Posted on 08/09/2012 5:55:30 PM PDT by Coleus
“This is a big moment for Catholic voters to step back from their party affiliation,” Baltimore archbishop William E. Lori tells me from the Knights of Columbus annual convention in Anaheim, Calif.
For Catholic voters in November, Lori advises, “The question to ask is this: Are any of the candidates of either party, or independents, standing for something that is intrinsically evil, evil no matter what the circumstances? If that’s the case, a Catholic, regardless of his party affiliation, shouldn’t be voting for such a person.”
At the convention this week, the message wasn’t just coming from Lori, the chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ new committee on religious liberty, but also from a letter conveying greetings from Pope Benedict XVI, commending the Knights and their work, specifically in defense of religious liberty. The Knights have been known to get papal encouragement, but this implicit comment on a contentious political issue is not part of the routine, reflecting what the letter calls the “unprecedented gravity” of the current situation.
“At a time when concerted efforts are being made to redefine and restrict the exercise of the right to religious freedom, the Knights of Columbus have worked tirelessly to help the Catholic community recognize and respond to the unprecedented gravity of these new threats to the Church’s liberty and public moral witness,” Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone wrote in the letter to the Knights, the largest lay Catholic organization in the United States, no doubt referring to the fight over the HHS contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing-drug mandate that has Catholic diocese, universities, and even businessmen suing the federal government to protect their religious-liberty rights. Cardinal Bertone continued: “By defending the right of all religious believers, as individual citizens and in their institutions, to work responsibly in shaping a democratic society inspired by their deepest beliefs, values and aspirations, your Order has proudly lived up to the high religious and patriotic principles which inspired its founding.”
“The challenges of the present moment are in fact yet another reminder of the decisive importance of the Catholic laity for the advancement of the Church’s mission in today’s rapidly changing social context,” the letter continues.
Citing papal comments to the bishops from the United States in Rome in January, the letter went on: “As he stated to the Bishops of the United States earlier this year, the demands of the new evangelization and the defense of the Church’s freedom in our day call for ‘an engaged, articulate and well-formed Catholic laity endowed with a strong critical sense vis-a-vis the dominant culture and with the courage to counter a reductive secularism which would delegitimize the Church’s participation in public debate about the issues which are determining the future of American society’ (Ad Limina Address, 19 January 2012).”
“Of particular concern are certain attempts being made to limit that most cherished of American freedoms, the freedom of religion,” the pope also said in that January address. “Many of you have pointed out that concerted efforts have been made to deny the right of conscientious objection on the part of Catholic individuals and institutions with regard to cooperation in intrinsically evil practices. Others have spoken to me of a worrying tendency to reduce religious freedom to mere freedom of worship without guarantees of respect for freedom of conscience.”
“Is it consistent to profess our beliefs in church on Sunday, and then during the week to promote business practices or medical procedures contrary to those beliefs?” the pope, perhaps prophetically, asked during his 2008 visit to Washington, D.C.
That this papal message would be sent this month to a lay organization, in particular, is “very significant,” Archbishop Lori emphasizes. “If we are going to transform the culture from within, which we are called to do, and defend our basic freedoms,” it will be primarily the role of the laity, Lori tells me.
“The bishops are teachers,” he said, but political leadership “really needs to come from the laity as citizens and mothers and fathers and voters.”
When it comes to election advice for Catholics: “The reality is we are defending something that transcends party. The defense of religious liberty,” he said, “should not be a Democratic or Republican issue.” For a Catholic voter, this should be “fundamental, as people of faith.”
And not just for Catholics: “Many in the media have portrayed the HHS-mandate fight as a fight about contraception — as well as sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs . . . but this really is a fight about religious liberty,” Archbishop Lori says. “And you can see that as Evangelicals, Mormons, and Orthodox Jews have joined us in defense. They realize if the government can do this to the Catholic Church, they could be forced to violate their consciences too. The Evangelicals include those at Wheaton College, which recently joined a lawsuit that the Catholic University of America had filed in opposition to the mandate, over [its] abortion-inducing drug aspect.”
In an interview last month, Philip Ryken, the president of Wheaton College, told me that “even if the HHS mandate had no effect on Evangelical institutions, it would still be important to me to be supportive of Roman Catholic institutions if there were invitations and opportunities to be supportive.” He echoed the immediate reaction of New York’s archbishop and president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, to the so-called accommodation that the president misleadingly touted this Wednesday afternoon in Denver, after being introduced by feminist superstar Sandra Fluke. “The most disturbing thing to me,” explains Ryken, who was a Presbyterian pastor in Philadelphia before becoming president of Wheaton, “was the government’s provision of a ‘safe harbor’ that would defer for one year the implementation of the mandate — and presenting that as somehow being a reasonable accommodation of religious liberty. I found that offensive — the hope that we would change our religious convictions over the course of the intervening year, or that religious convictions had somehow been honored if you violated them later rather than sooner.” “It was clear to me,” Ryken adds, “that there was no understanding of the true nature of religious liberty in the administration.”
“Never before has the federal government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace and buy a product that violates their conscience. This shouldn’t happen in a land where free exercise of religion ranks first in the Bill of Rights,” now Cardinal Dolan said.
Cardinal Dolan joined the papal greeting in Anaheim, encouraging the continued witness of laity in the defense of religious liberty. Alongside him was the president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Richard Smith of Edmonton, who said: “Our call at this moment is to affirm the right of religion to be active in the public square . . . to defend the freedom of people of faith and of religious institutions to act in accordance with their beliefs and nature; to maintain healthy church state relations; to understand conscience correctly and to form it according to objective truth; and to protect the right to conscientious objection. Believers are summoned now to stand up for their faith, even if they must suffer for doing so.”
Asked about the controversy brewing over an invitation extended by Cardinal Dolan to President Obama to speak, alongside Governor Mitt Romney, at the annual Alfred E. Smith Foundation dinner, a fundraiser for charities in New York, Archbishop Lori urged Catholics and other concerned citizens to “keep our eyes on the ball.” The invitation, and his presence, “do not constitute an endorsement,” Archbishop Lori tells me. But he was ready to make an endorsement himself: “I don’t think there is a clearer voice in the United States about the sanctity of life and religious liberty than Cardinal Dolan . . . [he's] a very clear, clarion voice. . . . Don’t get distracted.”
It is very brave. It is what is needed-—Art which evokes feelings and makes people actually think!
Art is what the Leftists have used for decades to change the hearts of the last few generations. Leftists remove the “thinking” so that you”feel” what they want you to— Mapplethorpe, and V. Monologues—it dehumanizes man—reduces them to sex parts— (like the Weimar Republic was famous for)-—it removes Reason and reduces man to base vulgar instincts destructive of civic virtue.
At least among the German princes we were pretty close in A.D. 1530. 21 of the 28 articles of the Augsburg Confession were on points of agreement, including justification, repentance, and the Eucharist.
There are detractors now on both sides but I believe that the signing of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification was either the beginning of the end (or the end of the beginning) of the reformation.
Note the lower case "r".
OK, but consider this. Pro-abortion presidential candidates have been invited to this dinner for decades. It's a long tradition of having both presidential candidates show up and make a speech. Snubbing Obama on this will invite accusations of singling him out, and that singling out will be assumed to be motivated by racism. Preposterous in the context of the work of the Church, of course, but the media will beat that drum for several days. Nothing like using one of their favorite weapons to bash one of their favorite targets.
Better to have both Obama and Romney at the dinner, and allow Romney to upstage Obama by mentioning the rights of the unborn in a room full of Catholics. It was beautiful to watch the extended applause when George W. Bush did that in 2000, and left Al Gore to just stare at the table in front of him.
I only hope that my Bishop (DeLorenzo of Richmond Va) has the same idea, but I doubt he will say anything.
#1 -- there's more evil to Obamalamadingdong than his abortion stance -- most rank-n-file pewsitters understand this, even if the polled "catholics" don't
#2 -- the Church is legally (in court) against Obamalamadingdong's administration, IINM....
#3 -- the media will always be against the Church and in favor of whatever Demoncrat is anti-Catholic
#4 -- the bishops had Catholics praying for religious freedom, only to follow it up with.... Dolan's invite? Who is more important --- the MEDIA??? or pew-sitting Catholics?!?!?!
#5 -- Is the Church promoting Romney as the anti-abortion candidate? Really? REALLY?????????
Thought for ETERNAL LIFE.....
WE should do what “PLEASES GOD”
“NOT” what “PLEASES MAN!”
ABORTIONS OUT!
CONTRACEPTION OUT!
HOMOSEXUALS OUT!
SAME SEX MARRIAGE OUT!
EVIL (OBAMA) OUT!
“Learn English. Great language.”
Tell it to the poster.
A liberal doc signed by lib lutherans, in conflict with Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions. As the LCMS puts it, a Betrayal of the Gospel.
I would also like to see the USCCB make a formal announcement and put it in all the diocesan papers. I am pretty sure the lame stream media won't cover it.
“Catholic Voters Can’t Vote for a Candidate Who Stands for an Intrinsic Evil.”
Guess I won’t be able to vote for hussein or willard then. Darn. I’m heartbroken I tell ya.
Heartbroken.
Exhibit A:
A liberal doc signed by lib lutherans, in conflict with Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions. As the LCMS puts it, a Betrayal of the Gospel.
I sure I could dredge up some Tridentine Latin Catholics with equally vehement rehetoric.
Thirty Years War was the good old days, eh?
I am a detractor for sure, justification is a suitable doctrinal hill to stand upon. Far from a religious war, it is an acknowledgement that reducing the Gospel’s stance on justification for the sake of so-called ecumenism is not a worthwhile tradeoff. The elca is a poor example of a church, let alone a Lutheran one. Are you now NALC or LCMC? Do they subscribe to the JDDJ? Are they members of the LWF?
Thought for ETERNAL LIFE.....
WE should do what “PLEASES GOD”
“NOT” what “PLEASES MAN!”
ABORTIONS OUT!
CONTRACEPTION OUT!
HOMOSEXUALS OUT!
SAME SEX MARRIAGE OUT!
EVIL (OBAMA) OUT!
So that means Obamao and Mitt-Witt are both out with Catholics then?
Maryland “Freak State” PING!
I don't see how, nothing has changed for them.
Sadly, I think it’s too late. They should have been saying this for years.
ahhhh, I LOVE seeing the KofC!! My father was a 4th degree and I have his cape and chapeau......sniff.
“So that means Obamao and Mitt-Witt are both out with Catholics then?”
You’ll hear/read conflicting opinions, but in my humble opinion, yes. Supporting any politician who supports abortion, same sex “marriage,” euthenasia, contraception, sterilization is supporting a candidate who supports that which is intrinsically evil. A Catholic cannot do that without committing sin. Some will may say something about the lesser of two evils. And they may have some merit in their arguments. I cannot support willard in anything. By virtue of his own legislation in MA, “Romneycare,” he has supported many of the items I just listed above. Should he win, I truly believe he would make a show of diminishing Obamacare, but nothing more. His focus is not removing the evil patterned upon his own, but being elected President of the United States. There’s an important distinction there which cannot and should not be missed.
I hate it when the meaning of words gets obscured, tainted, reversed. (That is so "gay"!)
Anyway, I was just thinking this morning (yes, actually) about "The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?" I was thinking about what that means, long, wide, and deep.
Let's pray for this communion, eh?
.
.
.
.
.
On a note of levity, the tagline:
I thought we Catholics were in the repentance and conversion business. No?
Mr. Romney says he had a change of heart regarding abortion. Is that not allowed? I've seen many previously pro-life politicians go pro-abort. We're not permitted to accept folks in the other direction?
Are you saying you don't believe his conversion? Well, I don't really blame you. Too much. I was certainly skeptical in 2008 when he made it known that he'd conveniently had such a change of heart toward the end of his otherwise all-abortion all-the-time term as governor.
There were folks who said, well, aren't you going to give the guy a chance? He says he's pro-life, now. Isn't a conversion, a change of heart sufficient?
And I said, it's just a little too convenient, the timing is just too close. I won't vote for him in 2008. But he'll be back. He'll run again for president. If he consistently and steadily maintains an overall pro-life attitude, if he continues to campaign as a pro-lifer, I'll revisit the question.
So, here we are four years later. And he HAS campaigned consistently as a pro-lifer. Is he a perfect pro-lifer? Not in my book. But the Church has taught us that we may choose candidates who are more pro-life than the other guy, that we may not get the perfectly-pro-life candidate, but that someone who is mostly pro-life is certainly a better bet than someone who is entirely pro-death. The Church has rejected the perfection-or-bust approach to these issues. One may, in good conscience, vote for a candidate who runs on a platform to legally restrict abortion more than it is, to reduce government support for abortion more than it is, and especially more than the other guy.
It is possible that Gov. Romney is a fake pro-lifer. It is also possible that he's not particularly persuaded in his heart of hearts, but will mostly govern in a way that promotes the cause of life and family, at least more than the exemplar of abortion, death and destruction of family, Obama.
It is definite, it is certain, that no one will govern in a worse way toward the questions of life and family than Obama.
“’So that means Obamao and Mitt-Witt are both out with Catholics then?’
“You’ll hear/read conflicting opinions, but in my humble opinion, yes.”
Your analysis is entirely wrong.
A Catholic may vote, in good conscience, for Mitt Romney, even if he merely believes that it is possible that Gov. Romney is at least moderately more pro-life and pro-family than Obama.
Someone who is possibly better on the issues of life and family is superior to someone who is definitely worse.
That said, for folks who don't want to vote for Gov. Romney because they still don't believe, that's a reasonable position. But it is far from the only legitimate Catholic position, and is perhaps the less rational position that Catholics should take.
sitetest
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