Progressive Catholics side with President Barack Obama on artificial birth control and abortion, both anathema to the Church's moral teachings.
Conservative Catholics side with President Want-to-Be Donald Trump on immigration and want to exclude and marginalize immigrants in the most heinous of ways. Keep in mind that there are major encyclicals as authoritative as Humanae Vitae that spells out the Church's preferential option for the poor and how to approach other social moral issues.
Thus we seen that Catholics who are willing to dissent from the Catholic Church's moral teachings are all in the same boat, be they progressive or conservative--they are at worst, heterodox and at best cafeteria Catholics.
For my part and as an official representative of the Church, I uphold what every convert to the Catholic Church must profess, "I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims, to be revealed by God."
If you promote President Obama's ideology on sex, marriage, divorce, remarriage, artificial contraception and abortion, you are a Democrat who happens to have only a veneer of Catholicism because you reject what is in red above.
If you promote President Want-to-Be' Trump's ideology on immigration, race, and caring for the poor, you are a Republican or independent who happens to have only a veneer of Catholicism because you reject what is in red above.
In terms of trying to divide and conquer Catholics who lean progressive or conservative in politics there is no difference between the president and the want-to-be president. It has been a tried and successful tactic for coloring book catholics of any stripe.
20 comments:
Illegal immigration is against the LAW. Those who come here illegally should be arrested and deported. The Church should not support and aide law-breakers, scoff laws, and those who intend to undermine the nation and her laws.
The premise of your argument is false. The pope should be the first person to uphold with clarity, with unambiguous teaching and practice all that he Church teaches. When Pope Francis clearly gives the impression that it's okay for a Lutheran to go to communion, which is in contradiction to "everything the Church teaches" who is dividing the Church. When the pope calls up a woman living in adultery and tells her it okay to go to communion without amendment of life who is dividing the Church. The call was never denied by the Vatican and people were left in confusion. The one dividing the Church isn't conservative Catholics who have always believed and lived what the Church has always taught it's someone else. Mercy and charity and preaching the Gospel did not begin with Francis. The big elephant in the room is why do people who HATE everything the Catholic Church teaches love this man? It's because they don't really believe that Francis believes in the teachings of the Church. And how did they get that impression? They got it by Francis not speaking clearly and allowing his words and actions to be taken however anyone wants to take them. For instance no Catholc let alone a pope would ever imagine that Our Lady felt betrayed at the foot of the Cross. But Francis did. Confusion.
Civil law concerning immigration can and should be changed by an act of congress or an edict of the president. Lay Catholic politicians and others of good will should lobby for such changes to keep our immigration laws in line with official papal teachings as expressed in encyclicals and found in the CCC.
As for Communion to Protestants, in fact canon law states the following:
A Protestant may receive Holy Communion in the Catholic Church under the following guidelines:
1. The Protestant is unable to get to their own Church or there are special reasons for the request.
2. The Protestant believes what the Catholic Church believes about the Holy Eucharist.
3. And then finally and most importantly, the local bishop approves it--meaning the person seeking Holy Communion, the priest offering it has first received permission from the local bishop.
As the Bishop of Rome and the Universal Pastor of the Church Pope Francis may at his discretion expand this law or change it. We are Catholic and if you know that, you know that the Supreme Pontiff can legislate for the Church whether you like what he legislates or not.
Pope Benedict as Cardinal Ratzinger at the Funeral Mass for Pope St. John Paul II gave Holy Communion to the Protestant abbot of Tazie. The abbot was in a wheel chair and Cardinal Ratzinger clear knew that he was not Catholic.
CCC 2241 "The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin. Public authorities should see to it that the natural right is respected that places a guest under the protection of those who receive him."
"Critics complain that neither Church teaching nor church leaders differentiate between legal and illegal immigrants, except when highlighting that undocumented immigrants should be treated with dignity. The charge is partly inaccurate. The fact that nations have a right to regulate immigration demonstrates that Catholic teaching does not condone illegal immigration. However, the Church’s primary concern is for the dignity and life of the human person. The sacredness of human life and the dignity of the human person does not disappear when a person enters the country through improper channels. To put it another way, there is usually no need for church leaders and the Church’s teaching to distinguish between documented and undocumented persons because the fundamental principles that should guide our policies are universally applicable to everyone, documented and undocumented, and even native-born citizens." - North Dakota Catholic Conference, May 2006
But, the law has not changed. Since when should the Church advocate making what is illegal legal. The Church should support the laws of the nation, which forbid illegal immigration.
Santita should decree that clergy who vote for the Abortion Party (formerly known as the Democratic Party) are automatically excommunicated.
I've never heard President Obama comment about divorce. and besides, isn't that a state issue anyway? I mean, there isn't a state---red or blue---in this country that does not allow for divorce in some circumstances.
This may be a "pick your poison" year when it comes to electing the president. Kind of like being in Poland during World War 2: "Would you prefer Hitler or Stalin?"
Yes, but as Catholics we are opposed to divorce (although for pastoral reasons separation and legal divorced are allowed in untenable situation, but not remarriage if the marriage is lawful in the eyes of God).
I was speaking with my staff this morning in casual conversation and alluded to the fact that we might have Trump and Sanders as the candidates to which I said and others too said, I will not vote.
Of course, I have recourse to moving the Cape Breton and seeking Canadian citizenship as my father was for the first half of his life or I could move to Italy and claim by Italian citizenship by establishing residency there for three months.
I prefer sunny Italy of course!
Fr. McDonald, well scads of liberal "catholic" priests will betray Christ and his Church and vote for the abortion drooling Dems. Disgusting
YEs Father, but isn't governance in Italy pretty bad these days? Like politicians on the take, taxes that are not collected, and workers who do not show up for work? I like Greece but it is pretty hot there in the summer, as I can attest from visit last year to Athens and the Greek Isles. Of course you see a lot more "onion dome" churches (Greek Orthodox) than you do Catholic ones there.......
I guess though (even if church law permitted it), you could not run for president because you are not a natural-born citizen?
I am all for legal immigration and for making the legal immigration process efficient and supportive of people who share Judeo-Christian values. I am also for treating all mankind with dignity and respect and for protecting true refugees. I am also against open borders in the same way I would not let just anyone in my home regardless of their background and values.
I wonder what the Church was saying about immigration in 1683?
Steven
I must disagree Gene. Our nation has never been "a Catholic" nation. In fact, it has always had a sizable bloc of anti-Catholics and always seen Catholicism with suspicion - as indeed it could hardly be expected NOT to given that the majority of Americans until recent times have been Protestants.
All through this time, the Church has often sought to change immoral laws by advocating for their reversal. One cannot therefore licitly argue that the Church may not seek to change our immigration laws without somehow breaking the law or being immoral!
On the other hand, there is an ontological difference between intrinsic evil (like abortion or sodomy) and malum prohibitum (wrong because it's forbidden by an human authority) crime. Immigrating without a VISA is illegal but it's not strictly speaking an immoral act if one's intention is to save or support one's desperately poor family.
But the solution to the desperate poverty of Mexico and Latin America is not open borders! The solution cannot be the US subsidy of Mexico and Latin America via our welfare state. The true Catholic solution, the true act of solidarity would be to change the root cause of poverty in Mexico and Latin America which is in fact, socialism!
Mexico and Latin America are basket cases for two primary reasons: their government systems make the acquisition and defense of private property (especially real estate) extremely complicated if not impossible AND their government systems and customs are hostile to the rule of law where all citizens are treated equally under the law.
There is a "pay to play" mentality throughout the whole region which effectively taxes all peons and serfs at all levels of society with violence always threatened if they refuse to pay the 'mordita' (little bite).
Such a feudal system keeps people from thriving and creating wealth! It keeps them poor! As such the greatest evil to "social justice" is NOT Capitalism but its absence because capitalism as an economic system requires private property and rule of law.
This is why Detroit and every other city run by Democrats are mini-Mexicos! Pay to play forces businesses to pay protection money to bureaucrats and the countless hangers on from poverty pimps to 'community organizing shake down artists'. The unequal application of laws creates a systematic culture of corruption where the rules are bent or waived depending on how a person is positioned in the social and political hierarchy. Thus Hillary is free when countless others would have been in prison already for breaches of protocol handling top secret materials.
The Conservative frame of mind - even building a wall from sea to shining sea would be an improvement over the status quo.
Trump has been critical of the pope, saying he is political. Trump reminds me more of a secular third-party candidate nearly 25 years ago, Ross Perot, who focused mainly on economic issues. Trump is not a frequent churchgoer and he has made clumsy answers to answer about this faith, even saying he does not seek God's forgiveness. But with all his faults, he is probably more electable than Ted Crus, who is too southern and Bible-Beltish for large parts of the country (notice how Trump finished well ahead of Cruz in New Hampshire, one of the most secular states in the USA---really libertarian more than anything else, whether it is guns, abortion, gambling, etc.)
Well, Jusad, we mostly agree. The nation has never even been a Christian nation in terms of its founding...it is an Enlightenment Republic that started out de facto Christian. However, the immigration laws are not immoral, the church continues to support law breakers, perverts, and leftist causes, and if there was anywhere else for me to go theologically, I would be there.
Many of us are marooned in the Catholic Church, having come here fleeing a failed protestantism and who are now being treated to the spectacle of the Catholic Church following exactly in the footsteps of that failed experiment. I personally would attend SSPX
if I did not have to drive 100 miles to get to a Mass. The Catholic Church is split between her theology and Dogma, which I believe to be the truest embodiment of NT belief and historical Biblical theology, and her actual behavior and social action which are anything but consistent with her dogmatic teaching. This Pope is the final evidence that the Church is completely off the rails. I remain because I believe that the doctrines and dogma of the Church are strong enough to pull her out of this mess and that God will somehow rescue her from her own concupiscence and whoring after secular, humanistic Gods...if the Church wakes up to the judgement she is clearly under.
Gene your attitude toward the Catholic Church and her Magisterium and our current pope is thoroughly Protestant. You have not allowed the grace of God to convert your Calvinistic, Protestant heart.
There are two areas that you need to pray about. The first is God testing your Catholic Faith to see if there is any real commitment, lifetime commitment to the Church Jesus Christ founding and her living Magisterium despite the warts that accompany this Divine Institution made up of sinful members.
The second is the temptation of the devil himself to sow seeds of doubt in your mind and to make you an instrument of the same as it concerns our Holy Father.
These are serious issues and could well impinge upon your salvation.
Fr, I would not be Catholic if it were not a life-time commitment. My attitude may be protest-ant, but it is not protestant. Being critical of what is going on in the Church does not mean one is unfaithful. God may well be testing my Catholic faith, but He may also be testing THE Catholic faith.
There are no seeds of doubt in my mind regarding the Christian Faith. I am not saved by the Pope; he is not above criticism and there appears to be a huge consensus among believing Catholics that something is truly amiss with this man. Be reminded, the Catholic Church is a subset of the Christian Faith..that is both Biblically and theologically correct.
Gene, DEAD WRONG. THe whole truth of the Christian Faith resides within Catholicism. The other sects are mere subsets and do not possess the whole of the Faith. Post Vatican Disaster II training I presume?
The whole truth may reside in the Catholic Church...the whole truth of Christ in an imperfect Church. Only Christ is perfect and He established the Church. The Church has fallen into error on occasion and is currently embarked on a notable ride off the rails. Besides, the "while truth" may reside in the Catholic Church...unless God, in His judgement of her apostasy, chooses for it to reside elsewhere. As I have said before, the Holy Spirit is not trapped in the Roman Catholic Church.
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