Cloudy
My mood has been murky today as I turn this article and its reaction in the Catholic blogosphere over in my mind. I am a political moderate but a registered Democrat as of this past spring, for the sake of voting in the 2008 presidential primary. Pro-life Democrats are rare now, and not particularly vocal.
I think sometimes that the faith isn’t particularly compatible with democracy, and the nature of our political system. I prefer when government stays out of my life, and I say that as a government employee.
The horse has, unfortunately, left the barn, and I don’t think that banning abortion wholesale would have much of an effect other than pushing women to illegal clinics. I oppose the expansion of available abortion and new government funding for it, but I think that the greater priority, given the current culture and political climate of America, is prayer and working to change the culture.
Yet some people tell me that so much as casting a vote for a Democrat is a grave sin.
A Good Person said,
September 28, 2007 at 3:48 am
You’re completely correct. Democracy, the very idealogical paragon that your blindly obedient and unthinking conservative kin so readily start wars for, is absolutely not compatible with Catholicism. Loyal Catholics threaten to drag the Republic into a long and destructive civil war. Papists must be eradicated or expelled in order to ensure that our national security remains intact.
Ignorant Redneck said,
October 22, 2007 at 6:09 pm
This is a late, late comment. But, I don’t think denieing communion to persons in manifest sin is about doing away with abortion. I think it’s about making them away that they are at risk in the spiritual sence, cooperating with grave evil.
It also has something to do with protecting the Blessed Sacrament from sacrilige. An unworth communion is termed sacraligious–it is sacralige to take communion under some circumstance.
Realistically, we are not going to get rid of abortion, legal abortion. The best we can do is convert those hearts we may to the understanding that it is murder. But, to do that, we need to underscore how much damage abortion, or advocating abortion, or even facilitating abortion by ones vote in a legeslative body does to ones relationship with Christ.
If I vote for a candidate who will support abortion, because I support his or her stand on another issue, that’s one thing. When that person then votes on a bill concerning abortion, we have another thing: the bill is much more specific.
And, I’m blessed that “A GoodPerson” calls for me to be eradicated–sez so in th Gosple.