Live forever, Dale Price. That so totally captures the idiocy, the sheer stupidity of their position.
They can't admit that other issues take precedence, because they consider abortion very important.
What they need to admit is that they, like their candidate, are pro-abortion, and not really Catholics at all.
Is it just me, or was that "column" one of the most disconnected streams of consciousness in recent memory?
This year they do, and let no one dare tell me I'm not Catholic or that I support abortion.
You need to remember that the Church is not a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party.
Jeffery, if you're comfortable supporting the most pro-abortion candidate in history, I can only assume that it's because you're comfortable with abortion as Obama would like to see it: expanded, easier, cheaper, part of a universal healthcare plan you'll pay for, with no risk of losing it by the overturning of Roe. Abortion is Obama's highest priority as he's said, and his greatest regret is his one failure in support euthanasia.
If you're supporting Obama, you may think you're not pro-abortion, but you are. If you supporting Obama, you may think you're still Catholic, but -- while it's not for me to judge -- there may be Someone who disagrees, Whose judgment will be determinative.
Paul, I agree with you that Obama is about as bad as a candidate can get on abortion, that this issue (clustered as it is with the Imperial Judiciary, gay "marriage" and The Coming Persecution) is definitive in current US politics, and that Kmiec's and others' defenses of Obama support are deeply unsatisfactory at best.
But no conceivable political judgment constitutes an act of heresy, schism or apostasy fit to permit outsiders, particularly unfavorably disposed ones, to say "X is not really Catholic." I share your frustration, but there are some judgements we are simply not permitted or qualified to make.
Nor do I presume to make that judgment, Victor, I call on those who have embraced the Champion of Abortion, my own Senator, to recognize for themselves that they have left Holy Mother Church, lest they find themselves corrected by the only One Whose opinion in the matter really counts.
Nor do I presume to make that judgment, Victor
In this clause ...
to recognize for themselves that they have left Holy Mother Church
... you do.
The Church has definitely never said that supporting a candidate constitutes formal cooperation with every stance of that candidate (indeed then-Cardinal Ratzinger explicitly said otherwise in his letter to Cardinal McCarrick). I also don't believe (I'm obviously less sure of this) that the Church has ever said that pro-abortion lawmakers incur latae sententiae excommunication under the meaning of "a person who procures" from Canon 1398, which is what your quote above implies.
Jeffrey:
Here's my promise to you: the day I (1) start describing the Republicans as tribunes of Catholic values and (2) pass a mental competency exam, is the day you can come up here from Toledo and punch me square in the schnozz. I'll even pay the transportation costs.
Nor am I questioning anyone's Catholicism. Hence the use of the word Catholic in the title, sans scare quotes. What Victor says on that issue is my position.
What I am absolutely flabbergasted about is the consistent willingness of Catholic supporters of Obama to ignore the man's actual pro-abortion record in favor of the occasional moderate-sounding rhetoric.
"This year they do, and let no one dare tell me I'm not Catholic or that I support abortion."
Of course you are a Catholic, although I recall that you went through a period when you left the Church for a time and loudly proclaimed that fact on your blog. Glad you are back. If you vote for Obama you are voting for a man who will do everything in his power to ensure that Roe v. Wade will be the law of the land forever. A man who raised campaign funds by championing partial birth abortion. A man who voted against legislation requiring medical assistance for unborn children who survived abortion. A man who will strive to reverse all progress that the pro-life cause has painfully made since 1973. I really don't care about whether you intend to support abortion by your vote. That is between you and God. The consequence of your vote is clearly to place in the Presidency the most radical pro-abort candidate who has ever run for that office.
Apparently Mr. Miller has no trouble writing other Catholics out of the Church over political issues judging from this post on his blog:
"...... of rule by the Republican Party, AKA the Party of Mammon. There's a boom in homeless, middle class baby-boomers in Santa Barbara, of all places. HERE'S the story.
I'm sorry if it offends the neo-con/libertarian sensibilities of supposedly Catholic bloggers ( No, scratch that. They need to be offended if they're to finally be Catholic, instead of pompous, dissident twits. ), but this problem has to be addressed, and only government can do that. If that makes me a socialist, then I'm a socialist.
Individual acts of charity won't do it. There aren't enough of them and the problem's too big. The Church doesn't do nearly enough. Even if it did, the job's too big.
The only way to solve the problem is to finally ditch the Republican bullshit and admit that every human being has a right, not an "invented right", but a God-given right, to basic shelter and a subsistance income. If you try to weasel out of that, you have no damn business calling yourself Christian, much less Catholic.
We hear laments that, oh, those "spirit of Vatican II" types talk about social justice so much that a "faithful Catholic" has to back off. Well, let me put this bluntly. If you don't accept and practise the teaching of the Church on social justice, you're every bit as much a dissident as the worst of that sort, so stop lying. You're not a faithful Catholic, at all."
Let's see: oppose increasing the welfare state and you are not a faithful Catholic; vote for the most pro-abort candidate who ever ran for the Presidency, hey that's fine for a Catholic! Got it.
Victor, it's my opinion that the Just Judge will take a very dim view of those who claimed to have the benefit of Catholic teaching, and yet continued to elect pro-abortion officeholders. I could be wrong, and I admit it's not my opinion that matters.
But it's not a risk I'd care to take.
So I express my opinion, but I don't say they're not Catholic, but neither will I reassure them that of course they are, as Donald and Dale do.
I just do the math, and I think that there's no problem so bad as the deaths of 2 million innocents per year in the U.S., unless it's the death of 2 million innocents per year in the U.S. with the support of self-proclaimed Catholics.
Especially, as Donald pointed out, ones who are perfectly happy to read others out of the Church on political grounds.
"So I express my opinion, but I don't say they're not Catholic, but neither will I reassure them that of course they are, as Donald and Dale do."
Of course they're still Catholic, because nobody with authority to say so has said otherwise.
The only people who have authority to say "X's not Catholic" are X (who knows) and the Church's hierarchy (which judges such things). We laymen can say "X is a bad Catholic who's Hell-bound," but no more.
Histor
Paul:
Given that it's above my pay grade to read someone out of the Church, especially on this issue where the Magisterium has given a considerable degree of latitude, yes, I cut slack.
I'm more than willing to point out the flawed thinking and the horrific consequences of supporting a particular candidate whose record should inspire horror, not confidence. If the lawmakers and executives themselves are rarely subject to Church discipline, then those who vote for them are another order of magnitude removed from culpability.
It's not about Church discipline, Dale. Even absent any rebuke from any person, even without anyone making an announcement, I'm pretty sure that it's possible, by a purely internal process, for a person to exclude himself from the Church, even without being himself aware of it.
And supporting the wholesale slaughter of innocents, even by only voting for a pro-abortion candidate because you like his other views, sure seems like a likely way to me.
There's an old theological theory that holds that a sovereign has a greater culpability for his sins than a subject, because the actions of a king are of so much greater moment than those of a commoner.
But make no mistake: in the U.S., it's the voter who is the sovereign. Presidents, Senators, Congressmen and the rest are merely our ministers. I think it's highly likely that we will be held responsible in some measure for their actions.
Abortion should not be an issue in American politics. All Americans should recoil from it and join together to ban abortion completely from our land. That so many politicians, and especially of one party, are so tolerant of -- and even enthusiastic for -- this holocaust, to my mind, calls into question all their other views.
But imagine for an instant that you, I, Barack Obama and the entire Democratic Party agreed with Church teaching on abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage and the rest. Imagine that the only disputes between the parties were things that were not matters of Church teaching: whether a given war is just or unjust, whether public or market action is the best way to help the poor, what scheme of taxation is the best way for our nation to raise revenues, what commercial regulations will best benefit our populace.
If we had a culture of life in this country, instead of a culture of death, how much better might everything else be? But those who are so ready to negotiate what even the Holy Father has called non-negotiable serve to slow or even prevent progress towards what should be our highest priority: a culture of life.
And by (at the same time as they do that) declaring their Catholic faith, they give scandal to the faithful and political aid and comfort to those who would continue to fight for the culture of death.
So, you're right; it's not for me to say that they're not Catholic. Nor is it for me to say that they are. I have an opinion on the matter, but there's no reason anyone should have to care what my opinion on that matter is. If they want to be thought of as Catholic, though, it seems to me that the least they might do is to vote like they're adherents of the Popes who have declared a Culture of Life as their highest, "non-negotiable" value.
Suppose, just suppose, you're one of those rare conservative Christians to whom fighting abortion and ending the Iraq War are the two most important issues. Men like Andrew Bacevich and Douglas Kmiec seem to fall into that category.
In that case, it's understandable to me that you could ask yourself: "Which is more likely- that President Obama would end the Iraq War or that President McCain would end abortion?"
How sure can we be that Barack Obama would end the Iraq War? Pretty sure.
How sure can we be that John McCain would even TRY very hard to fight abortion (let alone succeed)? Not very sure at all.
So, mightn't it be reasonable to vote for the candidate who's more likely to DO something about one of the main issues you care about?
How sure can we be that Barack Obama would end the Iraq War? Pretty sure.
I was actually just going to write the complete opposite. Catholics who believe this are incredibly naive. There is as much chance that the conflict in Iraq will end under Obama's watch as there is that abortion will end under McCain's.
So, mightn't it be reasonable to vote for the candidate who's more likely to DO something about one of the main issues you care about?
Again, yes, but you'd be acting out of a mistaken belief, not to mention horribly misplaced priorities. Between the Iraq war and abortion, there's only one issue that the Church has spoken out with magisterial authority.
If that's what they (not including Kmiec--he was a Romney man until a few months ago) are hoping for, they are in for a rude shock.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/
be...e_scenario.html
But Obama is a lead-pipe cinch to make things much, much worse on abortion.
The war in Iraq doesn't kill two million innocents per year.
It would be great if we had a Republican candidate with as much zeal for life as Obama has for abortion. Hell, I'd settle for a Republican who cared as much about life as he did about earmarks. Instead, we've got a choice between someone who will try his hardest to keep abortion legal, and someone who won't do much at all to make it illegal.
Sorry if I'm not excited about voting this year.
You and me both, Jim. I'm tired of the "least worst option," but this year especially, it's the only hope in town.
I sadly agree.
In regard to Bush 43 I really do think he took the pro-life issue to heart and has done the most that he could do considering the tooth and nail opposition of the vast majority of Democrats in Congress. On abortion McCain has always voted the right way, but it has never been a front burner issue for him. However there is this speech which he delivered on September 18, 1998 in regard to partial birth abortion:
"Mr. President, I come to the Senate floor today to speak on behalf of millions of defenseless unborn children who cannot speak for themselves. If they could speak, I know that they would ask for a chance to live. Tragically, too many unborn children are not given a choice and they lose their chance at life to abortion.
"We are not here today to debate the legality of abortion. We are here to discuss ending partial-birth abortion -- a particularly gruesome procedure that would be outlawed today but for the President's veto last year of a national ban.
"Banning partial-birth abortions goes far beyond traditional pro-life or pro-choice views. No matter what your personal opinion regarding the legalization of abortion, we should all be appalled and outraged by the practice of partial-birth abortions. This procedure is inhumane and extremely brutal entailing the partial delivery of a healthy baby who is then killed by having its vibrant brain stabbed and suctioned out of the skull.
"This is simply barbaric. I have heard from thousands of people in my home state of Arizona who are outraged that this brutal procedure is permitted. Many of them have differing views regarding the legalization of abortion, but they all concur that partial-birth abortions are particularly cruel and must be stopped.
"Arizonans were recently reminded about the devastating effects for unborn children of partial-birth abortions. On June 30th of this year, a physician in Phoenix attempted to perform a partial-birth abortion. Dr. John Biskind of the A-Z Women's Center was aborting what he believed was a 23-week-old baby.
"After beginning the procedure, Dr. Biskind realized that the child was actually a 37-week, 6-pound baby girl. He immediately stopped the abortion procedure and delivered the baby girl. She suffered a fractured skull and facial lacerations, but thankfully is now recovering with a loving family who adopted her."
"This deplorable incident should never have occurred. It could have been prevented, sparing this little girl, now known as Baby Phoenix, the physical and emotional trauma of nearly being killed at birth.
"If a national ban on partial-birth abortion had been the law, this Arizona doctor would not have been performing such a horrific procedure on a viable 23-week-old baby -- let alone 37-week-old Baby Phoenix.
"Clearly, this near-tragedy illustrates the urgent need for a ban on partial-birth abortions in our nation. We simply can not allow this heinous procedure to continue taking the lives of viable,
(a href="http://www.theonion.com/content/news/
obama_clinton_mccain_join_forces">The Onion nails it...
Dale, you said:
I'm tired of the "least worst option," but this year especially, it's the only hope in town.
I think it's a matter of perspective. One can look at the candidates and think "well, he's good on this issue, but he's terrible on that and that, and the opposition is even worse", and use it to have a negative view of the election. Or one can look at the candidates and think "which most closely matches my views?"
No candidate is going to be a 100% match (unless it's you that's running, and you vote for yourself).
For me, it's not a matter of which candidate will do the least harm, but which will do the most good.
Why does blockquote HTML break your formatting (or is the formatting just broken under Safari?)
You just tap your magic red gnome slippers together and say "yes we can!"... "yes we can!"....
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