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Communion should be denied Mr.Santorum if he has not made proper confession. Senator Santorum uses the sacramenets.

Pro-abortion Democrats persist in public sin without retraction or repentance. Kerry cites Pope Pius XXIII (sic) to justify infanticide.

Santorum's article does not evidence repentence; he persists in backing Specter, does he not?

I am curious if others agree that Santorum should be denied communion.

Lower taxes stimulate employment and generate higher tax revenues for the government.

All governments have performed studies in which they have identified specific taxation rates (points) of diminishing returns. In other words, the higher the taxation rate, the less people want to work and the more likely they are to 'hide' revenue (cheat on their taxes).

Every year, hundreds of thousands of the best educate Canadians come to the USA to work because of the low tax rates. These highly talented people are escaping Canadian socialism. How many US citizens move to Canada to enjoy the much much higher taxes north of the 49th parallel ? (hint: very few)

Hritzko

There was a Pope Pius the TWENTY THIRD? Geez, how long was I asleep??? :rolleyes:

SPDundas
Deaf Byzantine
Pro-Life and PROUD OF IT.

djs wrote:

There's no future for pro-lifers in the Democratic Party, is there?

I don't think I'm being overly pessimistic, but I don't see any indications that the Democratic Party will ever reject "abortion rights."

I think you are correct on that one. When the Democratic Party took its leftward swing some years ago, most of the conservative Democrats I knew left the party and became Republicans. The end-result was that the Democratic Party tilted more to the left, and the Republican Party became more right wing. Some of the Democrat leaders are so hardened in their socialist and pro-choice positions, they will never change. However, I don't think a real pro-life candidate would stand a chance of getting elected - sad to say.

Republican party became more "right-wing"? We must not be talking about the same party that the Governor of California and other pro-abortion Republicans now holding active office belong to.

Iconophile, the neoconservative movement is a fairly coherent social, political, and economic philosophy which now dominates the leadership and platform of the Republican party. Don't let someone tell you that it is only a fringe isolationist reactionary frothing revolving around a few individuals.

There is no coincidence that the rise of this movement and philosphy has coincided with the rise of many more pro-choice Republican candidates for office, many who now actually hold office at the state and Federal level.

Diak:
Perhaps I am just older than you. But I remember that prior to the late 1960s, the Republican Party was fairly moderate. At that time, most all the Southern states were solidly Democratic - conservative, segregationist Democratic. The McGovern candidacy caused many of those Southern Democrats to leave the party. At that time, pro-life had nothing to do with it. What we tend to view as Republican pro-life and economic positions are a product of more recent times. Now it seems the influence of the "Moral Majority" has waned and we see more and more pro-choice Republicans. I don't know where all this is heading, of course. Is it possible that being a Republican in the future will mean just holding to a set of economic theories?

Regarding whether one's vote for a particular candidate is gravely sinful, the Italian weekly, L'espresso , purports to have obtained a copy of Cardinal Ratzinger's memo to the USCCB on the question of refusing the Eucharist to pro-abortion Catholic politicians:

The Kerry Affair: What Ratzinger Wanted from the American Bishops [213.92.16.98]

At the end of the memo is a note regarding Catholics who deliberately vote for a candidate who supports abortion or euthanasia. These Catholics should not present themselves for Communion. Those who disagree with the candidate's stand on these issues but votes for the candidate for other reasons, is said to be remotely materially cooperating, "which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons."

Father Deacon, innuendo from L'Espresso vs. proclamations from the Magesterium are two very different things.

ByzanTN, I think you are heading the the right direction with your concluding statement, but it is more expansive than just an economic position, including a definite sociological and philosophical aspect as well.

For those who have read much of the Catholic historian Hilare Belloc the ideological trend of the Republican Party over the last 20 years will not be a surprise at all, but actually quite predictable.

djs,

Thanks for your post.

We certainly agree on the idea of avoiding debt and putting as much into savings as is possible. We also agree that sometimes emergencies necessitate debt. I would add only that when an emergency necessitates debt that one discharge the debt as soon as possible (and I'm sure that you would agree).

You seem to have a desire to misunderstand Cheney. He is not lax on the debt. ISTM that he feels that the current war on terrorism is an emergency that makes debt necessary. I agree with him on this. Defense spending during the 1990�s was not adequate given the threats to our country (the same problem occurred during the 1970�s). President Reagan restored the military to a needed level during the 1980's and our defense (especially the Stragetic Defense Initiative) contributed greatly to the downfall of the Soviet Union. Bush (43) is also bringing our military readiness back to a level we need. With the war on terror short term debt is necessary (just as it was necessary during WWII). The Reagan tax cuts led to a tremendous economic expansion that financial experts tells lasted - with a few bumps - until the late 1990s. The surpluses of the Clinton era were the result of an expanding economy, not spending cuts (spending increased enormously during the Clinton era). The best thing, IMHO, that President Clinton did on the economic front was to make hardly any changes in the economic team put in place by President Reagan (especially Fed Chair Alan Greenspan). President Bush has now restimulated the economy with more tax cuts and the result is higher tax revenues.

I both agree and disagree with this, depending on how you mean it.

The founding fathers of our country (almost all Protestants) saw the Holy Scriptures as interpreted in English Common Law as the arbiter of what is right and what is wrong. Our country has certainly wandered to the point where many (if not most) people see no unchanging standard of right and wrong. That�s too bad.

But the each time a local, state or federal legislature passes a law it most certainly makes a declaration on what is right and what is wrong. It says that passing a school bus that is stopped with its lights flashing red is wrong and if you pass it and get caught you will incur a fine and/or jail time.

While I disagree with you on this I am glad that you don�t think like a Democrat on this issue. Both Senator Kerry and Senator Kennedy opposed the partial birth abortion on the basis that it restricted a constitution right to abortion at anytime, not because they felt it to be a poor strategy to reduce and outlaw abortions.

I disagree that no lives will be saved. Yes, in many cases some of these women will resort to other means of killing their children but it certainly will prevent some doctors from doing late term abortions. Plus it has reinvigorated the societal discussion of abortion, and such discussions always educate. The more people know what abortion really is the less they choose it.

On the legal front, if the partial birth abortion ban survives the Supreme Court (and if President can get some pro-life judges past the Democrats onto the court) it might be possible in the next 10 years to ban not just other types of late term abortions, but all abortions in which the baby is viable. Now you may argue that this will save no lives but I would disagree. At the least it will be another message to those women contemplating abortion that this �product of conception� as the Democrats call it is really a human being. The process of restoring protection for human life in the womb is certainly going to be a long one.

I agree that [then] Governor Bush�s mockery was disgusting and terribly wrong. Still, he is much better than Senator Kerry who advocates unrestricted capital punishment for the innocent in the womb, and who has voted to use taxpayer funds to kill these innocent children and even to force Catholic hospitals to do this evil. I really cannot understand how you can give a pass to Kerry and the Democrat party on abortion and complain about Bush and the death penalty.

Regarding the necessity of executions, I disagree. There are too many murderers who are released back into society only to kill again. If there were a mandatory life sentence and there was no chance of escape I would agree that we could, as a society, not use capital punishment.

It is certainly possible that Bush did not do due diligence in reviewing each case of capital punishment that came before him. I don�t know. I do remember similar accusations against President Clinton when he was governor of Arkansas. I remember that during the 1992 campaign there was a mini-scandal about Clinton allowing a brain-damaged murderer named Ricky Ray Rector to be executed even though he acknowledged that it was a legitimate request for clemency. It seems Clinton needed to appear tough on crime so he allowed the execution. There are additonal, similar examples from his time as govenor of Arkansas.

I would certainly support the reform of our laws to make it possible for there to be no need for capital punishment. Until then, I must support it because it is the only way to protect people when murders escape or are paroled.

Admin

If there is one reason to vote for Bush it is he ended the Clinton policy of spending millions to coerce countries to adopt anti-life policies. US funds under Clinton went to force quotas for tubal ligation in Peru and Mexico.

As for the above, we are Catholics, not disciples of the Austrian School of Economics. All that gets us is a pro-abortion Terminator.

I agree Walnut40, that the economics sub-thread probably has far less to do with "moral voting". There are some who think the taxation is somehow inherently immoral - the "consficatory" label got the thread going. But I don't think that that idea can be considered part of our faith. As to the politics, the economic records over the past 24 years are clear enough.

from ByzanTN:
The defection of Southern Demoncrats in the national election before McGovern. Hubert Humphrey was not supported in '68; George Wallace with his segregationist platform was. LBJ commented after the passage of landmark civil rights legislation in his term that he had just lost the South for Democrats.

I agree with this point. The consequence is that the party for whom pro-life is a natural extension of their philosophy, exhibited over two centuries, is less able to work out of its limited, pro-choice vision.

The other party then carries - to some extent - an ad hoc pro-life appendage, whose coherence, if any, with its present or historical philosophy, is very difficult to see. As Yuhannon pointed out on another thread, Catholic social teaching is just out of place there. Thus the dissonance,

Overall the defections have not contributed to a solution of the problem. They have IMO aggravated it and made a solution less likely.

Dear Father Deacon John:

Thanks for the link.
The final paragraph is very interesting. It certainly puts Santorum in the clear. And others too!

Something else in the document is very interesting. Phrases like "permissive laws", laws permitting abortion", etc., are very interesting. European democracies are, I think, different from ours. They emerged among people with long histories of monoarchial governments. There is a sense of the law giving permission - i.e., that everything not explicilty authorized by legislation is forbidden. (In liberal Holland, for example, children's names, must be selected from an authorized list; no others names are allowed. Giving an obscure name would be considered asocial and abusive.)

We have an opposite perspective, that everything that is not explicitly forbidden is allowed. The government restriction must be justified, strictly. (We would find the Dutch restriction on names, utterly absurd.) Not enacting laws forbidding something does not necessarily represent an endoresement (you ought to give names like Moon-Unit rather than Mary), just the view that the justification for its prohibition is not sufficient.

Does Ratzinger understand the difference between German and American democracy?