Posted on 09/12/2007 1:33:38 PM PDT by pgyanke
Hopefully, this letter will provide you with some ammunition when dealing with the clueless.
For your ping lists...
unfortunately, the Catholic Church has decided that increasing the number of illegals from the southern border is more important than the sanctity of life. They are looking to increase the number of catholics in the US despite ignoring the ones who are already here.
Our Bishops are men. I defer to them heavily on Church and theological matters. When things get political, they can get confused as well as the rest of us. It's incumbent on us who are devout and politically-savvy to help them sort it out... that's what I'm trying to do...
As you say, it’s a bit long, which may work against it. But word for word it is excellently done. If I took out my red pencil I don’t think I could find any use for it.
What you say is absolutely true and vital.
If the Church stood up to its true self, it would certainly revitalize itself and draw more people in. Any people who were driven out by this would be people who were already Catholics in Name Only. The Pelosis and Kerrys in the Church need to be confronted for their own good and their possible salvation, and not to do that for them, or for their less famous followers, is to neglect one of the basic roles of a bishop or a pastor. Salvation of souls requires speaking the truth fearlessly.
I also believe that if the Church did this, fearlessly and with unity, the IRS would and the politicians would be forced to back down. Since when is it impermissible to speak the truth? And the truth is that the Democrat Party is, as you say, the only major party that supports abortion, cloning, fetal stem cell research, euthanasia, assisted suicide, and the legalization of sexual perversion as a form of marriage. The Church has a perfect right to point this out, since the souls of its members who vote for these politicians are being put at risk, as they continually act in complicity and enable those who commit these grave evils.
Wow - a very excellent and well-presented letter.
“truly it is the one organization that can single-handedly save this country from its folly and do so by simply standing up for its values.”
As far as the “values” you list as your concerns, the Catholic Church surely shares and supports them and is “standing up for” them,
but
(1) it (the Catholic Church) is not alone with regard to supporting those values, not even among churches,
(2) it is not “single-handedly” standing up for them,
(3) it cannot “single-handedly” successfully advance their support, particularly when, in truth, politicians who self-identify as “Catholic” are most often NOT among those who WILL defend those values (the Catholic church’s teaching on them falls on deaf ears, more often than in “Conservative Protestant” churches)
and
(4) advancing those values alone, and nothing else, will not “save this nation from its folly”, in general,
and
(5) in many other ways, the Catholic church does not advance many of this nations primary values but actively opposes them, in doctrine and in practice (as in a socialist form of government).
So, I honestly do hope you the best, and every success, in getting the Catholic Church to improve its active and public support for the values you listed, as all moral Christians should, but forgive me for my disbelief that even the success of your effort would mean that the Catholic Church will “single handedly” restore the values of this nation because the limitations of what you seek and its limited venue will never do that and can never do that (single-handedly restore the values of this nation).
Too many of our sacred values, as a nation, are left out of your goals for them to be given the unqualified label of “the sacred values” of the nation, and your venue, the Catholic Church, does not even support all the sacred values of our nation - our freedom from unlimited government to start with.
1. I never said the Church was alone in its values.
2. You're right, it isn't single-handedly standing up for its own values right now... I didn't say it was. That's the purpose of the letter.
3. Actually, if you had read the letter, you would have found that the voting population is 25% self-described Catholic. If the Church were to successfully form the consciences of its membership, it could very well single-handedly correct these injustices.
4. We'll have to agree to disagree. These are fundamental problems that without solution will destroy this nation. Everything else is open to debate.
It is clear from your post that you didn't read the letter. Thank you for taking time to post here. If you will take a little more time, I would be interested in your response to the words I have written.
Thank you for your very kind words. May God bless our efforts.
We now have a list of non-Catholic Catholics like Kerry, Kennedy, Pelosi, Daschle, and on and on and on. They do a great disservice to the church, opposing the Church on abortion, marriage etc.
The Bishops are Democrats and to them the end justifies the means. The Catholic Church is Socialist and supports Illegal Immigration, ACORN, Union thugs etc. They do little to reform or disown Kennedy and his followers.
May as well be honest. That does not mean the Church is wrong, it is the leadership. They will die some day and may pay a terrible price.
That is the point of the letter... the fact that the Church has not been active in teaching the congregations about their political choices. I’m endeavoring to change that. Copies of my letter went to my priest, the USCCB, friends who are priests around the country (including in the Bay Area) and monasteries.
The road we are on is as you described it... the RINOs neutralize the Sanctity of Life language in our party platform. After all, those who champion the “life issue” split their vote anyway... where are they going to go?
If the Church will engage, we will get the attention of those who seek elected office. From there, we don’t have to shun the Democrats forever... when they reform, we can consider their other policy issues. THAT’s how public engagement works... you want my vote, you stop opposing my values then we’ll talk. As I said, there is no reason the Church should find her values opposed in our government except for Her own self-imposed silence.
If Catholics were as solidly Republican as white Baptists, then New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts would be among the most Republican states in the nation. If only it were true.
No, I read the letter.
But, respectfully, the “catechism” does not “repudiate” socialism (it only repudiates “godless” dictators), in fact the current Pope has directly noted how he feels more common ground with western Europe’s socialists than America, preferring the greater interference of their socialist governments in economic matters that we allow here.
In my close reading of Marx and the totality Catholic social-economic doctrine, the only distinction is that the Catholic Church would prefer, ideally, to see its local priests as the leaders of the cadres, its bishops as the vanguard of the proletariat and its cardinals as the politburo. Forgive the rest of Christianity for not agreeing, having recognized that socialist political parties and/or socialist political thinking dominates wherever local Catholic churches and or Catholic education dominates in the west. That is not an accident.
If you're going to play the role of a keyboard expert on the internet regarding the Catechism, at least put forth the effort to read it, gomer. Unless of course you enjoy looking like a fool.
2425 The Church has rejected the totalitarian and atheistic ideologies associated in modem times with "communism" or "socialism." She has likewise refused to accept, in the practice of "capitalism," individualism and the absolute primacy of the law of the marketplace over human labor.206 Regulating the economy solely by centralized planning perverts the basis of social bonds; regulating it solely by the law of the marketplace fails social justice, for "there are many human needs which cannot be satisfied by the market."207 Reasonable regulation of the marketplace and economic initiatives, in keeping with a just hierarchy of values and a view to the common good, is to be commended.
Just a note... that's what this letter is about. Cheers!
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