But should we be surprised with how Catholics vote? Aren’t they voting exactly how they’ve been taught to vote? There is only one message that has been delivered to the Catholics in the pews for a very long time, and that is the redistribution of wealth message.
The USCCB and their bishops are all about the second collection. They teach Catholics virtually nothing about what must be done to achieve eternal salvation. Consequently, we see out children and grandchildren enter into marriages that crumble at the first sign of discomfort––if they even bother to get married. A child or two is the limit, if that many; and what grandparent can say with a straight face that their grandchildren do not totally and completely embrace homosexuality. And the bishops say not a word.
That’s the belief system that these Catholic bishops have impressed on Catholics, and that is the belief system of the non-Catholics in this country as well. So who then could be surprised if Catholics vote exactly like the rest of the country.
With exceptions, of course, --- blessed exceptions.
Catholics vote like other Americans (at least 50% Obamunist) because Catholics think like other Americans. And it is because the teachers are not teaching.
And some people respond "Well then, I'm abandoning the Church." Really? The solution to the catastrophic abandonment of the Church, is to abandon the Church?
You have to exercise Catholic Truth wherever you are. How you teach your kids, get involved in RCIA or Youth Formation, or Adult religious ed, consult with your pastor and your DRE, take charge of the weekly bulletin or parish newsletter, do what you can, where you can.
A month ago I finished reading Sigrid Undset's biography of St. Catherine of Siena. She had no position in this world: she was not a Princess or Countess or Queen, not the daughter of a noble family or the wife of a prosperous tradesman, she was not the daughter, sister, or mother of knights or prelates, she was not an Abbess or a learned choir sister, she could read Latin (she read the Psalms) but could not write it, nor could she read or write her native Tuscan, wave after wave of epidemic disease wracked Tuscany and decimated her family, and she was in poor health for most of her short life (she died at 33.)
So the Lord made her a reformer of Popes and Emperors.
I mean, you give yourself to the Lord! And then you do what you can!
St. Francis of Assisi, pray for us.
St. Ignatius of Loyola, pray for us.
St. Catherine of Siena, reformer of the papacy, pray for us!