Posted on 11/11/2008 9:39:56 AM PST by presidio9
The head of the U.S. Catholic bishops' group said on Monday that Barack Obama's election as president should be celebrated but he made it clear the church would not compromise its strict stand against abortion.
Obama won solid support from Catholics in last week's election, exit polls indicated, even though the church opposes the view, supported by the Illinois Democratic senator, that a woman has the right to choose whether to have an abortion. The U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 legalized abortion.
Obama's election "is a moment that touches more than our history when a country that once enshrined race slavery in its very constitutional order should come to elect an African- American to the presidency," said Cardinal Francis George of Chicago.
"In this, I truly believe, we must all rejoice," the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops told the group's semi-annual meeting in Baltimore.
George said the country may have reached a point where "all races are safely within the American consensus." But he voiced concern that Catholics face political pressure when seeking office to compromise on "fundamental Catholic teachings."
The central Christian teaching, George added, was that God became man and "took flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, nine months before Jesus was born in Bethlehem."
"This truth is celebrated in our liturgy because it is branded into our spirit. The common good can never be adequately incarnated in any society when those waiting to be born can be legally killed at choice," he said.
"If the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision that African- Americans were other people's property and somehow less than persons were still settled constitutional law, Mr. Obama would not be president of the United States," George said, referring to the 1857 decision
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Thank you for that report, Miss Marple. I have been so down about the Catholic vote. Your post gives me hope.
We must be the remnant and we must be a visible, outspoken remnant.
Too many of our Catholic children have had poor religious formation.
“PS: Unfortunately, even if the bishops started telling them right now, many would ignore them. They no longer fear excommunication. The bishops fell down on the job here, letting decades go by before acting and I fear they’ve lost a generation or two by their inaction.”
This is true. But the Church should stand up for the right anyhow, if it’s truth. There’s very few Churches anymore where getting confirmed as kicked out by your actions would mean something, especially as far as political ramifications go—and the Catholic Church is the biggest of them. It’s either baby butchery or not. The bishops keep telling us it IS baby butchery, but so far, they haven’t acted like it’s baby butchery.
Freegards
Hispanics voted heavily for Obama and they are overwhelmingly Catholic. There are many Catholic blacks also.
Oh, I agree! Whether or not the flock listen to them anymore, the bishops should absolutely stand firm and shout it from the mountaintops.
Publicly, formally excommunicating any “Catholic” who votes for FOCA would be a good start.
Regards,
Sometimes our priests are less than perfect. Sometimes they are naive.
Do what I do; I give my money to the local parish. I give to the diocese for particular collections (hurricane relief for example). I do not give to Campaign for Human Development or anything else I feel may be questionable.
I am convinced that the Bishop of Scranton would excommunicate Biden if he were in his diocese. He is NOT going to be allowing him communion there, for sure.
You know, I have family in the Scranton area...close family. They are all observant Catholics but many of them are old-school union Dems. Some of them are registered Dem only because it isn’t politcally and socially acceptable to be GOP. They were FURIOUS with their bishop for being so “rigid” with Biden.
But when I talked to them, they were clearly conflicted. They KNEW the bishop was right, they KNEW Biden was wrong, but the pull of those unions is strong. I don’t know how they eventually voted, but I can only hope that some of them at least resisted the temptation from the left and listened to their own consciences.
God Bless the Bishop of Scranton!
Regards,
This is a little off topic, but I need help with my pro-life discussions with a priest who threw the statistic at me that abortions were reduced by nearly 30% under the Clinton admin and then went up about 16% under the Bush admin. Can anyone help me out on this comment or point me to a source for actual numbers. Thanks.
Good post. I appreciate your thoughts. Let the chips fall where they may.
Legal or ILLEGAL “Hispanics”? If they voted for Obama, then they are “overwhelmingly” stupid. BTW: Many “Catholic” Hispanics belong the nonsense cult of “Charismatic”... a touchy-feely liberal spin-off that is nothing more than watered down Pentacostalism. They may call themselves “Catholic,” but I would disagree.
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