Posted on 09/17/2012 11:38:54 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 17, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - As the November general election approaches, America’s Catholic bishops have been walking a fine line as they strive to avoid appearances of partisanship while at the same time they wage a high-profile battle against the Obama administration over religious freedom.
Earlier this month, one of the leading lights in the U.S. episcopate insisted he “certainly” could not vote for Obama, while not specifically endorsing his Republic opponent Mitt Romney.
Asked whether a Catholic could vote for Obama in good faith, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia replied: “I can only speak in terms of my own personal views. I certainly can’t vote for somebody who’s either pro-choice or pro-abortion.”
In a wide-ranging interview with John Allen, Jr. of the National Catholic Reporter, published Friday, the archbishop drew a sharp distinction between a candidate’s “prudential judgments” about how we care for the poor, and his position on an intrinsic evil like abortion.
Responding to concerns over the budget proposed by Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, which some Catholic bishops and other critics had called immoral because it cut programs to the poor, the archbishop pointed out that people of good faith can legitimately disagree over the role of government in providing aid to the poor.
“Jesus tells us very clearly that if we don’t help the poor, we’re going to go to hell,” he insisted. “But Jesus didn’t say the government has to take care of them, or that we have to pay taxes to take care of them. Those are prudential judgments.”
“You can’t say that somebody’s not Christian because they want to limit taxation,” he continued. “To say that it’s somehow intrinsically evil like abortion doesn’t make any sense at all.”
The archbishop, while noting he is a registered independent, said he has “deep personal concerns about any party that supports changing the definition of marriage, supports abortion in all circumstances, wants to restrict the traditional understanding of religious freedom.”
Chaput also said the bishops’ Fortnight for Freedom campaign in the summer was a success in raising greater awareness among Catholics about the grave threat to religious freedom facing America.
“The history of the world demonstrates that if we aren’t always on guard about religious freedom, we’ll lose it. It happens everywhere, and it could happen in the United States,” he observed.
“I would never have thought, even ten years ago, that we would be dealing with it so quickly,” he added.
On the HHS mandate, Chaput said he “can’t imagine” the courts would not overturn it. “If we don’t win, I’ll be astonished, and I’ll be even more worried about the future of religious freedom in our country,” he said.
“Those who oppose us on the mandates are very insistent. I thought they would back down by now, but they haven’t,” he continued. “We have to fight as vigorously in opposing them as they are in imposing them. Who’s going to win? I don’t know. It will be whoever fights the hardest and wins the hearts and minds of the people.”
Virgil Goode. Prolife - supports traditional marriage.
Uh, ok.
Just an FYI, supporting Iran isn’t a prolife position, it’s a pro Israel death position.
Also, giving terrorists constitutional rights is not a prolife position...
:o)
I also question his seriousness. If he was for real, why didn’t he jump in the Republican primary? Too much work? Too hard?
Who are you voting for, sir?
Edit - pardon me Ma’am. Sorry. :)
Someone that’s on the ballot in all 50 states and actually has a chance odd winning mathematically. Romney isn’t even close to my first choice, but I don’t care, even if he’s a step above a cockroach, he’s better than Obama, and at least we have a chance of him appointing semi conservatives to the SC, but with Obama we have no chance of getting anything except Marxists appointed.
Good luck with that - I hope it works out for you. :)
I don’t mean to start a religious war, but I’ve often observed that if American Catholics voted their theology we wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with.
Lol! Well, I can safely say that I didn't start any religious war on this thread. It was already raging!
As conservative Protestants, now we have to do some work in our own circles to get our own houses in order.
Roman Catholics will excommunicate pro-abortion politicians. I think most local conservative Reformed and Lutheran churches would do the same. Perhaps we finally have the critical mass needed to get our synods and general assemblies to take a similar stance to that of the Roman Catholic Church, which on this point is correct.
Baptists, charismatics, and broad evangelicals have a different political tradition and often have different views of church government so I realize that step would be much harder for them, but I think Calvinists and Lutherans (at least in the Wisconsin Synod and Missouri Synod, and in the PCA, OPC, and maybe EPC) might be ready to take that step.
Official synodical and general assembly position papers opposing abortion mean very little if members are free to advocate baby-killing and sodomy without consequences. I think it's time for Calvinists take action to implement our teaching on church discipline being the third mark of the true church, and for Lutherans to take whatever action is consistent with their own theology to discipline open advocates of gross public sin.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.