Posted on 08/07/2003 12:42:11 AM PDT by swilhelm73
WASHINGTON - A profound and lasting realignment is likely soon to take place in American politics. Catholics, who for historical reasons have largely voted Democrat, will abandon the party in droves (just as social liberals have been, and are, abandoning the Church).
The realignment has been a long time coming. But it is unlikely to be possible any longer to ignore the fact that Church doctrine is incompatible with the policies of the party of the left.
At the general level, the Church insists on personal responsibility for individual actions, whereas the left is more likely to find societal or economic explanations for bad or criminal behaviour. On more specific and (now) non-criminal issues, Catholic doctrine holds that abortion and homosexual coupling are grave sins.
These two issues have become touchstones for modern Democrats. No one who hopes to be the party's presidential nominee can any longer admit to any doubt about a woman's right to choose to have an abortion.
There is more latitude on gay rights, but not much. Some Democratic presidential candidates do not endorse gay marriage, but they are finding it increasingly difficult to persuade the party's grassroots that they are genuinely committed to homosexual equality.
These two issues will likely figure in the 2004 election.
Senate Democrats are furious about a political advertisement that began airing last month that suggests they have a no-Catholic-need-apply litmus test for nominees to the federal judiciary.
The nomination in question is that of Bill Pryor, Attorney-General of Alabama, who opposes abortion both because he is as an orthodox Catholic and because as a constitutional expert, he believes the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling was an abominable piece of jurisprudence.
Democrats would also doubtless seek to block the nomination of a Protestant who opposed abortion, so the charge of anti-Catholicism is imprecise. But as the commentator, Ramesh Ponnuru, has pointed out, Democrats certainly operate a beliefs test that amounts to this: No one who opposes abortion rights is suitable to be a federal appellate judge.
Thus, anyone who accepts Catholic teaching on abortion is unacceptable. Senators Patrick Leahy and Dick Durbin, among others, have denounced this suggestion as a calumny. But what really riles them is not that the suggestion is false, but that it is true. And being true, it is politically dangerous.
Democrats gathered pro-abortion Catholics, including a priest, on Capitol Hill last week and assailed what they claim is an intolerant smear. But no matter how they wriggle, the irreducible fact is this: If you accept Church doctrine you cannot take the Democratic position on abortion; indeed you must oppose it.
That may be a good reason to abandon the Church, but the Democrats cannot have it both ways. And since Catholics account for about one-quarter of the American electorate and have traditionally voted Democrat, this is a serious problem for the party. The Democrats have pushed the socially liberal agenda to the point where it excludes a vast number of long-time supporters.
U.S. President George Bush polls well among Catholics; his moral clarity appeals to many of them. And he has come to prominence at a time when the Democrats are making it difficult for faithful Catholics to vote for them with their eyes open.
Similarly with the issue of gay marriage, Bush and the Republican Party offer orthodox Catholics a natural political home. Senior congressional Republicans are considering a constitutional amendment to protect marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Last week, in his final press conference before the summer recess, Bush appeared to support such a move and stated unequivocally that he regarded marriage as the union of a man with a woman -- nothing else.
And the Vatican was more challenging than ever on Thursday when the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith proclaimed: "The Catholic lawmaker has a moral duty to express his opposition [to homosexual marriage] clearly and publicly and to vote against it. To vote in favour of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral."
Thus, we are at the point where the mutual exclusivity of the Catholic and Democratic views has become impossible for intellectually honest people to ignore. Many people of good conscience are therefore leaving the Church, and many people of good conscience will leave the Democrats.
No political party should claim morality or religiosity for itself. Politicians rarely get away with even a hint that they are more Christian or religious or moral than their opponents. Voters punish such arrogance.
But voters also have the freedom to consider such matters, and they will find it difficult not to do so. The millions and millions of voting Catholics have never before been presented so clearly with a choice between their traditional political preference and their faith.
What you say is correct, although it makes the darwinists on FR grind their teeth.
Why are you going from thread to thread with this line? Looking for an early morning brawl to start your day off?
That is a source of guilt that Catholics thrive on, for some reason.
No ... This is not where my screen name came from, but it applies here as well.
That's the news I thought the headline of this article was referring to, predicting an "exodus" from the Church. It's hard to believe that many members of the Catholic laity haven't known about predatory priests for years and went along with the hush-up. It's only now, when lawyers can get fat judgements against the Church, that the cases are being revealed.
Scientism, materialism, atheism, etc., are all on the other side of the divide.
The problem with most voters, be they catholic, christian, jewish, atheist, etc. is that too often, their votes are cast based on "sound bites". My aging parents are a good example of how they 'receive' news. While my father will question what he is being fed by the major networks, he forgets to watch Fox News for a more balanced view. My mother, on the other hand, buys into "the language of cute Katie Couric." She (my mother) stunned me recently by unleashing a vitriolic attack on the president, basing her assessment of his performance on 'direct feed' from the likes of The Today Show. Like my father, she is programmed into watching and LISTENING to one-sided, liberal journalists.
There are a good number of conservative voting Catholics, just as there are conservative Jews and christians from various denominations. They will complain vociferously about the decline of propriety in the US, and shake their fists at politicians who have 'let them down'. But, on election day, once inside the voting booth, it seems their arms are 'hard-wired' to the Democrat line.
I didn't see the report on this. Anyone know if it was posted on FreeRepublic?
Guns are important too and so are taxes on the American of ordinary income. We don't send our kids to public schools but we despise what public schools do to other people's kids and through them to our society.
Catholics who attend Church at least weekly are much more likely to vote Republican as revealed by poll after poll. Our pastors are more and more likely to urge us to vote against the Demonrats. Sure, there is a residual rump caucus of aging activist "Peace and Justice" Kumbayas but the good news on them is each day's obituary page.
I believe that you have the instinct that Catholics are not going to move suddenly rightward at the voting booth and you are probably right about that but we are moving and we tend to be a verrrrrrrry stubborn lot. Once we move, we stay moved for a verrrrrry long time unless and until new reasons make for a slow change in momentum. Also, there is more and more momentum towards the GOP.
We are very good allies to have because of that stubbornness. It would help if Rome would appoint bishops more inclined to our pre-Vatican II separatism not because it is not good to have alliances with non-Catholics but because we Catholics must charge our Catholic batteries to maximize the strength and consensus that we can and must bring to the alliance with others. Be patient with us. We're worth waiting for. When we move against the anti-Catholic Catholics like Kerry, Durbin, Leahy, Mikulski, et al., there will be no turning back. Keep an eye on Archbishop Chaput of Denver. He would make a superb cardinal. He is a warrior Capuchin.
As to cafeteria Catholics, they are no more Catholic than those who despise and reject Scripture can claim to be Protestant. Ancestry is not determinative.
Union members are not robots for labor leaders. It is not right to exclude them simply because they look out for their own economic interests any more than we should reject the industrialist for improving his profit. The capital of the labor union member is his or her labor and he or she has the same right to maximize profit as anyone else. Until the Depression, a lot of labor union members, including many leaders, were openly and proudly Republican. It is also true that, as Reagan used to say, we did not abandon the Democrats. They abandoned us. So be it! p> God bless you and yours.
They've been trained to hate Republicans for so long, that they just instinctively vote 'rat. I know guys that are pro-gun, pro-life, and overall conservative people and they still voted for Clinton and Gore, and will probably vote for whatever the 'rats put up in 2004.
Every few years, I see the father of a friend of mine at a picnic or some function - he's in his 60's - and every time I see him he is still complaining about Ronald Reagan!
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