I want to express by paraphrasing what my priest said at Mass the day Reagan died, it was a small weekday Mass with the usual attendees.
He said Reagan was divorced and remarried, whose father was
a lapsed Catholic, and ex wife was Catholic, so if politics and religion went together as some people like to think they should, Reagan would have been someone for Catholics to not vote for.
But Reagan did his job, as president, protecting our freedom to practice Catholicism, and for that, he deserves praise and respect.
And, yes, the last sentence is what the priest said
I’m not going to get into the Catholic faith because I’m certainly not an expert on it. What I do know of it, there are things I don’t really agree with.
But what I will say, is what I see is maybe a problem even with denominationalism or church doctrine, any church doctrine that, in my view, would supersede or take precedence over the overwhelming mercy and grace of God and Jesus Christ.
I don’t say that to disrespect your priest or anyone else. And by those same standards I understand why such a statement would be made.
At the same time, if ANYONE is going to hold it against someone because they’ve sinned, or backslid, or someone else in their family backslid, well join the club, in terms of none of us are perfect.
I guess in that sense, politics and “religion” don’t go hand in hand because religion in that sense seems tied in legalism, church doctrine, and being still in bondage in a sense of “do not this and do not that”.
I tend to believe more in the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ that offered living water, i.e. eternal life to the woman at the well who’d been married 5 TIMES and who lead most of the people in her town to believe on Him as Messiah than I do in saying, “Don’t vote for him because he’s been divorced.”
But that said, Reagan indeed protected freedom, religious liberty, and to me he exhibited some qualities of a Godly leader.