Posted on 10/08/2004 4:38:50 PM PDT by rhema
In 1973, nine men in robes did what centuries of prelates could not or would not do: They united millions of Protestants and Roman Catholics. The Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision made leaders of both groups realize that, without putting aside theological differences, they could unite against a common enemy: abortion.
Another common opponent, John Kerry, is performing a similar function this year. In 1960, as Catholic scholar George Weigel writes in the Sept. 27 America, "millions of Catholics voted for John F. Kennedy for little reason other than that he was a Catholic." In 1980 millions of Catholics voted for Ronald Reagan because he was a conservative and was not Jimmy Carter, an overt evangelical. In 2004, according to a recent Pew poll, a sizeable majority of Catholics plan to vote for George W. Bush, an overt evangelical, against John Kerry, a Catholic.
The 2004 vote is likely to go that way for both positive and negative reasons. On the positive side, Catholic social doctrine and President Bush's compassionate conservatism have many similarities. As Mr. Weigel writes, Catholics now teach that "the free and virtuous society is a complex set of interactions among a democratic political community, a free economy, and a public moral culture. . . . The culture is the key to the entire edifice. A culture that teaches freedom-as-license is going to wreck democracy and the free economy, sooner or later."
A decade ago I wrote a book about 18th-century America, Fighting for Liberty and Virtue, that pointed out how evangelicals like Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams noted freedom's dependence on morality. They argued, as does Mr. Weigel, that liberty sets loose enormous human energy, and that a free society can survive only if people have "bottom," to use the 18th-century expression; a society, like a ship, needs some weight or it is blown around by the winds.
Most Catholics evidently see George Bush as having bottom on Iraq and on domestic policy, and Sen. Kerry lacking it. The root cause of bottomlessness is always theological confusion, and Sen. Kerry exhibits that big time. Just look at his 1998 interview with American Windsurfer, the journal of a charming sport that has become a Kerry metaphor. The senator said, "I am a believer in the Supreme Being, in God. I believe without any question in this force that is so much larger and more powerful than anything human beings can conceivably define." Sounds more like Star Wars than Christ on the cross.
Is Sen. Kerry a CINO, a Catholic in name only? He does go to Mass, especially when cameras are around. Yet Catholicism has set doctrines, while Sen. Kerry windsurfs: He has "always been fascinated by the Transcendentalists and the Pantheists and others who found these great connections just in nature, in trees, the ponds, the ripples of the wind on the pond, the great feast of nature itself. I think it's all an expression that grows out of this profound respect people have for those forces that human beings struggle to define and to explain. It's all a matter of spirituality."
Does Sen. Kerry speak about sin? Can't find that anywhere in his published speeches, but he did tell American Windsurfer, "So much of the conflict on the face of this planet is rooted in religions and the belief systems they give rise to. The fundamentalism of one entity or another." WORLD looked for a Catholic spiritual advisor who is close to him, but Sen. Kerry's most ardent praise seems to be for "the Dalai Lama who I've spent some time with and who is absolutely intriguing. Extraordinary person. He is certainly telling us there is life from enlightenment—here and hereafter, but I think, whether or not we're going to be [enlightened] is the great test that all of us are struggling with."
Is this Catholicism? No, but it's what is taught at Sen. Kerry's home church, the Paulist Center in Boston. Jonathan Last of The Weekly Standard attended a Center service and observed a reciting of an edited version of the Nicene Creed, with the section on believing in only "one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God," dropped out.
Once that ball is dropped other balls—marriage, sanctity of life, and so on—also hit the floor. The noise of all those balls dropping is mixed with the sound of most Catholics fleeing the Kerry campaign. —•
You cannot justify christianity and vote for kerry.
I would more believe he prays to a bird, or a dog, that to God the Father.
HUH, what do you mean by that?
Whatever Bush is, he's still a better Catholic than Kerry.
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JOHN KERRY = Enemy of Vietnam Vets
http://www.TheAlamoFILM.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1320
...and of Freedom loving people everywhere.
...A President JOHN KERRY would mean the death of Freedom for everyone everywhere.
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"Spiritual windsurfer: Why John Kerry is losing to George W. Bush among Catholics"
Because most Catholics know Kerry is a pretender. He postures as an Irish Catholic when many Catholics know the truth that he has no Irish heritage and that his family is actually Jewish and Czech.
Pope JP2 is Catholic. Mel Gibson is Catholic. There are a lot of good Catholics. Kerry isn't one of them and he disgraces Catholicism with his false claims of devotion.
John Kerry is not worthy to stand in their shadows.
He is a fake, a fraud, a poseur, and a liar. If you dig deep enough I'll also bet you'll find he's a closeted Jew just like his grandfather Fritz Kohn (nee: "Kerry").
Kerry's real family name is Kohn.
My wife, a Catholic, said that John Kerry needed to go into the confession booth ... and not come out.
On the question about stem cell research, Kerry showed how little Catholicism he retains. He waxed rhapsodic about how wonderful it was for women to be able to exercise their "Constitutional" rights, while between the lines, he was saying that grinding up babies was medically a good thing.
He cited Michael J. Fox, Christopher Reeve, and others. Yes, I sympathize with them, but there are enough medically miraculous materials in umbilical chords and placentas, that we do not have to "harvest" the frozen embryos that he described in ghoulish greed.
If his real name is Kohn, when and how did it get changed? Any links?
If Kerry believes life begins at conception, that is a scientific statement, not a faith based statement.
From there he is free to "impose" his beliefs through any legal process.
If fetal stem cell research held any promise, it wouldn't NEED any Federal funding.
The political support rises from the potential to identify SOME benefit from abortion.
Kerry has been parading as an Irishman for years. Yet you can look at him and know he looks more French than Irish.
We Irish know our own kind... and he's not it.
"If his real name is Kohn, when and how did it get changed? Any links?"
I can find links for you, but why not go look yourself?
In a boolean search put: "John Kerry" Kohn
And you'll get a lot of returns.
> Even the fact that "KERRY" is not his real name tells volume of the emptiness that is this man's life.
Kerry's paternal grandfather (born Fritz Kohn) changed his name in 1902 to "Kerry" (probably to hide his Jewish roots) and he converted to Catholicism. The fact that people see Kerry's last name as some sort of conspiracy tells volumns about the emptiness of their arguments about Kerry. What exactly is the problem here? Is it somehow reprehensible that Kerry (who did not find out that his grandfather was Jewish or had changed his name until recently) didn't change his name back to "Kohn" immediately? (For those who are interested, Kerry never met his grandfather because he committed suicide more than 20 years before Kerry was born.)
More information:
http://www.uahc.org/rjmag/03fall/kerry.shtml
>Kerry has been parading as an Irishman for years. Yet you can look at him and know he looks more French than Irish.
Uh, what???
During a 1993 interview with TV host John McLaughlin, Kerry addressed the incorrect presumption that his father was Irish by stating that his grandfather was Austrian and that his grandmother had been born Jewish. He added: "We're still trying to find all the details." And try he did. Once, while on a visit to Europe, he stopped off in Vienna and called every Kerry in the phone book. And in 2002, his office contacted the regional Czech archives, which, he would later discover, actually possessed information on Fritz Kohn's birth, but the senator never received a reply--two years earlier the bureau had stopped conducting searches for foreigners.
Source: http://www.uahc.org/rjmag/03fall/kerry.shtml
Basically because he is a Godless heretic.
BTTT
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