Expect a Catholic exodus

National Post ^ | 08/07/03 | Hugo Gurdon

[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.

[old and tired]

You are perhaps the most eloquent Catholic on FR and I want so badly to believe you. But I'd like to relate my recent experience.

We live just outside of Philadelphia, where Ed Rendell was mayor for 8 years. Ed Rendell followed Wilson Goode and greatly improved Center City as well as lowered the city wage tax for commuters as well as residents. Of course my 2 year old grandson could have done a better job than Wilson Goode, but Rendell, nevertheless, received much of the credit for the improvements.

All through my neighborhood, Rendell signs were popping up on front lawns. The front lawns of Extraordinary Ministers, lectors, even the guy who sells the scrip (school vouchers) after Mass had a Rendell sign on his lawn. Every election, we hand out pro-life voters' guides after Mass. We always have one or two idiots who refuse them, but it has always been the same idiots every election. Not this time. This time we probably had 25 percent fail to take a voters guide.

It was extremely disheartening. We have some of the most conservative priests in the country, yet these CINO's in my parish felt perfectly at ease displaying their sentiments for a man who called Kate Michaelman a "saint".

[Bluntpoint]

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

Welcome to Beautiful Greater Cincinnat:

http://www.enquirer.com/priests/

[Bluntpoint]

http://www.enquirer.com/priests/

[old and tired]

American Catholics are just beginning to evangelize. For many years the only evangelizing Catholics did was in our schools.

Now you see some evangelizing among Catholics, with EWTN and Catholics Radio. It seems the primary targets for conversion are former Catholics and Bible believing Christians. I think that is because they are the easiest targets. Please cut us some slack; this whole evangelizing thing is new to us American Catholics.

When we are more comfortable with evangelizing we will move on to the Muslims, Mormons, and the Jews. Please give us time.

[ninenot]

Well, yes--you win on execrable-ness. Bernardin was, without a doubt, the most insidious prelate in America since the Founding of the country.

Weakland was only capable of holding Bernardin's cape, in a manner of speaking.

[TradicalRC]

The Nazis were socialists, not Fascists. They've been labeled fascist by leftists who wanted the idea of centralized government to remain untarnished. Somehow we're supposed to believe that there ore pro-big-government right wingers although this doesn't ring true in America, it played well in Europe and with the American left. Their slavish devotion to the French Revolution made them very anti-American and being the free capitalist nation that we were they saw America as a land of evil right wing communist-hating bougeoisie.

Ah, the good old days.

[lentulusgracchus]

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 squirm)

LOL -- Good for you! Keep at it, and remember -- you aren't about to change these people's minds, but someone else is listening.

You might drop into your comments the fact that there was a continuous and unbroken spectrum of opinion in between-the-wars Germany that solidly connected the ex-army nationalists and patriots on the one hand and the internationalist Communists on the other, with the labor syndicalists, Socialists, and National Socialists in between.

The National Socialists were the "middle" in Weimar Germany, along with the social democrats, and that's why American troops after the war found it so incredible that Germans would tell them that "yes, yes, there were lots of Nazis -- but I wasn't a Nazi, they were too extreme for me!"

Balderdash.

[lentulusgracchus]

Bernardin was, without a doubt, the most insidious prelate in America since the Founding of the country.

Just curious -- I dont' have a dog in that fight -- but why do you say that? Are you accusing him of being, as it were, an inmate in charge of the asylum? Of being morally corrupt, that is?

[Ann Archy]

Pray that Catolics abandon the liberal lies of the left.

[swilhelm73]

Well, actually, Fascism is a leftwing political ideology.

Fascism originates from Mussolini who started his fascist party after a split with the Italian socialists over the question of whether one can be a nationalist and a socialist.

Fascism is notable by corporatist (aka Third Way) socialism, subjugation of the rights of the individual for the theoritical common good, the importance of a nominal national will over elections and republican controls, and a government of men and not of laws.

It isn't much of a stretch to claim the American Democrat party, and most of the political parties in Europe, are treading ever closer to the fascist thought and theory. Communism failed, badly, fascism, however, is a bit more of a successful governing model.

[George W. Bush]

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.

Ummm... Didn't the pope appoint the wacky leftist cardinal to ecumenism chair? Did the wacky leftist cardinal twist his arm behind his back and force him to kiss a Koran?

The New Covenant did abrogate the Old Covenant. The Bible says it plainly. Jesus and His disciples, all Jews, certainly thought so. I'll take their word for it.

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

No, it is not a heresy. They worship a false god, not Jehovah. Do not believe the Jewish and Christian elements they have incorporated into their false religion. Mohammed included those because he wasn't very original and because he was pursuing ecumenism. So the reason you're being ecumenical toward their false religion to avoid evangelizing them is because they were ecumenical toward Christianity in the hopes of deceiving Christians (and Jews) to join their false religion.

So much for ecumenism.

[George W. Bush]

American Catholics are just beginning to evangelize. For many years the only evangelizing Catholics did was in our schools. When we are more comfortable with evangelizing we will move on to the Muslims, Mormons, and the Jews. Please give us time.

I wasn't demanding that Rome rush out to evangelize anyone. What I meant was that they shouldn't have said they won't evangelize Jews. It stabbed us SBCers in the back. They bowed to political correctness instead of affirming the need for all men to know Christ.

Furthermore, having once said they won't evangelize Jews, it makes it more difficult to do so in the future.

[ninenot]

Didn't the pope appoint the wacky leftist cardinal to ecumenism chair?

Yes.

Did the wacky leftist cardinal twist his arm behind his back and force him to kiss a Koran?

That incident was before Kasper was put in the Ecumenism slot.

We think that JPII put Kasper in the Ecumeno-slot to get Kasper out of Germany, where Kasper was systematically destroying the Catholic Church.

The Bible says it plainly

The Old Covenant is still operative for the Jews. The New INCLUDES the Old but does not abrogate it--unless you believe that the 10 Commandments were abrogated. Please provide a citation demonstrating otherwise.

They worship a false god, not Jehovah

As a matter of fact, the Muslims worship Yahweh, and they are heretics because they refuse to recognize the Trinity, which was alluded to in the OT and explicitly mentioned in the NT.

This is why they do not recognize the Perfect Sacrifice (if Christ is not the Son of God...) and why they have such, ahhh, difficulties with the area of 'interpersonal law,'--essentially a failure to recognize that each person is a Son of God.

All the rest of their doctrinal aberratios can be explained in this light.

Belloc is a fairly decent source on the matter.

[harbingr]

The world and the Church in crisis... New book from Fatima.org:

'The Devil's Final Battle'...

Must Read Book Review...

Book Review

[George W. Bush]

That incident was before Kasper was put in the Ecumenism slot. We think that JPII put Kasper in the Ecumeno-slot to get Kasper out of Germany, where Kasper was systematically destroying the Catholic Church.

Oh, okay. So a bishop is destroying a diocese so he gets promoted to spread his poison on a wider basis. I guess it makes sense. Not.

And the pope was kissing a Koran before he promoted the flaky bishop to the ecumenism chair? That demonstrates that the pope is leading the strange and unbiblical ecumenism in Rome, not that he opposes it or is 'punishing' the German bishop for what he's done. I've said it many times: the current pope is actually the most radical pope since the Reformation. He is not, as many like to believe, the veritable soul of Roman orthodoxy.

The Old Covenant is still operative for the Jews. The New INCLUDES the Old but does not abrogate it--unless you believe that the 10 Commandments were abrogated. Please provide a citation demonstrating otherwise.

I'll cite the first ten chapters of Hebrews. Read it and get back to me.

Christ is the New Covenant. The Old Covenant is merely a historical footnote to God. Christian orthodoxy demands that only Christ's ever saved the saints of the Old Testament. After Christ died, only He was sufficient for salvation.

Moreover, it is the legalism involved with trying to perfectly fulfill the law of the Old Covenant which was so strongly condemned by Christ Himself.

As a matter of fact, the Muslims worship Yahweh, and they are heretics because they refuse to recognize the Trinity, which was alluded to in the OT and explicitly mentioned in the NT.

No. They worship a pagan moon god. They are not heretics. They are pagans with a barracks religion and use it to further their barbaric pattern of conquest. The historical record is abundant in this regard.

[harbingr]

Agreed...read how Bishop Fulton Sheen predicted that pandering to the Crescent Moon would lead to the current Jihad...also see Atila Sinke Guimaraes' article: 'How the Cresent Moon intends to Eclipse The Cross'

Daily Catholic.org

[harbingr]

Also... the story of why Vatican II failed to condemn Communism (contrary to Pius XII policy)...the secret deal between the Vatican & Moscow, Metz, France, 1962...

'The Pact of Metz'

[Petronski]

I wish this were true, but in many parts of the country, the American Catholic Church is split far from the Roman Catholic Church and instead aligned comfortably with everything the Democrat party represents.

[George W. Bush]

Outstanding links. I'd forgotten about Sheen recently. But then, you don't hear his name in Protestant circles all that much...

[George W. Bush]

...read how Bishop Fulton Sheen predicted that pandering to the Crescent Moon would lead to the current Jihad...

Maybe we should have some Sheen-on-Islam threads. Something even the Protestants and Baptists could get ecumenical about. ; )

I'd read some more of his stuff...