www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Moral Voting

If you want to talk fallacies, try equating a newborn, totally dependent infant with an independent, speaking human being. Or a senile, impotent old geezer with a virile youth.
You criticize those who say you can't be a good Catholic while holding the views that you do, but then you convict yourself every time you open your mouth!

MKE,

Simply put, one cannot condone murder and be Catholic.

As Christians we are called to submit to Jesus Christ and embrace the teachings of His Church in their fullness. This does not mean that we do not sin each day. All of sin each day. But when we do fall in sin we are to repent and reform ourselves according the teachings of Christ.

Christ does not allow us the option of choosing those teachings we like and rejecting those teachings we don�t like.

Admin

MKE,

I see you have bought the lies of the abortionists. All I can do is to pray for you that you choose to follow Christ rather than man.

From the moment of conception there is a human being. That human being is just as human as you or me. To kill that human in the womb is no different than killing you or me, than killing an elderly person who is ill, than killing a newborn child who is not yet �self sustaining�, than killing a mentally handicapped individual who will never be "self sustaining". It is all murder.

You have the free will to reject God�s teaching. But if you do you should not call yourself a Catholic because you are not.

Admin

In other words: yes! I did talk about "our" not "one's". I used the example of biomedical research simply in light of your response to Sharon. If you think this has nothing to do with taxes consider the central role of NIH in this enterprise.

What Cheney presents for public ocnsumption is evidently different than his argument to O'Neill. It would be nice, in any case if economic ideology were seasoned with reality, including political reality. The neo-con approach has not helped to reduce the debt. As far as stewardship goes, an argument can be made for incurring debt to finance investments, but not for expenses or depreciating purchases, even if we can "afford" it. The fact the this bad policy is less severe now than in previous times does not make it a good policy.

ABSOLUTELY. The government has no right to say that something objectively wrong is right or that something objectively right is wrong! It has general objectives, such as those enumerated in the Declaraion of Independence or the preamble to the constitution, and must make decisions about things as being consonant or dissonant with these objectives, but it has bussines in wieghin-in on moral dogma. This is the trouble with a pro-life posture compromised with a kill 'em in hard cases attitude.

Kerry has not had, given, procured, an abortion. Bush has had direct oversight of executions. The point is that "support" must be defined carefully in any serious effort to understand culpability. If you hold that voting for Arlen Spectre, for example, is as morally grave as murdering your neighbor in cold blood, then IMO, you are not participating in that serious effort.

Sheer nonsense! It would be sufficient that he undertook these executions with indifference to innocence, non-lethal alternatives, mitigating factors, etc. I had commented on this point previously but can't find the thread. Google Bush and death penalty. Responsible Republicans like Gary Bauer were incredulous over Bush's mockery of a woman that he executed.

Perhaps you would like to rephrase this gross misstatement.

I sense that we disagree on whether or not government should our spiritual father, and this colors our perceptions of party philosophy. As to the gains in credibility of the Republican party, perhaps you are right, only because of the zero-basal level.

By those who see government as spiritual father? Who on earth teaches them that?

I agree that more needs to be done within the Party to advance the pro-life cause.

In light of all the red-herrings, I want to re-post this:

https://www.byzcath.org/bboard/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=001350;p=4#000050

Some think the best way is to vote Republican, some to vote Constituional, some to avoid politics altogether. I see it differently. Father Deacon Lance began this thread by noting the clarity of what the church teaches. On morality of abortion there is no doubt. On not "supporting" abortion, crystal clear. On what entails "support", anything but. Witness the response to Bishop Sheridan by other Bishops and his own clarification.

And fortunately so, inasmuch as this is intertwined with political judgments, which AFAIK are not a matter moral dogma (although I sense an undercurrent of disdain for liberal democracy). People's ideas about the best way to get to the goal of an abortion-unthinkable society apparently span a wide spectrum. Charity dictates that this fact inform labels that people may like to attach to others and their judgments on sinfulness, excommunicability, failure to follow Christ, doing the bidding of Satan, etc.

Sorry, double post.

If that is the case, it would be difficult to justify a vote for either major party candidate in conscience.

If you are speaking of the Republican Party, there is definitely no incremental advancement of truth. Since Ronald Reagan, it has actually quite degraded itself in moral values.

Again, look at the new "shining stars" of the party such as the Governor of California. If that is incremental advancement of truth, I want no part of it. Any attempt of portraying the current Republican Party as a shining white night morally falls flat on its face.

Regarding the comment about pragmatism vs. purity earlier in this thread, I doubt many saints would have been canonized as saints had they opted for pragmatism instead of purity.
And they definitely were not pretending. All are called to witness the faith to the purest extent possible.

I think I understand your point now that you have rephrased it. Of course we must pay the expenses spent by the government in our name. You might, however, note that �fair share� is a euphemism used by many Democrats to confiscate higher percentages of income from those who work harder, taking risks and earning rewards. The main job of the federal government is to provide for the national defense. When the country�s debt becomes greater than the country can pay then the proper response is to reduce expenditures, not raise tax rates. Raising tax rates only succeeds in reducing tax revenues.

Might I first suggest that you not wish to use the term �neo-con�? �Neo-con� as used in political circles in Washington is a derogatory term referring to Jews who have moved from being liberal to being conservative.

The conservative approach has indeed resulted in reducing debt as a percentage of GDP. Keep in mind that you can�t look at debt as a snapshot. A trillion dollar debt in 2004 is far less troubling to an economy than a 50 billion dollar debt was in 1960.

Is it best never to incur debt? Depends. I am in debt because I owe a mortgage on my house. I don�t currently have an auto loan because my car is 12 years old but I am not totally averse to someday going into debt for a vehicle that will depreciate as soon as I drive it off the lot. FDR incurred lots of debt during WWII but it was that right to fight our enemies. A sizeable chunk of our current national debt is due to the war on terrorism. It is money well spent. I do prefer that we would reduce other expenditures but Congress has not seen fit to do that. I haven�t seen O�Neill�s specific remarks on Cheney but I have seen Cheney explaining his position on C-SPAN (yes, I am a C-SPAN junkie and even listen to C-SPAN radio while driving to and from work). Cheney was not advocating unrestrained debt. He was speaking that if one needed to incur debt that one should make sure it was small and well within one�s ability to pay it. Your summary of his position seems to be unfair as it suggests that he is willing to create a level of debt that we can never pay. That is not his position.

Then the government has no right to legislate because all law is predicated on an understanding of right and wrong. I disagree profoundly. For the record, are you stating here that you believe the government has no right to legislate regarding abortion and other types of murder?

Actually, no. There are plenty of examples of incrementally establishing law. Look at the example of drunk driving laws. In the past generation they have become incrementally more and more strict. While it would be my preference to outright ban all abortions that is not possible in the short term. The ban on partial birth abortion is an example that disproves your argument. If you were a legislator would you have voted against the partial birth abortion ban because it did not offer protection to humans who were only in the womb less than six months? I sure hope not. The fact that Congress did not find a way to ban all abortions does not mean that it has pronounced some abortions to be good and moral.

Kerry has voted to fund abortions (something always wrong) and even to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions. Bush has had direct oversight over executions (something that is considered moral by the Church). Kerry knowingly furthered the cause of abortion and is highly culpable. Unless Bush knowingly executed an innocent person he has committed no sin in the eyes of the Church, except for possibly a lack of mercy (which is not a grave offense when compared to furthering abortion).

Is voting for a pro-abortion candidate like Arlen Spectre less sinful than shooting your neighbor? Of course. But that does not make voting for Arlen Spectre a morally acceptable option if there were a pro-life candidate available. If I lived in Pennsylvania and had to vote between a pro-abortion Republican candidate like Spectre and there was a pro-life Democrat, I would vote for the pro-life Democrat.

Anyone who votes for a pro-abortion candidate when there is pro-life candidate available does not have a serious respect for the right to life.

Sorry, but it�s not nonsense. The most grievous accusation against Bush is that he mocked a woman who sought clemency because she was a new born-again Christian. While I find Bush�s actions in this case � assuming they are correct and in context � to be unacceptable, they certainly do not rise to the level of evil Kerry has done when voting to use federal funds for abortion or to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortion. Even Time magazine noted that Bush was not responsible for the number of executions or the procedures by which a governor of Texas could grant clemency (although, to be fair, Time magazine did chide him for not using the bully pulpit of the governorship to push for reform of these laws).

While the Church seeks mercy it does allow for the use of capital punishment. It is still the only way to guarantee protection of society from unjust aggressors who can escape (or someday be paroled) and kill again. If the state had in place a system where those now in line for capital punishment would never be released into society again then one could possibly argue that there is an effective way of preventing additional crimes. Such a method does not exist in the United States. It cannot, therefore, be argued that the Church prohibits the use of capital punishment when, clearly, it does not.

That is an interesting twist! No, I argue that we should restore the Judeo-Christian morality that our nation was founded on. If you are arguing that we should have no religious foundation for our laws then you are arguing for no law.

All it would take is for good men like you to refuse to vote for pro-abortion candidates and to work hard to support pro-life candidates.

Dear Administrator: Please note that "neo-con" also refers to certain Catholics [Novak, Weigel and Neuhaus, to be precise] that have gone from being liberal to being "conservative" [in this context, classically liberal Jacobins with an imperialist twist] and who have in the process attempted with some success to hijack Catholic social teaching and pull the wool over the eyes of Catholic believers.
If the term is a mask for anti-Semitism that's new to me.

Neo-Cons are about as Jewish as Kerry is Roman Catholic. It is an ethnic marker, not a practiced religion. They are militantly secular and have a new faith in the virtues of changing the Middle East through force, the most resistant region on Earth to Western secular influence and the Novus Ordo Seclorum.

Remember the Vatican-Iran surprise alliance against abortion in the UN. The secularists cried no fair. Whoever controls the global media, controls the global zeitgeist. If we want to win the abortion debate, we need a wealthy pro-lifer to buy a network.

Dear Administrator,

First, I recommend that you endeavor to be frugal and save if possible, so that you can pay cash when you need a new car, or any other major expenditure of this kind. Maybe I am just old-fashioned. Clearly real emergency can necessitate debt.

Cheney may not advocate unrestrained debts but his idea of restraint is just too lax for me. I think the surpluses of Clinton era are preferable.

Nope. It has a right to legislate on the basis of, as the supreme Court like to say, "compelling interests". It therefore inevitably willl legislate on matters that have moral dimensions. It may, on a good day recognize these moral dimensions. It has no right, however, to declare what is right or wrong.

In all honesty, I have mixed feelings on that legislation. We did not legislate against late-term abortions, just that particular procedure. We thus said this procedure is ghastly, do abortions in some less obviously unpleasant way. No lives have been saved and no principles - e.g. against later term abortions in general - have been established. Worse we have actually conspired conceal the ghastliness, making it yet harder to achieve the conciousness raising that will be necessary to achieve our goals. (A modest proposal to use discarded body parts in cat food - i.e., total revelation of the ghastliness, would be far more effective in jolting our conciousness. IMO!) So I see a step backwards in this regard. OTOH it does set some limitation, albeit an ineffectual one, that is something of a plus.

The church sees captial punishment as not inherently immoral. It can be moral. But it is certainly not unqualifiedly moral. That is what was terribly wrong with your original statement. And while Mr. Bush's mockery is disgusting, the main charge is that the gross number of executions that he oversaw is irreconcilable with the catechism's teaching that the neccessity of execution is "very rare, if not practically non-existent". (Moreover, there is are indications he did not do due diligence even to conduct substantive oversight of each case.)

A much better statement.

I guess Pope Innocent III never read the new and improved catechism under new management.

Speaking of Specter:

http://www.e-skojec.com/archives/000318.html#more

Is Santorum being denied communion?

Santorum is the most devout Catholic in the Senate, father of 7 and a Opus Dei guest speaker in DC for Father McCloskey.

He put seniority for Pennsylvania and his own leadership position in the GOP caucus ahead of the cause of life. Out of character.

Roman Catholic Pat Toomey of Allentown was pro-abortion in cases of rape, incest and alleged to save life of the mother.
Toomey's rally on the day of the election was at a Scottish Rite Freemason Lodge. He damned his own cause by a mere 16,000 votes.

So is there a move to deny him the Eucharist?