NJ politicians: Catholic Church is seeking too big a role, Senate leader leaves Church

Philly.com | 05.09.04 | Tom Turcol

[maryz]

Roe vs. Wade could be overturned based just on the reading of the law.

Indeed, I've read that there are pro-abort legal scholars who also think that Roe was so badly "reasoned" as to make it untenable.

[maryz]

I could never understand how someone could be Catholic and be a democrat in the first place.

In my grandparents' time (in the Northeast anyway), Republicans really were the party of big business, were anti-Irish and other immigrants, and were anti-Catholic (actually they were anti Catholic immigrants -- Irish, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, etc.). Lots of people learned their politics from their families and won't change. I think they're primarily people who aren't terribly interested in politics (here in Boston, the Dems played busing so well that lots of people thought the Republicans were behind it).

[maryz]

Are politicians special? They're no more or less human (jokes aside) than any of the rest of us, yet they receive special, public attention from the Church when it suits the Church.

No, they're not special (except to themselves). But they are public people. The distinction is the same as the one C.S. Lewis draws about the duties of the executioner: he cannot morally execute someone he happens to know to be innocent; this does not mean he has to take over police duties.

[IrishRainy]

In America, that seems to be the Unitarian Church. They seem to think everything's a-okay.

[maryz]

They don't like having to make a choice between politics and religion. what this seems to be saying to me is these politicians dont want to be forced to chose between heaven or hell/the world or Christ-they want their cake and eat it too.

Exactly! Do you know C.S. Lewis' Narnia series? In the last book, the dwarves won't choose between the two sides: "The dwarves are for the dwarves!" (Actually, this echoes an old European tradition that the dwarves, leprechauns, "little people" are those who wouldn't choose between God and Satan when Lucifer was cast down. That's why in so many stories they are totally unreliable -- not predictably bad and certainly not good, just unreliable.)

[IrishRainy]

Yeah, plus he's trying to make people feel sorry for him -- "they MADE me leave the Church that I love..." Riiight!

[maryz]

Just how would you feel if a Muslim politician reversed their position on an important issue to one which goes against 75% of their constituentcy's wishes following a cleric's Fatwah?

I expect politicians to run on what they actually believe, and the voters can vote for or against. A fatwah is not considered by Muslims to be universally binding even on Muslims. And I would deeply distrust a politician who claimed to be a Muslim (or anything else) but voted in reckless disregard of the teachings he supposedly espoused.

[maryz]

In America, that seems to be the Unitarian Church. They seem to think everything's a-okay.

Make that Unitarian-Universalist. When the Unitarians were separate, they actually had some standards. I recall from an American literature course in graduate school that Ralph Waldo Emerson left the Unitarian church just before he would have been thrown out.

[leprechaun9]

This will probably become a moot point when the country beomes so diverse that the Muslims will comprise an overwhelming majority. Then all other religions will be outlawed and us "infidels" will be imprisoned and ridiculed, humiliated or tortured and the dominant media will not emit a peep of disesnt!

[Aquinasfan]

Roman Catholic politicians in New Jersey, including one who left the church yesterday, are expressing anger at what they say is an attempt by church leaders to force them to decide between their government oaths and their religion.

Uh, yeah.

So which one will it be? I think we already know the answer.

[Aquinasfan]

For someone to give up Holy Communion or to leave the Church in order to promote "abortion rights" is so obscene and so grotesquely absurd it defies comment.

Well said.

[Aquinasfan]

Catholic prelates should get their collective nose out of secular matters.

Shouldn't you be at the abortuary killing babies or something?

[ZULU]

These people are not "Catholics".

The Catholic Church has clear and unambivalent positions with respect to abortion and divorce.

Yet many individuals who claim to be Catholic attend Catholic services and particiapte in Catholic Sacrements to which they are not entitled by Catholic dogma.

The Catholic Church is not structured as a Democracy. Polls do not determine morality - the Pope does, based on his interpretation of Biblical scripture.

While fundmantal Protestants like myself can take issue with the role of the Pope in doing so, we cannot take issue with the basic scripture upon which his positions are based. Abortion is murder. Life begins at the moment of conception and the Bible is quite clear about the taking of innocent life. Christ himself has stated that any man who puts away his wife for any reason except adultery is guilty of adultery himself.

This individual and McGreevery may smugly content that they are Catholics and yet disagree with basic Christian doctrine, they may smugly contend that they represent individuals of divergent religious faiths (yet even other faiths like Islam and Orthodox Judaism have views on abortion strikingly similar to those of the Catholic Church, as do fundamentalist Protestants), they are fooling no one.

Polls do not determine morality - Scripture does. And these individuals have made a choice. They have sacrificed their faith for politics and should be men enough to admit it, instead of mouthing these mindless rationalizations.

[Aquinasfan]

This is where you lost me. Have these two individuals been performing abortions?

Did Hitler personally murder any Jews?

[Aquinasfan]

(Actually, this echoes an old European tradition that the dwarves, leprechauns, "little people" are those who wouldn't choose between God and Satan when Lucifer was cast down. That's why in so many stories they are totally unreliable -- not predictably bad and certainly not good, just unreliable.)

Interesting.

[Cap'n Crunch]

Great news... let's get all of them out.

[al_c]

Let 'em leave. If they choose to put their popularity with voters ahead of what Christ (and it is Christ ... not a church) asks them to do, then they're not really following Him anyway.

[steve8714]

Scientology? Metro Community Church? Zoroastrianism? Bah'ai? Santaria? Rastafarian?

[Stagerite]

Shouldn't you be at the abortuary killing babies or something?

Please step outside your abuse box and consider your reaction to elected Muslim politicians forcing Americans to live under Islamic "law."

[GraceCoolidge]

"This is exactly what the Catholic Church said 50 years ago would not happen when Catholic politicians were trying to get elected to office," said Kenny, a former altar boy. "It is a total reversal of the position that enabled Catholics to represent people of all faiths and all backgrounds."

I don't see anything that prevents any of these "former altar boys" from holding office. The issue is whether they get to present and promote themselves as "Catholics." I do give some credit to the ones who are finding other faiths (however grudgingly). They should have done that a long time ago. But this attitude of "we have to bend the rules so Catholics can hold public office" is the real violation of church and state separation. The state is trying to intervene in the governance of the church, not the other way around.