DC Cardinal McCarrick: Church Will Push for Immigration, Gun Safety

A U.S. cardinal said he expects Catholic Church leaders to intensify efforts on behalf of a new immigration law and gun control measures as congressional legislation on the issues move forward.

Many undocumented immigrants are “family people” who “came to make a contribution to American society,” Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, retired Catholic prelate of the nation’s capital, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” which airs this weekend.

The nation’s Catholic bishops will back up their endorsement of a path to legal status for such immigrants with more action once legislation is introduced, he added.

“I’m hoping that when we get a bill, you’ll see how active they’ll be,” McCarrick said.

While the Catholic Church hierarchy has clashed with President Barack Obama over abortion rights and his health-care law’s mandate for contraception coverage, the nation’s bishops are allied with him on his stance for an immigration overhaul and gun control legislation.

“We obviously are against these heavy-duty automatic weapons; their place is in war,” McCarrick said. At the legislative battle’s “flash point, I think we will find that the church is speaking out.”

McCarrick, 82, didn’t participate in the election of the new pope because of a church rule limiting voting to cardinals under 80 years of age. He was part of a related conclave of cardinals summoned to Rome for meetings on church issues.

As the U.S. Supreme Court considers a civil-rights case for same-sex marriage, McCarrick said he has “no problem” with civil unions for gay couples that confer the same rights as marriage under a different name.

“I certainly would prefer that” to “what I could call a marriage, in quotes,” McCarrick said.

And his replacement, Wuerl, is hardly any sort of improvement.

From Pope Leo XIII (1899): Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae (written to Cardinal Gibbons and the American Episcopate):

…
The underlying principle of these new opinions is that, in order to more easily attract those who differ from her, the Church should shape her teachings more in accord with the spirit of the age and relax some of her ancient severity and make some concessions to new opinions. Many think that these concessions should be made not only in regard to ways of living, but even in regard to doctrines which belong to the deposit of the faith. They contend that it would be opportune, in order to gain those who differ from us, to omit certain points of her teaching which are of lesser importance, and to tone down the meaning which the Church has always attached to them. It does not need many words, beloved son, to prove the falsity of these ideas if the nature and origin of the doctrine which the Church proposes are recalled to mind. The Vatican Council says concerning this point: "For the doctrine of faith which God has revealed has not been proposed, like a philosophical invention to be perfected by human ingenuity, but has been delivered as a divine deposit to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully kept and infallibly declared. Hence that meaning of the sacred dogmas is perpetually to be retained which our Holy Mother, the Church, has once declared, nor is that meaning ever to be departed from under the pretense or pretext of a deeper comprehension of them." -Constitutio de Fide Catholica, Chapter iv.
We cannot consider as altogether blameless the silence which purposely leads to the omission or neglect of some of the principles of Christian doctrine, for all the principles come from the same Author and Master, "the Only Begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father."-John i, I8. They are adapted to all times and all nations, as is clearly seen from the words of our Lord to His apostles: "Going, therefore, teach all nations; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you all days, even to the end of the world."-Matt. xxviii, 19. Concerning this point the Vatican Council says: "All those things are to be believed with divine and catholic faith which are contained in the Word of God, written or handed down, and which the Church, either by a solemn judgment or by her ordinary and universal magisterium, proposes for belief as having been divinely revealed."-Const. de fide, Chapter iii.
Let it be far from anyone's mind to suppress for any reason any doctrine that has been handed down. Such a policy would tend rather to separate Catholics from the Church than to bring in those who differ. There is nothing closer to our heart than to have those who are separated from the fold of Christ return to it, but in no other way than the way pointed out by Christ.

Seems to me that there are a whole lot of our shepherds who need to review the above document in its entirety.

RE :”Catholics are a swing group. You want their votes? You gotta work for ‘em. Rightly or wrongly.”

Swing? Catholic voters supported the free Birth control more than most. The only way you can claim different is define only those Catholics who opposed it as REAL Catholics and then its such a tiny % its irrelevant.

Hispanics are a great example. They didnt vote for Obama because they were mad they were getting free contraceptives.

With all the hundreds and hundreds of things in Obama-care, picking the absolutely most positive handout in it and deciding that's your issue to highlight oppose is just dumb, or just a wish to lose which may be the case.

When you form the triangle with 3 corners together : ‘anti-abortion-anti-birth control-anti-welfare spending’ its pretty much a death wish.

At some point actually stopping things you hate (like losing marriage to gays) from happening needs to take priority over making voters made at you.

Dear sickoflibs,

The fact is, Catholics no longer vote as a single bloc. No longer can Dems count on Catholics voting for them like blacks, Hispanics, Asians, or even Jews. No one has won as much as 60% of the Catholic vote in a long time.

Even if one candidate or the other wins 51%, 53% or even 54% of the Catholic vote, it means the other guy got 46% or more.

A demographic that might vote 11 to 9 in one direction in one election and 26 to 24 in the other direction in another election is a swing vote.

You can drill down with the Catholic vote and see that generally speaking, the more observant a Catholic is, the more likely he will vote Republican, and vice versa.

And of course, if you look at non-Hispanic white Catholics, they vote solidly, but not overwhelmingly Republican most years.

Among church-going non-Hispanic white Catholics, there are multiple demographics, as well. My non-Hispanic white Pennsylvania in-laws will vote Democrat almost by default. Except the more devout can be persuaded by a serious social conservative. Not by someone who “runs as a conservative.” But the more-liberal, less devout are pretty much lost causes to the Republicans. But they've all been going to the episcopagan church anyway for 20 years, so I'm not sure why they still call themselves Catholic, which they do. And they call themselves CHURCH-GOING, religiously-observant, DEVOUT Catholics! They just don't say to which church they're going, LOL.

The white guys in my Knights of Columbus Council all voted for Bush, twice. Many voted for Obama out of disgust for the last couple of years of Bush. Few voted for Obama the second time, but many either didn't vote or voted third party, out of disgust for the guy who “ran as a conservative.”

The black guys in my council voted for Obama twice. At least most of them. I actually know some black Republicans in my council. They don't like Obama. Go figure.

The folks in Maryland Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown's Knights of Columbus council are all lost causes. But they've got a Democrat Lt. Gov. who is a member of their council.

Most Knights in Maryland lean Republican, and many Catholics in more conservative parts of the state lean Republican. Most of the folks in my territorial parish vote Republican. But my territorial parish is largely coterminous with a polling precinct that went 60% for McCain.

Where folks live is a better predictor of how they vote than whether or not they're Catholic.

All this demonstrates that Catholics don't vote as a bloc. Ethnicity is a far better predictor of how a Catholic will vote than is religious affiliation.

There are other reasons to be careful about how one looks at the Catholic vote. For one thing, the polls we see that tell us how “Catholics” vote treat Catholics as if they were Protestants. They are not. Catholics have a different sociology than Protestants that distorts the results of these polls.

Catholics in Maryland are likely more Democrat than in many other states, but as well, Maryland is 30% black (the rest of the country is around 12% black), and Maryland Catholics are more non-white than in other states.

Anyway, I didn't say that the Republicans are ever going to get a large margin with Catholics. Then they wouldn't be swing voters anymore, would they? But Republicans are competitive with Catholics, and when they work for the Catholic vote, come close to obtaining a majority of the Catholic vote, or even actually obtain a majority.

But if you ignore Catholic voters, which Mr. McCain did, which Mr. Romney did, expect to get 45%, 46% of the Catholic vote, or maybe a little better, not 51% or more.

The sad thing is that Catholics, in a general sense, are like salt that has lost its flavor. We no longer vote, or often live distinctly as Catholics. Our ethnicity, our geography, our education, our level of wealth, all these things often trump our Catholicity. We have been assimilated.

Not entirely. There's still a little bit that distinguishes us as a group. We still vote and live a little differently than the rest of the country, as a group. But we have mostly lost the things that distinguish us from others. A black Catholic is a black person, first. A non-Hispanic white Catholic is a white person first. A Yankee Catholic is a Yankee first. A Hispanic Catholic is a Hispanic first.

So, we tend to mirror the overall vote more than we represent a distinct Catholic demographic.

As for the hierarchy (bishops and priests), most of them are part-time Catholics and full-time Democrats. But as you point out, lay Catholics stopped taking guidance from them a long time ago. Most Catholics use the social bleatings of the bishops like a drunk uses a lamp post - not for illumination but for support of the individual’s already-decided views on various issues.

sitetest

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