Catholics in the Political Sphere
Imagine the Potential 2
Catholic Vote is back with another great pro-life TV commercial, “Imagine the Potential 2”, a follow on to their earlier ad that showed a child who had everything going against him before he was born but grew up to be our current president.
[Thanks to Amy Welborn.]
Catholic congressmen take on Clinton over Sanger
This is what a real Catholic congressmen sounds like. US Reps. Chris Smith and Jeff Fortenberry take Hilary Clinton to task for her admiration of the racist Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. Here’s what Fortenberry had to say:
Your remarks last month, when you called Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, a person whom you enormously admire, were stunning to me. Margaret Sanger clearly embraced bigotry and racism. She advocated for the elimination of the disabled, the downtrodden and the black child. In one of her writings, she said, “Today eugenics is suggested by the most diverse minds as the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems.” I don’t believe these ideologies have a place in our pluralistic society. And you went on to say that you will use American foreign policy in your position to further reproductive rights, which includes abortion, across the globe.
Madame Secretary, I don’t believe we should use American foreign policy to export abortion. This will undermine, in my view, our foreign relations in many areas throughout the world, including Latin America and Africa and among Muslim peoples. Promoting the international abortion industry is an imposition of our own woundedness upon others. Abortion has caused tremendous grief in this society, and its export I believe will be seen as a form of neocolonialism that is paternalistic and elitist and an assault on the dignity especially of the poor and vulnerable. I believe women deserve better, women throughout the world deserve better.
Awesome!
Clinton’s response?
Well, Congressman, let me say with respect to your comments about Margaret Sanger, you know, I admire Thomas Jefferson. I admire his words and his leadership and I deplore his unrepentant slaveholding. I admire Margaret Sanger being a pioneer in trying to empower women to have some control over their bodies and I deplore statements that you have referenced. That is the way we often are when we look at flawed human beings. There are things that we admire and things we deplore.
Apart from that, how did you like the play Mrs. Lincoln? In other words, Clinton says that if we ignore the racist, classist, genocidal stuff, Sanger was pretty cool. Unbelievable.
Of course, she might already have practice overlooking such things: “I admire Bill Clinton. I admire his words and his leadership and I deplore his unrepentant philandering.” Sounds like something she might have said.
[Link via Amy Welborn.]
Goring someone else’s ox
So, according to the liberal media and various left-wing and Catholic-hostile punditry, if the Pope is supposed to excommunicate (or keep excommunicated) public figures who hold views that are antithetical to the Catholic faith (i.e. anti-Semitism), would those same journalists and pundits be consistent with others who hold views that are antithetical to the Catholic faith?
Like pro-abortion politicians?
Yeah, didn’t think so.
Let’s hold the pro-life Catholics for Obama to account
One thing is for certain. All those “pro-life” Catholics who insisted that an Obama presidency would be better for the unborn and would reduce abortion are going to be held accountable if, as I am firmly convinced, that was a load of hogwash. In four years, it will be their responsibility to prove to the rest of us that their faith in Obama was not misplaced. We need to make ensure we don’t forget to hold them to it.
Liberal Catholics afraid you’ll vote your Catholic conscience - UPDATED
A couple of days ago I posted a video from a group called The Catholic Vote, essentially urging Catholics to consider the important role we play in the public square when we do our civic duty with our Catholic moral principles in mind, including when we vote. It was non-partisan and quite well done.
Last night I received a boilerplate comment on that post—which I did not put through because my blog is not a billboard for other people’s political gamesmanship—darkly warning:
If you forward this video or link to the website in your official capacity you may be in violation of IRS regulations and Church policy. You will also be distributing materials that contradict Church teaching.
The first part is just pure baloney designed to scare priests and lay employees of the Church and other non-profits from engaging their free speech rights. The second part is also baloney because this is what they claim contradicts Church teaching:
Among other things, the video glorifies US economic and military power. This runs contrary to Catholic Social Teaching which emphasizes a preferential option for the poor and solidarity.
What this shows is that this is nothing more than the same old liberal “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party at prayer who create a moral equivalency between abortion and a graduated tax rate; who reject the Church’s actual teaching on pacifism, just war, and self-defense; who prattle on about “single-issue” voting when what they’re really interested in protecting is the Big Government, Nanny state, tax-and-spend handouts as embodied by today’s Democrat Party.
Further proof is found in more dark warnings that some of the people behind Catholic Vote are— gasp — Republicans who, they proclaim breathlessly, “even supported republican Senator Rick Santorum over Bob Casey, a pro-life Catholic democrat, during the 2006 election cycle.” Yes, Rick Santorum, a pro-life Catholic Republican. I’m supposed to be dismayed by that?
I won’t dignify this blatant attempt at obfuscation, fear-mongering, and partisanship disguised as non-partisan Catholic citizenship by giving them a link to their site. Let’s just say, it’s the same old group of politically liberal Catholics who’ve been trying to provide cover for the rabidly pro-abortion Democratic Party in the last few election cycles. They claim to be “united” for the “common good”, if you know what I mean.
All they’ve done with this stunt is make me more supportive of Catholic Vote.
Update: Going back over the video, I’m struck by how duplicitous this Democratic operative is. In fact, the video spends more than 80 percent of its time talking about how life and family are the most important issues facing us. Then it says “The strength of our nation is not only in its military or economic power, but in our commitment to moral values.”[emphasis added] This does not in any way glorify US economic and military power, but subordinates it to a morality that is compatible with Catholic teaching (and not just “Catholic Social Teaching,” but the whole seamless garment, if I may use that term correctly.)
The Catholic Vote video
Another great video from Grassroots Films, this time for The Catholic Vote, a voter education project designed to get Catholics to the polls this November and to vote as a Catholic should.
[Link via American Papist.]
Catholics Against Joe Biden
Hot of the web presses, so to speak, we find Catholics Against Joe Biden, a new blog by Stephen Dillard, Chris Blosser, and Jay Anderson. Following on the successful Catholics against Rudy (Guiliani) blog, this is a non-partisan effort to point out reasons why Catholics should not vote for Catholic politicians who openly and flagrantly cause scandal because of their dissent from non-negotiable Church teachings that intersect with public policy. In most cases, but not all, this means abortion.
Now that Biden is the vice-presidential nominee for the Democratic Party, it is time for faithful Catholics to stand up and say that we will not be pandered to, that the act of choosing someone who may sit in a pew in a Catholic church on Sunday, regardless of his public beliefs and actions, should convince us to vote for him. Likewise, I would fully expect that if John McCain chose a dissenting Catholic for his VP spot, they would get the same treatment. Neither does it mean that a non-Catholic with the same beliefs would be more palatable.
But when it’s a fellow Catholic and we’re being told that this makes it okay, then we need to stand up and say it is not. I encourage you to bookmark the site, save the RSS feed in your feed reader, link to it, and put a banner on your site, if you have one.
Biden: pro-abortion Catholic running mate
I don’t understand why reporters are so clueless about Barack Obama’s selection of Sen. Joe Biden as his vice-presidential running mate, vis a vis Biden’s attraction to Catholic voters because himself is Catholic. Did they learn nothing from 2004 and John Kerry?
Steven Waldman, the editor-in-chief of Beliefnet, writes on The Huffington Post that Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, a pro-choice Catholic, is a smart pick by Barack Obama in terms of religious politics.
Obama, he writes, “desperately needs to retain his lead among Catholics,” many of whom are still upset at John McCain for his fleeting embrace of John Hagee, the Catholic-bashing televangelist from San Antonio.
I doubt Hagee’s anti-Catholicism will outweigh Biden’s pro-abortion stance. For those whose self-identification as Catholic affects the way they vote, which is the group they’re so hot to capture, the selection of a reliable pro-abort—which Biden is, even if he’s not as rabidly bloodthirsty as Obama—is still not going to endear him to Catholics. While Waldman writes that the selection could backfire because it will keep the question of whether pro-abortion Catholic politicians should receive Communion front and center throughout the campaign, he seems to want to ignore the problem, as if wishing it away will work.
In other words, he’s Catholic enough to appeal to Catholics, pro-life enough to avoid some Church attacks, and pro-choice enough to satisfy Hillary voters.
That’s a load of malarkey that only someone who is being willfully blind could believe. What we will see is that instead of being palatable to all, he will be palatable to none. If he’s pro-choice enough to satisfy the Moloch-bloc of the Democratic Party, then there’s no way he can be described as pro-life.
And speaking of the Communion controversy, Ed Peters weighs in early with his take on Biden in relation to the canon laws on reception of Communion. Specifically, he approaches the question of whether the strictures of canons 915 and 916 apply to Biden.
In regard to the Catholic Joseph Biden’s eligibility to receive holy Communion, then, the right questions will seek to answer whether certain of his public actions (chiefly legislative actions and public advocacy efforts) constitute obstinate perseverance in manifest grave sin. Answering those questions well will require (1) accurate assemblage of the facts (an area for which expert lay Catholic observers of American politics should be consulted), and (2) accurate inquiry into the requirements of Church law and moral teaching (an area for which bishops are chiefly responsible).
I have little hope that the secular media will engage in due diligence in this area and we’ll be subject to the same nonsensical reporting on the Catholic faith’s relation to politics that we saw in 2004. Still, it’s up to Catholics of all kinds to keep approaching this subject rationally and in good faith and not let politics be the only concern here. For at least Biden, but also for those who might support him, the questions have an eternal consequence.
Photo: Official US Congress photo in the public domain.
Religious faith in America fading over the past generation
While the Catholic Church is losing members slower than Protestant churches, that’s only because so many immigrants are themselves Catholic already. That’s one of the conclusions of the “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey,” from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, as reported in the New York Times.
What’s sad is that self-identified former Catholics make up one of the largest religious groups in the US.
According to their research, over the past generation, 44 percent of Americans have switched religious affiliations, either to another religion or denomination or to nothing at all. Of Catholics it says:
To no one’s surprise, “unaffiliated” was the biggest gainer. That the United States is becoming ever more secular and/or hostile to religious faith is fairly evident to anyone living in or near a big city or on the coasts. But it’s a spreading phenomenon.
Of course, the surveyors see it in the context of politics and similar matters. Plus, I’m not sure whether they even understand the categories they’re studying.
The rise of the unaffiliated does not mean that Americans are becoming less religious, however. Contrary to assumptions that most of the unaffiliated are atheists or agnostics, most described their religion “as nothing in particular.”
Which is, you know, what agnostic means. According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, whose definition is as good as any, it means: “A person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God.” That’s pretty much someone who believes in “nothing in particular.”
They also claim that people are abandoning large, impersonal churches for more personal, intimate venues. Supposedly, mega-churches succeed not because they are large but because “they have smaller ministries inside.” Or because they offer an experience that is not hostile to the experience that many people seek, which is a religion that doesn’t require too much counter-cultural changing of their lives.
Catholics coming in the front door and out the back
