VA Gov. Kaine was Jesuit missionary in Honduras

[Fantine]

Since Obama has said he will announce his Vice-Presidential candidate on Saturday (Biden has said it's not him, which means it's probably Kaine or Bayh) I thought I would read up on Kaine.

I thought this was interesting:

He attended Harvard Law School, taking a year-long break during law school to work with the Jesuit order as a Roman Catholic missionary in Honduras.[4] Kaine is fluent in Spanish from his time in Honduras.

He supports restrictions on abortion, such as requiring parental consent and banning so-called partial-birth abortions in cases where the woman's health is not at risk.[26

I recognize that he is not a conservative Catholic (the kind most of you call "Catholic Catholic") but I think it would be difficult for people who have not spent a year of our youth as Jesuit missionaries in Central America to say he is not a person of strong faith.

For the Democrats, who have allowed Republicans to define words like faith (possessed by lean, mean pro-life machines,) it gives them a window of opportunity to show that faith is defined as much by the "shalts" as by the "shalt nots..."

The spector of archbishops picking on lay Jesuit missionaries would be akin to bullies knocking down little old ladies, I imagine.

As a June 24 poll shows Catholics

by contrast, look like the public at large in their views on abortion, despite the opposition from their church. Fifty-five percent of Catholics say abortion should be generally legal, and 28 percent say their religion is the main factor in their opinion on the subject — in both cases about the same as the population at large.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/poll010702.html

While it saddens me to think that so many Catholics think that abortion should be widely available, it makes me mad that we have let a small bunch of mean-spirited gun-toting warmongers define what religion is for the rest of us, and I am hopeful that Kaine may be the one who helps break that stereotype.

 

[Michie]

Thank you for the info Fantine.

 

[Romans 13:3]

Wouldn't that be about the time the Jesuits were being criticized roundly for their Marxist/Socialist leanings?

 

[Michie]

EDITORIAL: Governor Kaine, On Abortion 'A Crime Can Never Be Turned into a Right!'

Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
It is NEVER compassionate to fail to hear the cry of the poorest of the poor, those who have no voice of their own. It never serves the common good to legalize the taking of innocent human life. A Crime can never be turned into a Right.

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Catholic Online) –

As I write this article, Senator Barack Obama will soon appear at a Town Hall meeting less than two miles from my home in Chesapeake, Virginia at Oscar Smith High School. In fact, the crowds are so large that cars are being parked on the public streets even this far away.

The Campaigns' visit to our City is one of four campaign stops Senator Obama is making to Virginia as he makes a full court press to win over the Commonwealth for his candidacy and his Party and comes closer to announcing who he has chosen to run with him as a Vice Presidential candidate.

Senator Obama has been appearing all day with the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Tim Kaine. Governor Kaine is a Catholic Christian with a distinguished background of public service. He also served as a young man with the Jesuits in missionary work in Honduras.

Continued- http://www.catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=28974

 

[Fantine]

If we do not hear the cry of those whom Mother Teresa rightly called “the poorest of the poor”, those in the womb who have no voice but ours, then our claims of concern for the poor and our claim of compassion for them are selective. We will care about only those poor whom we find to be convenient.We will select who is our neighbor.

I am shocked at the naivete of Catholic Online. It is precisely the pro-life politicians who only care about the poor who are convenient.

What can be more convenient to Americans than the unborn?

They don't need food stamps.
They don't need shelter.
They don't need education.
They don't need their own health care.
They don't need clothing.

Yes, they are very convenient neighbors. No wonder why Republican politicians are so impassioned in their defense.

It's just after they're born that they cease to be neighbors of the pro-life politicians.

It was so interesting to see an editorial trying to describe a Democrat that instead described Republicans to a "T."

 

[FullyMT]

I think it's important to note that the Governor was never a Jesuit himself, but rather worked as a lay person with the Jesuits in missionary activity...At first it sounds like he himself was a Jesuit of some sort...
Picking Kaine would be incredibly smart of Obama...

 

[Fantine]

Wouldn't that be about the time the Jesuits were being criticized roundly for their Marxist/Socialist leanings?

There were, I am sure, opportunities for Kaine to work in Honduras in a secular capacity--the Peace Corps, for example. Instead, he chose to go as a Catholic missionary, not because he was a "Marxist" or a "Socialist," as you are broadly trying to paint him and the Jesuit Order, but because he wanted to help the people of Honduras physically and spiritually.

I can imagine it must have been difficult to be a missionary in Central America, seeing so many natives enslaved by brutal dictators that the United States was supporting in office because they were "anti-Communist."

And Phil Ochs sang about them, "The Marines Have Landed on the Shores of Santo Domingo."

What kind of choice did the Jesuits and their flocks have? The brutal dictator or the young leader who was promising them a better life?

Maybe if the US had been committed to supporting a good leader who really wanted to give the people a better life (instead of the brutal dictator) those countries wouldn't have gone Communist...

But only the most severely entrenched in unquestioning hierarchy would advocate blind allegiance to a brutal dictator who enslaves his people.

 

[Davidnic]

Picking Kaine would be incredibly smart of Obama...

Agreed. Politically it would be an interesting move.

 

[2Cosmic2Charlie]

Picking Kaine would be a mistake strategically and tactically

(Wrong person - too much like him, - wrong state, Kaine is needed in Virginia as Governor, it is unlikely he would be replaced by another Dem)

It'll be Biden.

Excellent foreign policy credentials, tough, not afraid of a fight, charismatic, Catholic in a way that is almost unassailable. (He's one of those you can call pro-abortion and he doesn't care, he keep right on talking about this Catholicism) knows how to take names and kick butt. And as a tactical point, the next person in line in the Senate as far as seniority is concerned is now a Dem his spot in the Senate will not have to surrendered to Repbulican.


It'll be Biden and that's going to be on tough ticket to beat for a 70 year old man who can't remember how many houses he owns.

 

[Davidnic]

Biden, ya think.

I really don't know who it will be. Kaine likely will not be just because of the lack of experience. I hear Wesley Clark a lot.

Biden will not get him Catholic votes the way Kaine might. Biden will get him the Catholics he already has. Kaine might get him some of the ones on the fence.

Either way it should be interesting.