Posts Tagged ‘Catholic’
Ron Paul, ever a champion for the pro-life cause (other than throwing his political support behind candidates who couldn’t win), has a unique viewpoint, as former practioner of medicine:
As a physician who has delivered over 4,000 babies I am very disturbed by the continued efforts of those on the left to establish absolute rights to abortion. However, even more distressing is the notion that taxpayers should be forced to subsidize life-ending procedures such as abortion and embryonic stem cell research.
In addition to the news that those who will benefit from federally-funded stem cell research have seen an uptick in their financial position as a result of the election, comes news from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops that many health care facilities under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church may be shut down as a result of the so-called “Freedom of Choice Act” for refusal to perform abortions.
Catholic/Christian hospitals are known across the country for providing great medical care. As has been pointed out by many of the bishops, it will not be sufficient for the Church to simply sell the hospitals to those who would perform abortions. The only viable option would be to shut the Catholic hospitals down.
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S.C. priest tells parishioners to abstain from communion if they voted for Obama: A South Carolina Roman Catholic priest has told his parishioners that they should refrain from receiving Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because the Democratic president-elect supports abortion, and supporting him “constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil.”
Amen, and congratulations. People need to realize that they voted in favor of ideas worse than slavery. We need more lay people, priests, and bishops to stop worrying about offending people and tell them the truth.
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Catholic Bishops are emboldening over abortion following Tuesday’s election: “I cannot have a vice president-elect coming to Scranton to say he’s learned his values there when those values are utterly against the teachings of the Catholic Church,” Martino said.
I think it is time the Church stop worrying about tax-exempt status and start telling people the way they should vote (or, at the very least, lay out exactly how they should NOT vote). It is a grave, mortal sin to support any candidate who supports abortion, and souls are much more valuable than any dollar figure.
Here’s to hoping that the next four years sees a continuation of a newfound political passion by our Catholic Bishops. Clearly, by the exit polling of Catholics, the message has not been getting through.
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Douglas Kmiec tries, today in the L.A. Post, to fleece pro-life voters by saying that because Obama hinted in the last debate that abortion should be used as a last resort that all of a sudden, because of that, he is no longer “pro-choice” and that Christian (he says Catholic) can vote for him in good conscience.
So can Catholics vote for a pro-choice candidate? The answer is yes, but as I found when I publicly endorsed Obama, you’ve then got “some ’splain’n’ to do.” It’s a matter of conscience, but had Obama proclaimed himself to be pro-choice and said nothing more, it would have been problematic. But there are those additional words about appropriate education as well as adoption and assistance for mothers who choose to keep their baby.
Um, excuse me, but we aren’t stupid. Obama never, either, denounced abortion as something that is evil and is always wrong. He even said “we are going to disagree” when McCain had already spoken to the fact that abortion is wrong, and surely he didn’t expect that McCain disagreed with the assertion that we should do all we morally can to eliminate unwanted pregnancies (as in education, adoption, etc.). Clearly his point about disagreeing had to do with the fact that he thinks it is a mother’s choice to kill her child while McCain does not.
Some might ask, isn’t John McCain, the self-proclaimed “pro-lifer,” still a morally superior choice for Catholics? Not necessarily. McCain’s commitment, as he stressed in the debate, is to try to reverse Roe vs. Wade. But Republicans have been after this for decades, and the effort has not saved a single child. Even if Roe were reversed — unlikely, in my judgment — it merely transfers the question to the states, most of which are not expected to ban abortion. A Catholic serious about preserving life could reasonably find Obama’s educational and material assistance to mothers the practical, stronger alternative.
The fact of the matter is that regardless of what money is spent on anyone, and as it turns out McCain is much more charitable when it comes to these issues, the act of killing an innocent life is what is wrong. We can debate until our faces are blue about how best to support those who are going to carry out unwanted pregnancies as well as how we should go about preventing them, but that is totally immaterial in the argument of whether abortion is right or wrong and who you can vote on if you are rightly aimed and that is your strongest conviction. That part of the debate is not a moral issue on the same playing field as life and death. And, in case you didn’t notice, sir, the voter is completely at the mercy of the Supreme Court on this issue, one that should be decided by legislation from *elected* officials. Yes, we would have many more battles to come, us pro-lifers, after the decision was overturned. Many states would be legislating to legalize abortion immediately. However, at least our elected officials are accountable to us. Our SCOTUS justices are not. That should scare pro-lifers as well as the pro-death contingent (because how do you know what issue will be held hostage next?).
Catholics know how to pick presidents. In the last nine presidential contests, Catholics have been with the popular vote-getter every time. Where are the Catholics lining up in 2008? A recent Zogby poll has the national Catholic vote as a dead heat within the margin of error. If Catholic past is prologue, this election will be far closer than general polling suggests, and Obama’s few additional words in the final debate may prove to be his political salvation.
Obama’s words did nothing for any of us pro-lifers, and Mr. Kmiec’s words are even more outrageous. We aren’t stupid, and we will be turning out on November 4th to vote for John McCain.
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To illustrate just how important the Democrats were to Catholics, she relates the question she asked a Catholic friend: “If Jesus were running as a Republican and Satan as a Democrat, whom would you vote for?”
“My friend hesitated a bit and said, ‘I suppose I would have to vote for Satan,’ ” she said.
In my lifetime I have seen the scary trend of people becoming more passionate about politics than even their own religion. Their own religion. Today we get a perfect case in point from Charles Lewis:
The two women talk about the race between John McCain and Barack Obama, and how the issue of abortion is playing into it. Both look strained when they discuss how they might vote. The issue runs so deep Ms. Conway believes voting for a pro-abortion candidate like Mr. Obama — something she might reluctantly do because she wants to end the war in Iraq — is likely an offence against God.
“If I do end up voting for Obama, then I’ll go to confession after and tell the priest my sin,” she said.
Note the fact that she is admitting that voting against the War in Iraq is not an offence against God (although — as someone might explain to her — sinning and then going to confession when you aren’t truly sorry for it is a worse offence against God than the sin, itself, and is in fact a sacrilege). It is quite phenomenal, and not in a good sense, that we can be so divided over our thoughts and beliefs about making our country better, that we are willing to go to hell in order to get our way. It is something that secular society promotes by eliminating God from all of our decisions so that they and we, alike, can consider ourselves a god over something. For when the Christian voter votes according to their religious beliefs — the first filter in a series of filters through which we ought to be looking through to make all of our decisions, political and otherwise — they are deferring to God’s will instead of their own, and God’s will is something that the media have no control over.
The same can be said for the Christian voter who votes according to party lines (or union lines) in each election. Republican, Democrat, or independent/3rd party, it doesn’t matter — not all candidates in either party are created equal, and none of us — even Pope Benedict — is perfect. No matter who we vote for, we are voting for an imperfect human being. Yet, when some people are going to the polls they will only look for the letter in parenthesis next to a candidates name, rather than exploring what they stand for through the filters of religion, life issues, and family.
Think about this the next time you go to the polls. If you are generous, think about the most defenseless group among us; think about the unborn. If you are selfish, think about your own salvation.
As for the Bishop’s letter and the influence of the Church in this election year, she considers it best to just ignore it.
“It’s Catholic guilt conscience. And Catholic guilt conscience is a terrible thing.”
It is indeed a terrible, terrible inconvenience when you are so busy worrying about yourself.
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