Free Republic

During the lead up to the Senate vote on Obamacare all eyes were on a few rare Democrats who Pro-Lifers hoped would stand up against the Democrats’ culture of death and vote NO because of the sections mandating faith based hospitals to commit abortions. Pennsylvania Democrat Senator and putative Catholic Bob Casey was one of those quislings who talked a good game about being as pro-life but ultimately became the 60th and decisive vote to pass Obamacare. By doing this Casey forced his Church, the Roman Catholic Church, to face either closing its hospitals or knuckling under and committing abortions....

Seattle, WA is extreamly liberal, think -Boston liberal. Yesterday St. Benidicts in the Wallingford community was celebrating their annual 'Borkwurst' Festival to raise money for their school. I wore a 2 1/2"X 3 1/2" pen I made up on my computor that said: 'ROMNEY: God, Freedom, and Prosperity. Obama: Socialism, Slavery, and $20 TRILLION Debt.' As I walked around the playground with our family, I recieved quite a few requests to take a picture of my sign with their i-pods. One girl said she wanted to send the pic. to her dad to prove that not everybody in Wallingford was...

....religious-minded Americans also have to reconcile conflicting stances on political views within the church itself. For example, both Mormon and Catholic doctrines preach anti-abortion and traditional family values that align with the Republican way. At the same time, church leaders also publicly adopted a Democrat-esque, humane approach to immigration enforcement, inccluding a path to citizenship. [SNIP] The conversation also is about immigration and church officials' views that politicians should adopt a more tolerant view of the presence of immigrants. The softer stance stems from a growing number of undocumented immigrants converting to Mormonism — an estimated 70 percent of Latino...

The Myth and Reality of the Catholic Vote Editor's Note: Stephen S. Schneck is director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at The Catholic University of America. By Stephen S. Schneck, Special to CNN For years, pollsters and political scientists have been stumped about Catholics. On one hand, it’s been pretty clear that as American Catholics go, so goes the nation. George W. Bush narrowly won the Catholic vote in 2004 and won a second term. Barack Obama narrowly won the Catholic vote in 2008 and, with it, the White House. It’s easy to see why Catholics...

A new poll by a Catholic advocacy group shows President Barack Obama has a slight lead over Gov. Mitt Romney among non-Hispanic Catholics, despite the stalled economy and his 2012 establishment of church regulations requiring them to fund contraception and abortion-related services that they abhor. The poll of 2,629 likely Catholic voters, an unusually large sample, showed that 46.5 percent of non-Hispanic Catholics support Obama, while 45.6 percent support Romney. The poll was commissioned by The Catholic Association, and it showed Obama getting 49 percent of Catholics overall, including those of Hispanic descent. Only 41 percent support Romney, while 10...

Sister Simone Campbell has become a minor celebrity over the last few months. Her 15 minutes began back in April when her social-justice lobbying outfit, NETWORK, earned a rare public rebuke from the Vatican for, ironically, its inadequate understanding of social justice. Capitalizing on the fawning media attention she received, Sister Simone and a few of her fellow progressive friends embarked on a highly publicized bus tour of the Midwest — Nuns on the Bus, they called it — during which they slammed Paul Ryan’s budget for being incompatible with Catholic social teaching. Sister Simone’s crusade against Paul Ryan has...

Attention white Anglo-Saxon Protestants: Your days of running things are over. You have jumped the shark. But there's no need to feel bad for WASPs. They've had an amazing run. Every single president in our nation's history, except for John F. Kennedy -- a Catholic -- and Barack Obama, has been a white Protestant. Except for a handful of exceptions, for over 200 years the presidential nominees of both major political parties have been WASPs. WASPs had almost as many victories in a row as The Harlem Globetrotters. But it's over. Look at this year's presidential tickets: A Mormon, an...

It’s time for Catholics to lead true Democrats to start their own party. Catholic Democrats are in a terrible quandary. They vehemently disagree with the Republicans’ approach to policy, so they won’t vote for them. And since the Democratic Party’s leaders stand against religious liberty and for taxpayer-funded abortion, as well as support for stripping marriage of its meaning and endless war, they morally can’t vote for many Democrats either. The only viable option for a traditional Democrat is to not vote at all. It’s a terrible travesty that this has come to pass. It is crucially important that we...

OLYMPIA, Wash. — The state of Washington has advised the Catholic diocese in Yakima, Wash., that its plans to conduct a special collection to benefit the campaign to defeat the state’s marriage equality law is illegal under the state’s campaign finance laws. Last week, Yakima Bishop Joseph Tyson sent a letter to pastors in 41 parishes of the Yakima Diocese asking them to announce a special collection that would go to “Preserve Marriage Washington,” the coalition fighting the same-sex marriage law that was passed earlier this year. Opponents of the law have successfully targeted the measure with a voter referendum...

new survey of 900 registered Catholic voters holds devastating news for Obama that cannot be overstated. It says 54% of Catholic voter support he had in 2008 has dwindled to just 27% (MoE +/- 3 points); a historic low level no one running for president can survive. This 27% Catholic support for Obama will have important consequences for Obama and his Party in several states with sizable Catholic populations. While some might attempt to belittle this gap by pointing to the fact that only about 24% are “adherent Catholics” that argument is defeated by the fact that the survey found...

In the Leftist controlled media stories are shouted if they are helpful to Democrats, whispered if they are bad news for Democrats... ".. why a new poll a new poll commissioned by the American Life League (ALL) is so important. The poll conducted between August 15 and 19 spoke to 900 self-identified Catholic registered voters. There are few English language superlatives that can accurately portray the findings of this survey. “Earth shaking” “Sea Change” “Devastating” read them and take your pick. The story was whispered on a recent NPR segment and here’s why. A stunning 27% of Catholics told the...

Timothy Cardinal Dolan will deliver the benediction at the Republican Party convention but, in a slight to Catholics, pro-abortion President Barack Obama rejected Cardinal Dolan’s similar offer of a prayer at the Democratic convention.Dolan told Democrats he would be “grateful” to deliver a blessing in Charlotte, according to the New York Post, but Obama turned him down.Dolan — considered the top Catholic official in the nation, as head of the Archdiocese of New York and president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops — tipped off Democrats a few weeks ago that he had agreed to deliver the prime-time benediction at...

Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (Washington, DC)Photo by Shubert Ciencia Catholics are a major voting block, and one that can’t be pigeonholed by Republicans or Democrats. A recent NPR segment compared Vice President Joe Biden with the presumptive Vice Presidential nominee, Congressman Paul Ryan. Both are Catholics, but their worldview is not the same.Stephen Schneck, a political scientist at Catholic University, said that Biden comes from a more traditional generation of Catholics. “This is the Catholicism of our old ethnic neighborhoods, and our union halls, and St. Christopher medals on the dashboard sort of thing,”...

...Platform is clear: "Faithful to the 'self-evident' truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children." ... opponents of the fundamental Human Right to Life of our youngest neighbors in the first home of the human race control much of the media. So, this heroic action by the Republican Platform Committee is reported in...

After Mass on Sunday, North Carolina pastor Rev. Andre Mangango was approached by a man who, a day earlier, was introduced as Mitt Romney’s running-mate for the 2012 presidential election.“I am Representative Paul Ryan and this is my son,” the man said.Ryan reportedly attended the 7:30 mass that morning with a group of Secret Service agents at St. Gabriel’s Catholic Church in Charlotte, North Carolina prior to campaign events later that day in the state.“Our rights come from nature and God, not government,” Ryan said, in his post-nomination speech. “We promise equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.”Those words characterize Ryan’s understanding...

***Those who oppose the proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage are organizing, putting them at odds with bishops.*** [BIG SNIP] ......Groups of lay Catholics and former priests have spoken out against the bishops' campaign. Some parents and students also have criticized the church's move to talk about marriage in [archdiocesan] high schools. Active Catholics have met in Protestant churches to talk about how to defeat the amendment. Catholics and other faith groups have held meetings in their homes, like the one at Burg's house, where representatives for the anti-amendment Minnesotans United for All Families encourage them to hold conversations...

Catholic News Agency (CNA) Paul Ryan urges Catholics to act before religious freedoms erodeBy Michelle Bauman Vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan at a rally in Manassas, Va. Credit: Flickr.com-djbrandt (CC BY 2.0)Washington D.C., Aug 17, 2012 / 04:35 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Presumptive Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan says Catholics must act now to protect their right to religious freedom from being diminished in American society. “This is a time where people of all faiths – especially Catholics – have to stand up and speak for our rights,” he said. “And if we do, we will rekindle civil society.” In...

This week, one of the leading pro-life groups for Catholics made the decision to put its imprimatur on the presidential ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, saying it is the right vote for pro-lifers. On the heels of Romney’s picking a pro-life running mate in Rep. Paul Ryan, Brian Burch of Catholic Vote told his supporters, “Mitt Romney made his choice. Today we are making ours.” “CatholicVote.org is proud to announce that we are enthusiastically endorsing Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan in the 2012 presidential race,” Burch said. “The decision to endorse Romney for President was made after Governor...

Breaking Bread With the Enemy: The Al Smith Dinner August 9, 2012 By Kathy Schiffer 72 Comments “So he’s given us a year to figure out how to violate our consciences…”“You’ve got a dramatic, radical intrusion of a government bureaucracy into the internal life of the church…”–Most Rev. Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New YorkCardinal Egan welcomes President George W. Bush and Al Gore Cardinal Timothy Dolan has been an outspoken critic of the health care mandate imposed by the Department of Health and Human Services, requiring all businesses (even Catholic organizations) to offer free contraception and abortifacients as part of...

Dear Friend of CV, Mitt Romney made his choice. Today we are making ours. CatholicVote.org is proud to announce that we are enthusiastically endorsing Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan in the 2012 presidential race! Donate now to help Catholics elect Romney-Ryan in 2012! The decision to endorse Romney for President was made after Governor Romney announced Saturday that he had selected Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate. Congressman Ryan is a superb choice. He is a committed Catholic and a candidate willing to engage in the much-needed debate about the role of government in our society - including...