Voting Democrat: Sinful?

[Lounge Daddy]

[quote name='Iacobus' date='Jun 9 2004, 03:07 AM'] Unilartalism doesn't help us or anyone else. [/quote]
[font="Courier"]The U.S. didn't really act "unilatirally" - the U.S. acted against the wishes of Russia, Germany, and France.

Maybe a world forum could be useful to many nations (U.S. included), but I don't think the U.N. is a good solution anymore.
The EU worries me, too.[/font]

[Lounge Daddy]

[font="Courier"][url="http://www.scrappleface.com/MT/archives/001730.html"][b]Exit Strategy Succeeds: 12,000 Troops Leaving Korea![/b] [/url]

(2004-06-07) -- Just 54 years after President Harry Truman sent U.S. forces to invade the Korean peninsula, his exit strategy is showing early signs of success with the announcement that the U.S. will withdraw 12,000 troops from South Korea by the end of this year.

The move will leave just 25,000 U.S. military personnel in a post-war situation which critics in the Senate have called "a quagmire."

Senate Democrats, however, hailed President Truman's foresight and contrasted his foreign policy triumph with the Bush administration's poor planning in the month's leading up to the Iraq war.

"You can't just go storming into a country without a plan to get out," said an unnamed Senate Democrat. "Maybe now Bush will get a clue and learn some lessons from President Truman."[/font]

[Lounge Daddy]

[font="Courier"]Sorry if I lead this one astray…
Yes, I do think that consciously voting for someone who promotes abortion would be a sin – because you are helping this person to attain an influential position.[/font]

[Iacobus]

LD did you just get on a research tangent last nite? LOL!

I know from my parents NCLB is bad. Mainly because teachers don't like achivement tests (poor indictor) and there wasn't a funding increse with it.

And, I don't wanna hijack the thread but I don't think this needs a new thread, is pulling out of Korea smart? I mean we just shipped a ton of bomber groups over out of fear of war.

[Lounge Daddy]

[quote name='Iacobus' date='Jun 9 2004, 11:46 AM'] LD did you just get on a research tangent last nite? LOL!

I know from my parents NCLB is bad. Mainly because teachers don't like achivement tests (poor indictor) and there wasn't a funding increse with it.

And, I don't wanna hijack the thread but I don't think this needs a new thread, is pulling out of Korea smart? I mean we just shipped a ton of bomber groups over out of fear of war. [/quote]
[font="Courier"]lol
i remember reading about the Teacher's Union - terrorist bit, heh.
you rock, Iacobus

i really am uncomfortable with the Korea pullout - let's pray and see what happens.
it really is a volatile situation, but after seeing the response in Iraq the N Koreans have stood down and stopped “rattling the saber”.

but what next?
it is a strange situation.[/font]

[Chrysologus]

Does no one know of an official Church document saying it's immoral to vote for a pro-choice candidate? I'm really trying to inform my conscience here; I'm not really looking to debate. Conservative Catholic groups (like EWTN and Catholic Answers) are producing "voter guides" which claim that to vote for a pro-choice candidate for [i]any reason [/i]is immoral, unless all the candidates are pro-choice, but they provide [i]no reference [/i]for this. Personally, this seems absurd to me, since no one ever agrees 100% with a certain candidate's stances, and everyone who is morally sane votes for the person whom they think will be the best person for the job. In any case, I doubt I'll ever vote for a pro-choice candidate, but it seems like a serious intellectual and spiritual discredit to ourselves to be making the claim that [i]votes [/i]can be sinful.

[Dave]

[quote name='Chrysologus' date='Jun 10 2004, 03:26 AM'] In any case, I doubt I'll ever vote for a pro-choice candidate, but it seems like a serious intellectual and spiritual discredit to ourselves to be making the claim that [i]votes [/i]can be sinful. [/quote]
Well, we know that abortion is gravely wrong, and we also know that it's a mortal sin to cooperate in someone else's sin. If we vote for a candidate who we know is pro-abortion, we cooperate in the sin of abortion. That's just common sense.

[Chrysologus]

I disagree with the last premise of your argument. Voting for a pro-choice candidate is [i]not [/i]cooperating in the sin of abortion. George Bush is in favor of executing people, which I, and most Catholics, believe is gravely wrong, so would voting for him be a grave sin as well? If both candidates are pro-choice, these "voter guides" say I can vote for one of them, but, if voting for a pro-choice candidate is cooperating in abortion, then that would [i]still [/i]be wrong. If one tries to escape this by using "double effect," then it seems I can apply it when voting for [i]any [/i]pro-choice candidate (which is exactly what I believe as of now), because I'm voting for him for a reason [i]other [/i]than that he or she is pro-choice (and there are many such good reasons; Who would argue that, in some areas, i.e. capital punishment, charitable programs, foreign policy, etc., Kerry's policies are more Christian than Bush's?).

As always, I submit my wisdom to that of the Church. If anyone can show me that the magisterium supports this "voting for pro-choice candidate = grave sin" doctrine, then I will abjure and submit.

[cmotherofpirl]

start here:
Selected Quotes from Church Documents:
On the “Pro-Choice” Position on Abortion


Papal Teaching

But responsibility likewise falls on the legislators who have promoted and approved abortion laws, and, to the extent that they have a say in the matter, on the administrators of the health-care centers where abortions are performed. … In this sense abortion goes beyond the responsibility of individuals and beyond the harm done to them, and takes on a distinctly social dimension. It is a most serious wound inflicted on society and its culture by the very people who ought to be society’s promoters and defenders.

Pope John Paul II, Evangelium vitae (1995), no. 59.

When a parliamentary or social majority decrees that it is legal, at least under certain conditions, to kill unborn human life, is it not really making a ‘tyrannical’ decision with regard to the weakest and most defenseless of human beings?....While public authority can sometimes choose not to put a stop to something which – were it prohibited – would cause more serious harm, it can never presume to legitimize as a right of individuals – even if they are the majority of the members of society – an offense against other persons caused by the disregard of so fundamental a right as the right to life.

Id., nos. 70, 71.

Laws which legitimize the direct killing of innocent human beings through abortion or euthanasia are in complete opposition to the inviolable right to life proper to every individual; they thus deny the equality of everyone before the law.

Id., no. 72.

Utilitarianism is a civilization of production and of use, a civilization of "things" and not of "persons", a civilization in which persons are used in the same way as things are used. In the context of a civilization of use, woman can become an object for man, children a hindrance to parents, the family an institution obstructing the freedom of its members. To be convinced that this is the case, one need only look at certain sexual education programmes introduced into the schools, often notwithstanding the disagreement and even the protests of many parents; or pro-abortion tendencies which vainly try to hide behind the so-called "right to choose" ("pro-choice") on the part of both spouses, and in particular on the part of the woman.

Pope John Paul II, Letter to Families, February 2, 1994, no. 13

On “social sin”:

Also social is every sin against the rights of the human person, beginning with the right to life and including the life of the unborn or against a person's physical integrity…The term social can be applied to sins of commission or omission-on the part of political, economic or trade union leaders, who though in a position to do so, do not work diligently and wisely for the improvement and transformation of society according to the requirements and potential of the given historic moment…Whenever the church speaks of situations of sin or when the condemns as social sins certain situations or the collective behavior of certain social groups, big or small, or even of whole nations and blocs of nations, she knows and she proclaims that such cases of social sin are the result of the accumulation and concentration of many personal sins. It is a case of the very personal sins of those who cause or support evil or who exploit it; of those who are in a position to avoid, eliminate or at least limit certain social evils but who fail to do so out of laziness, fear or the conspiracy of silence, through secret complicity or indifference; of those who take refuge in the supposed impossibility of changing the world and also of those who sidestep the effort and sacrifice required, producing specious reasons of a higher order. The real responsibility, then, lies with individuals.

Pope John Paul II, Reconciliation and Penance (1984), no. 16

--


Vatican Documents
It is true that it is not the task of the law to choose between points of view or to impose one rather than another. But the life of the child takes precedence over all opinions. One cannot invoke freedom of thought to destroy this life…

The role of law is not to record what is done, but to help in promoting improvement. It is at all times the task of the State to preserve each person's rights and to protect the weakest. In order to do so the State will have to right many wrongs. The law is not obliged to sanction everything, but it cannot act contrary to a law which is deeper and more majestic than any human law: the natural law engraved in men's hearts by the Creator as a norm which reason clarifies and strives to formulate properly, and which one must always struggle to understand better, but which it is always wrong to contradict. Human law can abstain from punishment, but it cannot declare to be right what would be opposed to the natural law, for this opposition suffices to give the assurance that a law is not a law at all…

It must in any case be clearly understood that whatever may be laid down by civil law in this matter, man can never obey a law which is in itself immoral, and such is the case of a law which would admit in principle the liceity of abortion. Nor can he take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it. Moreover, he may not collaborate in its application.

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration on Procured Abortion, November 18, 1974, nos. 19-22

John Paul II, continuing the constant teaching of the Church, has reiterated many times that those who are directly involved in lawmaking bodies have a «grave and clear obligation to oppose» any law that attacks human life. For them, as for every Catholic, it is impossible to promote such laws or to vote for them.
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life 2002), no. 4

The social doctrine of the Church is not an intrusion into the government of individual countries.It is a question of the lay Catholic’s duty to be morally coherent, found within one’s conscience, which is one and indivisible. «There cannot be two parallel lives in their existence: on the one hand, the so-called ‘spiritual life’, with its values and demands; and on the other, the so-called ‘secular’ life, that is, life in a family, at work, in social responsibilities, in the responsibilities of public life and in culture.

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life 2002), no. 6

When political activity comes up against moral principles that do not admit of exception, compromise or derogation, the Catholic commitment becomes more evident and laden with responsibility. In the face of fundamental and inalienable ethical demands, Christians must recognize that what is at stake is the essence of the moral law, which concerns the integral good of the human person. This is the case with laws concerning abortion and euthanasia (not to be confused with the decision to forgo extraordinary treatments, which is morally legitimate). Such laws must defend the basic right to life from conception to natural death.

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life 2002), no. 4

--



U.S. Bishops’ Documents
No Catholic can responsibly take a "pro-choice" stand when the "choice" in question involves the taking of innocent human life.

Resolution on Abortion (1989)

We urge those Catholic officials who choose to depart from Church teaching on the inviolability of human life in their public life to consider the consequences for their own spiritual well being, as well as the scandal they risk by leading others into serious sin. We call on them to reflect on the grave contradiction of assuming public roles and presenting themselves as credible Catholics when their actions on fundamental issues of human life are not in agreement with Church teaching. No public official, especially one claiming to be a faithful and serious Catholic, can responsibly advocate for or actively support direct attacks on innocent human life. [N]o appeal to policy, procedure, majority will or pluralism ever excuses a public official from defending life to the greatest extent possible. As is true of leaders in all walks of life, no political leader can evade accountability for his or her exercise of power (Evangelium Vitae, 73-4). Those who justify their inaction on the grounds that abortion is the law of the land need to recognize that there is a higher law, the law of God. No human law can validly contradict the Commandment: "Thou shalt not kill."

Living the Gospel of Life: A Challenge to American Catholics (1998), no. 32

The law is not the only means of protecting life, but it plays a key and often decisive role in affecting both human behavior and thinking. Those called to civil leadership, as Pope John Paul II reminds us, "have a duty to make courageous choices in support of life, especially through legislative measures." This is a responsibility that cannot be put aside, "especially when he or she has a legislative or decision-making mandate, which calls that person to answer to God, to his or her own conscience and to the whole of society for choices which may be contrary to the common good" (The Gospel of Life, no. 90).

Public officials are privileged in a special way to apply their moral convictions to the policy arena. We hold in high esteem those who, through such positions and authority, promote respect for all human life. Catholic civil leaders who reject or ignore the Church's teaching on the sanctity of human life do so at risk to their own spiritual well-being.

Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities: A Campaign in Support of Life (2001), Part III





__________________________
Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
3211 4th Street, N.E., Washington, DC 20017-1194 (202) 541-3070
May 18, 2004 Copyright © by United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

Edited June 10, 2004 by cmotherofpirl

[Hazilloe]

[quote name='1337 k4th0l1x0r' date='May 28 2004, 12:14 PM'] Exactly. And abortion, homosexual marriage, and euthanasia cannot be secondary to economic policy. You may disagree with how one party wants to handle the economy, but the majority of both parties want to do the best thing to help the poor and serve the american people. You may disagree with them on how, but ultimately, you want the same end. For abortion, homosexual marriage, and euthanasia, a responsible catholic doesn't want any of these to happen. Killing babies is killing babies is killing babies. There's no getting around that.

Example:

A republican candidate might say he wants to lower taxes so people will start up companies and these people will hire people to work for them. This adds jobs to the market which reduces the unemployment rate and poverty rate.

A democratic candidate might say he wants to increase taxes to increase federal spending on government programs. Many of these programs will require new jobs, thus decreasing the unemployment rate and poverty rate. People who still live below the poverty line will be given a little bit of monetary support to help make ends meet.

Both of these viewpoints are valid in the sense that they both ultimately have decreasing poverty as their goal. You may be swayed one way or another, but both sides want the same end while the means are different. The means also are not inherintly sinful, i.e., you could vote for either one of these candidates (assuming this is the only issue) and you would not be committing a sin. Abortion is inherintly gravely sinful and therefore warrants more concern as a voter. [/quote]
if someone had told me this as clearly and concisely as you just did when i had opened this debate back in december, it wouldn't have rambled on and on.

i agree one hundred percent with you, my friend.

[crusader1234]

I liked that post.

[Child of God]

I have a question that might be slightly OT ( I read the title and the last page of posts and was intrigued!)

Are Catholics more likely to be Democrats or Republicans?

I live in New England and almost every Catholic is also a Democrat, I just assumed the two went together.

My purpose is not to offend, I'm curious to find out if NE is unusual. Catholics are the majority up here.

[crusader1234]

Arent the Irish republicans all presbyterian?

I think here its something like 50/50, but Bush puts on a Pro-Life front and Kerry doesnt. Bush doesnt really DO much though.

I basically vote for whomever best exemplifies what I am about. Sometimes they are NDP, sometimes they are Conservative, sometimes they are Liberal, sometimes they are even from the Marijuana party. In the recent elections I was supporting a Liberal, then my Grandma's new husband said he didnt want 'that conservative indian' running things because he 'wonders what hidden agendas he might have since he isnt born in Canada'. The guy WAS born in Canada, so I started supporting him just because I thought her husbands an idiot. :angry:

Right now in the states, depending on how you look at Bush's pro life stance, hes the guy to vote for.

[IXpenguin21]

interesting...

[Aloysius]

where's ppl like Ironmonk with that link that shows what Bush has done for the ProLife movement? you don't expect me to figure out where that link is, do you?