Posted on 11/12/2012 8:55:59 AM PST by marcbold
I am stunned that I was stunned by the election.
I am a fool. I convinced myself that the polls were not real. I convinced myself that the world I see around me every day is not real. I hoped for a redemptive moment without seeing any penitence. You can't have one without the other.
I, along with countless others, have been trying to figure out how President Obama managed to win a second term.
Trying to discover the key statistic that would explain the defeat has become a cottage industry over the past week. Every pundit on every side has a theory, women, minorities, Hispanics, voter turnout machines, etc. All wrong. But I figured it out.
I have been trying to figure out what the problem is all week, and then I finally did. The problem is you.
You, you Catholics. You are the problem...
(Excerpt) Read more at ncregister.com ...
These people seem incapable of observing (perhaps because they watch ABC News) that Obama never goes anywhere near the poor, choosing instead to associate only with the very, very rich. And I'm sure they didn't see the statistic that no more than 1/3 of "poverty" spending goes to the poor, with the rest going to program administration (and graft).
There's one in my prayer group. As near as I can tell, she thinks everyone should be protected from any negative consequences of their decisions, and that the government will do this with "compassion." (Her example is a brother and sister-in-law who don't have health insurance because they bought a big house and a boat, when their business was doing well.)
The fact that Obama is enthusiastically pro-abortion doesn't seem to matter, even though her own son is adopted.
“Catholics” is not one thing.
11/4 at the three of our six Masses that I happen to know about, the homilies were about the primacy of the right to life over social concerns. One homily was met with prolonged applause. The others were met with approval, except that a few people walked out.
Our “youth”, university students, are strongly anti-Obama.
So I think there are demographic aspects of “Catholics” that may make generalization a little complicated.
Catholics voted democrat as usual, and non-catholic Christians voted hugely republican, in fact they have only voted democrat in 1932, 1936, and 1964.
To a conservative, that is what we want, why do you want people voting democrat?
For the survival of the nation, we have to figure out some way to get Catholics to start voting like the non-catholic Christians.
No, "Catholics" did not vote democRat.
Get your facts straight.
why do you want people voting democrat?
Your question is wrong. Since I do not want folks voting democRat, I can only tell you to get your facts straight and quit being wrong.
we have to figure out some way to get Catholics to start voting like the non-catholic Christians.
1) Who's "we"???
2) You're wrong. Again. As usual.
Now ... you might start asking questions, instead of 'pontificating' wrongly ... but I doubt that you have either the intelligence or the humility to do so.
Your turn.
Good Lord, we can’t do anything about the Catholic’s almost permanent loyalty to the democrat party as long as catholics even refuse to acknowledge that catholics vote as they do.
Even on FR every thread about the democrat voting block of the members of the catholic denomination, consists of catholics who are supposed to be conservative political activists, saying ‘nope, move away from this topic, do not discuss this’.
It's sad, really ...
Demographics didn’t create a 150 year history for the Catholic vote, and demographics don’t mean much in a church that is a single church, a single denomination, under a single authority, and under a single teaching.
I work in 4 Catholic schools. I was shocked at how many loved Obama. The schools push Global Warming,amnesty, etc.. The church brings many illegals here, and they are enrolled in the schools. The Catholic Church is trying to grow their population. Sickens me.
Yes, immigrant Catholics found a political home in the demagogic Democratic party which did not challenge them to rethink their notion of government.
But since VATII in this country (and probably in Europe as well) a bunch of bishops, priests, and teachers just ignored those parts of the social teaching which they didn't like. I remember assisting at a class in which the deacon taught as a wonderful doctrine something explicitly rejected in Veritatis Splendor by JPII.
As a convert I came, so to speak, "cold" to the social encyclicals and found that they did NOT AT ALL favor the top-down government and delegated charity espoused by socialists (and too many Catholics.)
I'm seeing a shift. Mind you. I've only encountered a VERY small sample. But among the Dominican friars, those older than around 50-55 TEND to be pinkos. Those younger than 50 tend to be conservative.
Among the university students whom I encounter in parish work, including many "converts", there are a several who are members of the campus "Burke Club."
And I can say this. Those I see at Mass regularly -- on Sundays and weekdays, are far more conservative than the Easter and Xmas Catholics or the "converts" who give every impression of coming to our classes or Masses to get their ticket punched. That is, the Burke Club Catholics come to Mass. The pinko Catholics, not so much.
To restate that, the Catholics who are loyal to the Magisterium and committed to Catholic piety tend to be conservative politically. On the other hand, the socialista Catholics are so far from the teaching to the Church that they are frequently incoherent. It's not just that they don't know what "proximate material cooperation" in a sin is, they don't WANT to know and resent the very activity of careful analysis of ethical or theological issues.
The major problem is that even conservative catholics have one of two responses to the catholics voting democrat for 150 years, first is, ‘no they don’t’, and second is, ‘here is why’ ‘level of devotion’ ‘theological purity’, ‘racial purity’ ‘angels on the head of a pin’ etc, which ends up basically saying that ‘no they don’t’.
Catholics have always voted democrat, almost all catholic presence in America is from immigration after the 1840s, they were almost non-existent in 1780. So wherever they come from they are members of the catholic church and are part of the democrat voting block.
The first time that Catholics voted republican in history was either 1972, or 1956, depending on the source, after Vatican II catholics moved right and voted republican 5 times 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, and 2004, and the white, assimilated catholics, started voting republican by small margins.
The catholic vote has probably returned to it’s historical place in regards to the democrat party, we just lived through the best window of catholic voting ever from 1972 through 2012, now things are back to normal.
I was predicting a 54% republican margin for the catholic vote in this election, I was way, way off.
and second is, ‘here is why’ ‘level of devotion’ ‘theological purity’, ‘racial purity’ ‘angels on the head of a pin’ etc, which ends up basically saying that ‘no they don’t’.
is nonsense.
I pretty distinctly said "Some do,"which is NOT at all, "No they don't."
One of the errors in thought addressed by Plato is that it gets us nowhere to say only a good football player is a REAL football player. There are bad football players and there are bad Catholics. In the election last week we got a suggestion of how many bad Catholics there are -- lots.
Again, my saying there are lots is not saying "No they don't."
This is why God gave us data-mining. It may be true, for example, the minorities tend to get harsher sentences than whites for some crimes. That does not mean they get the harsher sentences BECAUSE they are minorities. It could be (though I doubt it) that they get harsher sentences in spite of their being minorities. But standards like employment, domestic situation, family income and assets, academic performance, etc. may influence sentencing while ethnic or racial issues don't.
People who point directly to the correspondence between race and sentencing usually have an axe to grind.
But if one does not see the difference between "some do" and "no they don't" there's not a lot of future in the conversation.
What I said was correct, even conservative catholics want to go into the tall grass and get into, at best, internal catholic discussions about purity and level of devotion etc.
As a conservative, I look at the catholic vote and see it going republican five times in all of history, possible 6, by slim margins, and only once against an incumbent democrat.
The catholic vote is dependably democrat, even within Hispanics the Protestant/Catholic divide exists.
Catholic immigration is serving the democrat party as it always has, when we talk about losing Texas, we are talking about the catholic vote turning it blue.
Actually, this is the best that it has ever been, you better enjoy this short window of Catholic "conservatism".
It’s always our fault.
Yep it is always our fault, nevermind that Obama couldn’t have won without the Protestant vote.
I’m going to avoid FR for awhile. I’ve had enough of this bashing by people so blinded by anti-Catholic bigotry that they cannot be reasoned with.
“......the Catholics who are loyal to the Magisterium and commmitted to Catholic piety tend to be conservative politically.”
This is visibly true to me.
In my deanery there are 5 Catholic parishes. The daily Masses are full at all five of these parishes every morning, and at the one parish, which has an additional evening Mass for people who work, there are many who come to Mass daily after work.
These are families and individuals who I have been familiar with over the last 37 years.
They are politically conservative-—very much so-—and are out-spoken about it.
Yes, I acknowledge that what I’m posting here could be termed “anecdotal”.
But it is also a truth that I experience daily.
They are there as a vibrant, and growing “remnant”.
All of the above.
In different ways and to diffeent degrees.
This is the "traditional" list of The 9 Ways We Participate in Others' Sins
And I would add # 10, 11, and 12:
If it were attributable solely to Protestantism, the black vote would not be Dem.
No, no one can explain anything about blacks and religion, or politics, or many other things in regards to the black relationship with their churches and religions, we do know that even they cannot dilute the overall Protestant vote enough to make it like the overall Catholics vote.
The wider experience of 160 years of history and with what happens to Hispanics and other minorities is more revealing.
It isn’t about blame, it is about begging to end the Catholic denomination’s devotion to the left.
After 160 years, conservatives are saying enough, conservative Catholics, do something to make your denomination more American, to get Catholics to vote republican.
Winning 48% of your church’s vote should not be considered one of the biggest republican wins of the Catholic vote, in American history.
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