Free Republic

The coming campaign season is shaping up to be as rough-and-tumble any in recent memory, and religious voters are once again at the center of the action. With Election Day less than three months away, Catholics of all political persuasions are working overtime to turn out the faith-based vote. On the Right, groups such as as Priests for Life and Catholic Answers are distributing voter’s guides that urge Catholics to support candidates who stand with the Church in its opposition to abortion, euthanasia, embryonic-stem-cell research, human cloning, and same-sex marriage — five moral issues that are, according to official Church...

When Democratic Party leaders "found God in the 2004 exit polls," as Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. likes to say, no one expected instant results. Many of the party's early efforts to attract religious voters, after all, were scattershot and not a little awkward. No one knew quite what the "faith staffer" ”a new breed of legislative aide” was supposed to do, and random-seeming insertions of Bible verses into floor speeches came off as Tourette's syndrome for Democrats. In the longer run, though, the new focus on forming relationships with religious communities and voters has been the right move...

Missouri Roman Catholics who attend Mass Sunday can expect to hear a homily against embryonic stem cell research and a statewide petition drive aimed at allowing Missourians to vote on a constitutional amendment to protect the research. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Friday that the Catholic church is using the first Sunday of Advent to launch a campaign aimed at keeping Catholics from signing the petition, and to teach them the Catholic view of the issue. The Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures, which includes business interests, universities and patient groups, announced the petition in October. Secretary of State Robin Carnahan...

N.J. politicians: Church is seeking too big a roleBy Tom TurcolInquirer Staff WriterRoman Catholic politicians in New Jersey, including one who left the church yesterday, are expressing anger at what they say is an attempt by church leaders to force them to decide between their government oaths and their religion.Elected officials said that escalating demands by the church hierarchy in New Jersey that Gov. McGreevey and others vote in accordance with Catholic doctrine on public issues runs counter to the principle of the separation of church and state.State Senate Majority Leader Bernard Kenny said he told his pastor yesterday...

ST. LOUIS (CNS) -- St. Louis Archbishop Raymond L. Burke will issue a pastoral letter following his comments in a radio interview that Catholics commit a mortal sin by knowingly voting for a candidate who advocates abortion. "It is a serious sin," Archbishop Burke told The St. Louis Review, newspaper of the St. Louis Archdiocese. He added that a person who voted that way could receive Communion only after a "true repentance" and obtaining absolution by going to confession. "It's not right to support candidates who are for abortion," he added. The archbishop was in Rome to receive the pallium...

After a brief flirtation with compassionate conservatism, Hillary Rodham Clinton has returned to her neo-Marxist ways. On April 19 Senator Clinton introduced the so-called Paycheck Fairness Act, a law that would pressure employers to fatten women’s paychecks, regardless of the number of hours worked or job qualifications. The former Soviet Union once tried to divorce job productivity from wages. Of course, that removed persons’ incentive for hard work, and economic mayhem was the result. But Hillary is a lawyer, not a historian. By interesting coincidence, Sen. Clinton’s bill was introduced the very same day that, half-way around the globe, Cardinal...

President Bush Files for Divorce with Catholic BaseCatholic Pro-Life Leader states: “President Bush’s implied support for the abortion-causing drug Plan B is completely inconsistent with his recent veto of the embryonic stem cell research funding bill”FRONT ROYAL, Va., Aug. 21 /Christian Newswire/ -- The Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, issued the following response to President George W. Bush’s statements today regarding his support for Andrew von Eschenbach and his recent decision to seek over-the-counter (OTC) status for the abortifacient drug Plan B. When asked by reporter Bill Sammon about the situation, Bush stated: “I believe that...

White Catholics will decide the upcoming US elections, according to William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former domestic policy adviser to President Clinton.Galston reviewed the past 50 years of religious and political trends and how they will help researchers predict future elections, which the US faces this November when all seats in the House of Representatives of the US Congress are open. Galston presented his research in a seminar hosted by The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life in May at Key West, Florida among journalists and research participants from publications like the New York...

A prominent anti-abortion Catholic legislator in New Hampshire on Feb. 17 sent a "confidential invitation for addressee only" to a 3 p.m. meeting with Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney March 17 at the Upham-Walker House in Concord, N.H.   Republican State Rep. Maureen C. Mooney said the meeting would be "private" and "closed to the press." She added Romney would answer questions from a "small group of conservatives."  W Mooney's invitation stressed that the meeting was not "an endorsement of any kind on my behalf or the N.H. GOP." Romney, a possible candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, lost ground with Catholic pro-lifers...

As you know, we are going to be voting in an election soon and we have to take our responsibility to vote seriously. It’s not just a right, but it’s a duty to be involved in selecting our representatives in politics because they make decisions that affect our entire lives, our very lives. They affect the common good. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church it says: "Service of the common good requires citizens to fulfill their roles in the life of the political community." This obviously includes voting, but voting is not a blind activity; it requires an informed...

Culture & Cosmos April 12, 2005 Volume 2, Number 36 Democratic Strategists Issue Memo on Loss of Catholics A memo authored by a prominent Democratic strategy organization calls the decline in support of white Catholics for Democrats "striking" and "a big part of the 2004 election story." One of the analysis' key findings is that Catholic voters are becoming more pro-life which the authors called "a factor in the recent losses and one of the blockages for Democrats, at least in the Midwest." The data also reveals that young Catholics are more pro-life than their parents and that bishops who...

It's Over! Did the Catholic Vote Really Count? by Valerie Schmalz Part 1 The 2004 election saw some of the most passionate involvement by Catholics, including clerics, in the political process in a number of years. But when all was said and done, was there a "Catholic vote,"—and did Catholics make any difference in the electoral outcome? Will Catholics who espouse the Church’s teaching, particularly on the primacy of the right to life and on the sanctity of marriage, have any impact on policy and lawmaking going forward? IgnatiusInsight.com asked a number of Catholic thinkers and political activists those...

October 1, 2004 To Christ’s Faithful of the Archdiocese of St. Louis: ‘On Our Civic Responsibility for the Common Good’ by Archbishop Raymond L. Burke Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, Introduction 1. In the summer of 1982, I spent two months in Bavaria for the study of the German language, as part of my graduate studies in Canon Law. I offered Mass daily in the parish church, and got to know and respect very much the layman who cared for the sacristy of the church. Often, we visited after Mass and discussed spiritual matters. 2. One day, the...

The Catholics for Bush website is now live! Click here to access the Catholic webpage: www.GeorgeWBush.com/CatholicsAs a Catholic Bush Volunteer, you know why the President has won the support of so many Catholic voters. Yet, there are still others who need to get the message. The new Catholics for Bush website is a tool for you to make sure our supporters turn out to vote and to convince undecided voters to cast their vote for the President.On the webpage, you can read how the President's agenda supports issues important to Catholics and view a side by side comparison of President Bush and Senator Kerry on...