good will disagree about racism and anti-semitism (I mean abortion and infanticide). They got exactly what they hoped for nice words that make them feel better and help them forget the actions of this president.

And Obama got what he wanted. He got a parade of dissenting priests, spouting Card. Bernadine's discredited seamless garment theory, equating the murder of an innocent to poverty, economics, and prudential judgements about war. He got these priests to accept the language of "lessening the need for abortion," glossing over the fact that this probably means promoting contraception, and that talking about lessening the need for abortion is like talking about lessening the need for murder, or racism, or genocide, as if these things were needed in the first place or we could concede that we don't want to end these intrinsic evils. He got an opportunity to make Catholics feel ok about disobeying the Church. He got the opportunity to paint the Church as divided against itself, and to paint the hierarchy as mean spirited partisans rather than as pastors of souls.

Who wins here? Barrack Hussein Obama.
Who looses? Humanity, and the principled rational debate.

Obama waxes elequent but what we need to ask is one simple question what is he talking about? What are we doing when we abort?
Answer: We are intentionally killing a human life, AKA murdering! The reasons, methods, and situations may mitigate the moral culpability but don't change this fundamental fact.

Barrack Obama supports murder and wants us to accept that people can agree to disagree about the relative value of murder and come together to "solve" other problems. He wants us to lessen the need for murder, rather than to work to end it, because Barrack Obama believes it is good, and sometimes needed, to murder babies both in and out of the womb (this last part is actually a logical position because there really is no difference between a baby inside or outside the womb).

Lessons to be learned:
1) Failure to lead the flock leaves the flock vulnerable to false prophets, wolves in sheeps clothing, and pastors will be held accountable for this failure.
2) The gloves are off, pastoral staffs have a pointed end for a reason.
3) The "Vatican II" approach to church governance is not authentically a fruit of the council and is causing grave scandal.
4) Someone needs to start holding priests accountable for what they teach and do
5) And someone needs to start making difficult decisions about Catholic institutions that are Catholic in name only.
6) We need to teach and articulate that abortion is murder, that support for abortion (let alone funding of it) is support for mass-murder, and that Catholic teachings about policy issues like war, social welfare, economics, etc. (which are applications of fundamental principles but can be debated) are of a different kind than teachings about fundamental moral principles which are always and everywhere valid. Injustice, Murder (three types of which are Abortion, Infanticide, and Genocide), Theft, Racism, Lying, Blasphemy, Adultary, Fornication, Contraception, etc. are always wrong, and for a person to promote one of these makes him unworthy of being honored by any institution that values truth, beauty, and goodness!

Finally, we should learn that in one regard the left is correct:
7) Catholics and Christians need to be more careful about partisanship. The left has correctly precieved an occasional bias toward the Republican party. Just because they are the party of the big tent, and are at least willing to give the pro-life cause a hearing doesn't mean that they are the Catholic or Christian party. Christians must be a prophetic leaven and challenge both parties to repent and believe in the Gospel, or at least to seek the common good in accord with the natural law. Just because a president is 99% for us (read President Bush), if he does not fundamentally agree that all life is sacred with no exceptions (even though this is a politically difficult position) then he has given into the culture of death and cannot be honored by the Church.