The “Church” is made up of the “faithful”.
Showing up once in awhile doesn’t make one a faithful Catholic.
Many Bishops and Priests spent considerable time and energy, informing their congregants of their responsibility.
The “Church” is fine in that regard.
It is the pretender in need of examining his conscience.
It was clear that there was at least one candidate who was morally unacceptable due to his stances on abortion, gay marriage, and the promotion of a fictitious "right" for contraception even when this means infringing upon the genuine Right to religious freedom of others -- 50% of Catholics voted for him anyways.
I would argue that the bishops should have been more clear that pResident 0bama was a morally unacceptable choice. Too many priests and bishops waffled on it, saying "these are the issues, now go vote your conscience." In days past, when most Catholics had properly-formed consciences, perhaps that would have worked. Today, too many Catholics have malformed consciences for the bishops to approach it this way.
Some within the visible church have priorities that trump what either the Church or the Bible says. Hispanic Catholics obviously care about something else more than they care about church teachings or matters of faith. Same with Blacks.
Right now I’m trying to decide whether to de-friend a friend of mine who is an LCMS pastor and has been posting a bunch of stuff in support of Obama. His wife was my roommate in college and talked about being so pro-life and was LCMS Lutheran also, but we got in a big argument back in 1993 when she was gung-ho for Clinton. Her justification was that Clinton would increase welfare and that would be a way that Christians could make sure the poor got help. I told her that if Christians had their own money they could make sure the poor got help from somebody who could also tell them the saving news of Jesus, who alone offers real change in people’s lives. Nope. The government was her answer to life’s problems. She had grown up in a democrat, union household and that was just that. The government is her god. She can talk the talk about Jesus being Lord and all that, but when push comes to shove the one she trusts as the answer to people’s problems is government.
And her husband seems to have gone the way of Old Testament Israel, being led astray by an (basically, in her heart of hearts) unbelieving wife.
We haven’t been in contact and I’ve only recently spent much time on Facebook so I wasn’t aware of what was going on. Now I really don’t want to hear from either of them and need to figure out whether I’m just angry, afraid to engage with them, or rightly shaking the dust off my feet. I don’t even know how to de-friend somebody so I haven’t done it. I suppose the Matthew passage means I should go to them privately and try to win them over. Sigh.
One of the major problems in Church is that they think they will win over the pagan by giving them stuff with no strings attached. Toy drives, food drives, clothing drives...who shows up for the goodies?? The same people who voted for a man who believes in infanticide and homosexual marriage. Take a look at the Christmas tree in your church lobby next month. Is it filled with the names of the children of hardworking members who show up a serve? I am just rereading Marvin Olasky’s “The Tragedy of American Compassion”. We have created a welfare entitlement monster.
There is no bigger supporter of the welfare state and thus welfare state politicians and the Dem party than the Catholic bishops. They love this destructive system based on envy, jealousy, covetousness, bitterness and theft. They promote this all the time and then they say oh, no, don’t vote for pro-abortion candidates. Good luck with that. Choosing which sins are ok and which are not is kinda tricky business.
Most Christians would rewrite Jesus’s parable and take the golden talents from the man with 5 and give them to those who had fewer or none.