I've only been of the age of political awareness to see two presidential elections, but the idea that my catholic faith should ever lead me to vote republican is ludicrious to me. The fault lines between the parties have the GOP as the party othat helps the wealthy, the Dems as the party that helps the poor. The GOP is of exclusion, the Dems of inclusion. The GOP is about self service while the Dems are about stewardship to the community the environment and the world. There's no question which side our faith teaches us to take on all these issues. The Democrats generally abide by the golden rule of "do unto others" while the GOP loathes this rule and attacks those who advance it.

But then there's abortions. If we assume that abortion is to be viewed as murder, then the republicans certainly have claimed the right side there. But what have they actually done about it? They whine and whine about a culture of death without making any tangible steps to stop it, as if the mere act of condemnation will stop it. Catholicism teaches to love the sinner, loathe the sin, Republicans have that backwards, they loathe the pro-choice movement as murderers but love abortion for the political influence it gives them.

The republican party has become the party of death, despite what they throw at the left. They've brought about abortions through their opposition to condoms and other birth controls. They've killed people over seas through incompetance and dishonesty. They've let people slip through the cracks of our society. They are, in a phrase, morally bankrupt. It sickening to me to see those who claim religious high ground to have so thoroughly perverted what religion is supposed to be about.

Yes, conservatives are pro-life from conception until birth. After that, not so much.

I agree. I tried to explain to my Repub, Bush-loving parents that the Pope (Il Papa himself) told Bush not to go to war with Iraq and told him it was morally wrong after he did it, they just shrugged.

Abortion is about the only thing the Repub platform and Catholic dogma agree on, but it seems to be enough for the older Catholics.

So, I explain to my parents that I agree that abortion is wrong, and if my GF got pregnant, I wouldn't want her to do it. As well, I would counsel anyone I knew, not to do it. That is a LOT different that saying I don't agree, therefore you can't do it. I have no moral involvement in someone else making that decision for themselves.

On the flip side, capital punishment is something that is obviously murder (as in thou shalt not kill) and I am personally involved since I pay for the justice system with my taxes. I think its morally repugnant, it goes against the Catholic doctrine, yet I have to participate in it.

Which is worse I ask them? And again I get a shrug, and they vote Republican. It's conversations like these that make it easy for me not to go to church anymore. If someone can be a Catholic for 65 years and still be OK with voting Repub, then it doesn't seem to have anything more to teach me. I'm happy I did learn the moral lessons it taught, but the follow through for most of my elders is disconcerting.

I am not a catholic but I consider myself a christian and I can say that what you have written is so true, I applaud your efforts to explain to anyone why voting Republican does not help anyone really, GWB has been in office for 8 years and all he did was make fools out of the evangelicals, because once he got in office he did nothing they wanted him to. I don't feel sorry for their cause because I believe we are accountable for what WE do as a person, I cannot get you into heaven and you cannot get me into heaven where crimes against God is concerned. I have to save my soul and if someone ask my opinion and I say look I think abortion is wrong but I know there are times when the suffering of the child because they may be severely retarded or severely physically bad off may be a reason to abort other than for those reasons there is too much birth control out here now and there is no excuse for unwanted pregnancies. Yes there is such a thing as separation of church and state and I believe that we should know the reason why. No leader can help you with God, he can only try to make your day to day life better by making good decisions. So yes I am an Obama fan because what he has we need as a country, we need to get back our greatness and I cannot see the Republican party doing anything but making it worse, could you believe the statement "We can be in Iraq for a hundred years". I just don't get and I am sure I never will understand having the world think that the only way this country can feel good about itself is when its occupying someone else's country.

The Democrats generally believe that the gov't should be the party helping people - I don't generally see people helping people (from EITHER party, frankly). Are not Catholics called to help people? Not put an entity in there to help?

theamazingjex:

I've only been of the age of political awareness to see two presidential elections, but the idea that my catholic faith should ever lead me to vote republican is ludicrious to me. The fault lines between the parties have the GOP as the party othat helps the wealthy, the Dems as the party that helps the poor. The GOP is of exclusion, the Dems of inclusion. The GOP is about self service while the Dems are about stewardship to the community the environment and the world. There's no question which side our faith teaches us to take on all these issues. The Democrats generally abide by the golden rule of "do unto others" while the GOP loathes this rule and attacks those who advance it.

But then there's abortions. If we assume that abortion is to be viewed as murder, then the republicans certainly have claimed the right side there. But what have they actually done about it? They whine and whine about a culture of death without making any tangible steps to stop it, as if the mere act of condemnation will stop it. Catholicism teaches to love the sinner, loathe the sin, Republicans have that backwards, they loathe the pro-choice movement as murderers but love abortion for the political influence it gives them.

The republican party has become the party of death, despite what they throw at the left. They've brought about abortions through their opposition to condoms and other birth controls. They've killed people over seas through incompetance and dishonesty. They've let people slip through the cracks of our society. They are, in a phrase, morally bankrupt. It sickening to me to see those who claim religious high ground to have so thoroughly perverted what religion is supposed to be about.

What a giant pile of jex.

The political narrative tells you that the Dems are "for the poor" and the Republicans "for the rich", but this assumes that we live in a non-zero sum world in which what benefits a set of people will necessarily hurt another. Furthermore, the policies advocated by the Dems do not, in fact, benefit "the poor" (a very tricky term by the way.) Few things are as expensive as the educational establishment that seeks to indoctrinate, not to educate. A justice system based on "compassion" is not very compassionate towards the victims of crime--the majority of which happen to be poor.

On the environment, perhaps it will pay to pay attention to the actual policies advocated, and not merely to the rhetoric. The Democrats advocate anti-human policies, not merely "environmentally-friendly". It is an ideological commitment for them, a quasi-religious one: they think humans, in fact, are the problem, and drastic population reduction is the solution. (What does the Magisterium says about that, come to think of it.)

But Jex's last paragraph is the best of them all. Jex, the Catholic Church is opposed to condoms. Get your facts straight. It is the Church that is completely "against condoms and other birth controls." By blaming the Republican Party for "deaths caused by it", you are blaming the Church even more.

>>On the flip side, capital punishment is something that is obviously murder (as in thou shalt not kill) and I am personally involved since I pay for the justice system with my taxes. I think its morally repugnant, it goes against the Catholic doctrine, yet I have to participate in it.<<

The Catholic Church does not teach that capital punishment is always wrong. If you read Evangelium Vitae, you will see that the Pope says that capital punishment should only be used in cases of necessity, and that in modern society those cases would be rare, if not practically nonexistent. This is not the same as saying that capital punishment is always wrong or is obviously murder. In fact, it would be up to proper state authority to determine exactly when or if capital punishment is warranted in a particular case.

That's also the case with implementation of just war theory. The church pronounces what the criteria are that the politicians should follow when deciding whether to go to war, but the church does not decree when these conditions have been met. If the pope made a private statement that the Iraq war was an unjust war, that's only a private opinion, not a pronouncement of doctrine. The pope is not the President of the United States, and it would be dereliction of duty for a President to say that the word of the pope on the justice of a particular war should be determinative as to whether the United States does or does not go to war.

Kevin Clark

I am so tired of hearing that Democrats are for the poor and Republicans are for the rich. There is nothing easier than giving away other peoples' money. That is what Democrats do. Teddy Kennedy has never worked a day in his life, is worth $500 million, has put his money in the Cayman Islands where the Feds can't tax it now or on his death - but he's portrayed as a wonderful, generous man because he wants to tax oher peoples' money. Every survey of real charity - that is, personal money and time donated - shows that conservatives and Republicans give far more of themselves and with less fanfare than do liberals or Democrats. And since when are the Republicans exclusionary? Every major piece of civil rights legislation in this country's history starting with the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the constitution, through the 19th amendment, and through the Voting Rights bills of 1964 were passed with majority Repubican votes over the filibusters and objections of Democrats. Finally, Republicans haven't just whined about abortion. They've passed as many bills as they can to restrict partial birth abortion, and they've appointed Supreme Court Justices who may finally put the issue back in the Legislative branch of government where it belongs. Any so-called Catholic who supports a politician who votes in favor of allowing 1.2 milion babies per year to be exterminated is far, far out of touch with the teachings of their faith. Supporting abortion while claiming to be a Catholic, is like supporting someone who nukes a city the size of Pittsburgh every year. There is no way to vailidate that choice no matter how far you try to stretch other issues.

"do unto others as you would like others do unto you" If the others are republicans, you are not being very kind to others, are you? Republicans are not evil and neither are democrats, we just have different solutions for the same problems and we need to talk this things out. Attacks will not get us anywhere.

Lexeus, the "we pay for capital punishment" is a slippery argument. While it's certainly true, it's also true that we pay though our economic dollars for all kinds of evils, african civil wars, murders, corporate exploitation of the young, etcs. I happen to agree with this point of view, I'm just cautioning that it's a pretty weak argument in the context of a global economy.

My Dems pro-poor Gop pro-wealthy argument may be simplistic but it rings true if you just look at the freakin political discourse. On minimum wage the dems fought to give the poor a decent wage, in exchange for which the GOP fought for a estate tax cut. Look at the Bush tax cuts. Look at any matter of policy debate. You might say it's stealing people's money to pay for your own aims, but what does that make the military or the prison system?

So, the pope is against condoms so that means we should all stop using them? But the pope is against the death penalty but that doesn't mean we should stop using it? Condoms actually contribute to our society a lot. Plenty of American Catholic clergy have come to realize this face. Seperate your dogma of politics from your dogma of faith and let's discuss this again.

On the republicans brave anti abortion stance. They've opposed partial birth abortion, which is less then .2% of abortions. The other 99.8% they've done nothing about. They've also been against promoting birth control. Government endorsed birth control accounts for a lot more then a .2% drop. I stand by my party of death statement.

theamazingjex:

I've only been of the age of political awareness to see two presidential elections, but the idea that my catholic faith should ever lead me to vote republican is ludicrious to me. The fault lines between the parties have the GOP as the party othat helps the wealthy, the Dems as the party that helps the poor. The GOP is of exclusion, the Dems of inclusion. The GOP is about self service while the Dems are about stewardship to the community the environment and the world. There's no question which side our faith teaches us to take on all these issues. The Democrats generally abide by the golden rule of "do unto others" while the GOP loathes this rule and attacks those who advance it.

But then there's abortions. If we assume that abortion is to be viewed as murder, then the republicans certainly have claimed the right side there. But what have they actually done about it? They whine and whine about a culture of death without making any tangible steps to stop it, as if the mere act of condemnation will stop it. Catholicism teaches to love the sinner, loathe the sin, Republicans have that backwards, they loathe the pro-choice movement as murderers but love abortion for the political influence it gives them.

The republican party has become the party of death, despite what they throw at the left. They've brought about abortions through their opposition to condoms and other birth controls. They've killed people over seas through incompetance and dishonesty. They've let people slip through the cracks of our society. They are, in a phrase, morally bankrupt. It sickening to me to see those who claim religious high ground to have so thoroughly perverted what religion is supposed to be about.

BRAVO!

Before someone goes and trashes the Republican party one ought to know the true History of the Democrat Party. The party of what you call the worlds stewards was founded by 2 of the largest slave owners in the history of America, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. Did you know that it was catholics that joined the republican party too urge Abraham Lincoln to sgn the Emancipation proclamation. Jim Crow laws = democrats, Lynching laws= democrats, Segregation laws = Democrats, guess what Civil Rights signed by an Democrat President, but written by a republican congress who were the majority at the time, oh and most importantly you know that President everyone loves to hate Richard Nixon thank him for affirmative action and the fair housing laws. As far as Obama being president, he stands for everything that we as catholics should be against, I have to laugh when Ted Kennedy calls himself a catholic, didn't he ever hear the part of the churches doctrine that they are Pro Life?

poor dims, they cant change the history fast enough....

I'm a Catholic and against abortion, but I don't believe I have the right to tell a woman what she can or can't do with her body, any more than she can tell me what I can do with mine. That is not the same as thing as supporting abortion and if you can't distinguish between the two, go back to school.

Nice fear/hate-mongering, "Supporting abortion while claiming to be a Catholic, is like supporting someone who nukes a city the size of Pittsburgh every year."

And do you really want to get into the whole situation of unscrupulous fat-cats with millions of dollars? Do the words "Ken Lay" mean anything to you. He must have been your example : "conservatives and Republicans give far more of themselves and with less fanfare than do liberals or Democrats." He gave till it hurt.

Wow, Phily Phlash. Parties voting records a hundred and fifty years ago should really be why we vote for them today. And that Nixon sure was the best friend of civil liberties. That's why he broke the law and spied on americans, to protect our liberties.