Free Republic

During their only debate this campaign season Thursday night, Vice President Joe Biden and Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) discussed how their Catholic beliefs have shaped their views on abortion. “Please talk about how you came to that decision,” asked debate moderator Martha Raddatz, ABC’s senior foreign correspondent. “Talk about how your religion played a part in that. And, please, this is such an emotional issue for so many people in this country. In the only debate between the candidates, Biden and Ryan discussed their views on domestic issues such as the economy, foreign policy and the role of the vice...

Paul Ryan had perhaps the question of the night when he challenged pro-abortion Vice President Joe Biden on the issue of the HHS mandate that compels them to pay for abortion-causing drugs.During the debate, Ryan brought up the controversial mandate that pro-life groups oppose.“What troubles me more is how this administration has handled all of these issues. Look at what they’re doing through Obamacare with respect to assaulting the religious liberties of this country. They’re infringing upon our first freedom, the freedom of religion, by infringing on Catholic charities, Catholic churches, Catholic hospitals,” he explained. “Our church should not have...

Thursday's vice presidential debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan at Centre College in Danville, Ky., will focus on domestic and foreign policy issues, while also pitting one self-professed Catholic against another. The vice presidential debate follows last week's first presidential debate that was focused on the economy, where most critics agreed that GOP candidate Mitt Romney held the edge over President Barack Obama. Many have suggested that this is now Biden's opportunity to push the Obama campaign back on track, and even Ryan has said he expects Biden to launch a fierce attack against him....

Catholics are a key demographic in the upcoming election. In fact, they may be the key demographic. In most every presidential contest since the end of World War II, the candidate who carried the Catholic vote won the election. Over time they have, as a bloc, become more conservative and more Republican in their voting patterns (they were once a major component of the Democrats' presidential coalition) as concerns over settled issues like the morality of abortion overtook in importance concerns about unsettled issues like the best way to secure social justice for the poor and the downtrodden.Much has...

Despite Catholic outrage over the University of Notre Dame’s 2009 invitation to President Barack Obama to address its graduates, the University has again invited the President to speak on campus as a candidate for reelection. From the Notre Dame news release: The University of Notre Dame’s president, Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., and student body president Brett Rocheleau have joined in inviting both President Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Gov. Mitt Romney to speak at the University during the fall election campaign.Continuing a long-standing tradition, Father Jenkins and Rocheleau addressed letters to each of the presidential aspirants, offering Notre...

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...