Expect a Catholic exodus

About Damn Time that the "Catholic-Reflexive-Democrat" vote becomes one grounded in morality.

But in Union towns, it may take a while longer than this writer expects.

The political division among Catholics is increasingly between those who attend Mass and those who do not. The hard core who attend Mass are much more heavily Republican than the indifferent among Catholics by birth. I am living in the Mid-west (northwest Illinois) and while I live in a very rural area, I often attend Mass in the nearby rustbelt city of Rockford. Discounting the experience at the Tridentine Mass community attended almost exclusively by my wife and kids and which is more Republican than the Republican National Committee (although numbers of them certainly USED to vote Democrat on economic grounds decades ago), the experience at the working-class Novus Ordo (modern Mass) parishes is anything but Democrat and numerous priests know how to encourage from the pulpit the notion that you cannot be Catholic and vote for pro-aborts or pro-lavenders ESPECIALLY if they also claim to be Catholic (CINOs). The wealthier parishes are a little more dicey in that the white wine and brie set do not want (above all) to offend their secular humanist friends.

I have been here about 3 1/2 years after migrating from my native Connecticut. There are union members back thee too. Not too many members of Knights of Columbus Councils are very Democrat inclined as they once were. There has not been a Democrat running the Supreme Council since about 1976 when Virgil Dechant (a Kansas GOP State Central Committee member) was elected. A few years ago he was replaced by a young hardliner named Carl Anderson. The K of C is not specifically political but also knows how to deliver the message in no uncertain terms to the members and the K of C is the premier Catholic organization in this country. Ronaldus Maximus was invited repeatedly to address Supreme Council Conventions (August of each year) and did so at least in election years. Expect Dubya to be invited as well.

There is quiet bloodletting in the Roman Catholic Church as we push AmChurch over the cliff. Rome is appointing good bishops to important and leser positions here, particularly in recent months. They have gotten the message about the scandals and have turned their momentum in the right direction. Catholicism is like a big battleship. If it is plodding along at 3/4 speed in a particular direction (say, obsessed with social gospel stuff) and someone notices some lavender torpedoes have been punching holes near the stern, the battleship can avoid some future torpedoes and eventually almost all of them but it cannot turn on a dime.

When I was 17, I was the first member of my family to consider myself Republican and be active at it. Almost all are Republican now. My relatives were labor union guys to the nth degree and worshipped the water that FDR rolled his wheelchair over. They were never pro-abortion, or even pro-birth control or pro-homosexual or pro-criminal or pro-communist, the combination which now defines the Demonratic Party which has repleced the party of our ancestors.

Failing to notice, FDR's patrician background, they thought of the GOP as the party of the hated executives who wanted to suppress their pay and benefits and dreams (a major problem and maybe even worse today because the GOP never learns much on this score) and it was the party of the mainline Protestants whom they viewed as snooty social snobs and anti-Catholics. My family guys were willing to return the favor by being anti-Protestant mainline (very easy for the Irish with our history), reverse snobs and having a good time laughing at the foibles of the upper class.

We regarded evangelicals and particularly Pentecostals as a curiosity and had little idea of their specific beliefs. We knew they tended to be more like us economically and very much unlike us in worship and religious practices. Even though there was a sharper anti-Catholic Church edge among fundamentalists on Scriptural grounds, it was not a social or economic enmity at all just differing beliefs. You could still play softball or go bowling with fundamentalists and have a good time not expected to be available with Episcopalians or Congregationalists or Unitarians.

As it becomes ever more obvious that the Protestant mainline is both evaporating numerically and also that its remains are moving toward the Democrats and that GOP Protestants are more likely to be Southern Baptists, Westminster Presbyterians (as opposed to the other sorts), Missouri or Wisconsin Synod Lutherans rather than ELCA, truly Christian remnants in the mainline Churches who also want to ally with us politically, Evangelicals and Penectostals, Catholics will be more and more comfortable with being Republican. We will shed poorly catechized Catholics in liberal parishes and dioceses to evangelical and even pentecostal churches where they too will become more likely Republican and the remaining Catholic core will be increasingly hard-core as our internal purging continues.

The hard-core of the Catholic Church are the ones most likely to disdain birth control as well as abortion and to have large families for all the right reasons plus the sheer joy of seeing the shock on the faces of more modern types confronted by mom and dad and the eight or twelve kids. The converts TO the Catholic Church of whom there are many are not coming in to be Kumbayas. Just as some who leave for the conservative Protestant churches do so because they were starved for red meat by their pablum spewing liberal priests and bishops, so others are fleeing INTO Catholicism to distance themselves from the Bishop Spongs and Bishop Robinsons of Episcopalianism or their counterparts in Presbyterianism, Methodism, ELCAism, etc. These folks are coming in BECAUSE they are conservative and they will help reinforce the trends among birth Catholics.

The danger among Catholics can be affluence. Materialism is a prime enemy of orthodoxy in the Catholic Church. Whether Catholics are right in a preferential option for the poor, a sentimental attachment to the underdog, a sympathy for legitimate victims like the unborn, and works which are often theologically derided though practiced elsewhere, or not, those very qualities will, through social issues, bring many Catholics around to the GOP. They will not be Republican marionettes and the GOP should prepare to adapt. We are verrrrry angry at the scandals within and social issue liberalism is the very visible enemy and it is found among the Kumbayas.

As you can see along the border, our numbers will grow. Our families will be larger. We have a superb generation of priests in preparation in seminary now and reinforcements available from the Third World to assist the transformation back from AmChurch to the Roman Catholic Church. This will not be to the benefit of Mrs. Antichrist or those like her.

The advertising that says that the Senate Judiciary Demonrats, including the likes of the phony Catholics Leahy, Kennedy, Durbin, et al. will only accept anti-Catholic "Catholics" on the Federal Bench will sting the Demonrats badly among Catholics. As solidarity is maintained in both party caucuses, it is the Demonrats, including CINOs, who vote unanimously anti-Catholic if a nominee actually believes the tenets of the Catholic faith and acts accordingly. We even have Senator Kerry, who claims to be a Catholic, warning of the evil influence of JP II over American Catholic politicians, the kind of rhetoric that made Catholics Democrats in the first place 100 years ago and more.

Suppose that you are a Baptist and I am a Catholic and we each REALLY are committed to our respective faiths. Our grandfathers or great grandfathers probably did not expect to be chums: possible but not probable. You and I may difer as do our faiths but we live in different times where it is easier to see that we agree on more of the permanent things of Christianity than those items, however important, upon which we disagree. You and I have tangled a time or two but I don't think you are a bad guy and I hope you don't think me one either.

Meanwhile, we can both recognize that, if we are friends, we often have mutual enemies. We call them modernists and you call them secular humanists but they are the same enemies and most are Democrats. The rest are RINOs. Be patient. We will be there with you in both fights. Any wait will be worth it.

I assume your response to my #27 was also a response to my #35 since you seemed to address both. I'll try to respond to those points in your mega-post that I find the most interesting.

There is quiet bloodletting in the Roman Catholic Church as we push AmChurch over the cliff. Rome is appointing good bishops to important and leser positions here, particularly in recent months. They have gotten the message about the scandals and have turned their momentum in the right direction.

I think Rome already was changing direction even prior to the pedophile scandals. At least to my observation, it seemed that the conservativism of my bishop (excommunication of pro-abort/pro-gay organization members) encouraged my archbishop (informed the diocese that voting Dim was anti-life/anti-Church) and then we saw the neighboring diocese in Denver get a new conservative bishop who cleaned out the sodomite nest of vipers in the local seminary apparently. I think the momentum was already toward traditionalism and orthodoxy even before the recent pedophile scandal. Perhaps the scandal has accelerated the change.

Being a good Baptist and hating to suggest that Rome bases its decisions on rational self-interest, I'd be willing to speculate that, from time to time, Ratzinger and others in the College of Cardinals actually pulls out a Excel spreadsheet and tallies up which dioceses are conservative or liberal and which ones have sex scandals and which have large families and which ones have higher regular attendance and which ones are bringing in money and holding onto their membership and even expanding. I think they can see that conservative dioceses are beating the liberal ones hands down. And if the American RC churches are the financial breadbasket of the Roman church, they can readily see that it is in their own self-interest to promote conservative bishops.

It's comforting for any conservative to observe that reason and tradition and devotion to Christian orthdoxy are actually rewarded economically. It's just difficult to keep all those ducks in a row over the course of generations...

Catholicism is like a big battleship. If it is plodding along at 3/4 speed in a particular direction (say, obsessed with social gospel stuff) and someone notices some lavender torpedoes have been punching holes near the stern, the battleship can avoid some future torpedoes and eventually almost all of them but it cannot turn on a dime.

Agreed. The pedophile priest scandal had actually largely passed in actual commission of assaults against children before the cases were ever brought. Generally, the pedophiles committed most of their crimes in the Sixties through the Eighties. Obviously, there was a problem with liberalism and lavenderism whose roots were in the Forties and Fifties when liberal/lavender priests started to become liberal/lavender bishops. They became the American RC establishment and institutional momentum and culture kept them in power. Their failure to maintain membership and revenue over the course of decades had to be apparent to Rome. So, in the quieter and more conservative dioceses, Rome began to appoint a few more conservative bishops. And those are a resounding success across the board (membership, family size, orthodoxy of membership, attendance, contributions) in comparison to the liberal bishops.

Yes, it is satisfying to observe when Christian orthodoxy and the economic life of a church walk hand in hand. Even aggressive Baptists can find no advantage in the hijacking of the American RC church by a liberal national hierarchy.

A Baptist or Protestant might observe with some satisfaction that it is the conservative dioceses where one finds RCs who are most studious toward scripture. With regard to abortion or to sodomism (and lavender clergy), the liberal faction could only win their permanent institutional victory if they could elect a pope who could use his authority to pronounce anti-orthodox doctrine in their favor.

So I would not say that conservative RCs/dioceses are demonstrating a sola scriptura tendency. But I would observe that the liberal dioceses who are so obviously and egregiously anti-scriptura have demonstrably failed on all counts. And Rome has obviously noticed.

The liberals are retiring. The appointments of bishops over the next ten years will determine to the future of the American RC churches. You notice that I refer to them as 'churches', not 'church'. Given the gulf in orthodoxy between conservative and liberal dioceses, there is a certain Protestantism between the orthodox and non-orthodox dioceses that is rather satisfying to observe to a Baptist. We would say that it doesn't pay for a church to defy the Bible. It is satisfying to notice that the soundest Roman churches are those who seem to have the soundest Bible students as well.

On a related note, I observe that elsewhere in the First World, it is in eastern Europe (New Europe) where the success of more conservative traditional bishops seems to be succeeding in much the same way we see with conservative bishops here in the States. Just an interesting observation and not some mere coincidence, I think. And it is no coincidence that they are the freedom-loving peoples who supported our efforts to free Iraq from the vicious tyrant Saddam. As I said, I find that very interesting.

The hard-core of the Catholic Church are the ones most likely to disdain birth control as well as abortion and to have large families for all the right reasons plus the sheer joy of seeing the shock on the faces of more modern types confronted by mom and dad and the eight or twelve kids. The converts TO the Catholic Church of whom there are many are not coming in to be Kumbayas. Just as some who leave for the conservative Protestant churches do so because they were starved for red meat by their pablum spewing liberal priests and bishops, so others are fleeing INTO Catholicism to distance themselves from the Bishop Spongs and Bishop Robinsons of Episcopalianism or their counterparts in Presbyterianism, Methodism, ELCAism, etc. These folks are coming in BECAUSE they are conservative and they will help reinforce the trends among birth Catholics.

Yes, I agree. The current Episcopal scandal will benefit the RCs. Just as the pedophile priest scandal has, in some of the worst RC dioceses, benefitted the Orthodox who has taken in RC refugees, most of them merely afraid for their children or disgusted with the scandal and unwilling to support the payoff of victims when they have an opportunity to receive the Eucharist elsewhere. Many of them, I suspect, might have already had a certain preference that their parish priests should be married. I note that among the Orthodox, they still select bishops from the celibate/widowed in my understanding which is rather interesting when you consider that Rome accepts married Episcopal priests to administer Roman sacraments. The contrast there is interesting and may be worth watching in coming decades.

The advertising that says that the Senate Judiciary Demonrats, including the likes of the phony Catholics Leahy, Kennedy, Durbin, et al. will only accept anti-Catholic "Catholics" on the Federal Bench will sting the Demonrats badly among Catholics. As solidarity is maintained in both party caucuses, it is the Demonrats, including CINOs, who vote unanimously anti-Catholic if a nominee actually believes the tenets of the Catholic faith and acts accordingly. We even have Senator Kerry, who claims to be a Catholic, warning of the evil influence of JP II over American Catholic politicians, the kind of rhetoric that made Catholics Democrats in the first place 100 years ago and more.

Agreed. I don't think the CINOs could get away with it if their bishops weren't so liberal. I don't know that they would be denounced publicly if they had conservative bishops instead. I just think they couldn't get the RC votes if the dioceses were headed by conservatives like my bishop for a generation. Notice that Carter (now ex-Southern Baptist and isolated in a dying liberal Baptist association) and Clinton and Gore (both claimed to be Southern Baptist but no longer bother to) were never condemned or expelled by their local churches (lacking a pope, we Southern Baptists could not expel them denominationally but we could expel their churches). But even though neither they nor their churches were expelled for their liberal anti-Christian politics while in office, they did not get the Southern Baptist vote. Their denominational fakery was not rewarded after Carter's little ploy which was only semi-successful.

I expect the same things will happen to the liberal CINO politicians in coming years. In conservative dioceses, CINOs will find little electoral traction due to their claim of RC affiliation.

You and I may difer as do our faiths but we live in different times where it is easier to see that we agree on more of the permanent things of Christianity than those items, however important, upon which we disagree. You and I have tangled a time or two but I don't think you are a bad guy and I hope you don't think me one either.

No, not at all. I recognize that many members of Rome's churches are sincere and devout and are within the tradition of Christian orthodoxy. In the current state of Christian churches, there is a much a battle for simple orthodoxy in the battle against liberalism and political correctness as there is over the typical disagreement between Roman churches and Protestant/Baptist/evangelical churches.

However, I do resent that the American RC churches are abandoning the evangelization of the Jews and Muslims. Now only we Southern Baptists seem willing to declare that Jews and Muslims are no different than any other men in their need for Christ. We SBCers and you RCers may be allied on fighting the pro-abortion/pro-sodomite political fight but you RCers are hanging us SBCers out to dry on the orthodoxy issue of whether all men are in need of Christ and Him only.

I think your pope has become way too ecumenical in his dotage and he is being influenced by the liberal faction in Rome. It's the most charitable explanation I can find. Of course, we SBCers still have Billy Graham (also in his dotage) who claims to be an SBCer and is still regarded as one even though he is just as dottily ecumenical as your pope has been. I take some comfort that his son, Franklin, has, despite his wayward youth, affirmed the need of all men for Christ (very pointedly with regard to Muslims and to Jews) in the post-9/11 era. And Franklin is getting more attention from the White House and the Washington establishment, for what that's worth. I would generally consider myself in fellowship with Franklin but not with Billy, Carter, Clinton, Gore. I think when SBCers understand what Billg stands for, they don't pay attention to him or give him money. SBCers are already aware that Carter/Clinton/Gore are just SBC-INOs and were never anything else.

I think there are "secular catholics" as well.

My wife's family is Catholic in the way many Jews are Jews-they were born that way, that's their identity, they could ever be anything else, so that's what they are.

The Catholic vote is the backbone of the twelve Catholic senators who strongly defend abortion-it would be great if that changed.

I would like to see the demographics of the Ted Kennedy supporters. I would bet the farm that he has the gays, the welfare bums, the Cambridge Square academic elite, the pro abortion soccer moms, and yes, the union bosses. Other than the union hacks, you wont find many of his constituency at Mass. I would be willing to bet he isnt carrying a majority of Catholic voters. Could be wrong but it would be interesting to know...

The last time Edward Kennedy was elected to the Senate, he received 1.889 million votes. His Republican opponent received 334,000.

50% of Massachusetts voters describe themselves as Catholics. It is reasonable to assume, therefore, that 1,111,500 votes in that election were cast by Catholics.

Even if EVERY VOTE for the Republican were cast by a Catholic (dubious), that would mean that 777,500 Catholics voted for Ted Kennedy. The true numbers are of course probably substantially larger.

Now, there is not room in Harvard Square for 77,000 Catholics, much less 777,000 or a million.

The fact is, sad though it may be, that there is overwhelming Catholic support for Kennedy (and presumably for the rest of the "abortion twelve"), that it is fair to describe it as the backbone of such support, and if that were to change that the situation of the baby killers would be much worse politically.

The pro-choice stance of the Democrat party is the main reason I became a Republican in 1996. As a life-long Catholic, I could no longer ignore the fact that Democrats condone the murder of innocent babies, pure and simple.

I looked up the 99-2000 Kennedy election. Token Repub candidate raised a total of $150,000 while Kennedy raised about $7 million. In actuality, he ran unopposed. Some Libertarian got 13% and Repub. Jack Robinson got 12%. I am trying to find some real demographics that were collected... Interesting.

My 88 year old Grandmother, born and raised Roman Catholic, converted to the Episcopalean (sp?) Church in the mid 60's.

She did this because after years of living with a layed off union worker alcoholic, she decided she must get a divorce. This was after a complete nervous break down on her part. Her faith was so important to her that she could not reconcile in her mind a divorce. She later met my Step Grandfather (a widow with 5 kids), and fell deeply in love and decided to marry. Because she could not marry in the Catholic Church without an annulment (which I have no doubt would have been granted) she switched Churches. She believed strongly that to ask the church for an annulment would be like slapping her children in the face. These children were her life, and she never wanted them to think that her marraige to their father wasn't "real".

Since the Bishop Robinson scandal (homosexual bishop) she has refused to go to Church. Because my Step Grandfather died two years ago she has been suffering depression anyway, and unforetunatley this is pushing her over the edge. Nothing we say can cheer her up. Due to other minor health problems, she has basically given up on life. She really sees no reason to live right now, except for the fact that she doesn't want to die without some religous ceremony. Her Priest has tried to comfort her but she wants nothing to do with that church, but doesn't think she can go back to the RC church either.

I don't think that the Episcop. Church has any idea what it is doing to it's members. This live and let live attitude regarding morals and core beliefs will backfire.

Grandmas Bible right now is her saving grace, and I tell her that God loves her and is waiting with open arms for her, and so is Grandpa.

PING

I've always been surprised that many Catholics vote democratic. It seems to fly in the face of many of the things the Catholic church teaches.

As a Catholic I was saddened by the way Bill Pryor was treated. A man who has convictions of his faith in God should never be scorned.

I do believe that treatment of Mr. Pryor by the judiciary committee may have been a turning point for many of the faithful in the Catholic Church.

No one with a brain can be a Catholic and a Democrat at the same time.

No one with a brain can be a CHRISTIAN and a Democrat at the same time."

You might suggest that her life and faith are more important at her stage in life and in God's eyes as well. She could still receive sacraments from conservative RC or Episcopalian priests without those being some sort of an endorsement of the problems either church has had or that she has with them. God will look on her sincere heart, not on the problems of a denomination which might extend sacraments to her.

Using the word "fascist" is precisely a ruse by communists to obscure the socialist aspect of both Hitler (AND Mussolini!).

Back in my more naive days I used to chuckle when I'd hear this is the typical Hollyweird movie/mini-series etc...

finally, i dawned on me what was really going on and now it really irks me when i hear it, so whenever i hear it in conversation, i always fold "national SOCIALISTS" into the reply, that really irks the liberals i'm talking to (and boy is it satisfying to watch them squrim)

I know that, and you know that, but making Grandma believe that are two different things.

To her morals are one of the cornerstones of religion, and for her to accept the Church is to condone their actions.

This has been coming for a long time with Grandma. She cant stand the liberalization of her church.

Before with Grandpa at her side it was ok. Now alone she doesn't have the strength. Depression is one of the elderlys most fatal illnesses, all of her friends are dead or dying, and she has no will to live. She loves her family (kids, grandkids, and great grandkids) but thats just not enough right now.

Sorry to highjack a thread with a personal story, but I just wanted to point out that the lack of true morals in this society are killing us in more ways than one.

The problem goes back to the so called "seperation of Church and State". I am all for that in theory, but in practice it is killing us. I think more and more are seeing this, and that truly religous people will be leaving the Democratic Party in droves.

For years we have been told, by politicians trying to appease their souls, that because of Church vs. State, they must not impose their morals on others. Many, many so-called Catholics say things like "Personally I am pro-life", but then go to vote with their liberal buddies.

For years their has been no consequences, because they have brain washed their followers to believe that is ok to be pro-life but the "Constitution" says you can't force your views on others.

I think more and more people are actually looking at their Constitutions and saying "Hey it doesn't say I cant be religous, it just tells me that the Government cant tell me which God to believe in". They also see the breakdown of society due to the live and let live attitudes of the liberals.

I have deep faith in this Country, and I do believe that we are going back to home grown, moral values. I also see that people are waking up, and although most are "libertarian" in their views on homosexual behavior, the do not want the homosexual lifestyle re-defining their most sacred tradition of marraige.

The significance of this is it represents a wedge issue for Hispanics which the Republicans certainly should exploit. Hispanics will turn national elections for decades to come.

You got it!!!

It is one of the things socialists today like to dissemble or simply never bring up, that there was for a while in Weimar Germany a nearly seamless continuum of opinion from the nationalist Right to the Spartakist Left, and socialism and National Socialism grew up from very similar roots

Yes, and since PiusXII famously remarked that "One cannot be both a true Socialist and a true Catholic," the anti-Catholicism of the Nazis is better understood.

And if you believe CBS, you have a long way to go before you achieve anything resembling wisdom and understanding.

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

One of the harder-hit areas in the country for this execrable sin was Milwaukee.

It so happens that I am a fairly active Catholic, and know a LOT of priests--including one who has been accused (nothing more than that, yet.)

Sorry to report to you that this stuff was NOT "widespread knowledge" among Catholics--NOR would any of us have covered it up, PERIOD.

Sadly, this knowledge was available to Bishops who failed, miserably--some through stupidity, some through complicity.

I do resent that the American RC churches are abandoning the evangelization of the Jews and Muslims.

One at a time:

W/regard the Jews, evangelization has been put on the back burner for two reasons: a wacky leftist Cardinal, newly appointed to the 'ecumenism' chair in Rome; and secondly, a technical issue: it is a truism that the New Covenant did NOT abrogate the Old Covenant--thus, the 'urgency' of baptizing Jews has been diminished.

I suspect that evangelization will go back to full-steam-ahead in about 15-20 years.

Muslims: Rome has found that the Muslims who are not of the murderous barbarian persuasion (there are more than a few who are NOT barbarians) are quite helpful in many regards at the UN--they are firmly anti-abortion, anti-homosexual-agenda, and have a better understanding of the foundation of Governments than do, say, the Kennedys.

It is not diplomatically useful to have a full-steam proselytization campaign going on in those circumstances.

Further, Muhammedanism is really a Heresy, rather than a non-Christian religion.

As you know, heretics are the most obstinate of all 'converion prospects.'

Two cents, pay at this window.

The fact is, sad though it may be, that there is overwhelming Catholic support for Kennedy

Something for which Cardinals Cushing and Medieros are now attempting to explain to St. Peter, without the benefit of defense lawyers.

Law will be next in the same position.

OTOH, O'Malley is a fistfighter anti-abortion zealot. Things will change up there--not necessarily fast and dramatic, but the fireworks show will be well worth the price of admission.