Posted on 06/08/2003 5:37:56 AM PDT by RJCogburn
TODAY IS Pentecost Sunday, the day each year when the Church celebrates the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Christian community 10 days after Christ’s Ascension. While the faithful celebrate the “birthday of the Church,” the world in general takes little notice of it.
That is the context of a remark made to me recently by a Catholic priest that my parents might have found rather shocking. The priest saw me on a day when I was wearing a tie (a rare enough event) and commented on its color.
“I’m glad to see you wearing a red tie, Jack. That’s the symbol of the Holy Spirit.” (The Holy Spirit has taken many forms, including a dove, but it was in tongues, as of fire, that He descended on the day of Pentecost.) I approached the priest and showed him the pattern of the tie, consisting of tiny images of elephants.
“I hope the Holy Spirit won’t mind,” I said, “but it’s a Republican tie.”
“No, He won’t mind,” Father assured me. “In fact, He’ll be happy.” It was probably the first time I had heard that the Holy Spirit (known in my youth as the Holy Ghost) was aligned with the Republican Party.
Now the reason I said it would have shocked my parents, and many others of their generation, is that my parents were both good Catholics and loyal Democrats. Indeed, neither would likely have taken strenuous issue with the doctrine, proclaimed to this day by former Manchester Police Chief Tom King, that the Blessed Trinity is Irish, Catholic and Democrat.
I remember asking my father, in the early days of my youth, who “we” wanted in an upcoming election. (By “we” I meant, of course, our household. I assumed we voted as a bloc, the same way we all rooted for the Brooklyn Dodgers.) “Do we want Eisenhower or Stevenson?”
“Oh,” Dad said, laughing at my boyish naivete. “We don’t want Eisenhower, he’s a Republican.”
I wasn’t sure what a Republican was, but it sounded rather ominous. I began to wonder if this Eisenhower rascal might also be a Yankees fan - or worse, a partisan of the hated Giants.
I remember also repeating to my mother something vaguely favorable my second grade teacher had said about “Mr. Eisenhower.” The teacher, my mother promptly concluded, was a “damn Republican.”
The Republicans, my father explained to me, were expected to protect the interests of the wealthy, the “big shots.” Priests, with job security and no dependents, were spared the rigors of poverty, but were rarely wealthy. They were concerned about justice for working people and were more likely to be Democrats or independents than Republicans.
So what has changed?
Listen to the Democrats running for President today. How often do any of them seem concerned about economic or social justice?
Dick Gephardt occasionally talks about labor issues and the unfairness of competition from workers in the third world. Dennis Kucinich speaks almost nostalgically of reviving and expanding the agenda of the New Deal. John Kerry warns that the common citizen is in danger of losing access to the courts.
But by and large, the Democratic Party is no longer the champion of the poor.
The Democrats have been hounded since the days of George McGovern for promoting anti-military sentiment and for smothering free enterprise with bureaucratic regimentation. But that old harlot, Big Government, has no scruples about bigamy and the Republicans have married her, too. And the militarism of the current Republican administration and its cheerleaders should remind sober-minded Americans of President Eisenhower’s farewell warning about the military-industrial complex.
But there is one issue on which the Democrats have come to speak with virtually one voice. The Democratic Party has cast its lot with what Pope John Paul II has called the “culture of death.” Its candidates for President have pledged to nominate no one for the highest judicial office unless said nominee finds the mandates for the pro-abortion culture written into the Constitution of the United States.
The Republicans may be nothing to write home about. The Democrats, unfortunately, are.
Any serious Catholic can find much of their agenda condemned in the Pope’s encyclical, “The Gospel of Life.” George Bush, a non-Catholic, appears to support the principle of protecting and defending innocent human life. The Democrats are committed to defending its destruction as a matter of “choice.”
Catholics must also be “pro-choice.” They must face up to the awful freedom and responsibility of choosing between the moral law, supported and explained by the Magisterium established and ordained by Christ, and the focus-group, poll-watching pandering to men and women enamored of the slippery, dishonest ethics of the diabolical “culture of death.”
There are, sadly, many who refuse to face up to that choice.
But I bet the Democrats can still count on the homosexuals.
The clergy are so steeped in helping the "poor" by destroying greedy capitalism and providing government give away programs as well as supporting "peace" through pacifism that I think that most have overlooked the obvious downside of abortion on demand that comes with this liberal Democrat agenda.
The people in the pews have for a long time made up their own minds on many issues quite contrary to what the clergy have been spouting from the pulpit. First and foremost was that most have ignored the Church's dictat against the use of birth control. Many now are also deciding that the high taxes and big government socialism aren't to their benefit either and are voting for candidates like Reagan and George W. Bush.
It's simply the clergy that's out of step.
Unfortunately, the writer just lost the middle ground. Economic and social justice is _ALL_ the Dems talk about - though according to their mostly warped worldview. One can't fault the Dems on their subject, one must fault them on their solutions and methodology. This article will ring true among Pub party faithful, but will have little effect on the undecided.
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