Posted on 11/16/2012 9:34:05 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The Catholic Church — a politically and ethnically sprawling institution — has no natural home on the American ideological spectrum. Neither major party combines moral conservatism with a passion for social justice. So Catholic leaders have often challenged Democrats to be more pro-life and Republicans to be more concerned about immigrants and the poor.
But President Obama’s first term was a period of unexpected aggression against the rights of religious institutions. His Justice Department, in the Hosanna-Tabor case, argued against the existence of any “ministerial exception” to employment rules. Obama tried to mandate that Catholic schools, hospitals and charities offer insurance coverage for contraceptives and abortifacients. His revised policy still asserts a federal power to declare some religious institutions secular in purpose, reducing them to second-rate status under the First Amendment.
On top of this, Obama ran a stridently pro-abortion reelection campaign, seeking culture-war advantage on an issue he seldom mentioned four years ago.
The Catholic hierarchy and more traditional Catholic laymen reacted as you’d expect. Bishops issued pastoral letters in defense of religious liberty. Conservative and pro-life groups organized in battleground states.
The result? According to the first cut of exit-poll analysis by the Pew Research Center, Obama’s support among white Catholics fell to 40 percent — seven points lower than four years ago. It was one of the largest swings of any portion of the electorate. John Green of the University of Akron argues that the religious liberty issue came to “encapsulate other concerns such as abortion and marriage” among many regular Mass attendees.
In a close election, this reaction might have made all the difference. But the election wasn’t particularly close. And the trend among white Catholics was partially offset by Latino Catholics moving in the opposite direction for reasons unrelated to abortion or religious freedom.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Obama gained three points among Hispanic Catholics and took three-quarters of their votes. In the end, Obama won the total Catholic vote by a small margin.
Christians need to go a lot further than abortion and same-sex marriage. The Obama/Democrat agenda is institutionalized envy, jealousy, covetousness, bitterness and theft. Christians look at the left’s agenda of envy/jealousy/covetousness/bitterness and fall for the lie that it is all love and light. They weigh abortion against the “great charitable heart” of Democrats and come out for Democrats. The Democrats compound sin with sin, evil with evil. There is no trade off. Do Christians even bother to ask how is it even possible for politicians who are such ardent advocates of abortion and sodomy to be paragons of virtue on other issues?
Today’s Christians would rewrite Jesus’ parable of the golden talents and take away the talents from the man who had five and redistribute them to those with fewer or none.
The Catholic bishops are the biggest supporters of the destructive, larcenous welfare state from hell. And thus leftist politicians. Come election time they tell their flock not to vote for abortion. Too late, bishops. You’ve already sold folks on the party of death.
Envy is a sin. Jealousy is a sin. Demanding even more of other people’s money is greed. Looking to the government to meet your needs and solve your problems is idolatry, the worst of all.
ANOTHER THING TO NOTE:
The portion of the coalition that is pushing away Latino Catholics is making the political work of conservative Catholics far more difficult.
If you factor out Hispanics and non practicing Catholics (those who rarely, if ever, attend Mass), Romney won the Catholic vote by a HUGE margin.
I don’t see how a national number for exit polling is useful when, at least in 2008 according to exit polling, you have huge splits between Catholics by state. The biggest I could find was NM 70% for Obama vs. La 70% for McCain. How is a national number like 50% telling us anything when we vote by the electoral college? Am I missing something?
Freegards
I know that the seal of the Confessional is absolute, but would a priest be allowed to answer the general question “has anyone confessed the sin of voting Democrat?”
The percent of Catholic vote that Obama won don’t go to church
We need to get out of the Echo Chamber STAT! We need to fire EVERY GOP “pundit”. I am not at all suggesting we become more Liberal, quite the contrary, but I am saying we need some fresh Conservative ideas or we are done. Listening to those idiots on TV or radio telling us why Libtards are bad, or the next idiot conspiracy theory does one thing ... makes them rich and kills Conservatism.
Wishful thinking and sitting around in a circle saying “yeah, they’re stupid” is going to do nothing but turn America a raging blue.
Let the Libs have their echo Chamber. Let’s dump ours.
I have always said Catholics in US and the clergy included—with the exception of some social issues as gay marriage and abortion {clergy) are quite liberal. No wonder a large percentage supported Obama
This shouldn’t be a big surprise.
Rothman and Lichter researched and wrote a book on American radicals, “The Roots of Radicalism: Jews, Christians and the Left” back in 1982. They discovered that the Christian component of the Left were largely Catholics.
Where the Catholic Church goes wrong (well one way) is with thw whole “social justice” paradigm.
AsS far as I have been able to determine from my examination of the question all adjectivial modifiers to “justice” are basically synonyms for “injustice”.
Let the Church preach “charity”. Let the Church preach “justice”, but “social justice” is a misnomer at best.
This is all to be expected when borders are open to kindly receiving South American socialism and communism and Islam from collapsing South American countries. US education from bottom to top is in the hands of Marxists.
We have at least another generation of the indoctrinated coming, but we sit here wondering what happened to our country when the answer is right down the block.
The Official Latino Pandering thread is over there.
They need your support because some awful American is calling for the deportation of Latino foreign nationals who are living here in violation of the law.
Just because you’re wearing a sash, doesn’t mean you’re a beauty queen.
100% of CINO vote.......
“more concerned about immigrants and the poor.”
Man, I hate this assumption. I, as a conservative, care WAY MORE about immigrants and the poor than liberals.
I want our legal immigrants respected, encouraged, and treated fairly. I want the end to the abuse of illegal immigrants, who are treated as a half a slave class. I want them to shake off the severe negatives of the countries they are leaving, not bring them with them to infect the U.S. I want them to integrate, to assimilate, to be proud and hard working Americans. I want an end to their indoctrination by the estate holders who keep their secret but require slave labor in return. I want an end to the sexual abuse, physical abuse, and theft by the coyotes. I want new immigrants welcomed in America, not looked at shiftily because they suspects!
I AM the poor. I want a free market where hard work, ingenuity, intelligence, meaningful education, and steadfastness are REWARDED, not punished. I want an end to the theft from the productive to reward the irresponsible, the ornery, the lazy, and the grifter. Socialism creates poverty and, like illegal immigration, SLAVERY. We all become - poor - slaves of the state, ultimately.
Why do they continue to assert that conservatives hate immigrants and the poor? It is the biggest lie. If I hated them, I’d join the Democrats.
I didn't know about the book, I stumbled across this truth about 3 or 4 years ago, by looking at voting data, and then digging deeper, and farther back, it is shocking.
Romney winning 48% of the Catholic vote, is one of the greatest republican margins of all time.
This current period of 1972 to 2012, is as good as it gets, it was the glory days of the GOP sometimes winning a slim margin of the Catholic vote.
A vison of the anti-christ is open for all to see, all one needs to do is to open one’s eyes and behold the truth.
Followers of The Christ do not do the following:
1. Support murdering unborn children in their mothers wombs.
2. Support stealing other people’s earnings to give to those who haven’t earned it.
These people that this article speaks of are not Christians in any snese of the word, they are the children of the anti-christ, they are in fact anti-God.
Our country is being lead by people who follow the anti-christ.
Even so, come Lord Jesus,
Followers of Christ do not send their children into godless schools. Just to cooperate in the godless classroom the children must learn to think and reason godlessly ( at least while in the school).
Maybe, just maybe, if Christians of one to three generations ago had provided their children with a God-centered education that **thoroughly** supported and taught their specific Christian denomination's worldview, then maybe we won't have an issue with abortion.
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