Free Republic

Be Catholic. Vote as a Catholic with a Catholic moral vision. Advance the Kingdom of God. by Msgr. Charles Pope -snip- To again be clear, abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and same-sex “marriage” are moral issues, and the Church must teach against them no matter where the political lines fall. The Catholic position on these matters currently coincides with one political party’s platform over another. But this not the intention or fault of the Catholic Church. -snip-

NAPLES, Florida, September 23, 2016 (LifeSiteNews)--We are at a "precarious moment in our history" when churches must speak truth to power or risk the loss of a lot more than their tax statuses, Ave Maria Law School chaplain Father Michael Orsi said in a blistering speech at a National Day of Remembrance for Aborted Children event on September 10. "For too long, pastors and churches have been bullied into believing that they can say nothing political from the pulpit," said Orsi. The regulation that is used to silence them "was a piece of spite work" against non-profits that had opposed...

Anyone who is still wondering how to vote on November 8, and who sincerely wants to vote their conscience, need only listen to this extraordinary homily given by a priest who knows exactly who to vote for. On October 2, 2016, the Very Reverend John Lankeit of the Diocese of Phoenix began his homily by warning the congregation that the devil is a divider who will use almost any tactic to separate Christians from Christ. “He doesn’t typically come right out and say, ‘Deny Jesus Christ!’ because he knows that someone who loves Jesus would immediately reject the suggestion. So,...

Denver Archbishop Samuel Aquila has given one of the most powerful elections statements by any Catholic leader. He says Catholics in good conscience can’t support candidates who are pro-abortion.  But Archbishop Aquila goes further. He says Democrats are “aggressively pro-abortion” because they are pushing taxpayer funding of abortions and because they will appoint judges who support abortion. Naturally that includes Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president who is spearheading that agenda.Archbishop Aquila also complains about how Democrats are pushing to overturn the Helms Amendment, which prevents forcing taxpayers from promoting and performing abortions in other countries.  On the other...

NEWARK, New Jersey, Apr. 4, 01 (CWNews.com/LSN.ca) - Father Peter West, a staff member at the Priests for Life group in New Jersey, was recently physically thrown out of a Catholic school hall while a pro-abortion politician was being honored inside.    While not a Priests for Life-sponsored event, Father West and a group of 15 pro-lifers protested the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Newark on Sunday, March 18. Their complaint was that pro-abortion politician Jim McGreevey, the Democrat candidate for governor, was appointed grand marshal of the parade. Father West noted that much of the parade and events afterward...

“The Democratic Party is facing a Catholic apocalypse,” Patricia Miller warns at Salon.Her article does a good job of marshaling statistics, but when she assesses the reasons for the apocalypse she makes a critical error.“White Catholics are now identifying as Republicans by historic margins,” she says, and lists the evidence.• She cites Pew data showing that 53% of white Catholics favor the GOP, versus 39% who favor Democrats.• Catholics voted for John McCain over Barack Obama in 2008’s presidential race by 5 percentage points, she says — but chose Mitt Romney over Obama by 19 points four years later, she says.• The U.S....

For over seventy years, white blue-collar Catholics who have lived and worked in America’s once great industrial states were the voting bloc that provided the margins of victory for Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, and the two Bushes. The 2012 election results, however, indicate these Catholics no longer have that kind of clout at the ballot box.Why? First of all, they are an aging group whose numbers are declining every year. About 650 Catholic World War II and Korean War veterans die every day. That translates into 950,000 in the last four years. Add spouses and the number...

I am stunned that I was stunned by the election. I am a fool. I convinced myself that the polls were not real. I convinced myself that the world I see around me every day is not real. I hoped for a redemptive moment without seeing any penitence. You can't have one without the other. I, along with countless others, have been trying to figure out how President Obama managed to win a second term. Trying to discover the key statistic that would explain the defeat has become a cottage industry over the past week. Every pundit on every side...

“This is a big moment for Catholic voters to step back from their party affiliation,” Baltimore archbishop William E. Lori tells me from the Knights of Columbus annual convention in Anaheim, Calif.For Catholic voters in November, Lori advises, “The question to ask is this: Are any of the candidates of either party, or independents, standing for something that is intrinsically evil, evil no matter what the circumstances? If that’s the case, a Catholic, regardless of his party affiliation, shouldn’t be voting for such a person.”At the convention this week, the message wasn’t just coming from Lori, the chairman of the...

---- ROME, August 4, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Top officials at the Vatican are throwing their support behind pro-life Catholic leaders campaigning against dioceses allowing pro-abortion politicians receive Holy Communion, says one such leader. American Life League President Judie Brown spoke with LifeSiteNews yesterday about her recent trip to Rome, where she spoke with Vatican officials about Communion for pro-abortion politicians and the changing pro-life landscape in America.  Cardinal Raymond Burke told Brown to be “persistent” in her campaign to have Canon 915 enforced, she said. Canon 915 states: “Those upon whom the penalty of excommunication or interdict has been imposed...

A document of the U.S. Catholic Bishops is partly to blame for the abandonment of pro-life teachings by voting Catholics and the election of the “most pro-abortion president” in US history, one of the Vatican’s highest officials said in an interview with LifeSiteNews.com. Archbishop Raymond Burke, the prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, named a document on the election produced by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops that he said “led to confusion” among the faithful and led ultimately to massive support among Catholics for Barack Obama. The US bishops’ document, “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” stated that, under certain circumstances,...

Roman Catholic church leaders meeting this week in Baltimore heralded the election of the first black president, but maintained forceful opposition to President-elect Barack Obama's pro-choice stance. Leading that opposition was Paterson Bishop Arthur Serratelli, who proposed a new blessing of unborn children and called for elected officials to oppose abortion. In adopting the blessing Tuesday, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops compared abortion to genocide during its annual convention and vowed to accept no compromises, according to the McClatchy News Service. For his part, Serratelli introduced a new "Blessing of a Child in the Womb," which prays "for our...

After committing a murder in Rome, the famous 17th century Italian painter Caravaggio went to Malta to avoid the death penalty. While there, the Great Master of the Order of the Knights of Malta commissioned him to do a painting for the chapel of the Co-Cathedral of St. John in Valletta. Caravaggio chose as his theme the martyrdom of John the Baptist. He produced The Beheading of St. John, his largest work, the only one he ever signed. No doubt the scene touched him personally.    Herod was married to Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife. Because John the Baptist preached against...

Democrats tried to attract Catholic voters in Denver. Republicans tried to attract them in St. Paul. As the excitement at the end of the Republican National Convention affected Catholic Republicans as much as it did other delegates, they may have succeeded. Polls and TV ratings suggest Sen. John McCain of Arizona and his vice-presidential candidate running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin ended the convention way ahead of where they started.In his acceptance speech, McCain electrified Catholics by speaking about a culture of life, funding for private schools and America’s newest Catholics, immigrants.“From the boy whose descendants arrived on the Mayflower...

Forty years ago this month, Bobby Kennedy was still alive and running for the Democratic party’s 1968 presidential nomination. I was a seminarian in Washington, D.C. I was also an active volunteer in Kennedy’s campaign. I can still remember helping with secretarial work in the same room where Edward Kennedy and Pierre Salinger labored away on the campaign’s strategy. It was my first involvement in elective politics, and, after the Vietnam Tet Offensive in February and Martin Luther King Jr.’s murder on April 4, Kennedy’s cause seemed urgent. Then, on June 5, Kennedy was gunned down himself.After Robert Kennedy died,...

Rep. Dale E. Kildee (D-Mich.), a Catholic congressman who endorsed Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) for president, told Cybercast News Service Wednesday that despite Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) failure to capture Catholic voters in the Pennsylvania primary, the majority of Catholics will vote for the Democratic candidate in the general election, whether it's Obama or Clinton. According to the exit poll of the Pennsylvania primary, church-going Democrats picked Clinton over Obama on Tuesday, with Catholic voters especially lining up behind Clinton. Among all Democratic primary voters who said they attend church weekly, Clinton beat Obama 61 percent to 39 percent. Among...

Like most Maryland Democrats, I voted for Sen. Barack Obama in the recent Potomac Primary. By doing so, according to the leaders of my church, I put my soul at risk. That's right, says the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops -- tap the touch screen for a pro-abortion-rights candidate, and you're probably punching your ticket to Hell. For a church that "thinks in centuries," things sure are moving quickly. Back in 2004, as Washington correspondent for the independent National Catholic Reporter, I covered what Comedy Central's Jon Stewart dubbed the "wafer wars." A handful of conservative bishops warned Democratic presidential...

Washington DC, Feb 7, 2008 / 06:02 pm (CNA).- Catholic voters backed Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona and Democrat Senator Hillary Clinton of New York in many Super Tuesday presidential primaries and caucuses for their respective parties, according to news reports. Deal W. Hudson of InsideCatholic.com reported that exit polling on the Catholic vote was done in 10 of the 22 GOP primary states. Of those states, Sen. McCain won over Catholics in eight while former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who left the presidential race on Thursday, attracted the Catholic vote only in Georgia and his home state, Massachusetts....

Voter's Guide for Serious Catholic's        To read the Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics online, just follow one of these links.Booklet: Display in Pop-up Window (pdf, 100 KB)(Displays Voters Guide booklet in a new browser window)(To save the file to you computer, right click the link and select Save)Booklet: Embedded in Web Page (pdf, 100 KB)(Displays Voters Guide booklet within this browser window)NOTE: Best with Internet Explorer browserThe links above use the Adobe pdf format. Adobe Reader 5 (or above) required.FREE Adobe Reader Download (opens in new window) We also have the Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics...

BALTIMORE - Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston, saying the Democratic Party has been persistently hostile to opponents of abortion rights, asserted yesterday that the support of many Catholics for Democratic candidates "borders on scandal." In his sharpest comments about the political landscape since he was installed as archbishop of Boston four years ago, O'Malley made clear that, despite his differences with the Republican Party over immigration policy, capital punishment, economic issues, and the war in Iraq, he views abortion as the most important moral issue facing policymakers. "I think the Democratic Party, which has been in many parts of...