Politics: Catholic Vote . com revisited

Here's a comment I rec'd today from a " Kathy O'Leary " based on a post I wrote a week or so ago about Catholicvote.com:

Yesterday I received an email with a "grassroots video" produced by
Catholicvote.com.

The video and website, Catholicvote.com were produced by
Fidelis. They have very strong ties to the Republican Party and to the McCain
campaign. In February of this year they issued a press release endorsing John
McCain for president and their website includes articles from Deal Hudson who is
an advisor to the McCain campaign as a member of the “Catholic Outreach
Committee”. They have given campaign contributions only to republicans and even supported republican Senator Rick Santorum over Bob Casey, a pro-life Catholic
democrat, during the 2006 election cycle.

If you forward this video or link to the website in your official capacity you may be in violation of IRS regulations and Church policy. You will also be distributing materials that contradict Church teaching.Among other things, the video glorifies US economic and military power. This runs contrary to Catholic Social Teaching which emphasizes a preferential option for the poor and solidarity. It also runs contrary to the Cathecism which teaches us that "Respect for and development of human life require peace."

There is more than one intrinsic evil at issue this year. They include genocide, racism, torture, targeting non-combatants and engaging in unjust wars. They are all life issues and they all require our attention as Catholics. Whether we vote Republican or Democrat this year what defines us is that we are Catholic. Don't let the political parties redefine what it means to be CATHOLIC.

Vote the Common Good!www.votethecommongood.com

Now, normally, I'd be thrilled to get such a long comment from someone I don't know. But I read this, re-read it, and just wasn't impressed! And why:

1. anyone who gives my little blog even a cursory reading would see that I am probably a staunch, card-carrying Republican, so for me to find out the film's producers have "They have very strong ties to the Republican Party and to the McCain campaign" doesn't really bother me much.
2. supporting what is true, good and rationale in this campaign year for me IS the Republican party so I don't have a problem with "contributions only to republicans". I have yet to hear a Democrat explain life issues rationally -- Senator Biden claims that when life begins is "just a matter of religion" -- uh, no even a 10th grade biology student learns that LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION. Nancy Pelosi, SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES FOR THE UNITED STATES, doesn't have her facts correct and yet by her own admission, she has "studied this matter for years"! HUH??????
3. obviously Ms. O'Leary has no clue what this blog is all about -- a modest (but not very humble) homeschooling mom occasionally waxing poetic about her family, their learning adventures and general Catholic truths, teachings and festivities. Her comment that "f you forward this video or link to the website in your official capacity you may be in violation of IRS regulations and Church policy" is just nonsensical -- as is much of the idea that relgion shouldn't come into politics and that just because it's true for you doesn't mean it's true for everyone else. Wasn't it Pilate who asked "What is Truth?" (John 18:38)
4. finally, the "life issues" described in Ms. O'Leary's comment can only be mentioned to cloud the overall issue. If someone doesn't understand the dignity of human life, the idea that the human person is DIFFERENT from animals, that our nature is imbued with something special since we are made in the image and likeness of God ... than that person is not a Christian or a Catholic. No matter how much a wolf calls itself a sheep, it is still a wolf, period! The sancticity of life starts at the moment of conception and continues until the moment of natural death -- this precept includes "genocide, racism, torture, targeting non-combatants and engaging in unjust wars" and the only time such a precept is suspended is when innocent lives are at stake. Period. Until we can get Democrats who talk truth ... who talk rational .... who talk with a logical base ... the only way for this blogger to vote is Republican!

But thank you, Ms. O'Leary, for giving me a chance to vent a few of MY feelings about this political year ... to elucidate the reason why the Republicans make sense and the Democrats make empty statements. Thank you.

The Democrats, The Election and THE CHURCH

For those of you who might not realize this, we are a Catholic family. We are very active, devout Catholics who try our best to live our faith in a very secular world. Unfortunately, there are some folks out there -- particularly politicians -- who CLAIM they are Catholic and then completely disregard all the Church's teachings on life issues, social justice, etc.

During the Democrat's Convention (and in the journalistic love-fest prior to the opening), one particularly outspoken "Catholic", Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, made some amazingly erroneous comments about Catholicism. Thank God we have strong Catholic leaders who are willing to step out and correct these statements.

Below is a letter the good Archbishop Charles J. Chaput and the Auxiliary Bishop Conley wrote to the Archdiocese of Denver (an area that covers Catholics from north of Colorado Springs to the Wyoming border, covering most of the upper half of the "big square state"). I've quoted it in it's entirety as it is necessary for ALL Catholics to fully understand the position of the Catholic Church and Her teachings on what have become "political issues":

ON THE SEPARATION OF SENSE AND STATE: A CLARIFICATION FOR THE PEOPLE OF THE CHURCH IN NORTHERN COLORADO

Monday, August 25, 2008

To Catholics of the Archdiocese of Denver:
Catholic public leaders inconvenienced by the abortion debate tend to take a hard line in talking about the "separation of Church and state." But their idea of separation often seems to work one way. In fact, some officials also seem comfortable in the role of theologian. And that warrants some interest, not as a "political" issue, but as a matter of accuracy and justice.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is a gifted public servant of strong convictions and many professional skills. Regrettably, knowledge of Catholic history and teaching does not seem to be one of them.

Interviewed on Meet the Press August 24, Speaker Pelosi was asked when human life begins. She said the following:
"I would say that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time. And what I know is over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition . . . St. Augustine said at three months. We don't know. The point is, is that it shouldn't have an impact on the woman's right to choose."

Since Speaker Pelosi has, in her words, studied the issue "for a long time," she must know very well one of the premier works on the subject, Jesuit John Connery's Abortion: The Development of the Roman Catholic Perspective (Loyola, 1977). Here's how Connery concludes his study:"The Christian tradition from the earliest days reveals a firm antiabortion attitude . . . The condemnation of abortion did not depend on and was not limited in any way by theories regarding the time of fetal animation. Even during the many centuries when Church penal and penitential practice was based on the theory of delayed animation, the condemnation of abortion was never affected by it. Whatever one would want to hold about the time of animation, or when the fetus became a human being in the strict sense of the term, abortion from the time of conception was considered wrong, and the time of animation was never looked on as a moral dividing line between permissible and impermissible abortion."

Or to put it in the blunter words of the great Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
"Destruction of the embryo in the mother's womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed on this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder."

Ardent, practicing Catholics will quickly learn from the historical record that from apostolic times, the Christian tradition overwhelmingly held that abortion was grievously evil. In the absence of modern medical knowledge, some of the Early Fathers held that abortion was homicide; others that it was tantamount to homicide; and various scholars theorized about when and how the unborn child might be animated or "ensouled." But none diminished the unique evil of abortion as an attack on life itself, and the early Church closely associated abortion with infanticide. In ahort, from the beginning, the believing Christian community held that abortion was always, gravely wrong.

Of course, we now know with biological certainty exactly when human life begins. Thus, today's religious alibis for abortion and a so-called "right to choose" are nothing more than that - alibis that break radically with historic Christian and Catholic belief. Abortion kills an unborn, developing human life. It is always gravely evil, and so are the evasions employed to justify it.

Catholics who make excuses for it - whether they're famous or not - fool only themselves and abuse the fidelity of those Catholics who do sincerely seek to follow the Gospel and live their Catholic faith. The duty of the Church and other religious communities is moral witness. The duty of the state and its officials is to serve the common good, which is always rooted in moral truth. A proper understanding of the "separation of Church and state" does not imply a separation of faith from political life. But of course, it's always important to know what our faith actually teaches.

+Charles J. Chaput,
O.F.M. Cap.
Archbishop of Denver
+James D. Conley
Auxiliary Bishop of
Denver
###

My hopes in quoting this entire letter, signed by both the Archbishop and the Auxiliary Bishop, is that Catholics who are unsure of Church teachings, seek the answers through competent authorities and not rely on political personality with a host of agendas of their own. Archbishop Chaput has just written an excellent book on this particular issue of separation of Church and State: Render Unto Ceasar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life. A book ALL Catholics should read!

Another thing we can all do is PRAY! Please join me in the Nine-Week Election Novena staring on September 1st and ending on November 4th (Election Day).