WP: Catholic Voters Given Leeway (by Vatican) on Abortion Rights Issue

[DeepModem Mom]

Catholic Voters Given Leeway on Abortion Rights Issue

By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 8, 2004; Page A06


Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's arbiter of doctrinal orthodoxy, has given Roman Catholic voters leeway under certain circumstances to vote for politicians who support abortion rights, U.S. Catholic officials said yesterday.

In keeping with Ratzinger's pronouncement, Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis last week clarified the remarks he made earlier this summer, when he said any Catholic who votes for a politician who supports abortion rights is committing a grave sin and must confess before receiving communion.

Burke now says that, in theory, there could be "proportionate reasons" that justify voting for someone who does not share the church's position against abortion -- though in practice, he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "it is difficult to imagine" what such reasons would be.

In other years, Ratzinger's intricately worded statement and U.S. bishops' efforts to parse it might have escaped general notice. But in this year's super-heated political climate, they could make a difference to some voters in the tight race between Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), a Catholic who favors abortion rights, and President Bush, a conservative Protestant who has signed legislation aimed at restricting abortions....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3534-2004Sep7.html

[saracat]

1. They don't want Bush either.

That will teach him to be late visiting the Pontiff!

[Hekate]

2. Did W really keep the Pope waiting?! What a boor...

...what an embarrassment.

Of course, W has the only real true pipeline to God's ear -- I think Talibornagains don't believe Catholics are real Christians.

Hekate

[bitchkitty]

15. Talibornagains! I love it!

My little town is overrun with them.

[KDLarsen]

29. Lmao! What a classic!

Once I read the word again, I suddently picked it up - thought it was some obscure fraction of Christianity.

Btw, have you guys heard about the Pope calling Dubya "the Anti-christ"?

[amber dog democrat]

3. The chickens are coming home to roost.

I just learned about the log cabn republicans and now this.
The world is more seure with out him.

[Maeve]

4. Ratzinger can be such an ass

Especially when he thinks people are all "one issue" voters in a multi-issue world. He has his ideas of how people think without, apparently, ever actually dealing with people who think that way...(see http://www.suntimes.com/output/greeley/cst-edt-greel03.html for another example of this)

As the 19th century English Cardinal Newman responded, when asked what he would do should his conscience and the Pope be in conflict--I'll vote my conscience, of course!

(edited to add--he's right about it being our choice, it's his justification and misunderstanding of political thinking I find absurd)

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

8. Come on now - the man has actually done the right thing

his political thinking is conservative church thinking - its always going to be absurd to us - but he did the right thing

[Maeve]

18. Agreed, but for the wrong reason

Or with the wrong reasoning, if you will--that's why I added my edit.

Even a blind pig can find an acorn now and then.

[Tyler Durden]

19. Pigs find acorns like they find truffles: scent.

But then maybe I'm splitting hares.

I mean hairs.

[Maeve]

20. Be careful--word games multiply like rabbits

Of course, some pigs can't find acorns in an oak forest, but that's neither hare nor thare.

[union_maid]

5. The RC church tries to be consistant

I'm not a Catholic, and some of their positions on life are hard to swallow, but they do put their money where their mouth is. Catholic Charities actually does a tremendous amount of charitable work for the destitute and pro-life is really pro-life, not anti-abortion. Bush is clearly not pro-life, just anti-abortion.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

7. Very well said

:thumbsup:

[leftchick]

12. as a Catholic I say bush* is "pro-fetus"...

Excellent post union_maid! I always say he is pro-fetus. Once it is born he could give a shit about the "life". All one needs to do is look at the literally THOUSANDS of lives he has killed ordestroyed through his policies.

[AngryOldDem]

31. "Pro-Birth" More Like It

Because once the kid is here, he's on his own -- especially as Bush and some "pro-life" groups are concerned.

[Hekate]

6. The Roman Church has always been more subtle than the likes of W

... could ever imagine.

They believe in the importance of a whole range of social justice issues dear to the heart of Jesus: feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, refraining from waging unjust wars.

In other words, abortion is important to the Church but they have not lost sight of their mission to the rest of suffering humanity.

In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq the Catholic bishops of the US were meeting in Washington DC on issues of their own, but they took time to publish a formal rebuke to the Bush administration for beating the war drums for made-up reasons.

I disagree with the Catholic church on many issues, but in this they are being true to their calling.

Hekate

[tanyev]

10. Gasp!

Surely they're not....nuanced. Or sensitive. The horror!

Seriously, I'm very glad to see him make this statement. I don't understand how people can vote one issue only.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

9. Ths is gret news. The church is acknowledging that this is a SECULAR natio

give people the choice - don't force them and you will open peoples' hearts, not foster resentment

[Annette]

14. As a Catholic,

I don't always agree with everything the church says, but I can tell you from my experience at our church, our priest is definitely not supporting the chimp boy. He constantly asks the parish to look at the broad picture and not just one issue. He often asks us to question whether Iraq was a just war.

[LibDemAlways]

22. Wish I could say the same.

Priest at my church wouldn't touch politics or the Iraq war -- too many country club types with too much money to contribute and big W 04 stickers on their Escalades. If Jesus showed up, the police would be summoned.

[truthspeaker]

11. Wow, isn't that big of them.

As if they have any authority over anyone at all.

[PA Democrat]

13. Richard Mellon Scaife's right wing rag on local bishop's political views:

The bishop, who was ordained and installed in March, wrote that any public official who says, "I can vote for abortion and still be a Catholic in good standing," is being intellectually condescending to every Catholic by making himself or herself the sole judge of what "Catholic" means.

That "intellectual sleight of hand" is demeaning to the intelligence of any informed Catholic, he said.

Democratic Sen. John Kerry, the first Catholic nominee since John F. Kennedy, says he's a practicing and believing Catholic who happens to hold positions contrary to the church's teachings. His support of abortion rights and civil unions for gay couples has irked church leaders.

President Bush, a Methodist, is seen as being more in line with Catholic teaching on those issues.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/search/s_246610.html

How about the "intellectual sleight of hand" of bible-thumping hypocrites who profess to be born again and then defy every single one of Christ's teachings regarding the poor, children, the elderly, the disabled?
:grr:

[booksenkatz]

16. Don't call him a Methodist

The grinning, kill-happy Fraud King horrifies my devout Methodist mother and her entire Methodist Women's Group. The Methodists won't have him. Maybe he can start his own church, like Henry VIII did.

[merh]

17. Ratzinger said this months ago, it is the dang U.S. leaders that

have finally decided to pay attention to it. I have been posting copies of Ratzinger memo on this for months. The pope distrusts * as much as we do.

[lumberingbear]

21. I just can't understand...

how people can let a religious organization tell them who they can vote for, who they can have sex with, who they can love!!!! :shrug:

[saracat]

23. Most Catholics don't and never have.

That is the problem.The American Church has been especially difficult.It never has fallen in line.Part of that is that most of our Catholic institutions of higher learning are Jesuit and they have always been the intellectual arm of the Church. Think Georgetown. Bill Clinton is a product of that intellectual training. Paul Begala is a professor.James Carville is a devout Catholic. This Cardinal just made a satement of the obvious.The Catholics were going to do it anyway.The only exception might be Catholic fundementalists and they probably form their own churches like Mel Gibson who thinks the Pope is too "liberal"!

[TexasBushwhacker]

24. Bush's "Christian" Blood Cult (Pope thinks Bush might be Anti-Christ)

http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen04222003.html

<snip>

"Bush's blood lust, his repeated commitment to Christian beliefs, and his constant references to "evil doers," in the eyes of many devout Catholic leaders, bear all the hallmarks of the one warned about in the Book of Revelations - the anti-Christ. People close to the Pope claim that amid these concerns, the Pontiff wishes he was younger and in better health to confront the possibility that Bush may represent the person prophesized in Revelations. John Paul II has always believed the world was on the precipice of the final confrontation between Good and Evil as foretold in the New Testament. Before he became Pope, Karol Cardinal Wojtyla said, "We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel." The Pope, who grew up facing the evils of Hitler and Stalin, knows evil when he sees it. Although we can all endlessly argue over the Pope's effectiveness in curtailing abuses within his Church, his accomplishments external to Catholicism are impressive."

<snip>

[Hekate]

33. Wow: "The Pope knows evil when he sees it"

I guess he still does. Goes to show he may be frail and nearly incomprehensible, but his instincts and mind are still working all right.

Thanks for posting that.

Hekate

[progressivebydesign]

25. I'm certain the war in Iraq had something to do with this..

.. the Pope is a learned man. He does not miss the subtleties, though he holds dear to the Church's teachings. Perhaps he weighed the deaths of the innocents in Bush's war. Perhaps the Church realized that they will alienate millions of Catholics, and drive them away from the Church. Or perhaps they're still miffed about Bush asking for church directories. It's a good decision on their part.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

26. Any way you look at it - the vatican don't like Bush. US Bishops, however

aren't as opposed

[AngryOldDem]

32. Bishops Grasping At Authority

It's not that they're necessarily Bush supporters, it's that they see this issue as a way to reestablish some sort of "authority" among the faithful. Instead of doing what they know should be done -- taking full responsibility for the depth and breadth of the sex scandal, admitting failure, tendering resignations and open legal investigations where need be, and giving the laity more of a substantial role in the governance of Church function -- they're looking to reexert their power in the old-fashioned way: By throwing their weight around, as if the average Catholic pays attention to such displays, much less be cowed into submission. It's a sad spectacle.

[saracat]

27. And the Church has historically,in the final analysis, always bee ,

a political institution. They are very much part of the world stage and the world doesn't like Bush!

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

28. Ain't it great that even ultra-conservative institutions hate the bastard?

Makes one feel proud to be a murkin!

[saracat]

30. Hey, Take it where we can get it! LOL!

[DuaneBidoux]

34. Yea' Catholics got a bit of a conflict...

A prez who loves babies unborn but bombs, impoverishes, and poisons the born ones.