WASHINGTON — Cardinal James Francis Stafford, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary of the Holy See, delivered a lecture on Thursday saying that the future under President-elect Obama will echo Jesus’ agony in Gethsemane. Criticizing Obama as ‘aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic,’ he went on to speak about a decline in respect for human life and the need for Catholics to return to the values of marriage and human dignity. Delivered at the Catholic University of America, the cardinal’s lecture was titled ‘Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II: Being True in Body and Soul,’ the student university paper The Tower reports. Hosted by the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, his words focused upon Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae, whose fortieth anniversary is marked this year. Commenting on the results of the recent presidential election, Cardinal Stafford said on Election Day ‘America suffered a cultural earthquake.’ The cardinal argued that President-elect Obama had campaigned on an ‘extremist anti-life platform’ and predicted that the near future would be a time of trial. ‘If 1968 was the year of America’s ‘suicide attempt,’ 2008 is the year of America’s exhaustion,’ he said, contrasting the year […]