Time for Christians to Unplug from Our Secular Culture

Crisis Magazine ^ | October 20, 2016 | Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

[knarf]

I didn’t mean to single anyone out ... I just comment on what I think is becoming more common in FR .... the religious/spiritual connection/question about voting.

[bella1]

I agree. We tend to over spiritualize when we shouldn't. Both candidates are obviously flawed. One is flawed by being a bit too crude. The other is flawed by being a bit to evil. Crude I can handle. Churchill was crude. Heck, read the Bible. Paul called women silly and easily mislead. Lot offered his daughters up to be raped. David slept with his neighbors wife and had her husband killed to cover his crimes, Jesus called people white washed tombs full of dead mans bones; blind leading the blind, wicked and adulterous generation. By today's sensitivities they all would be voted out the Bible.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Moretal sin. Right. It's right there in the Mosaic Decalogue McGowan Catalogue.

[knarf]

That line about Jesus is EXACTLY what I use when I debate/converse with an "he said pussy" opponent of Trump.

Not nice language in mixed company for the day ... but Jesus was TALKING TO MEN !

[MayflowerMadam]

Romans 12:2 (KJV)

“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”

[humblegunner]

Mr. Trump is a or baby Christian.

Is you is a or is retarded?

In a special way?

[Biggirl]

Means young in faith in the LORD.

[Biggirl]

Amen.

[Arthur McGowan]

It is material and formal collaboration in mass murder.

[Biggirl]

God calls the most unlikely people in the Bible. Seen a couple of days ago a picture of Mr. Trump with a list of the persons in the Bible.

[Mrs. Don-o]

`

[Mrs. Don-o]

I disagree that deciding not to vote for either presidential candidate us a mortal sin.

In itself, it is not even remote material cooperation in evil, nor is it, by any stretch of the imagination, formal cooperation.

If abstaining from the top line is *motivated*, in whole or in part, by approval of gravely intrinsically wrong things (i.e. abortion,sodomy, sacrilege, attack on the Church), then we’re in the mortal sin category through intending grave evil.

But if it’s motivated by the desire to avoid complicity in grave evil, the intent is just, and the choice is an example of prudential judgement.

“Not voting” is not the same as cooperation, just as taking a vow of silence is not the same as lying.

Is it your contention that voting is always morally obligatory?

[Just mythoughts]

II Corinthians 11:14

13For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. 14And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. 15Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.

The ‘Spirit of Discernment’ is lost on the many.

[NYer]

Catholic ping!

[Arthur McGowan]

Whenever there is a candidate who, like Hillary, promises to do monstrous evils, such as genocide or mass abortion, it is a strict, grave obligation to vote for a candidate who will not commit crimes of equal gravity.

In this election, the only candidate who can possibly defeat Hillary is Trump. Thus, voting for Trump is a strict, grave obligation.

If Trump IS going to do some evil, putting him in office is NOT formal cooperation in that evil, because the purpose of voting for Trump is to keep Hillary out.

As it happens, nothing that Trump is committed to doing is evil.

Assuming Trump is a serial groper—for which there is no evidence—this is relevant to voting ONLY if it is demonstrable that all serial gropers, once in office, gravely damage the common good more than lifelong abortion fanatics who get into office.

(BTW: By far the MOST idiotic statement by any bishop this cycle is Conley’s statement that Catholics should not believe themselves obligated to vote for anyone in order to keep someone out of office. That is absolutely false. It is when one candidate is monstrously evil that a Catholic IS strictly, gravely obligated to vote for the person who has a chance of keeping the evil person out of office.)

Claiming that not voting at all is not formal cooperation in the evil Hillary will do is like standing next to a person having a heart attack, and doing nothing, and calling for nobody to help, and declaring, “I am innocent because I didn’t cause the heart attack.” Or similarly standing by when one COULD prevent a grave crime.

Refusing to vote for Trump so as not to “soil” oneself with Trump’s faults is like going into the voting booth and masturbating while yelling, “I am so pure! I am so pure! I am so pure!”

[Arthur McGowan]

KEEPING a vow of silence, when a word would save an innocent man from the gallows, is murder.

[Arthur McGowan]

Is it your contention that voting is always morally obligatory?

Most moral theologians have said that it is. I would agree with them in most elections.

The only time there is no obligation to vote is when the candidates are truly indistinguishable. This is NEVER the case in our country, where one party has expelled EVERY candidate who was not fanatically pro-abortion and in favor of other crimes such as dissolving the borders, persecuting Christians, importing a beheading army, etc.

Even before the Democrat party became the Communist party in America (1994), it was pro-abortion.

Thus, in ALL cases where people (since 1972) adopt the "they're all liars" or "they're all crooks" or "they're all the same" are not making an honest judgment, but adopting a mortally sinful POSE.

In his column of August 12, Archbp. Chaput confessed his intention to commit a mortal sin, and belittled those who do not intend to join him in mortal sin. (I.e., he asserted that ONLY a "mysterious calculus" could lead anyone to refrain from joining him in mortal sin.)

http://catholicphilly.com/2016/08/think-tank/archbishop-chaput-column/some-personal-thoughts-on-the-months-ahead/

[Mrs. Don-o]

I see a rapidly fading possibility of stopping Hillary. A non-vote cannot contribute to stopping her; a vote for Trump might. A chance that is vanishingly remote but there it is. So --- to remove the personal element --- please understand that I am voting for Trump.

But I don't think it is morally wrong to abstain from voting, especially if you figure on the evidence that the chance of stopping Clinton by your vote is zero, but the chance of being personally corrupted by the vote is greater-than-zero. I know my vote is not going to swing the results at my polling place, North Side School; nor will it swing Washington County nor the State of Tennessee. This for a virtual certainty. It won't change the outcome. But it could change me by being another augmentation of my cynicism, callousness, and willingness to accept the mainstreaming of sleaze and re-norm my own life around the putrid cultural zeitgeist.

My own prudential judgment moves me to vote for Trump anyway. But if I thought it was corrupting to me I would not. I don't think abstaining from voting is a mortal sin if it is avoiding a near occasion of sin.

To quote you back at yourself, with modification,

"Voting for Trump as if it were morally obligation is like going into the voting booth, voting, and masturbating while yelling, “Salvation through sleaze! I am saving my soul! Everybody else is going to hell!"

[Mrs. Don-o]

I can agree to that, but I don;'t think the analogy is apt. Stepping into the voting booth at North Side School and pulling the lever for Candidate A, B, or LGBT is not going to save the innocent man at the gallows or change one g-dd-mned thing.

It would be a far more Christian thing to blow up the gallows. At least then you wouldn't be fooling yourself.

[metmom]

The 2016 election is one of those rare moments when the repellent nature of both presidential candidates allows the rest of us to see our nation’s pastoral terrain as it really is.

Both candidates?

He's equating Trump with Hillary?

Trump can be a bit off putting in his mannerisms, but hardly *repellent*, unless you disagree with what he stands for.