Politics and Catholicism

Anyone who would have known me for a significant amount of time and had a political conversation with me would have known that I dislike the Bush administration. I don't like Dubya's policies in the Iraq War (particularly attacking and killing enemy troops and civilians alike just because he was "afraid" they might do something to his "great country"). For this reason, I considered myself a democrat. The Republicans are just full of crap to even support this man.

For this reason also that I had a self-agreed conclusion that I should support any Democratic candidate to topple Bush over. I believed that men against his policies are of the more sensible kind. It turned out that the Democratic presidential bet is John Kerry.

In my mind, I supported Kerry. I thought that he has good policies and is intelliigent enough to oppose the Iraq war. Then one day, I was cleaning up my email when I saw a junk mail from NARAL Pro-choice America that proclaim their support for Kerry because his pro-abortion platform. I was aghast. I wouldn't have thought I would want a guy to "lead" a country. I shared this news to Gustavo a friend of mine. From him, I found out that Kerry himself is Catholic.

How can that be? How can a Catholic politician openly support the murder of babies? How can he, with the honor and grace of that title proclaim that such slaughter should be allowed and be made more accesible?

Votes, of course.

Of course, being Catholic in America (or USA, since "America" encompasses two continents) also means being in a minority. Yes, this is a land where it is legal to kill your baby if you don't think it is not human but it is considered double-murder if you kill a pregnant mother with the fetus in her. That means also that to be a liberal Cathpolic, you "have" to divert from the doctrines of your church.

Because of this also that several Bishops alsready declared they would deny communion to politicians who openly promotes sin. Some bishops have not and thi is brewing some scandal. Some people took this as the church's meddling with the politics. Those people, of course, are those that don't thoroughly understand Catholic beliefs.

Number one, The Catholic Church is a pro-life Church. That means that it hold up Human Life to a high esteem, be it you, me or that zygote inside a mother's womb.

Secondly, the clergy (the Pope, priests and bishops) have the DUTY to serve their flock. That means that, out of love, they should let members of their congregations to turn away from sin. I should note and stress on the fact that this is done out of LOVE, not politicking. It would be more porper for them to do so than to just sit there and watch people use the church as a prop for the set of their polical play.

Lastly, if someone commits a grave sin, that person loses communion with the church. support of abortion is such a sin. This loss of communion (or connection) means that he will be disqualified from receiving the sacraments and the sacrament of communion (the Eucharist - bread and wine: body and blood) is one of these. It signifies that people should turn away the sin and come back to the churche's embrace. The Church doesn't condemn anyone to hell but warns them of what could happen if they don't repent. Again, this is not done out of hatred or greed but out of love.

John Kerry knows very well that he can get renegade Catholic votes but the chances of him getting devout Catholic votes are close to nil. This is why he talked to the liberal Theodore Cardinal McCarrick to get more votes. This disgusts me to no end. How dare he use Catholicism to further his goals?!?!?

Now, I guess I would have no choice to either just be contented with Bush. At least, he is the lesser evil.

For more information:

http://discuss.agonist.org/yabbse/index.php?board=3;action=display;threadid=18632

http://daschlevthune.typepad.com/daschle_v_thune/2004/03/kerry_daschle_b.html

http://www.tldm.org/News6/BishopBurke.htm

http://www.fuckfrance.com/read.html?postid=625331&replies=3&page=1

http://www.catholicexchange.com/vm/index.asp?vm_id=50&art_id=22695