Why is Bush getting the bishop's blessing?

Bergen Record ^ | 10.14.04 | Mary Ellen Schoonmaker

[Coleus]

Why is Bush getting the bishop's blessing?

Thursday, October 14, 2004

NEWARK'S ARCHBISHOP John Myers wrote an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal last month on why Catholics cannot in good conscience vote for a pro-choice candidate. It was titled "A Voter's Guide."

Myers wrote that abortion and research that destroys human embryos are evil and that no other issue outweighs that evil in this presidential race: not the death penalty, poverty, or the war in Iraq.

The archbishop did not name names, but his message is clear: Catholics can't vote for John Kerry. Since Catholics make up one-quarter of the voting population, Myers would hand the election on a silver platter to President Bush.

Another archbishop, Charles Chaput of Colorado, is even more blunt: Voting for a candidate who is pro-choice or supports embryonic stem cell research is a sin, and the voter must confess it before receiving communion.

These dire warnings are part of an attempt by both the Bush campaign and conservative bishops to deliver the Catholic vote for the 2004 Republican ticket. In other words, Bush is endorsed by God.

This is a hard pill for many Catholics to swallow. In any election, American voters do not like to be dictated to - and this is no ordinary race. How can it be reduced to one issue when so much is at stake?

Bush and Kerry have starkly different views on preemptive war, how to fight terrorism, reducing nuclear proliferation, preserving the environment and expanding health care. All of these issues have the potential to save or destroy a great many lives.

Yet Catholic Kerry supporters are being told they must put aside their opposition to Bush's policies, which many of them have reached on moral grounds, and vote for a man who they believe has done some rather immoral things: taken the nation to war on false pretenses and made the world less safe by recklessly concentrating his resources on Iraq instead of the war on terror.

Some Catholic voters would consider their positions on these issues "pro-life."

But Myers says in his article that it's a numbers game: What other issue can outweigh 1.3 million abortions in America each year? Sadly, other issues do rival those numbers. Millions have died in civil wars in Africa in recent years, and genocide is happening in the Sudan right now. Millions have died from AIDS, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, and millions continue to be infected around the world. Millions could die in a military showdown with North Korea, for instance, if nuclear weapons were used.

Bush is pro-life, although he said during his first campaign he would not try to overturn Roe vs. Wade. But this time around, if reelected, he would likely name one or two justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. Given that his favorites on the court are Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, it's certainly possible that a future court would have enough votes to ban abortion.

But so far, Bush has done little to significantly lower the abortion rate in the United States. In some places, abortions have likely increased due to unemployment. And the U.N. Population Fund estimates that Bush's repeated withholding of U.S. funds pledged for family planning programs has led to hundreds of thousands of abortions in poor countries.

The conservative bishops have the right to speak out, even organize voter drives, although in coming so close to campaigning for a particular candidate, they may be jeopardizing the church's tax-exempt status.

For the record, I am pro-life. I believe life begins at conception and therefore, abortion is wrong.

But I also believe most wars are wrong.

I believe it's wrong to stand by while half a continent needlessly suffers and dies from AIDS. It's wrong to allow people in this country to die of easily curable illness because they have no health insurance. It's wrong to condemn children to lifelong poverty and waste their minds by denying them even the most basic education. It's wrong to allow corporate greed and influence to take precedence over fairness and generosity in the workplace, in the environment and in how we care for the most vulnerable in our nation and the world.

All of these issues, and a host of others, are relevant in this pivotal, polarized election, which defies reduction to a simple referendum on abortion.

The church should be working to lower the abortion rate in this country. But telling people how they must vote, on condition of losing their souls, goes too far.

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Mary Ellen Schoonmaker is a Record editorial writer. Send comments to oped@northjersey.com, schoonmaker@northjersey.com

[applpie]

could it be becasue he has the courage and fortitude to stand up to Mr. Antichrist Kerry and his demonic minions?

[B Knotts]

The archbishop did not name names, but his message is clear: Catholics can't vote for John Kerry. Since Catholics make up one-quarter of the voting population, Myers would hand the election on a silver platter to President Bush.

No...it is Kerry who would hand the election to President Bush.

No one is stopping Kerry from accepting the teaching of the Church, and becoming pro-life.

[jwalsh07]

Equating pacifism resulting in genocide to the killing of the unborn is an argument bereft of morality and logic.

[Dominick]

But Myers says in his article that it's a numbers game: What other issue can outweigh 1.3 million abortions in America each year? Sadly, other issues do rival those numbers. Millions have died in civil wars in Africa in recent years, and genocide is happening in the Sudan right now. Millions have died from AIDS, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, and millions continue to be infected around the world. Millions could die in a military showdown with North Korea, for instance, if nuclear weapons were used.

None of which Kerry would do anything different than Bush, no wait I take that back. Kerry would skillfully negotiate over nothing while these atrocities take place.

IMHO, Bush isn't a shining star here either, there hasn't been much action in Sudan like there should have been. Bush is also not a 100% pro-life candidate, however, a pro-life vote for anyone BUT Bush is an effective Vote for Kerry.

I may also remind this boneheaded author that Clinton negotiated the paper-tiger agreement with the PRK, and they promptly added to the PRK national stock of toilet paper.

[airborne]

I think Kerry said it best-

"I'm a politician who just happens to be a Catholic."

[ArrogantBustard]

Looks like the author cannot, in good conscience, vote for either Pres. Bush or Sen. Kerry. She must find some other candidate to support. Or decline to vote.

[NewJerseyJoe]

The bishops aren't telling voters who to vote or not vote for. They're reminding adult Catholics of important things they should already know and which they already should be using to guide the moral decisions in their lives.

Of course, any "pro-life Bergen Record writer" has been indoctrinated enough by her employer to know what she is and isn't allowed to write. By trying to have it both ways, she fails miserably at both. She is the wrong writer in the wrong newspaper at the wrong time.

[NewJerseyJoe]

> Equating pacifism resulting in genocide to the killing of the unborn is an argument bereft of morality and logic.

Correct. It doesn't match Catholic teaching for centuries. Unfortunately, the Vatican has been playing a game of moral equivalency for the last few decades; the end result is that a lot of supposed Catholics really don't know what to think any more. You can blame the bishops (and yes, the pope) for their various confusing and ambivalent statements over the last 34 years.

[mabelkitty]

Wow!

[Askel5]

=== I believe life begins at conception


Anyone who believes this cannot possibly vote for Bush.

[Question_Assumptions]

One other thing that they should make clear is that a vote for Kerry isn't just a vote for Roe v. Wade, it's a vote for partial birth abortion and a vote against parental consent.

[Psycho_Bunny]

In other words, Bush is endorsed by God.

Typical liberal blarney reflecting shallow, wanna-be intellectualism.

[old and tired]

Editorials like this make my blood boil. I actually haven't read the whole thing - my blood pressure can't stand it.

[cpforlife.org]

PING

John Kerry-10/7/04 (Presidential Debate): “First of all, I cannot tell you how deeply I respect the belief about life and when it begins.

John Kerry-10/13/04 (Presidential Debate): “I will defend the right of Roe v. Wade.”

4/23/04: Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass speaks in support of baby murder aka abortion at national rally in Washington, D.C. Kerry is flanked by Kate Michelman, President of NARAL Pro-Choice America, left and Gloria Feldt, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, right. Feldt also lavishly praised Kerry at the Democratic National Convention.

Kerry on abortion-10/7/04: “You know, it's just not that simple.”

G.K. Chesterton: “Moral issues are always terribly complex, for someone without principles.”

Kerry on abortion-10/7/04 “But I can't take what is an article of faith for me and legislate it”

Being against killing unborn children-abortion is not “an article of faith”, it is being humane and civilized. It is a scientific fact not an “an article of faith” that human life begins at conception—not birth.

Birth is one day in the life of a person who is already nine months old.

Abortion is murder.

[Salvation]

A bump for Archbishop John Myers!

[Mr. Silverback]

The two defining pictures of Kerry are the one you've posted, and another AP photo of him at a fundraiser with Patty Osama Mama Murphy and Baghdad Jim McDermott, all three of them chummy as all get out and beaming from ear to ear.

[Lexinom]

I believe life begins at conception and therefore, abortion is wrong.

But I also believe most wars are wrong.

I believe it's wrong to stand by while half a continent needlessly suffers and dies from AIDS. It's wrong to allow people in this country to die of easily curable illness because they have no health insurance. It's wrong to condemn children to lifelong poverty and waste their minds by denying them even the most basic education. It's wrong to allow corporate greed and influence to take precedence over fairness and generosity in the workplace, in the environment and in how we care for the most vulnerable in our nation and the world.

You can actually make the case that war is wrong. You can launch a searing indictment against America for doing too little about the dreadful death and suffering in Africa. You can chastise her for her greed - which greed permeates almost every aspect of our lives to some degree.

You cannot, cannot, cannot, however, hold these positions with any consistency while looking the other way while the little lives least deserving of death are thoughtlessly snuffed out for no better reason than another person's whim.

You have to subscribe to what I call the "poof" theory: At some arbitrary point along in her development, POOF! the entity suddenly becomes human. That, my friends, is anathema not only to morality, our religious convictions, and science, but to common sense.

[Lexinom]

The two defining pictures of Kerry are the one you've posted, and another AP photo of him at a fundraiser with Patty Osama Mama Murphy and Baghdad Jim McDermott, all three of them chummy as all get out and beaming from ear to ear.

He left out the third of Washington's favorite sons and daughters, Maria Can't-vote-very-well.

[Mo1]

But I also believe most wars are wrong.

No one likes wars .. but sometimes one has to go to war to save peoples lives

Hitler murdered Millions of people .. and would have murder millions more if there was no war to stop him

Saddam murdered hundreds of thousands of people and would have murdered more if he had not been stopped