First it’s important to understand there is not any such thing as “the bishop’s position”. Whatever the Church teaching is, that is what any individual bishop’s (or priest’s) position SHOULD be. They are in alliance with and have allegiance to the Holy Father and their Faith is exactly the same as what is in the Catechism.
Also, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is not a governing body, it is not a teaching body, it has no authority over you OR OVER ANY PRIEST. Any statement put out by the bishops does not have the authority of the Magisterium. Each bishop only has jurisdiction in his own diocese. His charter is to Teach, Govern and Sanctify. Any document from the USCCB, including “Faithful Citizenship” is not an “official” Church document and has very little relevance to anything except for Catholic “progressives” and the media to twist the words to their own liking.
OK, so that said, the problem we have is bishops are human and some are almost saints, some are jerks, some are ignorant, and some are downright heretics or apostates. They all get together and try to form a document and it gets watered down my committees and ultimately only confuses the faithful.
The “good” bishops (Chaput, Burke, Bruskewitz, Finn, Vasa, etc) are currently a minority among all the bishops in the country. There are pro-Obama bishops, and they are in error. Many dioceses have been infiltrated with “progressives” who promote global warming over pro-life. This is not Catholic teaching, it is wrong. Frankly, there is corruption and deceit within the Church hierarchy and that’s why you feel you can’t get a clear answer.
Fortunately most of the bad bishops (Mahony, Neiderhauer, Brown) are inching toward retirement, and how they got there is a very complex story going back to Vatican II, John Paul, the nuncio, etc. Benedict and Sambi have eyes more wide open in appointing good guys for the up and coming slots.
To try to keep this short, suffice it to say YOUR understanding is correct. A Catholic cannot support a candidate who deliberately promotes an intrinsic evil, particularly abortion. There is no obfuscation or wiggle room, just lots of fancy rhetoric from CINO’s like “Voice of the Faithful” and other such groups.
Bishop (I forget name, Wilton or something, black guy) who is jumping up and down with glee and saying it’s great Obama was elected is out of line. Yet this humble priest, a lone voice, is right on target.
I heard a priest once say all good reforms in the Church have always come from laity and priests, NOT from bishops. By the time one is a bishop, it’s very easy to become more concerned with power, prestige, or even just “keeping things calm” than really teaching the (controversial) truth, and saving souls.
#9 What you said!
The 16 pages of single spaced, small type of the Bishop’s treatise on “Faithful Citizenship” that we were enjoined to read each week was off-putting, as well as confusing. I don’t know how they can equate global warming, illegal immigration, and abortion!
I suspect that most of the Bishop’s statement was unread by the people, although they had our best interests at heart. It would put the average person to sleep.
I applaud Fr. Newman’s forthright statement and wish that our Pastor would be so bold.
A Catholic cannot support a candidate who deliberately promotes an intrinsic evil, particularly abortion. There is no obfuscation or wiggle room, just lots of fancy rhetoric from CINO’s like “Voice of the Faithful” and other such groups.
Try this: Simply, if the other candidate promoted a worse intrinsic evil, then one could vote for a candidate who promoted an intrinsic evil.
At the other end of the spectrum, if one votes for a candidate BECAUSE he supports an intrinsic evil (and all the conditions about knowing what you are doing are met), one is fer shur committing mortal sin.
The muddy ground, again theoretically, is in the middle. The "arguments" FOR voting for Obama have pretended to maintain that defending the country against her enemies and treating with comparative mercy people who never signed on to the Geneva conventions and who violate them incessantly is somehow a worse intrinsic evil than killing gazillions of innocents.
Personally, I don't see how a person of unimpaired mental faculties could argue that.
I think the priest was correct, and his admonition was pastoral and courageous. I think the Monsignor overreacted badly, and his reproof was misdirected and, probably, not a really good example of the virtue of fortitude.