All Read: Political Threads

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sylverpiano

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These generalizing flame bombs of haphazard theology where people base Catholicism on party affiliation are not allowed.
The six threads I linked to do just that. The message seems to be that if you don't vote Republican, you are not a true Catholic, committing a Mortal Sin and effectively auto-excommunicated. I found and linked to them in five or ten minutes.
 
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Davidnic

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The six threads I linked to do just that. The message seems to be that if you don't vote Republican, you are not a true Catholic, committing a Mortal Sin and effectively auto-excommunicated. I found and linked to them in five or ten minutes.

I believe most of those are closed for staff review. I closed two yesterday. Two today. Some are being looked at.

My hope is after this thread most of it ends. If not there will need to be more forceful measures. 2008 was horrid around here. No one wants to go through it again and such things will be nipped early.
 
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Davidnic

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David, I just attended a presentation on Faithful Citizenship presented by a diocesan lobbyist.

And your representation of Faithful Citizenship is different from what he said.

Well then his is different from the USCCB official clarification. Also in October of this year the Bishops issued a new statement so that in 2012 the forming consciences faithful citizenship document is not used to justify a pro-choice or any anti-life vote: link and link

So USCCB clarification outweigh what anyone told you. The clarification is clear that if something is an intrinsic evil that it: “involve the clear obligation to oppose intrinsic evils which can never be justified”

Abortion is a prominent intrinsic evil. So, the USCCB is clear that after the misinterpretations of 2008 how Faithful Citizenship is to be used.

So it is not really a conversation or a debate.

The Bishops officially said as one, after a dozen or more individual clarifications:

“Although it has at times been misused to present an incomplete or distorted view of the demands of faith in politics, this statement remains a faithful and challenging call to discipleship in the world of politics. It does not offer a voter’s guide, scorecard of issues, or direction on how to vote. It applies Catholic moral principles to a range of important issues and warns against misguided appeals to “conscience” to ignore fundamental moral claims, to reduce Catholic moral concerns to one or two matters, or to justify choices simply to advance partisan, ideological, or personal interests.”

This cuts both ways but the Bishops are clear the document can not be used to make Abortion one of many issues. Or, at the same time, to discount other issues besides abortion.

In short it can not be used to support a non-Catholic proportionalist argument that allows support for an intrinsic evil. Be that abortion or torture...or any other one.

So if your rep was supporting proportionalism, you should be wary. Because there are dozens of individual statements and one united statement about how it can not be used this way.

So if I am going with what a Diocesan rep says and what the USCCB has said united and dispersed. I am going with the USCCB.


 
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benedictaoo

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well IMO ONLY its a hard call because we have both sides that that supports abortion, but one side supports many other intrinsic evils like torture, while the other side just supports abortion.

Seriously, what outweighs here? abortion on demand or abortion with special permission along with DP, torture, war...

but then again, the Democratics say they are against the DP and torture and war but we still have them. Obama did not do what he promised to do. We still have the intrinsic evils he said he was against.

So you want to vote? Throw a deck of cards up in the air and see where it lands... and vote for them.
 
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Fantine

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This representative said that each bishop is accountable only to the Pope and that no bishops are accountable to the USCCB.

Maybe that's why the most conservative bishops on the USCCB make enough noise, even if they are espousing fringe positions, figuring that they'd rile up the whole country.

We are fortunate to have a bishop who is moderate and balanced, and who cares deeply about all life issues. He believes in comforting the afflicted and afflicting the conservatives (God bless him). In an area as conservative as this, we need a bishop who reminds them that there IS life after birth, and it is important.
 
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Davidnic

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This representative said that each bishop is accountable only to the Pope and that no bishops are accountable to the USCCB.

Maybe that's why the most conservative bishops on the USCCB make enough noise, even if they are espousing fringe positions, figuring that they'd rile up the whole country.

We are fortunate to have a bishop who is moderate and balanced, and who cares deeply about all life issues. He believes in comforting the afflicted and afflicting the conservatives (God bless him). In an area as conservative as this, we need a bishop who reminds them that there IS life after birth, and it is important.

Yeah see, right there when a rep is basically swiping aside the body of Bishops that wrote the document, they lose credibility.

Here we are going with what the USCCB has said as a body.
 
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Fantine

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Only a few years ago, the Catholic Answers Voters Guide (whose image you are trying to recreate Faithful Citizenship in) was banned by some dioceses simply because it wasn't a "guide" at all. It was marching orders.

A few years ago, a local pastor (who has since been transferred) told his staff that they had to sign a "loyalty oath" that they were voting for McCain, and that if they refused to sign the "loyalty oath" they should resign. At least one resigned. They all wrote letters to the bishop complaining, and complaining that the priest had Republican posters on the rectory lawn. The bishop made him take the posters off the lawn.

When he left and a new pastor was assigned, the employee that resigned went back to his old position.

If there are abuses in the voters' guides, they're not coming from the liberal end.

The representative showed a slide presentation from the USCCB. It didn't say what you said.

I'm looking at the bulletin insert. It doesn't say what you say.

http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-act...nces-Faithful-Citizenship-bulletin-insert.pdf

Even when it says, "these intrinsic evils must always be opposed," it does not say what form the opposition should take. When a morally bankrupt politician who scarcely has a single position acknowledging that there's a heart beating underneath his Brooks Brothers suit says he's pro-life, why should I believe him? If he loses that issue, only 1% of the population would find anything in all his other positions praiseworthy. He needs to keep abortion legal because he needs the religious right's support, and he can only do that if ending abortion is an unkept promise.

Better to elect someone who works for positive change and send him or her regular notes encouraging and exhorting him or her to become more enlightened in other ways.
 
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MikeK

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Fantine, you're a disgrace. That isn't a flame, it's the kindest thing I can say to you.

David, thank you.

There are wolves on the left and wolves on the right and it has reached a point where faithful Catholics cannot engage in conversation here because of extremist trolls on either side. If the past is any indicator, this will of get worse as election time gets closer.

It is possible to vote for a Democrat, a Republican or an independent without sinning. It is also possible to abstain from voting without sinning.
 
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Davidnic

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Fantine, many Bishops have clarified this and the information is available. I could list every clarification and they run into the dozens. And not a single one agrees with your rep or your slide show. Or your personal interpretation. Here is the direct clarification for the USCCB from 2008 from those in charge of pro-life and social justice proclamation for the USCCB. Since it is from both of those offices and addresses the attempts to twist Faithful Citizenship directly, it will stand as the clarification that counts in OBOB. Do as you wish in your personal life. But here, this is what stands and the matter is not up for discussion since this is a statement from the appointed representatives on a document approved by the whole body of Bishops. So everyone, place threads where they should be. Any questions ask. Be civil :

Joint Statement by
Cardinal Justin Rigali
Chairman, Committee on Pro-Life Activities
and
Bishop William Murphy
Chairman, Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
October 21, 2008

In Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship (2007), the Catholic bishops of the United States urged Catholic voters to form their consciences in accord with the Church’s moral teaching. We emphasized that: ”Both opposing evil and doing good are essential obligations” (No. 24). Unfortunately, there seem to be efforts and voter education materials designed to persuade Catholics that they need only choose one approach: either opposing evil or doing good. This is not an authentically Catholic approach.

Some argue that we should not focus on policies that provide help for pregnant women, but just focus on the essential task of establishing legal protections for children in the womb. Others argue that providing life affirming support for pregnant women should be our only focus and this should take the place of efforts to establish legal protections for unborn children. We want to be clear that neither argument is consistent with Catholic teaching. Our faith requires us to oppose abortion on demand and to provide help to mothers facing challenging pregnancies.

In 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision knocked down laws against abortion in all 50 states, fabricating a constitutional “right” to abortion that continues to haunt and divide our society. Within two days of that decision, the Catholic bishops rejected it as “bad morality, bad medicine and bad public policy.” We called for a comprehensive response: exploring “every legal possibility” for challenging the Court’s tragic error and restoring legal safeguards for the right to life of the unborn child; helping to pass laws to ”restrict the practice of abortion as much as possible” in the meantime; and educating society to the need to safeguard the child and support “more humane and morally acceptable solutions” for women facing problems during pregnancy.

Recently, some have called on the Church to abandon most of this effort. They say we should accept Roe as a permanent fixture of constitutional law, stop trying to restore recognition for the unborn child’s human rights, and confine our public advocacy to efforts to “reduce abortions” through improved economic and social support for women and families.

The Catholic community is second to no one in providing and advocating for support for women and families facing problems during pregnancy. Catholic hospitals, charitable institutions, and thousands of pregnancy aid centers, provide life-saving care and compassionate alternatives to the violence of abortion. We have advocated for universal health care coverage, generous family leave policies, increases in theminimum wage, humane welfare policies for women who are pregnant or caring for young children, expanded funding for WIC and other nutrition programs, and a federal children’s health insurance program that includes coverage for unborn children and their mothers. Because some women still feel pressured by economic hardship and lack of support to resort to abortion, our task in this regard is far from over.

These efforts, however, are not an adequate or complete response to the injustice of Roe v. Wade for several important reasons. First, the Court’s decision in Roe denied an entire class of innocent human beings the most fundamental human right, the right to life. In fact, the act of killing these fellow human beings was transformed from a crime into a “right,” turning the structure of human rights on its head. Roe v. Wade is a clear case of an “intrinsically unjust law” we are morally obliged to oppose (see Evangelium vitae, nos. 71-73). Reversing it is not a mere political tactic, but a moral imperative for Catholics and others who respect human life.

Second, the many challenges to the Court’s error since 1973 have borne fruit, leading to significant modifications of Roe. Most recently in its ruling on partial-birth abortion, the Court upheld a ban on an abortion procedure for the first time in 35 years, and acknowledged that abortion takes a human life and does serious harm to women.

Third, Roe itself enormously increased the annual number of abortions in our society. The law is a teacher, and Roe taught many women, physicians and others that abortion is an acceptable answer to a wide range of problems. By the same token, even the limited pro-life laws allowed by the Court since Roe have been shown to reduce abortions substantially, leading to a steady decline in the abortion rate since 1980. Bans on public funding, laws requiring informed consent for women and parental involvement for minors, and other modest and widely supported laws have saved millions of lives. Laws made possible by reversing Roe would save many more. On the other hand, this progress could be lost through a key pro-abortion proposal, the “Freedom of Choice Act,” which supporters say would knock down hundreds of current pro-life laws and forbid any public program to “discriminate” against abortion in providing services to women.

Providing support for pregnant women so they choose to have their babies is a necessary but not sufficient response to abortion. Similarly, reversal of Roe is a necessary but not sufficient condition for restoring an order of justice in our society’s treatment of defenseless human life. This act by itself would not automatically grant legal protection to the unborn. It would remove an enormous obstacle to such protection, so the people of the United States and their elected representatives in every state could engage in a genuine discussion of how to save unborn children and their mothers from the tragedy of abortion. Both approaches to opposing abortion are essential. By protecting the child’s life to the maximum degree possible, improving life-affirming support for pregnant women, and changing the attitudes and prejudices imposed on many women to make them see abortion as an acceptable or necessary solution, we will truly help build a culture of life.

In light of a wide range of attempts to interpret Church teaching or imply that outside materials represent the teaching of the Church, we wish to affirm that Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship is the teaching that has been approved by the body of bishops of the United States. As we explained in that statement, “We encourage Catholics to seek those resources that are authorized by their own bishops, their state Catholic conferences, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.”​
 
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