Perhaps you say the two Parties are too similar to make any vote between them make a difference. Perhaps in other areas, this may or may not be so. But turn your eyes to those issues where you may have to answer on Judgment Day before the Great White Throne for your words and deeds. Christ will likely not question you about tax policy or stump speech gaffes.
Democratic Party Platform on Abortion (source http://www.issues2000.org/Celeb/Democratic_Party_Abortion.htm)
The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay. We oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.
The Republican Party Platform on Abortion (http://www.ontheissues.org/celeb/Republican_Party_Abortion.htm)
Faithful to the “self-evident” truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children. We oppose using public revenues to promote or perform abortion or fund organizations which perform or advocate it and will not fund or subsidize health care which includes abortion coverage.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church on Abortion (http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a5.htm)
2270 Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person – among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.
2271 Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law:
2272 Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life.
The Republican Party Platform on Same Sex Marriage (source: http://www.gop.com/)
The institution of marriage is the foundation of civil society. Its success as an institution will determine our success as a nation. It has been proven by both experience and endless social science studies that traditional marriage is best for children [… ]we believe that marriage, the union of one man and one woman must be upheld as the national standard
The Democrat Party Platform on Same Sex Marriage (source: http://www.ontheissues.org/Celeb/Democratic_Party_Civil_Rights.htm inexplicably yet unselfconsciously placed under the topic ‘Civil Rights’.)
We support marriage equality and support the movement to secure equal treatment under law for same-sex couples. We also support the freedom of churches and religious entities to decide how to administer marriage as a religious sacrament without government interference.
United States Council on Catholic Bishops on Same Sex Marriage (source http://old.usccb.org/laity/marriage/samesexstmt.shtml)
The Roman Catholic Church believes that marriage is a faithful, exclusive, and lifelong union between one man and one woman, joined as husband and wife in an intimate partnership of life and love. This union was established by God with its own proper laws. By reason of its very nature, therefore, marriage exists for the mutual love and support of the spouses and for the procreation and education of children. These two purposes, the unitive and the procreative, are equal and inseparable.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church on the Sacrament of Matrimony (http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p2s2c3a7.htm)
1601 The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.
My comment: Which stances of the two parties, Democrat or Republican are compatible with faithful Church teaching and natural reason, and which are directly opposed to faith and reason?
On the smaller issue of the two, please note that same sex marriage is a contradiction in terms as well as a contravention of the timeless truths taught by the Church.
Sexual union by definition means a mating or union of opposite sexes, and marriage by definition means a ritual or sign signifying or celebrating that union. Sodomy is not the mating act, and ergo a civil union of sodomites, no matter how great their erotic affection for each other, cannot logically be signified by a mating ritual. The attempt to do so robs the signifier of significance, that is, destroys marriage.
In the same way inflation destroys the value of currency while leaving the physical banknotes in your billfold intact, changing the definition of marriage to equate it to antimarriage destroys the meaning of your marriage certificate, while leaving only the physical piece of paper intact.
At that point, in the eyes of the law, the couple is no longer man and wife, merely two persons who cohabitate, bound by a contract severable at will by either party, who enjoy certain survivorship benefits and tax breaks.
Now, if this is what the Democrat party, in its gapingly profound shallowness, thinks all marriage is to begin with, then they adopt a seriously unchristian and anticatholic view of the sacrament.
When the Democrats ask in eye-popping astonishment and contempt in what way abolishing marriage harms marriage, they are not just being stupid and evil. They are being stupid and evil, of course, but there is a thin veneer of honest surprise behind their dumb question and their theatrical mock astonishment.
They actually do not get it. They are utterly worldly, utterly crass materialists. They are so crass, in fact, that they believe themselves to be more spiritual than the grasping Republicans, and more enlightened than the benighted Christians.
They do not see any spiritual or logical or rational or legal point to marriage. To them marriage is merely an emotional thing, a mechanism to sate an appetite.
They cannot see anything but the physical piece of paper and the physical attraction of the (in this case, disordered) sex drive. To them it is the piece of paper. Marriage is the social approval of the act of indulging the sexual appetite, and nothing more. It is for this reason they do not erupt into gales of laughter when they call marriage a ‘civil right.’ They actually think the sacrament is a civil right, and nothing more.
Why insist that the Department of Motor Vehicles give you a driver’s license for your bicycle? A bicycle has no motor and is not a motor vehicle. Why call giving driver’s licenses to bicyclists who cannot drive a civil right? For the same reason giving a mating license to two gays who cannot mate (at least, not with each other). It is a matter of prestige, of honor. They want reality to come into compliance to their sex drive, and not to have their sex drive come into compliance with reality, and, frankly, function as designed, and drive them toward the sex act and not away from it.
They cannot even see that the sex drive in this case is disordered, because they are blind to the concept of order, which requires some minimal sense of logical reasoning to comprehend, or minimal education.
The Democrats here are blind men deluded that they see clearly. Is it any wonder they fall into a ditch? Is it any wonder they are shocked and screaming and astonished and outraged and frustrated and frightened at all times?
The ditch is not just unexpected: to them it is impossible. What must it be like to be a person whose false-to-facts theories never, never, never work, but whose axioms is so constructed that he cannot question, nor, in a real sense, cannot ever be aware of, the theory guiding him?
So much for same sex marriage. As I say, it is a smaller issue, and not worthy of being dwelt upon further.
On the larger issue, speaking of abortion, pulling the lever for a Democrat candidate in the voting booth is the same as pulling the lever on the trapdoor of your own gallows. It is self-excommunication.
Saying that the living offspring of a human being is not a human being is a contradiction in terms. Species do not reproduce themselves as things not themselves. Geese do not lay acorns, but goose eggs. Oak trees do not drop goslings, but acorns. You can say a gosling in the egg is not a goose in the same was you can say an adolescent is not a man: biologically speaking, the statement is nonsense. Since nothing happens for no cause, nothing comes from nothing. Men do not come from nothing but from parents of their same species, nor is membership in the species Homo Sapiens something that is granted by change of location or change of dependency, nor of stage of development, nor granted by the mother, nor granted by the state.
Reality is what it is, and you don’t get a vote.
You cannot decree a baby not to be human any more than you can decree an oaktree to be a frog. All that happens is that your words become meaningless, and your thoughts, if you take such meaningless words seriously, become disconnected from reality.
There are no-pro-abortion Catholics for the same reason there are no pro-Satanist Catholics. Again, it is a logical contradiction in terms.
You must pick one or the other, and choose you this day whom ye will serve.
Or do you think the Lord welcomes into eternal life those unrepentant souls who visit death on innocent, unborn, unbaptized infants, or aid or applaud or abet or fund or fortify those who do, or call it a Constitutional right?
If you are one of those Catholics who says the teachings of the Church and the commands of Christ, His vicar and apostles, the patristic writings, the priests, and the findings of the Ecumenical Councils and Synods are not binding on your conscience, then you have adopted the primary defining stance of Protestantism, which says that in religious matters each man should do what seems good to himself in his own eyes.
That is a perfectly respectable mainstream theological opinion to hold. Heretical and erroneous, this opinion may be, it is not dishonorable nor illogical. But a Catholic may not hold such an opinion, not and honor to his vow to honor and obey all the Church founded by Christ teaches. To be a Protestant Catholic is a contradiction in terms.
I had to admit, as a fan of both your own and Mr. Mark Shea’s musings on the intersections of faith and politics, I had always wondered if there would ever come a day when the two of you disagreed; Mark tends to take much more the stance of “a pox on both your houses”, and generally dismisses the Republican stance on these issues as things they say to get votes but never do anything about for fear of losing other votes. He also faults the Republicans for committing grave evils of their own in many of the actions taken in the War on Terror, so he tends to argue either for voting third-party or independent candidates where possible or not voting at all if it isn’t — ironically, the only way to respond to a choice that seems to make no difference is to take a third option that also seems to make no difference.
(Reminds me of Kang & Kodos from The Simpsons: “That’s right — THROW YOUR VOTE AWAY! IT’S A TWO-PARTY SYSTEM!”)
Forgive me for sounding obsessive on this, but I have always been fascinated by trying to find the fulcrum between purity of principle and practical effectiveness, and issues like this always bring that to the forefront. I in no wise mean to pick any kind of fight and will take a “If I choose to comment on Mark’s stance it’ll be after reviewing his words, not yours” as a merited reproof.
Mark Shea and I disagree on two points.
First, I do not put much credence on the evidence, such as it is, which accuses the previous administration of using torture techniques to interrogate prisoners at Gitmo. Torture is an always shall be morally indefensible. It would be better that we lose the war, and our wives and children be killed, than that we should resort to such means. From what I read, and it was not a lot of reading, the techniques used at Gitmo crept as close as they could toward torture without actually passing over the line.
I am a lawyer, and I am wary of evidence that is offered as hearsay, with no indicia of reliability, coming from sources with a vested interest in lying. If indeed the Obama Administration, upon investigation, had proved, or even made a prima facea case for the war crimes of the Bush people, my skepticism would be much assuaged. But where are the convictions? Where even is the accusations, the indictments, the hearings? Did Chaney kill all the CIA men because they knew too much? Is there some occult Illuminati forcing the Obama Administration not to expose these crimes, even though it would be very much to their political advantage?
But I agree with him with all my heart that to vote for a politician advocating torture is to imperil your immortal soul, and your soul counts for more than your party winning an election.
Second, while Mitt Romney was my last choice among the contenders for Republican candidates, Mr Shea seems to have fallen hook, line and sinker for the class envy propaganda techniques ginned up by the Left, and seems (to judge by his more vehement mockery against the politician) to liken him to Rich Uncle Pennybags from the cover of the Monopoly game by Parker Brothers.
I am a newspaperman, and I am wise to their techniques, which mostly consist of what stories to tell and what to withhold, and what to emphasize. Perhaps naively, I pay more attention to what politicians say in their speeches, their words, and not to pay attention to inflections, emphasis, and other things the media can easily and artfully distort.
I would say that one can vote for the lesser of two evils if the lesser evil does not involve you in the mortal sin, that is, a candidate who advocates torture or advocates abortion.
But the two parties are not the same. The are not Kang and Kodos.
I do not think the Republican Party is grossly, openly, nakedly, evil, with an evil that grins like a vacant skull, so smugly delighted with their evil that they boast of it. The Democrat party is.
They were not always thus. I am old enough to remember hardline God-fearing Democrat union men, coal miners and farmers and staunch anti-communists who looked to Uncle Sam to keep Big Business from railroading them. In my lifetime, the Dems took a sharp turn toward the hard left, and became the atheist pervertarian antinomians Politically Correct Gnostics we know and love today, men psychologically incapable of repelling, or even acknowledging the existence of, the Jihad, men dying of terminal narcissism, and yearning to drag us down to degradation and hell with them.
The Republicans are greedy, stupid, treacherous, disunified, undisciplined and untrustworthy, and I do not expect their campaign promises to be kept except on issues where the base is and continues to be filled with a cold and persistent outrage.
Hence I do not expect abortion to be acted upon by Republican politicians. To abolish that, we must do it ourselves, from the grass roots up.
But I do expect Obamacare to be repealed, even if Romney himself likes many of the aspects of economically-idiotic idea of socialized medicine: too many people know we are broke, and too many people were paid off by Obama to shoehorn the deal through, and it STILL survived only by one vote in the Senate and one vote in the Supreme Court. Without the bribery and the strongarm tactics, why would the leadership of the AARP and the AMA voice public support for this monstrosity?
I agree with most of Mark’s POX ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES rhetoric. But given a choice between a drooling idiot and a grinning devil, I will take the idiot. King Log does not eat as many frogs as King Stork. The Idiot Party at least gets the concept of not getting something for nothing.
I do not support the Republicans to the hilt. I draw the line at those things the Church defines as everywhere and always evil. The Church condemns usury, the use of weapons of mass destruction to destroy cities and vast areas indiscriminately, and, except in rare cases, the death penalty. My Republican friends do not. I stand with the Church, because I trust her judgment better than my own. I have abandoned my libertarian stance that the state has no role whatsoever in feeding and clothing the poor. I now admit that whatever the minimum possible role for the state could play which is technically in keeping with the Church’s social teaching on the point may be admitted as a necessary evil among people grossly uncharitable, when the death count from starvation is very high. Since I regard state welfare as always counterproductive, this is simply an admission of faith from me that God can somehow make the money by miracle not be counterproductive if He so chooses.
And the Republicans and Democrats at the higher levels are in cahoots. They go to their swank parties with their expensive mistresses in Washington, and high-five each other. Their opposition to each other is a calculated pretense, like the posturing and boasting of World Wrestling Federation stars. Macho Man Randy Savage and Jesse the Body Ventura, believe it or not, do not have any personal dislike for each other. It is a show to gin up votes.
So, when Mark Shea says “it it the elite against the rest of us” I say “amen.” By and large, he is correct.
By and large. But. What we see here is like nothing I have ever seen.
If Mr Obama were only as wicked and depraved as Carter, or Wilson, I might indulge in Mark Sheaesque PLAGUE ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES rhetoric myself. But as it is, the race seems very close, and another four years of Obama will spell the end of the Republic. I am fully expecting a 50% unemployment rate by this time next year, a collapse of our military power, and public takeover of major media as “bailouts” akin to the takoever of GM.
I have never seen or even imagined a press corp so utterly and entirely and grossly and unashamedly devoted to lies, untruth, and propaganda. The Media are the enemy. Hollywood is the enemy. The Press is the enemy. The Dems would have no power if the Fourth Estate were not so uniformly and so vehemently backing the hard Left candidates. I can think of no worldly explanation for it. Honesty in reporting simply evaporated over the last twenty years. CNN is an arm of the DNC. They are a Pravda with no Stalin to force them to be Pravda. They are a Pravda trying to create a Stalin. The sheer shameless hatred of the truth or anything like it leaves me gobsmacked.
This is how nations die. Spain under Phillip once ruled an Empire larger than Rome’s. Ditto Britain under Victoria. Ditto Greece under Alexander the Great. These nations now are like disease-rattled hobos with holes in their boots drinking sterno because they cannot beg enough to buy rotgut. There but for the grace of God go we. And when we scorn and blaspheme God, will He not withdraw His grace?
I remind you that the period of time between the Battle of the Milvian bridge which vaulted Constantine to the purple and the withdrawal of the last legions of Rome from England, which plunged that civilization deeply into frontier barbarism, raids, the loss of road, law, letters, coin money, and other arts and institutions of civilization, was 71 years (I am counting from 312 to 383).
Civilizations collapse quickly.
The quickest way is to spend all the money and go broke, raise taxes, inflate the currency, discourage industry, and disband your army in the face of barbarian aggressors.
With the race so close, and the fate of the nation in precarious balance, I will prefer to err on the side of prudence rather than on the side of idealism, when it comes to cast a protest ballot.
I am also a citizen of the Commonwealth of Virginia, which is a swing state. Here, every vote counts.
Thanks very much for the extensive reply; I appreciate the time you take to respond to us commenters (we commenters?) about this stuff. I have great respect for both your writings and Mr. Shea’s, and disagreement among people I respect always leaves me a little disconcerted and discomfited; I appreciate your indulging my waffliness.
I suggest you read Rebecca Hamilton’s blog (“Public Catholic”). The evidence of Republican doubletalk and doublethink on the subject of abortion is cryingly obvious. They want the votes of anti-abortionists, but they don’t want to put an end to abortion. They want the Christian vote, but despise Christians. Look at the testimony from Harry R.Jackson Jr. – a Townhall.com regular and a staunch conservative as well as an ordained minster – which I quoted here: http://fpb.livejournal.com/217701.html . The obscene political murder of Rick Santorum showed once again that real Christians do as well in the Republican party as in the Democrat.
This is sadly obvious to me. I need no additional testimony to convince me of its truth.
But I suggest that there are enough Republicans who supported Santorum that the idea that our wing of the party might grow in influence is not preposterous; whereas the idea of an anti-abortion Democrat is preposterous, or, at least, as ironic as the evidence that some Jews and Homosexuals were members of the Nazi Party.
Between the party that openly despises the Constitution and all for which it stands, and the party that pays insincere lip service to the Constitution but is indifferent to it, the second party is the better bet, if for no other reason than the practical one that they prevent the easy and uninterrupted victory of the first party.
Moreover, the Obama administration’s shameless disregard for the conscience rights of Catholics, as shown in the HHS mandate, is an extremely ominous development. I never thought that I would see such an action in my own country. Every time I think that things can’t get any worse–they get worse. Enough.
By the way, I don’t expect a political party or any other human institution to be perfect, so I don’t get extremely upset when the Republican Party does not act precisely as I would wish, as long as it is not a matter of an intrinsic evil. The idea is never to give up moving in the right direction, even slowly. I note that socialists and communists never stop trying to move things in the leftward direction; I plan never to give up trying to move things in the pro-life and pro-family direction.
It is for this reason I plan to vote Republican this season. And then go to confession afterward.
It will help save the Republic.
To echo Ladyhobbit:
It is finished.
The sacred heart is pierced,
The temp veil is torn.
Heaven mingles with Earth,
The sacred pours over the profane.
The world is made anew.
And Who makes the world anew? Not men and their institutions. The poxers (among whom I have numbered at times) often expect too much from politicians. Short of the Second Coming we must often settle for the flawed, feeble, and foolish in our politicians if doing so at least keeps evil at bay.
One other thing, Catholic friends: as far as allies among the other faiths go, you’ll find none stronger than the Latter-day Saints. I think appreciation for Catholicism has grown immensely in our communities as we see how you have been a bulwark against the regression of morality.
Mitt Romney, by all the evidence, has been faithful to the teaching of the LDS faith, which are opposed to gay marriage and abortion. While he was constrained by the voice of the people in Massachusetts with regard to abortion, his personal views seem to have been sturdy. In fact, one of the hit pieces the Obama campaign brought out was Mitt’s counsel to a couple to try to keep a child rather than abort it. I don’t think Romney’s the weathervane he’s been painted as.
Romney was my last choice out of the primaries as well, and I’m not going to be thrilled if he wins. More than anything, most Mormons just want to be left alone to worship. And we don’t mind if you’re kind to our missionaries too.
I hate to confess that Harry Reid is also a Mormon, but Nancy Pelosi is a “Catholic”, so we’ve all got our bad apples.
I have nothing but admiration and love for the Mormons, especially ever since the PC thugs decided to target ya’ll. You can judge a man’s character by his enemies.
Our bishops will not excommunicate Pelosi or Biden, and the secular arm in America refuses to let us burn heretics at the stake for some reason. Can your prophets in Utah excommunicate Reid? Or exorcise him, or whatever you can do to bring some church discipline to bear?
On the point of so-called gay marriage, though, what about those rights and privileges conferred to married persons that, at least on their face, appear to be just civil matters? You rightly address marriage as an innately sacramental thing, above and beyond the power of the State, but that’s part of my point: my marriage has meaning regardless of the State’s recognition and further the State can not confer that same character to illicit marriages; it has no authority there. But that doesn’t prevent the divorced-and-remarried, for example, from having survivor rights and other legal recognition.
I do agree that the use of the term “marriage” is problematic, but what of those other civil perks that are, apparently, ancillary to State-recognized unions? Is it simply that giving any recognition of a presumably homoerotic relationship is tantamount to condoning the sin, and should not be tolerated?
I myself was convinced by an argument given by a homosexual who hates me that the civic magistrates should recognize some form of civic union to act as in inclination to deter further unchastity, and to deter violence between sexual rivals. If a homosexual contracts only to perform his unnatural acts with a man he loves, surely it is proper for the state to encourage him not to perform the act with many men?
I would favor a civil union which gives the legal but not the spiritual benefits of marriage. The mere fact that this has been rejected by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts and others shows as clear as it can be shown that the pro-perversion lobby do not want the legal benefits if they cannot get the spiritual benefits. They want the honor, that is, they want an inflation and thus a renunciation of that imponderable currency with which we pay or moral debts. They want their wickedness approved of, and for approval to be rendered meaningless.
So, yes, I think a faithful Catholic can arguably approve of civil unions provided it is not called marriage, in order to avert a graver evil. However, the Progressives when they object that they do not want to destroy marriage are lying like dogs: that is what they want and all that they want. Their actions, including the rejection of the offer of civil unions, prove this.
I am relieved to find I’m not actually in disagreement with you.
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Were marriage no more than a sentimental fashion accessory to lend the perfect romantic blend of poignancy and gravitas to an overwrought fit of disordered lust, then sure, gay marriage, why not? But it is no such thing. Marriage is also, in another theological vein, the earthly mirror image of the Covenant between Christ the Bridegroom and His Bride the Church, which is eternal and immutable. The Church will, for this reason if for no other, never yield on same sex “marriage”.
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