Tax Cuts

[smeagol]

duh september 11 changed things. i know this. but i'm saying bush's policies aren't helping things. kerry can do better.

i would not be able to sleep with myself if i voted for bush. don't tell me what my moral obligation is. that's my conscience's job. it is well-informed and it is telling me KERRY 04! call me a sinner; condemn me as a heretic if you like... but if i think bush's stance on abortion is only a facade, a ruse to get votes, my moral obligation is to vote for Kerry, who i believe will actually make America a better place.

good night, ice -- err good morning by the time you read this. :cool:

[Dave]

duh september 11 changed things. i know this. but i'm saying bush's policies aren't helping things. kerry can do better.

i would not be able to sleep with myself if i voted for bush. don't tell me what my moral obligation is. that's my conscience's job. it is well-informed and it is telling me KERRY 04! call me a sinner; condemn me as a heretic if you like... but if i think bush's stance on abortion is only a facade, a ruse to get votes, my moral obligation is to vote for Kerry, who i believe will actually make America a better place.

good night, ice -- err good morning by the time you read this.

The Church teaches that we can't knowingly vote for a pro-abortion candidate without sinning. Our conscience has to be formed correctly, that is, by the Church's teachings. If you feel your conscience tell you to vote for Kerry, then you're either mistaking conscience for personal opinion, or your conscience is badly formed or just plain nonexistent.

[smeagol]

The Church teaches that we can't knowingly vote for a pro-abortion candidate without sinning. Our conscience has to be formed correctly, that is, by the Church's teachings. If you feel your conscience tell you to vote for Kerry, then you're either mistaking conscience for personal opinion, or your conscience is badly formed or just plain nonexistent.

ouch Dave, i felt that one.

to make it feel better, respond to this: i think bush's stance on abortion is only a facade, a ruse to get votes because he knows that no matter how badly he messes everything else up, he will get votes based solely on abortion from people who adopt the manner of thinking to which you and others subscribe.

[Dave]

ouch Dave, i felt that one.

to make it feel better, respond to this: i think bush's stance on abortion is only a facade, a ruse to get votes because he knows that no matter how badly he messes everything else up, he will get votes based solely on abortion from people who adopt the manner of thinking to which you and others subscribe.

I think that's highly judgmental on your part. Do you have magic eyes to see inside Bush's heart to see what he really thinks about abortion? Methinks not. Judge not lest ye be judged.

[cmotherofpirl]

Kerry is a pro-abortionist's best friend. Voting for Kerry is a sin.

If there is a choice between voting for Kerry which is a sin, and voting for Bush who you don't like, then simply don't vote. Nobody is holding a gun to your head and demanding your particular vote.

When you die each and every thought word and deed will be judged. Do you really want to explain a vote for Kerry to HIM?

[ironmonk]

duh september 11 changed things. i know this. but i'm saying bush's policies aren't helping things. kerry can do better.

i would not be able to sleep with myself if i voted for bush. don't tell me what my moral obligation is. that's my conscience's job. it is well-informed and it is telling me KERRY 04! call me a sinner; condemn me as a heretic if you like... but if i think bush's stance on abortion is only a facade, a ruse to get votes, my moral obligation is to vote for Kerry, who i believe will actually make America a better place.

good night, ice -- err good morning by the time you read this.

No it's not just your conscience's job, it's every Catholic's job to keep our brothers and sisters on the right track.

1829

The fruits of charity are joy, peace, and mercy; charity demands beneficence and fraternal correction; it is benevolence; it fosters reciprocity and remains disinterested and generous; it is friendship and communion:

Love is itself the fulfillment of all our works. There is the goal; that is why we run: we run toward it, and once we reach it, in it we shall find rest.108

-----------------

If you are going to remain in opposition to the teachings of the Church; you might want to refrain from the Eucharist.

Something that demands automatic excommunication (abortion) for even taking someone to a clinic and you think the other little things have greater importance?

You've got a lot to learn about Catholicism.

A conscience that would allow someone to vote for an abortionist has been poorly formed.

You do not appear to be well informed whatsoever.

No one is condemning you.

Catholics cannot vote for abortionists when Pro-life cannidates are running and be true Catholics.

To think that Bush's stance on abortion is a facade is just ignorant. The man is closer to being Catholic than Kerry is and kerry claims to be Catholic.

Bush has been working on getting good judges in place for his whole term.... saying it's a facade is a sure sign of being in the dark.

Kerry, make America a better place?! HA The man is a liar and clearly tells people what he thinks they want to hear. The man supports the defilement of marriage, baby killing, and God only knows what else because you can't believe anything coming out of his mouth over his forked tongue.

Ignorance is not bliss... get the facts. Listen to both sides and then listen to an unbias side... Know the Catholic faith and apply it.

-ironmonk

[foundsheep]

Monk, I agree with you on this one. I am a registered Democrat. But that doesnt mean Im pro abortion or pro gay Marriage. I do believe i will be re registering by the time the election comes around in November. The change to Republican comes after much thought about both those issues. I have not seen one candidate against both those issues except for Bush. Yes maybe he made some wrong turns on this whole Iraq thing. But is that as important as Morality? Especially after the fiasco we here in California went through with this Governer thing. None of the Candidates except for one (Mcklintock) was pro Life. Even Bush has distanced himself from Our current governer(who is republican) because of his stance on those issues. I got to respect that.

[smeagol]

The man is closer to being Catholic than Kerry is and kerry claims to be Catholic.

a presidential election, to me, is not about who's the "better" Catholic--who determines "better" anyway?; it's about who the voter thinks will make the country a better place.

Dave, i'm not claiming to have magic eyes to see into his heart, but i think it's more of a political than moral move on his part. i'm not making a moral judgment on either man, only a prudential one. and i firmly believe that kerry will be better for this country than bush.

when it comes to voting for a govt office, it matters not what's inside their hearts. only their actions are of any consequence, when it comes to politix. how many unborn babies has Bush saved while in office these past 4 years?

Bush and his campaign KNOWS there will be people who vote solely on the issue of abortion so he adjusts his platform accordingly. i am NOT going to be a predictable voter so that politicians can easily manipulate the masses.

Do you really want to explain a vote for Kerry to HIM?

yes

[IcePrincessKRS]

If I were a cartoon character, right now as I read those replies, there would have been an angelic chorus singing as the background music. lol

I dare not say anything more on this subject because it probably wouldn't be very charitable. I've said my piece, if you reject it thats your problem now, because "my piece" also happens to be what the Church teaches on the matter.

[Colleen]

read this

i thought this was interesting but i am not going to comment on this. i'd rather let the more eloquent experts do the talking for me.

[PhatPhred]

I've been trying to keep out of this, but I just can't help myself anymore. Some of the rhetoric in this topic goes beyond the pale. I think that many people here need to pay heed to canon law number 227, which states the following:

To lay members of Christ's faithful belongs the right to have acknowledged as theirs that freedom in secular affairs which is common to all citizens. In using this freedom, however, they are to ensure that their actions are permeated with the spirit of the Gospel, and they are to heed the teaching of the Church proposed by the magisterium, but they must be on guard, in questions of opinion, against proposing their own view as the teaching of the Church.

We've all read the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' website material on faithful voting. Nowhere do they state that voting for Kerry is sinful, and that the only choice good Catholics have is to vote for Bush, a pro-life third-party candidate, or to abstain from voting. And any claim on this phorum that this is the teaching of the magisterium is a direct violation of canon law.

As I have said before, the bishops are not shy (nor should they be) about making prudential judgements about applying Church doctrine to specific situations. This is why they did not merely restate just war doctrine, they specifically taught that the Iraqi war was unjust and immoral.

I thought I had seen it all when people started placing the Catholic Culture website above the actual magisterium of the Catholic Church. But quite frankly this hits a new low.

[CatholicAndFanatical]

if you really want to help the common man, you would vote to repeal the tax cuts, but only for the rich. that's what kerry wants to do. let the people whose annual income is less than $200,000 to keep their tax cuts, but tax the wealthy and close the loopholes that corporations use to evade taxes by moving jobs overseas. if you really had the interest of making the common man's economic life better, you'd vote for kerry.

under 200,000? I dunno about you, but if I was making over 100,000 i would consider myself pretty wealthy.

I agree with both of your arguments, but im not a kerry fan at all. For one, he claims to be Catholic but yet votes for support of abortion...that in itself will keep me from voting for him, so no kerry for me.

however, it urkes me when the government puts out these dumb reports saying how well the economy is right now and how jobs are on the rise..yea, sure they are..maybe in their neighborhood but not around here. The two major factories here in my town are shipping more and more jobs to Mexico and laying off more people. I personally have been out of work almost 3 months with nothing in my field showing up..seems like im gonna have to practice saying "You want fries with that?" soon.

as for tax cuts that we recieved. I think it was baloney, the way President Bush made it was the more you put into tax's, the more you get back. So in essence, the wealthy people got more back than someone who really needed it. Thats crazy, I think the wealthy in this country, people who make over lets say 150,000/yr, should be paying alot more in tax's than what we would be, and if you make over 750,000 a year, I think you should get double taxed to help cut the deficit.

As for unemployment, I believe they should stop allowing companies to send their jobs to other countries. If they want to open plants there and stuff thats fine, but there should be a law that prohibits layoffs in this country due to their jobs being moved to another country. Thats the only real way were going to keep jobs.

and as for abortion, its our duty as Catholics to vote AGAINST anyone who supports abortion, democrate or republican.

I say Sean Hannity for President :)

[IcePrincessKRS]

Phred, I assume you meant my comments. Maybe my phrasing wasn't totally on the mark and I should have left out "the Church's teaching" but I'm working with what I have read and been taught in Moral Theology, etc. to the best of my ability. If I could I would turn all these arguments over to Fr. Anthony in a heartbeat (my MT teacher); he'd give it to you in his words and you'd understand believe it. I'm not trying to put words in the bishops' mouths. But, still, even if the bishops don't say outright "Voting for Kerry is a sin" doesn't mean that its not. Kerry is on the abortion bandwagon. I will not apologize for saying that voting for a man who you know is pro-abortion is sinful because I speak the truth.

Voting for Pro-Abortion Candidates

Question from Robert Dunn on 01-26-2004: 

If a Catholic votes for a candidate who is pro-abortion or for a political party that supports abortion at any stage is that person complicit in abortion? Is this matter for confession. 

Answer by Fr.Stephen F. Torraco on 01-26-2004: 

If the person knows the Church's teaching that abortion is a serious evil, and if the person knows that voting for a pro-abortion candidate makes him, the voter, an accomplice in evil, then yes, he commits a serious evil and needs to go to confession. 

[IcePrincessKRS]

voting and prolife

Question from Mary on 02-20-2004: 

Dear Mrs. Brown Can you please tell me what excerpts from church documents one can use to show that voting for a prochoice candidate is a sin. Thanks Mary 

Answer by Judie Brown on 02-21-2004: 

Dear Mary,

Section 2272 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that "formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave sin."

Most recently, we have had bishops state that Catholic politicians who adopt a pro-abortion political stance should not consider receiving Holy Communion.

To me, that says I have no business voting for such persons.

Judie Brown

Catholic voting

Question from Parishoner on 02-06-2004: 

I know that abortion is a mortal sin. And if one were to vote for a pro abortion candidate they would also be committing a serious sin. However, many Catholics respond by saying, "I'm not a one issue voter." As though abortion doesn't automatically eliminate that candidate for them.

Many Catholics that I have talked to want to see it in writing: catechism, ecyclical,papal document,extc.

Which documents would suffice?

Answer by Judie Brown on 02-09-2004: 

Dear Parishioner,

If someone were to say, "I'm going to give you a million dollars, buy you a house on the beach and a yacht -- and shoot you," you would quickly become a "one issue voter" on the question of your future. You would absolutely reject the offer. If a politician promises to save Social Security, pave our roads, build new schools, and guarantee national security and racial harmony, but he or she also supports abortion, we should also reject the offer. The package includes good things, certainly, but it also includes murder!

Section 2271 of the Catechism says, "Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law."

A 1989 resolution of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops states, "No Catholic can responsibly take a “pro-choice” stand when the “choice” in questions involves the taking of innocent human life."

Anyone who says abortion is an "issue" is either horribly misguided or has engaged in an extreme act of self-deception. Anyone who could overlook the killing of innocent children in their mothers' wombs because a candidate is "good on other issues" obviously doesn't get it.

Judie Brown

[dairygirl4u2c]

http://www.ustreas.gov/press/releases/js410.htm

All I have to add is that by these stats... there's over 300 million people in the united states by the most conservative counts. do the math. I added one child per "family".

And right now there are only around 250 270 million people in the united states. peeps are being double counted!