Catholic Vote: Not. Trump.

Always good to read.

I agree-Pope Benedict was the best in my lifetime, too-I would be beyond happy if he led the Church again.

I treat my husband, neighbors, the grocery store clerk, and fellow FReepers, with courtesy, loyalty, and consideration. Examining my conscience before God and you, I can reproach myself for lapses but I affirm my course-corrections have been regular, and my aim and trajectory honorable.

OTOH, as for Trump’s
use-em-and-lose-em course through life, you have only to consult his discarded wives, mistresses, investors, employees and business partners. It’s not a pretty picture.

And to that list you can add his discarded political supporters through the years. To use Phil Ochs’ phrase, Trump’s allegiance has been one of (cough, cough) “expegiance”.

Allow me to propose to you two moral conundrums ...

The First:

My wife and I cannot have children. But suppose for the argument, she were to become pregnant, and something goes horribly wrong in the last month, something that comes to a choice that I have to make - between saving the life of my wife or of the only child I might ever have ... Whose life should I choose to sacrifice?

The Second:

It is mid winter ... I am standing equidistant between two people: My younger sister and a small but unrelated little girl in the opposite direction ...

The child is walking along a set of railroad tracks, and being apparently deaf, she is oblivious to a train fast approaching from behind ... At the same time, my sister is skating on a nearby frozen pond, when she suddenly breaks through the ice and plunges into the water! I know that she cannot swim, and though she is clinging to the edge of the broken ice, she is losing her grip ...

Both individuals are in immediate jeopardy of life, but I can only reach one in time to save them from certain death.

Which one should I save? Which one do I sacrifice?

On the matter of paying taxes to Baal - you avoided answering my challenge. If you and the numerous individuals of the pro-life movement would commit to placing all on the line, then you would likely win the war, even if you personally must loose the battle by suffering the sacrifice of your own possessions and freedom.

You and many others insist they are “committed to life” - yet you and many have not the strength of conviction to sacrifice your own life for the sake of saving others.

If you think you can win this battle while playing by the rules of the enemy - The I can only reply: “Good Luck with that!”

Do you want to see what true courage and sacrifice looks like? Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYq614xqnlI

You both need to read the papal bull (Constitution / immutable law of the Church) of Saint Pope Pius V - ‘Quo Primum’ It is IMPOSSIBLE to legitimately alter the sacred liturgy of the Mass w/o incurring the penalty of anathema.

And while the “New Rite” MAY be valid (and that is questionable, considering the bad formation of priests that has occurred since Vatican II) it is certainly illicit. That is a very important distinction that most Catholics fail to grasp.

Is Quo Primum still binding? By Raymond Taouk

http://catholicapologetics.info/modernproblems/newmass/qprimum.htm

... a choice that I have to make - between saving the life of my wife or of the only child I might ever have ... Whose life should I choose to sacrifice?"

Your example makes an a priori assumption which I don't accept, and that is that you have to "sacrifice" (I assume you mean 'kill'?) one or the other. You never have to kill one or the other. You try to save both, and if in the course of action, one of them dies, well that is sad; but no murder is is involved, because you tried.

If one of them is clearly and objectively beyond saving, you are justified in directing all your efforts toward saving the one you can, and leaving the other for nature to take its course. In this case, too, you are not guilty of murder, because that which is objectively impossible (saving someone who cannot be saved) is never morally obligatory.

Your second example: two endangered children, one is your sister and one not.

Assuming you have to make your decision in a split second, you could certainly choose to dash out sand save your own child/. You have not, by doing that, "sacrificed" the other child. You have not done any harm to that other child. She is hit by a train. You didn't do that.

On the other hand, let's say that in a moment of clarity you see you have a better chance of saving the kid on the tracks than saving the kid on the ice. In that case, you could save the deaf child on the train tracks, and if your sister drowns, she drowns. This is sad. you have not "sacrificed" her. You have not murdered her. You did not have the capability of saving both, and as I said before, that which is objectively impossible cannot be morally obligatory.

On your third point, I do not pay taxes to Baal. In Biblical language, I pay taxes to Caesar: a Christ-denying state which in some ways bears the sword against evildoers (Romans 13, pagan government as God's instrument) and in other ways oppresses the just and sheds innocent blood (Revelation 13, pagan government as the Beast).

Both Romans 13 and Revelation 13 are true.

I repeat: I pay taxes to Caesar, as I think all Christians did even when they were being persecuted and their innocent blood being shed.

If they did not pay these taxes, I would like to hear about it.

Again:

Could you tell me when (year, or occasion, or name of document) Benedict decided to arbitrarily change the Mass? Google isn't helping me on this one.

I am not repeating this to harass you. I am sincerely interested.

I am a Catholic voter, and plan to ignore his advice. Where does this guy get off thinking he can give advice to all Catholics! Go Trump!

No disagreement on your first two responses - as I concur; and no, in the first case, I did not mean an act of “killing.”

I also thank you for responding about taxes ... and specifically for bringing up Caesar, which I did expect would be your reply ... Here’s your answer, from none other than Miss Ann Barnhardt - a traditional Catholic, having incredible insight. Apologize for the length, but I am wont that all should understand her points:

***Begin transcript***

And now, ladies and gentlemen, is the hour in which the full and hideous scope of the horror that dares call itself “modern, Western Christianity” is revealed. After announcing my Federal tax strike, I have been overrun with sickening, nauseating email after email telling me that for me to enjoin a tax strike is “immoral,” “unchristian,” “contrary to scripture,” “pointless,” “a waste” and all the rest. To everyone who has sent such an email, and you know who you are, there are not words to express the depth of my disgust. I am ashamed - yes ASHAMED - of every single one of you. Your cowardice, your failure to grasp even the most rudimentary concepts of Christianity, starting first and foremost with the First Commandment, but most especially the shallowness of your discernment, is repellant to behold. Super-fun Rockband church and Pastor Jason, and the Marxist-homosexualist infiltrated Novus Ordo Catholic parishes with Father Liza-Judy and their bee-ess six-minute sermons about ABSOLUTELY NOTHING have cleared the battlefield for satan in a war of attrition that would make William Tecumseh Sherman blush with shame.

And let’s not forget that other tool of satan which has sent every other clergyman pecker-down in the dirt to lick the hooves of the federal government, wet with the liquid manure of political correctness and the running blood of the unborn, in utter submission: the 501(c) exemption.

Here’s your catechetics and civics lesson for the week.

“Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” is NOT a release from the First Commandment.

I had one guy email me and tell me that Jesus will not hold any of us responsible for any of the abortions in this country because we JUST HAVE to pay taxes and we have absolutely no choice in the matter. Bullsh*t. First, what the hell do you think is happening right now? Boys and girls, you are going to be held to account for sitting by and subsidizing the holocaust of the preborn. This country is being brought down as punishment for the genocide that every one of us is partially responsible for.

Secondly, apparently you all have been brainwashed into believing that the I.R. fricking-S is the most powerful entity in the universe, and that being condemned by the IRS is the worst and most permanent fate in the universe and in the realm of humanity. In other words, YOU IDIOTS WORSHIP THE I.R.S. ABOVE GOD. YOU FEAR THE I.R.S., BUT DO NOT FEAR GOD, HIS JUDGEMENT OR HIS WRATH IN THE SLIGHTEST. And you call yourselves Christian? Really?

Now let’s think logically. The words, “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s; and render unto the Lord that which is the Lord’s” have as a direct corollary the asking of a question. What is that question? Come on. Think. You can do this.

The question is, what rightfully belongs to Caesar and what rightfully belongs to God? The God part is easy. EVERYTHING belongs to God. Uh-oh. Now we have a mathematical conundrum, don’t we? If we believe in God, and we believe in the First Commandment, then “Caesar” is truly OWED nothing. We can CONSENT to pay taxes in a spirit of truth, justice, solidarity and freedom, but only if those four specific ends are served by our taxes.

Let’s go through each of the four:

TRUTH:

Barack Obama is a usurper. He is constitutionally ineligible to hold the office of the presidency, and he knows this, the entire Congress knows this, the entire upper-echelon of the military knows this, the entire intelligence community knows this, and the SCOTUS knows this. Barack Obama is an enemy of the United States, who is in a state of open, declared war upon it, its constitution and its people. This is the absence of truth. We are being “led” by a human lie, backed by an entire government of oath-breaking liars. Therefore, the government is illegitimate and has forfeited its licitness.

JUSTICE:

The Rule of Law is effectively dead. From the presence of Obama himself in the White House, to the lawless Department of Justice, to Fast & Furious, to Solyndra, to the unconstitutional “czars” and “executive orders,” to the Federal Reserve, this is a society ruled by a government of men, not laws. When government is ruled by men and not laws, the determining criterion of how government relates to people becomes brute force of arms and violent coercion, and not transcendent truth. We are utterly deprived of justice by the government itself, and thus the federal government has forfeited its legitimacy. (Note: Remember that when this was originally written, the full knowledge and scope of the financial market lawlessness was not yet known, much less any of the crimes that have occurred or been exposed since November of ARSH 2011. MF Global had happened only six days earlier.)

SOLIDARITY:

The government is inciting both race-centered, age-centered and class-based antagonism and violence. In declaring pre-born children non-human, a genocide has been legally sanctioned that has cost 50 million lives AND COUNTING. ObamaCare is poised to exterminate the elderly by determining that their lives are not worth living. The government is consciously and expressly trying to break down solidarity amongst citizens along race and class lines, including the literal dissolving of the territorial borders of the nation, and in that action it forfeits its legitimacy.

FREEDOM:

From ObamaCare, to the TSA, to the forced acceptance of sexual perversions, to forced “political correctness,” to the overt support of Sharia law and muslim sedition, to the destruction of the Free Exercise and Equal Protection clauses, this government is working consciously and overtly against fundamental human freedom, and has thus forfeited its legitimacy.

1-2-3-4. I don’t owe Caesar a damn thing, and it is now to the point where the continued subsidizing of this utterly lawless and illegitimate government puts me in violaton of the

First Commandment (I AM the LORD thy God; thou shalt not have strange gods before me.) by forcing me to break Godâ€™s Law - the Natural Law - in order to follow the laws of the state; the

Second Commandment (Thou shalt not take the Name of the LORD thy God in vain.) by punishing and imprisoning my fellow citizens (See Lakin, LTC Terry) who attempt to uphold their sworn oaths, and by forcing me to subsidize a government that is, to the man, populated by oathbreakers; the

Fourth Commandment (Honor thy father and thy mother.) by actively and consciously destroying the family, discouraging right-ordered marriage through the welfare state, legislating perverted “false marriage” paradigms, facilitating the murder of children by their parents, and pitting society against their parents by encouraging or even mandating euthanasia via ObamaCare; the

Fifth Commandment (Thou shalt not murder.) through the “legally sanctioned” and now MANDATED taxpayer subsidizing of the holocaust of preborn children via abortion as well as the premeditated murder of thousands of Mexican civilians via Operation Fast & Furious; the

Sixth Commandment (Thou shalt not commit adultery.) through the forced “legalization” of sodomite faux-marriage and the discouragement of chastity and marriage itself via the HHS contraceptive and sterilization mandate as well as welfare state; the

Seventh Commandment (Thou shalt not steal.) via the government sanctioned, legalized and protected conï¬scation of private property, the illegal nullification of contracts by the federal government, and the stirring-up by the government of envy and the sense of entitlement to the property of others; the

Eighth Commandment (Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.) by forcing me to subsidize and give my tacit approval to the lie of Barack Obama’s presidency and the fundamental dishonesty of the Eric Holder Department of Justice, in addition to the mathematical lies regarding the state of the banking sectors and the mathematical impossibilities of the government run entitlement ponzi schemes; and the

Tenth Commandment (Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods.) by forcing me to subsidize a government that is built on a premise of and is attempting to fully convert to a system based wholly upon coveting the property of one’s neighbor and the forced redistribution of private property.

We’re batting .800. Enough is enough. You CANNOT subsidize this government and still claim that God is “first” in your life. It is mathematically, metaphysically and morally impossible. You must choose your allegiances NOW. You must NOW choose who or what it is that you truly worship. Do you worship God or do you worship your wealth? Here’s a simple litmus test for you: are you or are you not willing to give up all of your wealth in bearing witness to God in His Truth? If the answer is no, then stop calling yourself a Christian, because you very simply are not.

If you don’t like people speaking the truth to you like this, I’m sure Pastor Jason or Father Liza-Judy will be very happy to lie to you and dry your tears with the rockband playing proudly behind.

If you don’t want to take my word for it, that is fine. Here is paragraph 2242 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which specifically cites the Tribute episode as the ratification of civil disobedience:

The citizen is obliged in conscience not to follow the directives of civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands of the moral order, to the fundamental rights of persons or the teachings of the Gospel. Refusing obedience to civil authorities, when their demands are contrary to those of an upright conscience, finds its justification in the distinction between serving God and serving the political community.

“Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

“We must obey God rather than men.” - CCC 2242

Now to the question of imprisonment and even execution. Again, I can not understand how Christendom has become so monstrously illiterate. “Oh Ann, you can’t do any good in prison, and leave the pointless martyrdom to the muslims.”

HOW. DARE. YOU. How DARE you piss all over the true Christian Martyrs. How DARE you call their deaths “pointless” and how DARE you equivocate the deaths of these saints to the murderous suicides of pagan musloids. Why don’t you turn off your precious TV for a few minutes and actually READ something? Like the biographies of the saints, for example? Or even just the Bible. Do you not realize that St. Paul wrote a goodly portion of the Epistles from prison? Do you not realize that St. John the Beloved spent most of his life either in prison or in remote exile? Do you not realize that eleven of the twelve original apostles were EXECUTED along with St. Paul? Only John died naturally in old age. Why don’t you tell me about the massive wastes their lives were. If they had only lain low and watered down the Gospel, they could have lived long lives and accomplished so much more. Is that right? Isn’t that your argument? Well, why don’t you just make that argument for Our Lord while you’re at it? There are plenty of leftist pseudo-theologians running around saying exactly that. Jesus was a fool to have only led a three year ministry. If He had just been more politically savvy, He could have lived for decades - and then think how much He could have taught the world! The Incarnation really was a waste in terms of earthly accomplishment. Right? RIGHT?

St. John the Baptist: Beheaded

St. Stephen: Stoned

St. James the Great: Beheaded

St. Philip: Crucified

St. Matthew: Impaled on a halberd

St. James the Less: Clubbed to death after crucifixion and stoning

St. Matthias: Beheaded after stoning

St. Andrew: Crucified

St. Mark: Beheaded after being dragged

St. Peter: Crucified upside down

St. Paul: Beheaded

St. Jude: Crucified

St. Bartholomew: Flayed alive and then crucified

St. Thomas: Impaled with a spear

St. Luke: Hanged

St. Simon: Crucified

St. Antipas: Roasted alive

And that is just a few of the more “famous” Christians of the first century, whose deaths history recorded. Please understand that being a Christian carried a non-trivial risk of death for the first several centuries. Thank God that those men and women weren’t the milquetoast, fair-weather, pants-pissing cowards that so many of you are today. Thank God that they had real courage and real fortitude and didn’t immediately water-down the Gospel into some filthy, narcissistic heresy just so they could stay in the good graces of the governments. Thank God that they actually understood their faith, and didn’t regard Jesus as a mere “philosophical construct” or “imaginary friend” and actually acknowledged that He is True God and True Man.

Whether you care to admit this or not, people are responsible for their government. And We The People of the United States of America have perhaps the most personal responsibility for our government than any other nation in history. Why? First, because were are a representative republic founded upon a foundation of Christian law and philosophy. This was one of better set-ups in all of human history, and it also therefore bestowed the most responsibility upon its people for the government itself, up to the very top. When your constitution literally opens with the words, “WE THE PEOPLE,” it is simply beyond the pale to try to argue that “the people” bear no responsibility for the government.

The other reason we are the most culpable nation in history for our government is because we are an armed nation. The people of North Korea, because they were disarmed decades ago, bear less responsibility for their government than we do - but they are still responsible. If the people of North Korea, disarmed and half starved to death, are responsible for their government, how much more are We The People, armed and fed, responsible for the absolute abomination that is our Federal government? This concept of citizen culpability for governance is why it was morally licit to firebomb Dresden, Tokyo and finally drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The civilians of Japan permitted, allowed and cooperated with their government in its wars of aggression during WWII. The same goes for the German people. They could have and should have put down their respective governments - but they didn’t and so they paid for it.

The exact same dynamic applies to us. We have let this happen. We have sat by, complacent, impotent and self-absorbed, coveting our personal wealth and possessions above EVERYTHING. And now that there is no denying or escaping what our duty is to God and neighbor, we can only concoct fictions about the eternal omnipotence of the Internal Revenue Service in order to convince ourselves that we aren’t to blame, and that we have no duty except to ourselves. Because you fools refuse to act to correct your lawless government via the most effective, simple and utterly non-violent method, namely a tax strike, you are guaranteeing hot war, bloodshed and catastrophic suffering.

The fact is that every single Christian clergyman should have called for a national tax strike on Sunday, January 28, ARSH 1973. Why? Because that was the Sunday after SCOTUS legalized the murder of preborn children. Because of that first moral failure, here we now sit, and it is no one’s fault but our own.

Most of you out there apparently have the capacity for delusion that allows you to convince yourself that you will not be made to answer for any of this, but I do not, and for that I can only say, Thanks be to God.

I fear God, and God alone, and thus I will render unto Him EVERYTHING, up to and including my wealth, assets, freedom and life, if that is what is required to remain in compliance with His commandments. The early Christians went to their deaths rather than offer a pinch of incense on the altar of Caesar. Incense is merely symbolic and burns away. Money subsidizes, finances and enables activities that break God’s law - the Natural Law. Therefore I will not file, and I will not pay income taxes unless and until the Federal Government of the United States is reformed under the Constitution of 1787 as amended, and the Rule of Law is reasserted, necessarily and non-negotiably including the arrest and trial of Barack Obama, and the re-criminalizing of abortion in all cases, or until a new, legitimate government replaces it.

***End Transcript***

Trump is full of promises that he can not keep. He seems to lack moral principles. Trump is about Trump.

So don’t expect much for your vote.

The Catholic Church is fixing its problems.

The teachings of Jesus have always faithfully followed by the Catholic Church.

Yes Catholics are both saints and sinners and we have a long way to go in following the path of Jesus. Many who question our faults, but don’t listen and understand the moral teachings of the Catholic Church are missing the way to get to heaven.

Catholics as a group (not the Church)should be allowed to influence other Americans so that they make the right choice for the benefit of all Americans.

So I hope that your opinions are supported by an honest evaluation of all the candidates, and not just the one that seems to promise the most.

Government should be there for the basics - safety, defense, law and order, fiscal management of our money and resources and an orderly society.

Government needs to get out of micro management and giving away things to gather votes and power.

So how is your candidate going to solve the corruption in Washington DC?

“So how is your candidate going to solve the corruption in Washington DC?”

The fact that he isn’t afraid to tell these people to their face that they are crooks is a good start. Also he isn’t a sitting member of an elected body, and has been in the private sector his whole life. With that comes a perspective that isn’t rooted in the world of the good old boys club. He does know how to deal with these people, so they don’t have an upper hand on him.

Wish I could do a more detailed response, but typing on a tablet is a bit of a pain.

I like Cruz, Rubio, and Fiorina. They all seem to have good, solid ideas.

And she was originally appointed by Ronald Reagan.