Barack Obama will be elected the 44th President of the United States in November for several reasons, among them...

1) 80+% of Americans are unhappy with where we are today as a result of the Bush administration's incompetence, immorality, corruption, partisanship and arrogance.

2) A majority of Americans now realize that Bush's War is and only ever was solely about oil and "appeasing" Big Oil (with lots of goodies for the military-industrial complex thrown in.)

3) A majority of Americans now realize that, in 2000 and 2004, they voted against their own economic interests.

4) During the past 7+ years, the behavior of President Bush, the GOP and the Religious Right has made it abundently clear to many Americans that we need significant change in Washington D.C.

5) Many Americans are onto the hysterical lure of "wedge issues" like gay marriage and abortion and, this time, are consciously keeping their focus on the economy, America's departure from Iraq, health care, real national security, the environment, etc.

6) Barack Obama is an intelligent (what a relief that will be!), highly educated, charismatic, progressive and confident leader with broad appeal.

7) No amount of demonizing Senator Obama will deter his supporters. Just as with "wedge issues," the American people are onto swiftboating and Rove-isms. NOT THIS YEAR!

"Change,"
Interesting you mention "health care," which, for liberals, is always a code word for abortion and contraception.

Also, what is a "wedge" issue? What scares me the most about Obama is his ideological totalitarianism. And no truly educated person would support things that violate the Natural Law. Clinton and Bush have laid the groundwork for gutting the Bill of Rights, and now all Obama has to do is sign the Hate Speech Act.

On the other hand, there is one bright spot in all this: while Catholics are "trending" back to the Demonocratic Party, not all of them are abandoning the so-called "Wedge issues." Recently, pro-life Democrats won off-season elections in Missippi and Louisiana. Two weeks ago, a pro-life, Latin Mass attending Catholic won the Democratic nomination for US senate in SC.

Dear "CHANGE":

There is not one syllable in your post that evidences the slightest familiarity with the teaching of the Catholic Church, or the manner in which educated Catholics reason about political matters.

Which leads me to believe that you are either a run-of-the-mill lefty, trolling Catholic sites and posting Democratic Party boilerplate...

or else you are a very, very poorly catechized Catholic.

Abortion is homicide. Abortion is killing BABIES. You are never going to persuade a knowledgeable, serious Catholic that the goodies Obama is planning to hand out are more important than stopping the mass murder of babies in America.

That is why it is important that Catholics push for a third candidate instead of choosing between these two bad candidates. Catholics are a big segment in US society and if they can be educated and empowered to push for candidates that are truly pro-life, then America has a chance. We can't just simply talk, we have to walk the talk.
Go out and expose the anti-life policies of Obama (pro-Abortion) and the anti-life policies of McCain (pro-Iraq war). Push for the third candidate who is anti-abortion and anti-Iraq war. Do not let the internet trolls of the Democrats and the Republicans push you into choosing one of these two by the lame reasoning that they are the only viable candidates. If enough people can push for a good third candidate, that will be a strong message to America.

A person can be in favor of the Iraq war, and be in communion with the Catholic Church.

A person cannot be in favor of abortion, and be in communion with the Catholic Church.

This means that a Catholic is at liberty to vote for a candidate who supports the war in Iraq. This means that a Catholic is NOT at liberty to vote for a candidate who supports abortion.

A person who persists in representing his personal opposition to the war in Iraq as "Catholic teaching" is abusing the Church and misrepresenting what the Church teaches.

Change,

Here are some points in response - assuming you're not a hit-and-run troll and you're still reading this:

1) There are no "wedge issues" - this label is a way smug liberals (who by no means represent the majority of liberals) demean and belittle the beliefs and values of their fellow citizens. We take our beliefs as seriously as you take yours.

2) If any issue escapes the "wedge issue" label, it is abortion, which half the American public, give or take some percentage points, has oppposed the expansion of since RvW. It isn't the same as gay marriage, which was rushed onto the ballot to get people out to vote for W.

3) It is far more irrational for the Democratic Party to cater unwaveringly to the hysterical propaganda of radical feminism - a tiny, disproportionatley loud minority - than it is for Christian Americans to reject abortion as an affornt to human dignity.

4)Good Catholics will not sell their souls for economic benefits.

5) Good citizens will stop waiting for some governmental messiah to come along and fix everything and take local initiative. They will also, hopefully, reject the individualism and vulgar materialism of the right wing.

It looks like it is going to be a good day for comments on this post, so I am sorry I don't have more time to get in the discussion. I just have to make a few points....

JC: Health Care shouldn't and isn't code for abortion and contraception. There are roughly the same number of Americans who do not have access to basic Health Care as there are voting age Catholics. This does not even include the global poor. The Gospel calls us to care for the sick and in Matthew 25 it says we will go to Hell if we do not.

And it is also truly disgusting that so many of those who lack Health Care are children. McCain voted against Health Care for poor kids. That is a life issue...I know it isn't the only one, but health care for poor kids is a life issue.

Fr. Joseph: We must be clear that You can NOT vote for a candidate BECAUCSE they support war. As Catholics we stand for peace and the protection of life. Prudential judgement allows the Church to consider when a war is just. But we can not intentionally promote war through our voting.

And more broadly the teachings of the Church do NOT let us off the hook from considering issues that are more complex and in the area of prudential judgement when making our voting decisions.

Just as Archbishop Chaput has said that we must have a reason to give to the victims of abortion when we face them in Heaven, we must also have some kind of reason to give to kids who have died as a result of poverty and preventable disease, especially when we do not confront our culture of greed, excess, and materialism. We have to have a reason to give people who live in Iraq (and if John McCain is elected Iran) and to our soldiers, who died as a result of our waging war.

John McCain is a radical when it comes to the use of military force. Bombing Iran is not a Beach Boys song like he jokes. And he has even had an election year conversion to start supporting torture (which is also intrinsically evil).

What are you going to say to all of the other victims that you push aside...A kid that starves to death or dies of malaria, a woman who dies when a bomb drops on her house, a wrongly accused man who is tortured? Are you simply going to say "abortion."

As Catholics we are called to transform our political parties and hold accountable candidates to ALL the teachings of the Church and you reject our Saviour when you only are pushing on one issue.

And if you don't know the teachings of the Church, buy a copy of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church...and read the Gospels.

Dear BDK,

You say:
"we must also have some kind of reason to give to kids who have died as a result of poverty and preventable disease, especially when we do not confront our culture of greed, excess, and materialism."

If you claim to be Catholic then you have fallen into the trap of "everything is equal," the seamless garment excuse. Nothing, and I mean nothing, trumps abortion. If one candidate is for outright abortion and another candidate is not, then the choice is easy for a Catholic. At least it should be! May not like his stance on the other 99% but the fundamental right to life is the starting point. Everything else is connected to it.

From your quote you imply as if you are saying conservatives intentionally let people live in poverty and disease. That is a pretty big judgment to make considering how much social programs in this country have expanded, and keep expanding, over the years and the amount of tax payer money spent and still cannot get the job done. Up until the 20th Century it was the Church that built hospitals, orphanages, schools, etc. Disease and poverty was still present then without any government programs and or services. Or at least very little. Does this mean the Church is guilty of not ridding such horrible elements in society? Why do you think government is better suited to address what the Church is actually designed for? If you want to help individuals in this situation, donate to these outlets instead. Delivery of services is much better and more in line with the sociel component in Catholicism.

"As Catholics we are called to transform our political parties and hold accountable candidates to ALL the teachings of the Church and you reject our Saviour when you only are pushing on one issue."

You are so right in that we must hold each other accountable (Heb. 3: 13), but again, is starts with abortion. You mention "our Saviour" and what He wants us to do in this life. Read the Sermon on the Mount, which is the starting of his earthly ministry. After He explains to us through the beatitudes the template for life of a believer He immediate goes into the moral law- it starts with His stance against killing in the physical body as well as the spirit by having hate and anger.

Thanks
Paul

Nonsense. Utter nonsense.

I DO in fact support the war, and I oppose surrender. The war is one of my reasons for opposing Obama--in addition to the fact that he is for continued legal abortion and infanticide. I oppose Obama also because he wants to further socialize the health care sector of the economy, raise marginal tax rates back to Carter-era levels, reduce carbon emissions to "prevent" Global Warming (which isn't even happening), and spend umpteen hundreds of billions on "the poor" (i.e., middle-class, unionized, thuggish, parasitic, government employees).

Catholics, like all sane people, always hope for peace, but the Catholic Church does not teach pacifism. Pacifism is a heresy.

We certainly CAN "promote war through our voting," in situations where waging war is just, and surrender would be destructive of freedom and innocent life.

I suggest you start learning your Catholic doctrine from the Catechism of the Catholic Church and other reliable sources, such as Magisterial documents and sound Catholic philosophers and theologians. Your comments bear no resemblance to the teaching of the Catholic Church.

First of all, Deal, thank you for all your work on this subject.

This is where our bishops and priests must step forward and stop being afraid of their authority. There should be no ambiguity about the Church’s teaching on life issues, and Mass attending Catholics should hear, from the pulpit, that it is wrong to cast one’s vote for any candidate who stands in open and unashamed opposition to these Catholic moral teachings. This type of leadership from our clergy is necessary for the Church’s teachings to be truly understood.

Obama’s eloquent speeches should not be mistaken as a sign of superior intelligence. I’m surprised there are so many adults who are falling for the fluff, instead of waiting to hear some substance before making up their minds. Obama is as amoral on life issues as any major who has ever run for the Presidency. His hesitancy to even answer the question about when life begins should give any Catholic who takes his faith seriously reason to look at another candidate.

Fr. Joseph, you nailed it with your comments on the war and abortion. Thank you for your clarity.

Plain and simple, Obama preaches and supports “anti- Christ” teachings, which should be enough to have ALL Christians in America running to the polls to vote against him, even if the ideal candidate isn’t in the box below. Hats off to Dr. Dobson for having the guts to expose Obama’s “fruitcake” view of Christianity and the Sacred Scriptures.

I suspect many Catholics (being that catechesis is so poor), do not realize that unlike Protestants, Catholics do NOT interpret their own Scripture, at least to the extent “our understanding differs with the Magisterial Teachings” (Dei Verbum). It simply is not up for grabs, as Obama believes it to be.
Obama has clearly demonstrated that his Christianity is “inclusive”, meaning Christianity is NOT what Christ teaches, only what we “think” it is. Beware the wolf; Obama is one in designer clothing!

With a culture steeped in Oprah, (who is without question marching souls to hell with her new age teachings, knowingly or unknowingly), Obama is one of the same. This is dangerous new age/syncretism nicely packaged.

Even if Obama BELIEVED he could change hearts, all faithful Christians know only ONE person can change hearts and minds, and that is Jesus Christ. Consequently, Obama can dedicate his entire presidency to “changing hearts”, but without “CHRIST AS THE ONLY WAY,” IMO, Obama as president makes the Cuba Missile Crisis look like the White House Easter egg hunt.
Voters beware!

Klaire

That right wing rants such as Fr. Joseph's are completely out of step with the balanced positions of Catholic social teaching.

If we are supposed to vehemetly oppose "socialized health care" and taxes on corporations, and government attempts to repair the damage done to the environment (whether or not Global Warming is involved), how does one account for over a century's worth of Vatican support for Christian Democracy, which have supported these policies in Europe?

American-styled right-wing libertarian/conservatism may be able to squirm its way into an uneasy co-existence with Catholic social teaching, but it is FAR from the sort of system we have a moral duty to be striving for.

Since Fr. Joseph implores us to get our teaching right from the Catechism, lets do that. Here is what it says about taxes:

"Submission to authority and co-responsibility for the common good make it morally obligatory to pay taxes..." (2240)

As for healthcare and help for the poor, the Catechism says,

"Concern for the health of its citizens requires that society help in the attainment of living-conditions that allow them to grow and reach maturity: food and clothing, housing, health care, basic education, employment, and social assistance."(2288)

Until Americans, and especially Catholics, stop buying into extreme individualism, and start taking care of business at the community level, the state - through taxes and regulation - is the only institution that can provide for these needs.

Our choices are the community or the state. Individualism - the idea that individuals can be economically, politically and spiritually self-sufficient - is a myth, a stupid and dangerous one at that. Yet this is the myth people will buy into if the social and communal nature of man - which is explicitly and repeatedly recognized by the Church - is not clarified.

More from our Catechism:

"There exist also sinful inequalities that affect millions of men and women. These are in open contradiction of the Gospel:

Their equal dignity as persons demands that we strive for fairer and more humane conditions. Excessive economic and social disparity between individuals and peoples of the one human race is a source of scandal and militates against social justice, equity, human dignity, as well as social and international peace." (1938)

Ranting about "parasites", complaining about taxes, and relishing in a war that Pope John Paul II condemned in no uncertain terms - I think it's Fr. Joseph who needs to re-read the Catechism and stop insulting the intelligence of those who have read it. Maybe he should watch "The Mission" while he's at it.

Perhaps we would all be better off if we spend a day focusing on this prayer from the Catechism:

"Because of the evils and injustices that all war brings with it, we must do everything reasonably possible to avoid it. The Church prays: "From famine, pestilence, and war, O Lord, deliver us.'"

Joe H., none of the citations you give from the Catechism endorse any of your preferred policy choices. They may not contradict them, but they do not advocate them either. As Catholics, we have a serious obligation to be as well informed as possible and make the best judgments that we, with our fallible, limited intellects, can make. This is what I believe you have tried to do, but you must recognize that others who take their obligations just as seriously as you do, who are just as committed to Catholic social teaching as you are, who are just as concerned with making a more just society as you, who will, nevertheless arrive at very different conclusions.


Politics is alot like mediciine. Aristotle, still one of my favorite political teachers, loved medical analogies when he spoke of politics, and there's a good reason for this. We can all agree about what the goal of medical care is: health. But doctors can and do disagree passionately about what constitute good medical care. Their common goal may not lead to a common course of action. Sometimes there is one and only one effective treatment for a condition, but more often choosing a correct treatment means making a judgment about uncertain future events. What will happen if I give medicine X, versus, what will happen if a perform surgery X? While there are certain acts which a physician may never perform, regardless of future ramifications, e.g. abortion, most medical judgments are about choosing the best means to an end.

Our political knowledge is simlarly limited. We cannot know with infallible certaintly what the outcome of a certain tax policy or health care plan will be. We have to always be opened to new evidence, always ready to examine the real-life effects of our policy choices. We can't evade this responsibility by willy-nilly equating everyting with abortion and claiming that our personal preferences are Church teaching.

Given the limitations that every one of us shares in, you have to undertand that someone else may look out at the same set of facts that you do and conclude that the positions you advocate will leave the world more impovershed, more violent, more dangerous, more unequal, more unjust: in short a less fit place for human flourishing. Such a person would then, as a Catholic, have an obligation to work against the policies that you advocate.

Not anymore. Obama is in the pocket of the Abortion and Homosexual lobby, making him an unacceptable candidate. But Senator McCain will represent more of the same as far as policy is concerned. I can understand why Catholics are voting for Obama, even if they are wrong. I will be voting 3rd Party this November, and I would appeal to other Catholics to do the same. The Judges Issue is a joke, McCain knows full well no Pro-lifers will ever make it to the Bench even if he wins. McCain will be Mr. Compromise, and you all know it...the conservative base does too, which is why his reception is lukewarm and resigned. I grow tired of the same worn reasons to "vote for McCain." McCain will be painted as a flip flopper and a panderer to a conservative base who not too long ago he had open contempt for....and that would be accurate.

To Sum Up: A Case Against Barack Obama doesn't make a Case FOR John McCain.

Or how about this to meditate on from CCC:

"From its conception, the child has the right to life. Direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, is a 'criminal' practice (GS 27 § 3), gravely contrary to the moral law" (CCC 2322).

And:

"God, the Lord of life, has entrusted to men the noble mission of safeguarding life, and men must carry it out in a manner worthy of themselves. Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes 76" (CCC 2271).

Say what you want about the war in Iraq being a "crime", but there is a war going on in the U.S. that has taken millions of lives and all people want to say is "well, its a choice because the Supreme Court said so."

You cannot have a war without people and I do not say that in any joking manner. I dislike war too, but really, is this the line of reasoning for this presidential election.

As I read this post I am happy that I can click out to all the information I need to validate that what OBAMA said yesterday and did yesterday clearly proves that his PLATFORM will not bring our GOVERNMENT in a direction that will strengthen us as a NATION but rather compromise us further from our CORE VALUES out!!! I have yet to see or hear him convince me that he is for AMERICA.... he is for the Little guy..... but the little guy can't get to prosperity through more government assistance. The little guy or gal will get to prosperity educating themselves through the tremendous volumes of KNOWLEDGE available to us AMERICANS.... Government subsidized school systems, health care system, etc will never be EXCELLENT...... It takes the Private Individuals and Organizations passionately pursuiting Life, Liberty and HAPPINESS to drive EXCELLENCE into all aspects of our Society. Any PLAN that says GOVERNMENT is necessary in order for the poor to have a chance is a PLAN that tells poor people that they aren't capable on their own. THIS IS NOT TRUE..... OPRAH was Poor and black....... Did the Government make the difference in her JOURNEY.... I don't think so..... SHE worked her butt off and still does.... Now, Deal, I would like you to perhaps help me determine if MCCAIN - will give us more of the same BUSH.... that seems to be the one defining TAG that is doing him the most damage.......... and how about a piece on VP possibles for both Candidates. Will we have to wait until convention time to know the VPs? Thank you for what you do! I am going to email this to all of my friends and family!!

You failed to notice that nothing in the passages you cited contradicts anything I said.

First of all, I wrote against tax INCREASES, not the existence of taxes. Your citation from the Catechism is therefore irrelevant.

You will notice that the Catechism says that "society" should make sure that people have food, shelter, clothing, etc. You failed to notice that the passages you cite do not mention government, but "society." A Catholic can believe that the Federal Government should not spend a penny for such purposes, without contradicting the Catechism. The belief that the Federal Government should have anything to do with providing food, shelter, clothing, medical care, schools, and income redistribution--is all personal opinion. No Catholic is obliged to believe that the Federal Government, or any level of government, is the best means of achieving any of these ends.

"Extreme individualism" is a straw man. Not one word that I have written indicates that there should be no taxes, or that the poor should go hungry, the sick should be untended, etc. I also wrote not one word "relishing in" war. (I think you meant "reveling in.")

In 2004, Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote to the American bishops that a Catholic is not obliged to agree with the Pope's judgment about the war in Iraq, or the application of the death penalty--but that a Catholic IS obliged to oppose laws that permit abortion. Those who persist in asserting that Catholics are under an identical obligation to oppose the war and oppose abortion, or an identical obligation to oppose all application of the death penalty and oppose abortion, or--even more outrageously--argue that Catholics are under an equal obligation to favor socialized medicine and to oppose abortion, are abusing and misrepresenting the teaching of the Church. The Church is Jesus Christ. Anyone ought to tremble at the thought of going around making bogus claims that the Church teaches things it does not teach.

But we are talking on this board about VOTING. Since a Catholic is free to oppose virtually everything Obama wants to do as President--killing babies, socializing the economy even further, surrendering to the Jihad--there is NOTHING in Catholic teaching that exerts the slightest pressure on me, or ANY OTHER CATHOLIC, to vote for him.

Those who stubbornly insist that "Catholic social teaching" obliges Catholics to favor Federal spending on charity, or to be pacifists, are simply misrepresenting Catholic social teaching. Such arguments really serve only a political end--snookering poorly-catechized Catholics into voting for Obama and other pro-abortion candidates.

I can't wait for InsideCatholic to run a series on what "The Common Good" is. That would be a good first step.

As we argue in these 'pages' about policy, some (on both sides, unfortunately) seem to think that "Catholic Social Teaching" presents "THE" rigth way to translate the principles of CST into policy.

To promote the welfare of the poor (so that we don't "go to HELL") can be accomplished by means other than the social democratic/EU model. We are allowed to argue about which works best and how to implement what we finally decide on.

This means I can argue with Joe or "Change" or BDK or whomever that free-market policies and low taxes and expanded freedom-to-contract policies are the ABSOLUTE BEST WAY to help poor people in both the US and the world. And I can argue that the Nanny-State type policies of USCCB and the Holy Father, are not as good as these other methods. And I am still completely, entirely, and without ANY FREAKING DOUBT.. .well within the boundaries of CST.

Of course, those folks are welcome to argue with me. But as soon as they say that I'm "not in line with CST" I quit listening, because they are either too poorly catechized to have an intelligent discussion with about CST, or such zealous devotees of ideology as to not be worth having any discussion with about any topic.

I am not saying my policy preferences are right or better with absolute certainty - just that I can hold them without being labeled as "not catholic enough" or "out of step with CST" or whatever. And that whatever the USCCB says about salmon or guns or nuclear power should be given it's approprate weight, as described by Mr. Skojek.

So lay off the judgments, you know what Jesus says about that! (just a little joke about the most inappropriately quoted and misunderstood words of the Lord).

Now, I don't mean that as an ins

Wouldn't people who could think be nicer?

But we get, instead, this:


Yes, quite likely. Carter was elected, too. Sometimes, despite the best efforts of the best men, ignorance produces evil outcomes.


The only one of those that Obama doesn't show a greater propensity to, going in, than Bush did is "partisanship"; however, that is only because he doesn't verbally defend, and instead does his best to occlude, whatever philosophy has made him one of the two or three most far-left members of the Senate. Were his rhetoric about his stances as extreme as the stances themselves, he'd be the left-wing equivalent of Michael Savage.


It is astonishing how many people believe that, because there is oil in the Middle East, all Middle-Eastern wars are waged to capture oil fields. There is no logic to this belief, and all evidence is to the contrary.


Again, insanely ignorant cant. Ups and downs happen in economies no matter what, and economically favorable policies can usually alleviate, but not prevent, the downs. Which is exactly what the moderate and mostly-helpful Bush policies, when implemented, have done. McCain's economic proposals are mixed. Obama's are uniformly ruinous. If America votes in Obama, she votes to wear a barrel four years from now.


Actually I agree. We need most of the current GOP presence replaced with conservatives who're positively allergic to "pork"...who keep kosher, you might say. And then we need the left-most half of the Democrats replaced with, say, Randian libertarians. (That would remove Obama from the picture, incidentally.)


Possible, but sad. The first two are easily more important than all the others combined (assuming I can correctly guess your meaning for the Orwellian phrase "real national security"), and Obama's intent on all of those issues is badly misguided, and usually ignorant.

...continued next post...

for their measured and resonable responses, which stand in dramatic contrast to the villification and vituperation of some other comments made by ostensibly "holy" people.

But, let's return to the ultimate question here: can Catholics support Obama?

Nothing in Deal Hudson's review of his recent blogs gives me any more cause for or trepidation about voting for Obama. Yes, Obama supports abortion rights. But, and I have cited this passage quite often, the Catholic Bishops, including Bishop Chaput, have said clearly that such a policy stance cannot be the reason for which a Catholic votes for Obama or any other pro-choice candidate. But, that does not preclude Catholics from supporting those candidates, Obama included.

Francis implores the church hierarchy to start instructing people to vote a certain way, but that notion suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Catholic church's function is. It is not to instruct people to vote a certain way. That has been said time and again by Bishops and Popes.

So, how are we to decide how to vote? Through prudential judgment and an enlightened conscience, says the Catechism and the church, most appropriately for American Catholics thorugh the the full conference of US Bishops(see Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship). I, for example, have examined the full range of issues facing the country. Those issues include: abortion, war and foreign policy, poverty, health care, education, enviornmental policy, capital punishment, tax policy, housing policy and criminal justice policy. That is along list, but taken together, each of those facets represent a blueprint for how we want to construct and govern our society. How are we, as Catholics, to go about that society building and governing? To Catholics, it is important, and indeed morally paramount, to protect life at every stage. But it is also morally imperative to provide for the poor, care for the sick, work to end disparities in education, taxes, income, and other social strata. Our social calling, then, is to build a society without injustice and inequality. We are also called to prevent war at all cost and taught that only just wars, where diplomacy has failed and our own survival is at stake, should be fought. We are called, as well, to care for all of God's creation.

Where does that leave us with the two major party candidates (because a third party candidate is not a feasible option; while it may give one a personal sense of righteousness, it is nonetheless a de facto vote for one of the major parties. That is simply how the American political system works). Abortion is a disgusting tragedy of intrinsically evil proportions that we should all strive to end. But, the challenges of social, educational, financial and judicial inequalities are so stark today that I am compelled to support a candidate who has placed those issues in focus. I am also repulsed by the swiftness with which the current administration abandoned diplomacy and marched to war and the negative externalities that those policies have engendered around the world and, therefore, driven to support a candidate who has outlined a new, more just foreign policy. For those primary and, I believe, proportionate reasons, I support Barack Obama for President. If Deal Hudson thinks I'm wrong, that's his opinion. But, if he thinks I'm a bad Catholic, then he is wrong.

I just wish that Catholics planning to vote for Mr. Obama take at least one half of the effort they expend defending their vote for a pro-abortion candidate, and use that to defend those unable to defend themselves, unborn children.

...continued...


Truly, he is intelligent, in that brittle academic sense which Michael Crichton called "thintelligent."

He is highly educated, but no more so than G.W. Bush, which shows where that gets you. A wise Catholic once noted he'd sooner be governed by the first 100 names in the Boston telephone book than 100 members of the Harvard faculty.

He is charismatic, on the level of Bill Clinton: Dangerous in someone with such a faulty rudder on matters of morality and practicality...but a positive boon for a participant on American Idol.

He is progressive, in the sense that his ideas and policy approaches are a rehash of the Carter era, which in turn was a rehash of the Dewey era of progressivism. While it is ironic that something so retrograde and retrieved from history's dustbin should be labeled as progress, it's a correct labeling in so far as it's the same name that the racial eugenicists of the early 20th century used.

He is confident, in the sense that he's blissfully unaware of the narrowness of his own experience (a trait which he shares with G.W.Bush) and the utter lack of applicability to the office of that experience (something less true of Bush's bio).

He has broad appeal, because by voting for a black man despite his inexperience, his utter wrongness on most matters of policy, and his utter disconnectedness from the lives of most Americans, a lot of voters hope to do a penance for the racism of their grandparents. Having done that single historic act of Affirmative Action, they'll feel free to vote, next go 'round, by a candidate's competence and character, instead of by the color of his skin. Call it a "dream" of the average voter, if you will.


I've noticed no amount of rational discourse will, either. But Obama's not a demon. He's just a nice fellow whose skills make him wonderfully qualified to start a small business or serve on a city council, but who never-in-your-life would be a presidential candidate had he not shown up on the scene with the right skin color, at the right time.

Colin, of course I'm not gonna call you a "bad Catholic." In fact, I'm not going to call you any names at all.

Yes, I disagree with you. Yes, my disagreement is deeply held on my part. And yes, this is my opinion. All judgments are opinions ("doxa" as Plato called it), except those of the Church on matters such as the protection of unborn life. That's not merely an opinion, although I may use it as the foundation of my political judgment.

An "opinion" is not false because it is an "opinion." Nor is an "opinion" false per se, whether it is yours or mine. Opinions can be either true or false. I disagree with your opinion, not because it an opinion, but because I think it's wrong about the subject matter it describes, i.e., Obama's suitability, from a Catholic perspective, to be president of the United States.

Apologies to "Change":

The plain fact is that in my preceding two-part post, I cast aspersions (well, an aspersion) at your ability to think.

While some of the points you made were so baseless and divorced from reality as to make me grit my teeth, I should not, even in such a mood, have begun my post that way, and I should have softened my tone more throughout.

Joe H, and others, outdid me for sober discourse that time.

Sincerely,

R.C.

That's a very good idea. We'll do it. Thank you.

And for everyone else: We're always open to your article and point/counterpoint ideas, so keep them coming.

...how can you justify voting for Obama, given he is probably the most liberal candidate on Abortion we've ever had, and is in Planned Parenthood's pocket? The Holy See and the US Bishops Conference does not equate the Economy and Abortion...they are not of the same gravity. I find your attempt to equate prudential and non-negotiables to be offputting and a distortion of the intentions of the Bishop's Conference and the Holy See.

I am not saying you should vote Republican...I've said that repeatedly about the election in general. I understand Catholics voting for Obama, but I think the Holy Father would disagree with your reasoning, given the primacy Abortion, Euthanasia and Homosexual "marriage" have been given. Obama would allow all three....how is that keeping with Catholic teaching?

What a great discussion on this board. Pro-lifers win me on all counts. Their arguments are much more intelligent than the Obama supporters - they make no sense when they say they oppose the Iraq war and it's death toll and yet it's okay to allow the mass murder of "millions" of defenseless babies by their chosen candidate. I guess to them, infanticide of millions of innocents is okay so long as the government takes care of health care for the poor, pulls out of Iraq, spends billions on global warming (mixed science about this), etc, all good things in themselves BUT not a priority over saving the unborn. What a pile of baloney they put out! Please, Obama supporters, don't insult my intelligence by your phony "catholicism". You're real motive is to win the Catholic Vote.

David W.,

Thanks for your response.

I think you're mistaken to trivialize the list of policy choices we face, beyond abortion, to the economy. I listed a full array of ways in which I think Obama is the better candidate for Catholics. Namely, that he will fight social inequality across a number of different avenues: income, education, health care, housing, criminal justice and more. Those might seem like all the same issue, but they are many different issues and presidential elections have huge implications for those policy areas. In addition, it's not just about those 5 issue areas, it's also about foreign policy, which is itself a whole host of seperate issues that require thoughtful and dynamic policy solutions. I think on those many, many issues, Obama is the better candidate.

I admit, abortion will not be outlawed under Obama. But, will it be under McCain? McCain's appointments would be more conservative than Obama's, but that does not mean those justices would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade (especially if he does not require an abortion litmus test). Look at David Souter, appointed by George H. W. Bush. An ostensibly conservative and guaranteed vote against Roe v. Wade, he's now a reliable vote in favor of abortion rights. There's no guarantee on how a judge will rule once they ascend to the SC bench.

At the least, we can try to reduce abortions. Abortions have risen under George W. Bush; Obama has pledged to work to reduce them. In fact, the group, Democrats for Life, has proposed a 95% reduction in abortions. How will Obama reduce abortions? Through increased adoption efforts, better sex education and holding parents accountable.

So, Obama is not on a crusade to increase abortions. And, the charges of infanticide are hyperbolic, at best. That IL state bill was flawed, different from the federal version that passed (which Obama supported though he was not in the Senate at the time), and was designed not to address abortion but to divide voters and force bad votes.

Of course he won't "crusade to increase abortions", but his policy will entrench Abortion interests like Planned Parenthood. How is cementing Roe V. Wade any better than electing Compromise candidates? I know full well McCain won't be able to get Pro-life Jurists, but that is due to Democratic Obstruction, which Obama would support. I find GOP Foriegn Policy abhorrent, but that doesn't let Obama off the hook. What of Obama's stance towards homosexual "marriage"? You mentioned "Sex education"...how can a Catholic support pushing contraception in schools? Which is exactly what such a program would entail. You've made a case Against John McCain from a Catholic Perspective...but you haven't made a case FOR Obama that would satisfy Church teaching. On most of the big social issues, his policies would be anathema to Church teaching.

Colin:

While I disagree with your views, I must compliment your calmness in presenting them (better than I did for my own, in fact, a little while ago). Thanks.

Now, to me, health care, the economy, the environment, foreign policy, et cetera, are all among reasons I won't vote for Obama. I think his policies are laughable in most of these areas, likely to cause harm in many, and likely to create improvement in none.

You and I are separated by a wide chasm on those topics. But we are separated by a shorter distance on the topic of abortion, so I think that discussion will be far more fruitful.

You say:

This argument seemingly presupposes that this is the last presidential election in history, and our last opportunity to influence the balance of the court. But if there are two vacancies in the next four years, Obama's nominations (sure to be confirmed by a friendly Senate) are likely to be a Ginsberg and a Ginsberg. McCain's are likely to be a Kennedy and a Kennedy. Now, myself, I'd want a Thomas and a Thomas. In fact, I'd like a SCOTUS consisting of Thomas, Scalia, Alito, Roberts, Thomas, Thomas, Thomas, Thomas, and Ponnuru.

But my point is that Obama's nominations would delay the possibility of a court reversal of Roe by at least two conservative administrations at best, whereas McCain's would delay it until the next conservative administration at worst. So, in the first case we're talking about 12-16 years minimum; in the latter, 4-8. And how many babies are killed annually, again?


Well, look at history. Apparently there is a guarantee: If a justice is thought to be conservative, he will either be conservative, moderate, or liberal on SCOTUS. But if he is thought to be "progressive," he will consistently be "progressive."

So, we are balancing the certainty of an evil against, not the certainty of a good, but only the possibility of a good. I think the moral arithmetic is not too difficult, in that scenario.


Well, yes. But it's impossible to honestly believe that any policy of George W. Bush caused the increase in abortions. A president cannot unilaterally increase them or decrease them, unless you think his speeches about the "Culture of Life" caused the increase! For all else, he must rely on Congressional legislation or the eventual outcome of his Supreme Court nominations.

...continued...

Still responding...


Obama could have, with equal effort, pledged a bright orange lollipop for every child. Without a plan to implement it which can plausibly succeed, this item is meaningless except as an indicator of his willingness to deceive those who are prone to wishful thinking.

Similarly, "Democrats for Life" can "propose" a 95% reduction in abortions. But since that statistic, or anything like it, won't happen without making abortions not only illegal, but a federal criminal offense for doctor and mother alike, the "proposal" is an eyewash and a smokescreen. Unless outlawing abortion has become a central plank of the Democratic Party, that is.

On a related note, "better sex education" will have no effect, and what does "holding parents accountable" even mean? Financial penalties for abortion, perhaps?

No. There is no way that Obama can credibly be painted as preferable on the abortion issue to even, say, Rudi Giuliani, let alone any other Republican.

I am compelled to conclude that, unless one argues that Obama's position on abortion is sufficiently counterbalanced by his positions on all other issues, one cannot be an obedient Catholic and vote for him. And while the Church has not made that line of argument impossible, the Church's stance on the relative importance of the abortion issue has made it extremely difficult to justify.

Respectfully,

R.C.

I'm not sure how you, as a Catholic, could be against Barack OBama's progressive tax policies, his emphasis on supporting working families and workers rights, his universal health care plan, or his green policies. But, you didn't really flesh those out, so I can't really criticize those points.

Onto your last point: "But it's impossible to honestly believe that any policy of George W. Bush caused the increase in abortions." Sure, that might be impossible to believe. But, did he try to reduce them? No. Obama has said he would. And, yes, that includes sex education about contraception. That's a common sense policy which will reduce unwanted pregancies, pure and simple. Catholic doctrine prohibits the use of contraception for Catholics, but we certainly do not want to discourage the use of contraception for non-Catholics, especially when it would help reduce unwanted pregnancies and, therefore, abortions.

I'm just coming at this from a common sense, realistic point of view, much like Obama is.

"I am compelled to conclude that, unless one argues that Obama's position on abortion is sufficiently counterbalanced by his positions on all other issues, one cannot be an obedient Catholic and vote for him."

That's exactly the argument I made. The full weight of his policy proposals on poverty, education, health care, taxes, housing, the environment, the war, and diplomacy are what compels me to support him. Then, there is the abortion issue, on which he's not the devil that some have argued.

Now, if you want to have a debate about why Obama's proposals on poverty, education, health care, taxes, housing, the environment, the war, and diplomacy are more Catholic than McCain's, I am happy to have that debate.

Colin states:

"How will Obama reduce abortions?" Through increased adoption efforts, better sex education holding parents accountable".

Come on Colin, first there has to be "live" babies to adopt. If Obama is elected, he will make sure they're won't be many "live" babies around. What baloney! Your point of view is so shallow!

"Come on Colin, first there has to be "live" babies to adopt. If Obama is elected, he will make sure they're won't be many "live" babies around."

This is the kind of mendacious, absurd hyperbole that I think we could all do without. Obama will make sure there won't be many "live" babies around? What does that mean, that he will be encouraging abortions?

Can't we avoid this kind of ridiculous argument and discuss things reasonably?

R.C., no offense taken. As a retiree, I have the luxury of time to read a couple dozen articles a day in various conservative, liberal and religious publications covering a wide range of election issues. I've been very engrossed in all this, especially since January. So, I'm personally very comfortable with the degree and depth of thought I've devoted to my decision to support Senator Obama.

By virtue of the limitations of the human condition, all of us, regardless of educational level and training, are essentially stuck in subjectivity. I've known many rational people in my 58 years, but never one who was truly objective. Permit me to warmly embrace my subjectivity over yours.

I remain grateful that I live in a country where we can even forcefully disagree with one another and with our government. I think my vote for Senator Obama will help to preserve our freedom of expression.

Best regards,
CHANGE

Irregardless of Humanae Vitae? That's total nonsense, Colin.


You say he isn't "the devil people say he is" on Abortion, and yet you offer no evidence to support that contention. Is he against Partial Birth Abortion? Cloning of Embryos? Federal Funding for Abortions through Planned Parenthood? Upholding the ban on Foreign Aid supporting Abortion?

Why is it, throughout InsideCatholic, that every time a thread of responses gets pretty long, there are multiple comment-boxes...one in the middle of the page, and one at the bottom?

Change, I, too, am 58 years of age, and I,too, have noticed the problems of subjectivity over the years. I agree that absolute objectivity cannot be found in the human mind, and it belongs to God alone to know the truth because He is the truth. You're right to say that, at the end of the day, we must choose between judgments that arise out of our subjectivity -- it's a necessity of the human condition. However, being subjective doesn't necessarily make someone wrong, it just means their judgment is human rather than divine, and human judgment can be measured by the object it attempts to grasp. The question becomes, how do we know which subjective judgment to prefer over another? For me, when it comes to judging Sen. Obama, the fact that he supports abortion, partial-birth abortion, infanticide tells me something, objectively, about his values, about his worldview, that I cannot support in a presidential candidate. As regards prudential matters, I don't agree with him either, and don't think they comport with Catholic Social teaching any better than McCain's. In fact, I will try to write a follow-up article explaining my preference for McCain over Obama on prudential matters such as health care, poverty, minimum wage, etc. If we want to have it out on the basis of prudential matters then I'm up that debate as well.

David W.,

What percent of Catholics do you think use contraception in the US? My guess would be over 50%. Can we expect to hold the rest of the country to a standard to which not all Catholics hold themselves?

If we want to reduce unwanted pregnancies, we've got to approach the issue from a common sense perspective. People that aren't ready to have children have unprotected sex: Catholics, protestants, atheists, jews, muslims, all across the US. Some of those unwanted pregnancies end in abortions, some do not. Even if we want to outlaw abortion, we also still want to reduce abortions if we can. This is a way we can accomplish that.

What's nonsensical about that, David?

Thank you, sir: Well-stated and gracious of you.

I still think some of your notions (your economics in general, that the Iraq invasion was "for oil", the idea that a "wedge" issue is necessarily unimportant) are crazy-talk.

But William F. Buckley could befriend Kenneth Galbraith, whilst trading policy barbs. Sounds like a healthy model to me.

Obama, like Kerry, Gore, and Clinton before him, PROMISES to appoint ONLY judges who will uphold Roe v. Wade.

I.e., he promises to do all he can to make sure the Supreme Court keeps abortion "legal."

AND he promises to sign the Freedom of Choice Act--which would force Catholic hospitals to do abortions or close, just as Massachusetts forced Catholic Charities to place children with gay couples, or shut down--which they did. AND he promises to take over Health Care--another means by which a pro-abortion Federal Leviathan will have enormous new power to stamp out authentically Catholic health care providers. AND he promises to fund abortion domestically and abroad.

But would all this be "encouraging" abortions? Of course not! Outlandish! Preposterous! Such a smear! Will these anti-Obama mudslingers stop at NOTHING?

In reply to Colin -

With regard to your point that Obama would "try" to reduce abortions I'm a little puzzled about! You haven't given a good explanation as to how that might happen! Lets see, would that be through funded abortions, stem cell research on embryos, contraceptives freely handed out in our schools, foreign aid to fund abortions overseas. Hmm, I just don't get that line of thinking. How would the adoption thing work. Please enlighten me!

I don't think the last statment you made (besides your sarcastic ending) is not backed up by the facts, Fr. Joseph. Where does Obama promise "to fund abortion domestically and abroad"? Where can I find evidence of that?

I don't think there is any.

Google: "Mexico City Policy"

As a Catholic, one cannot discard Catholic beliefs when convenient. This applies to all issues. The fact that many Catholics ignore the Church is irrelevant...what Rome teaches, is. Saying that "oh they're heterodox or Cafeteria Catholics means I can be too" is ignorant.

You still haven't made the case FOR Obama from a Catholic perspective, or answered in regards to Planned Parenthood, the Mexico City policy, Parental Consent, et al..

all those specific economic policies (which are NOT requirements of Justice) you prefer don't really "weigh" against abortion - opposition to which IS required by Justice.

McCain can say that minimum wages are silly, universal health insurance is unnecessary, and that the government should "do nothing" about global warming (er, cooling... whatever it is this week) and STILL be completely within the realm of policies acceptable via Catholic Social Teaching. You see, he does have policies aimed at helping the poor, etc. - just not the ones YOU like.

However, Mexico City, FOCA, etc. are policies ACTUALLY CONTRARY to dogmatic CST and crimes against humanity.

But you know, whatever... I'm sure that in Bishop Chaput's scenario of confronting the millions of aborted humans on judgment day, saying "but you know, health insurance? Minimum wages?" will carry the day.

I know what the Mexico City Policy is, the Hyde ammendement, etc. I'm asking for proof that Obama has said he would repeal them. Does it exist? I haven't seen it.

I have indeed made my case for Obama, on Catholic principles alone, in fact. See my earlier posts.

I have a question....if we know by a preponderance of the evidence or even beyond a reasonable doubt that raising the minimum wage will prevent more abortions than passing a legal ban on partial-birth abortion and we can only select one of those, as Catholics which are we required to do?

Colin:


Well, that's a lot to talk about; mind if I start with one item?

I oppose Obama's economic policies because his policies will "narrow the gap between rich and poor" by harming both. The rich will be harmed more, if you measure in dollars; that's why the "gap will narrow." But the poor are harmed nonetheless, and of the two groups, only the rich can afford the harm. (Through tax-planning and deferred activity, they can mostly avoid it. The poor can't "roll with the changes" so well.)

Some, knowing this, still support such policies, because they "knock down the rich." I can understand why: The prodigality of Paris Hilton, et al., is outrageous when there are people starving in Sighisoara (my last mission-trip was to Romania).

But hurting the poor, in order to hurt the rich more, comes (I think) from Covetousness and Malice. Those who "sell" such policies to the electorate rely upon a mix of envy and success-resentment, and ignorance of economic feedback consequences.

Supporting such policies is, for me, morally similar to "selling" abortion by showing contrasting visuals of flat, toned bellies on smiling working women with images of harried-looking housewives in sweatpants: The primary selling points have a grain of truth, but the important consequences and issues are ignored.

Had Obama's policies been in place for the last four years, I think we'd be in a deep recession now, instead of a downturn so mild that it flirts coyly with the definition ("two successive quarters of negative GDP growth"). Downturns always come; it's not called a "business cycle" for nothing. But some policies lengthen/deepen a downturn; other policies shorten it or make it shallower. Obama's lean heavily to the first, worst, category.

Consider the minimum wage hike. Obama favored it; I opposed it. Sold as a way to help lower-wage folks, the primary constituents for it are actually government unions, whose contracts are indexed to the minimum wage. Union bosses with upper-tier contracts get multi-thousand-dollar raises every time the minimum wage goes up a buck.

Among lower-wage workers, the main impact is unemployment...shown recently when unemployment rose a half-point, as predicted by economists modeling the effect of the hike. Examination of exactly who is now unemployed confirms expectations: They're not career workers or executives or skilled laborers. No, the "uptick" in unemployment consists in large majority of those in the minimum-wage part of the economy: Teen-agers looking for summer jobs and temp-workers. They hoped, this summer, to get minimum wage. Those that are, are getting a bit more: But now more of them are getting no wage at all.

So, to implement the Church's moral goal of maximizing opportunities for gainful employment to all men, I oppose Obama.

That's one area. In the other areas, too, I think Obama's proposals would hurt rather than help. So, for economic, environmental, medical, foreign policy, and other reasons, a vote for Obama would, for me, contradict Catholic teachings.

Mr. Hudson,

For what it's worth (my one vote), I disagree that it's a "fact" that Senator Obama supports infanticide. My personal conclusion is that his vote against BAIPA in Illinois was never a vote in support of infanticide, but instead a vote to protect Roe v Wade.

The Chicago Tribune reported, "Obama said that had he been in the US Senate two years ago, he would have voted for the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, even though he voted against a state version of the proposal. The federal version was approved; the state version was not. Both measures required that if a fetus survived an abortion procedure, it must be considered a person. Backers argued it was necessary to protect a fetus if it showed signs of life after being separated from its mother…the difference between the state and federal versions, Obama explained, was that the state measure lacked the federal language clarifying that the act would not be used to undermine Roe vs. Wade." [Chicago Tribune, 10/4/04]

"Perhaps on no other issue is Keyes' rhetoric against Obama as harsh as on abortion. Keyes repeatedly accuses Obama of favoring 'infanticide' because of Obama's vote against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. The failed measure would have required doctors to provide medical attention to fetuses born alive during a rare type of abortion procedure. Keyes pointed out a similar measure sailed through Congress. But there was a major difference between the state and federal versions: the federal one stripped out any language that could have been used to challenge the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion legalization decision. Despite that, Keyes continues to hammer Obama with the "infanticide" charge virtually daily on the campaign trial. Obama, who pointed out state law already required doctors to care for fetuses born alive during botched abortions, said he's "deeply offended" by Keyes' assertion because he knows it's false. Beyond that, Obama would have voted against the ban on late-term abortions that Bush signed - but federal judges since have put on hold - and Keyes would have voted for it." [Chicago Daily Herald, 9/20/04]

Deal, because infanticide is such a hideous act against humanity and God's laws, it's hard for me to believe that any state would have so many legislators specifically in favor of infanticide, resulting in the defeat of a measure against it. What I can believe is that many Illinois legislators voted against the state BAIPA for the same technical reason that Senator Obama did, in support of Roe v Wade. I will go so far as to suggest that probably no legislator in Illinois or in any other state supports infanticide.

Subjectively yours,
CHANGE

"Now, if you want to have a debate about why Obama's proposals on poverty, education, health care, taxes, housing, the environment, the war, and diplomacy are more Catholic than McCain's, I am happy to have that debate."

News Flash: There is no such thing as a Catholic proposal on poverty, education, etc.. There are only proposals supported by Catholics who are well versed in Catholic social teaching and apply that teaching to concrete social circumstances as best they can. Two equally faithful and knowlegable Catholics can support diametrically opposed policies.

A health care policy, for instance, would be opposed to Catholic teaching if it violated Church teaching on faith or morals, by supporting assisted suicide, for example. Beyond those clear moral guidelines, the field is wide open for debate. None of us knows with infallible certainty what the real results of our policy preferences will actually be. Obama could be wrong. McCain could be wrong. I could be wrong. You could be wrong. All God's children could be wrong about our policy preferences on any or all of these issues.

The Church does not teach error. As long as a policy could be wrong, it isn't Catholic. We all see through a glass darkly and do the best we can. I strongly support a health care plan that would enable everyone to buy the private policy of their choice. I'm thoroughly convinced that this is the most just, most equitable, most effective choice available. I would never dream of calling it the most Catholic because I could be wrong, and I recognize that other Catholics feel just as strongly about very different approaches without being any less committed to Catholic social teaching than I am.

CHANGE,

That rather proves the point, doesn't it?

Perhaps I have misunderstood you...but it seems to me you're saying that Obama opposed the state bill because it lacked language protecting Roe v. Wade, whereas he would have favored the federal bill (had he been in the U.S. Senate to do so) because it did protect Roe v. Wade...correct?

If so, then Obama, if he is truly aware of how bad abortion is, and truly in favor of ending it, should have leaped at the opportunity to vote for a bill which had the potential to undermine Roe v. Wade.

That he did not do so indicates perfectly clearly that he does not consider abortion a moral evil warranting the use of every legal means to diminish it.

This is yet another instance of Obama wanting to have his cake and eat it too: He is sufficiently "opposed" to abortion to want the body-count "reduced"; as I might wish my waistline reduced, or the price of gasoline reduced, or the number of television commercials per hour of program-time reduced. He finds abortion distasteful, worthy of pursed lips or a shaking head or a frown or even a good, serious scowl.

But actually take action which risks, however minimally, putting a practical end to it? No way, Jose! That's an unpopular position with his base. He didn't sign up for that.

Charlotte:

I, too, support private health plans. To be more specific (but still admittedly rather general) I could "go for" a system like this:

- Privately owned MSA's
- Mandatory catastrophic illness/accident insurance
- Private health-coverage plans purchased using the MSA's
- Elimination of all tax deductions and exceptions which currently subsidize the "coupling" of an employee's health plan to his employer.
- Government matching of health-care dollars spent for children that aren't covered by the catastrophic illness/accident plan, pro-rated to the number of years remaining before their 18th birthday; e.g. 100% until 1st birthday, 93% until 2nd, 87% until 3rd, 80% until 4th, et cetera...or some such scale.

To my eyes, such a system runs far better odds of maintaining the market effect of reducing costs and transmitting knowledge of the value of treatments, while accounting for the needs of children and preventing catastrophic need from catapulting someone into dependency on government.

It furthermore pushes 100% of the American people, to one degree or another, into the "investor class." (The 50%+ distribution of retirement accounts has already done a lot to help this happen.)

Since ownership of appreciating assets is in the long run the only way out of poverty, supporting policies which promote such ownership is perhaps the best possible way of fulfilling Church social teaching, short of "selling all you own and giving the proceeds to the poor."

The government-dependency-fostering alternatives, however well-meant, do the opposite. They are perhaps the chief reason, in industrialized nations, why Jesus' prophetic statement "the poor ye shall always have with you" remains true to this day.

On "Sex Education", Homosexual "Marriage", The Mexico City Policy, Government funding of Planned Parenthood, Partial Birth Abortion, Euthanasia, Cloning, Parental Consent Laws....

How can you vote for a man who opposes the Church on such things, or has given lip service to the same?

"I have a question....if we know by a preponderance of the evidence or even beyond a reasonable doubt that raising the minimum wage will prevent more abortions than passing a legal ban on partial-birth abortion and we can only select one of those, as Catholics which are we required to do?"

The question is meaningless. You can't have any such "knowledge". You would be weighing a greater or lesser probability against the absolutely certainty of the evil of abortion.

Charlotte,

I appreciate your perspective, but I'd ask you to take my whole argument considered together.

Everything you say is true - we will always disagree on how to best achieve a goal. My argument, however, is that there is both, in writing AND in precedent, Vatican support for what Americans such as Fr. Joseph contemptously deride as "the nanny state" or "big government" programs.

That doesn't mean I support them or that I even think they are the best solution. But if the choices are wrongly and tragically reduced to individualism and statism, then only the latter can provide for the needs clearly stipulated in the Catechism.

I would urge you to look into the origins of Christian Democracy. While it has always defended the right to private property, it has also defended many of the policies of social democracy; in many countries it has become social democracy with a religious/conservative conscience.

This is better than individualism but not as good as communitarianism.

The comments here are instructive, but one point needs to be added:

The judgment to vote for this or that candidate is perdicated not only on their policy positions, but also on the possible effects (or non-effects) of their policies. Being "pro-life" is toothless if one cannot explain how the policy is supposed to be achieved. As a previous poster noted, there is no way, with Democratic majorities in Congress, that any Supreme Court nominee by the next president is going to swing the court against Roe v. Wade.

But even if there were such a change, and Roe v. Wade (and its fake "right to privacy") was overturned, what would happen then? Abortion won't end. South Dakota, a state with ONE abortion clinic, had a referendum on an abortion ban in 2006 - and it lost. In South Dakota. (This is NOT a reason to be pro-choice, I would add)

The fact is, for the foreseeable future, abortion will be a horrific plague that will have to be reduced rather than eliminated. That will take individual persuasion, the noble work of pro-life support organizations like Project Rachel... and policies that make it easier, especially financially, for women who get pregnant to bear their children. Plenty of abortions happen because of "culture of death" attitudes. But plenty of abortions also occur with lots of pain and anguish (which doesn't make them excusable), and making health care universally available and making college affordable for all will both help the situation many find themselves in.

Finally, while it is "politically incorrect" to mention this, the African-American community represents a disproportionate amount of the unwed pregnancies in this country, often promoting sexual promiscuity at young ages. Obama can do something about that. He does something about it just by BEING president and by BEING the father of a model family. But he's shown himself willing to speak out about the situation as well.

Factors such as these have to be considered when addressing abortion. They are not in any way apologies for abortion or "pro-choice" relativism. They simply assume that, in a democracy, the policy choices of changing entrenched behavior are complicated.

"First of all, I wrote against tax INCREASES, not the existence of taxes. Your citation from the Catechism is therefore irrelevant."

What difference does it make? If you go back and look at the entire paragraph in the Catechism, it also makes the point that we are not to worry about taxes - "render unto Caesar what belongs to him."

"You will notice that the Catechism says that "society" should make sure that people have food, shelter, clothing, etc. You failed to notice that the passages you cite do not mention government, but "society."

And you failed to note the point I made - that if communities are not fulfilling these needs, then the state must. There are no other options!

"The belief that the Federal Government should have anything to do with providing food, shelter, clothing, medical care, schools, and income redistribution--is all personal opinion."

In the absence of fully functioning communities, there is no other institution that can provide all of these things on a consistent basis. It's true that the Catechism doesn't say "federal government", probably because it is written for Catholics of the world, some of whom do not live under "federal governments" but under constitutional monarchies or some other form.

The Church has strove to make her teachings UNIVERSAL, and from this right-wing scounderls derive a prextext for arguing AMBIGUITY.

"No Catholic is obliged to believe that the Federal Government, or any level of government, is the best means of achieving any of these ends."

You aren't obliged to believe it - but you'd be willfully ignorant if you ignored the fact that the Vatican has, in practiced, promoted a theory called Christian Democracy which has a role for the state that is far more expansive than the minarchist libertarian utopia.

As for the rest, I openly and clearly oppose Obama and am not voting for him. That doesn't make his opponents right by default!

Joe:

Good to "see" you again; I see in this debate echoes of the discussion we had about "communitarian" policy. (How would you distinguish that, by the way, from Chesterton's Distributivism?)

One reason I'm suspicious of the idea is because you seem to lean toward believing that left-liberals, or the policies they proffer, are better bets for implementing the intended goal (distributed ownership in business assets) than conservatives.

In my experience this has not been the case. Take for example the three most poverty-reducing and dependency-reducing policy shifts of the last half-century: (1.) The Reagan Tax Cuts, (2.) Welfare Reform, and (3.) Establishment of Privately Owned, Tax-Deferred Retirement Savings Accounts.

In each of those cases, left-liberals fought tooth and nail to prevent passage until passage was inevitable, at which point they added their own twists and conceded, or just took credit for it, or both. (Now, I'm not slamming them for that: Insisting on compromises, or taking credit for what you initially opposed, is a time-honored tradition of D.C. and will inevitably continue!)

But Democrats allowed passage of the Reagan tax cuts, which in large part were the cause of the quarter-century wealth expansion, only when bribed with vast increases in social spending; prior to that, Tip O'Neill and company were foaming with resistance. Clinton beamed at the signing of Welfare Reform, but it started out, if I'm not mistaken, in Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America."

And let's look at all those 401K and Roth-IRA and related accounts. As a result of these, more than half of Americans are investors. They own appreciating assets. This is how poverty is escaped.

Now in each case the left-liberal reaction was: "This is for the rich" or "this shafts the poor." In each case the result was to strengthen the upward mobility of Americans...and, yes, yes, some filthy stinkin' rich folk got more filthy stinkin' rich. But y'know what? I don't mind. I hope they gave assiduously to church and charity, but even if they spent it all on Bentleys, I'm willing to put up with that, annoying though it may be, to achieve a society in which the poor have a better-than-even chance to become the middle class.

And that's largely what happened. I don't wish to downplay the tough time people are having these days, what with the high gas prices and the high food prices and the more-or-less flat economic growth. I'm having a tough time (self-employed, two-kids-and-counting, church musician) too.

But I noticed on a mission-trip to Romania (built a church-building for gypsies) that "poor" there and "poor" here aren't quite the same. Over there, you can tell Gypsy children: They're often too poor to have clothing. Any. Naked. On the side of a Transylvanian mountain. In a sod-walled hut.

And over here?

The #1 chronic health problem of the poor in the U.S. is...anyone? Anyone?

Obesity.

Jus' saying.

Meanwhile, what Marx promised (people's ownership of the means of production), only the capitalists could produce (50%+ of Americans own stocks). Perfect? No. But better than what left-liberals would have left us with.

Hence my skepticism.

Joe:

A couple of side-notes:

(1.) It's likely you're correctly reporting what the Church has said re: economic systems. I'd like you to give me a reading list, though, so I can check it out for myself. If you'd be so kind?

(2.) The Church teaches infallibly on matters of "faith and morals." Then there are matters of economics, on which she does not teach infallibly. One reason I want to see the "reading list" is so that I can judge for myself, not only how committed to some particular communitarian economic legislation She is, but also how much of Church teaching on the subject is written as economic teaching, and how much is written as moral teaching.

I'm sure you see where I'm going on this, and so your natural rejoinders are twofold:

1. "Economic decisions should always be moral decisions"; and,

2. "Just because the Church doesn't teach something infallibly doesn't render her voice unimportant; one can't entirely ignore the clergy without a good reason."

In anticipatory reply to "economic decisions should always be moral decisions," I say: Of course. But the same must also be said of every other topic in the world. If the limitation of papal infallibility to "faith and morals" is to be meaningful at all, it cannot be extended to every human activity with moral implications, for that would merely be: Every Human Activity.

And re: "One can't entirely ignore the clergy without a good reason," I reply: "Not without good reason, and not entirely, but with good reason, and only in areas where they are not competent, and only when their teaching authority is not miraculously preserved from error." Which is to say: Most of the nitty-gritty details of economic legislation.

Or so it seems to me. But send me the reading list, and I'll get a-readin'.

Warm regards,

R.C.

Our friends who are supporting Obama want to avoid talking about abortion and infanticide and homosexual marriage because Obama is in favor of allowing these activities to remain legal in his country.

Read the statement – not an opinion – not a conclusion – but a statement of fact supported by the candidate’s actions. Obama is in favor of allowing abortion and infanticide to remain legal in this country. He has never voted to end abortion, to reduce the need for abortion, to allow for parental involvement in the abortion decision, to support groups offering alternatives to abortion or to do anything that would show anyone anything but unqualified support for the position embraced by Planned Parenthood. So to all Obama supporters I recommend that you watch or read his speech addressed to Planned Parenthood. Then ask yourself why you think someone who thinks so little of the unborn is going to really care at all about the poor, the marginalized and the dispossessed.

I cited on my blog a few weeks ago evidence to show how truly generous and supportive of the charitable agencies Barack Obama was. In 2001 he and the Mrs. made over $272,000 and gave $1,470 to charity; a whopping .5%. Sounds like someone who walks the talk. Or perhaps this is someone who has no problem telling you what to do with your hard earned money, but conveniently forgets that he has his own moral responsibility to act independent of government.

But let us not forget to address some of the “other” social issues that Colin and CHANGE think are so vital that they more than compensate for the 3600 babies that Obama has no interest in protecting through law.

Health care. There are those who argue that the government should run health care and that that we should emulate Europe and Canada. The argument is made that this is good for the poor and uninsured, as if having the government run anything is going to really help the poor.

But how is it that divesting ourselves of the moral responsibility to care for our brother and dropping it in the lap of government is going to improve the plight of the poor. What we as the Church did originally in establishing and building hospitals, in staffing them with members of our community who dedicated themselves to helping the poor, in raising up families who had children who offered themselves as a sacrificial gift to help their brother, in providing the financial means to support these institutions, this was following the gospel mandate. We cannot shirk our duty and lay it at the feet of government, nor can claim that doing so follows the Gospel.

Government has certain basic obligations. However liberalism has chosen to make the use of government to address social issues the central component of their creed.

As I have said before, unless you are pro-life, you cannot cross the threshold to ask for my vote. This inexperienced pro-abortion, anti-Catholic, pro-homosexual, anti-marriage politician from Chicago does not even come close.

There is much argument that a Democratic Congress is going to make it difficult or impossible to get any pro-life work done. Once again we see the myopic vision that requires everything to be done by Washington. A McCain presidency will prevent great harm and allow us to solidify certain gains being made in the cultural battle. The growing scientific awareness and availability of ultrasound can only have a positive effect on our efforts - unless they are threatened by FOCA and liberal jurists. After all the pro-abortion advocates would love to curtail our free speech rights and declare it "hate speech."

As I stated in another post, if the Senate does not confirm the recommended appointment, let the seat stay open. If both Ginsburg and Stevens leave the bench, and the Senate will not approve the president's choice, then leave the seats open. Indeed that would give us a 4-3 advantage even with Kennedy on the wrong side. He might be persuaded to return to the light and a 5-2 court would be fine to reverse Roe.

So David, do not despair. Our God is a God of mercy. Perhaps He will be merciful if we are humble before Him.

Chance and others on this blog have claimed that Obama does not support infanticide, or that his vote was only "procedural." These claims are not true, and that is an "objective" statement.

Former Nurse Jill Stanek witnessed first-hand Obama support for infanticide. She writes:

“I was intimately involved in the five-year process to pass the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act, testifying before committees twice that then-state Sen. Barack Obama sat on.”

Stanek lists the 10 excuses Obama given through the years for voting "present" and "no" on the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act, or BAIPA.

YES, OBAMA HAS VOTED AGAINST THE BORN ALIVE INFANT PROTECTION ACT - TWICE - AS A STATE SENATOR IN ILLINOIS!

Here are SOME of Stanek's list of Obama's excuses:

Obama says, "I just want to suggest ... that this is probably not going to survive constitutional scrutiny.
"Number one, whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we're really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a – child, a 9-month-old – child that was delivered to term. …
"I mean, it – it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an anti-abortion statute. For that purpose, I think it would probably be found unconstitutional."

Obama again, "What we are doing here is to create one more burden on women, and I can't support that."

Obama once more " W]e live in a pluralistic society, and … I can't impose my religious views on another."

And again, "But my opponent's accusations nagged at me. ... If I am opposed to abortion for religious reasons but seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all."

And Obama again, "The bill was unnecessary in Illinois and was introduced for political reasons."

Most important of all, "Now, the bill that was put forward was essentially a way of getting around Roe vs. Wade. ... At the federal level, there was a similar bill that passed because it had an amendment saying this does not encroach on Roe vs. Wade. I would have voted for that bill."

... to be punished by having a pregnancy they do not want, why should my sons be punished by having communion with a bunch of wolves in sheep's clothing and flock-betraying shepherds that they do not want?

Once again I call attention to one blogger's evaluation showing that even on negotiable issues of concern to Catholics, McCain handily trounces Obama. See: http://tinyurl.com/66fhgx

And Obama expects us to cling to him instead of guns and religion? Please. I'm so glad I bailed out of the Democratic Party before it took a nasty left and plunged over the cliff along with the abortion industry, NOW and Hollywood elites making up my "Deck of Weasels."

Mr. Hudson,

Senator Obama did indeed vote against BAIPA in Illinois. Senator Obama, and enough other fellow legislators, voted against BAIPA and defeated it in order to protect Roe v Wade. None of the Illinois legislators, including Senator Obama, voted against BAIPA because they support infanticide.

It apears that we'll need to agree to disagree on this one.

Subjectively yours,
CHANGE

P.S. There's a great deal of "present" voting that goes on in the Illinois legislature. It's very common there.

Sorry about the title. Bad pun, couldn't resist.

But you really ought to, you know.

You keep saying that "[Obama] didn't vote against BAIPA because he support[s] infanticide."

And you further clarify, "[He] voted against BAIPA and defeated it in order to protect Roe v Wade."

See the problem?

Roe v. Wade, largely, equals infanticide.

Your argument then, takes the form:

"Obama didn't vote against BAIPA to support infanticide; he voted against it to support infanticide."

For of course if Roe v. Wade were repealed today, thus throwing the issue back to the states, the "blue" states would remain unchanged, the "purple" states would probably regulate abortion slightly more strictly, resulting in a small reduction of infanticide, and the "red" states would regulate abortion rather more strictly, resulting in a large reduction of infanticide.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

RC,

I’m not that familiar with Chesterton. However my brief reading of the wiki entry on Distributivism is enough for me to say that I am pretty much in full agreement with the main ideas. I know your concerns revolve around the problem of coercion and I don't see why this should be a concern at all, since these kinds of economic communities can easily be established without violence (they might require subsidies, but then, if wealthy Catholic investors decided to live up to their social responsibility, we wouldn't need subsidies either).

“One reason I'm suspicious of the idea is because you seem to lean toward believing that left-liberals, or the policies they proffer, are better bets for implementing the intended goal (distributed ownership in business assets) than conservatives.”

This is a misreading of my views, but understandable given the confines of the American political debate. I don’t think left-liberals can or will implement communitarian ideas (or distributive ideas), nor would I want them to.

What I do think is that left-liberal welfare-statism is vastly preferable to right-libertarian Social Darwinism. That means if I had no other choices, I would support the former over the latter.

But I do think we have other choices – we can choose to regenerate our communities at the economic level and the spiritual level. Neither an individual’s quest for personal wealth and power, nor a bureaucrats’ goal for a more “efficient” society, should ever threaten the integrity of the community.

”And let's look at all those 401K and Roth-IRA and related accounts. As a result of these, more than half of Americans are investors. They own appreciating assets. This is how poverty is escaped.”

RC, I know you mean well but this simply isn’t true. 401Ks and IRAs aren’t even close to satisfying the requirements of Catholic social teaching. They offer economic perks to individuals, but they don’t do a thing to foster cooperation, which is the real source of a communities’ health and effectiveness.

Secondly, these perks don’t amount to more than a pittance. 80% of stocks in the US are owned by the top 10% of income earners.

I think its wishful thinking at best to put faith in 401Ks as the means by which to escape poverty. Saying that 50% of the people have them without the context of the wider distribution misses the point. The bottom 40% of income earners own less than 1% of the stock.

”I hope they gave assiduously to church and charity, but even if they spent it all on Bentleys, I'm willing to put up with that, annoying though it may be, to achieve a society in which the poor have a better-than-even chance to become the middle class.”

If it were that simple I might agree. I can’t make the whole argument now but there is a perspective in economics that recognizes that we can’t go up unless someone else goes down. It might not seem that way in America, if only because our whole country has gone up while others were kept down.

You mention Romania’s poverty – how about China’s? Or Africa’s? Or South America’s?

Right wingers blame all of this on political “corruption”, and when they even bother to recognize the legacy of Western imperialism, it is only to highlight how beneficial it has been. They denounce as left-wing subversion any suggestion that our economic relations with the third world have ever been anything but benevolent. Will it ever be possible to have an objective account of this relationship?

I don’t reject charity – how could any Christian? – but our social teaching says nothing about limiting our efforts to individual charity. There would be no need for a social teaching at all if we were simply to depend upon the largesse of the wealthy.

If you read what I quoted to Fr. Joseph above, you see that our Catechism clearly states that vast inequalities in wealth are unacceptable. It doesn’t say they are acceptable as long as the rich give to charity, it says they are plainly unacceptable because they undermine social stability and rob the majority of people of their human dignity.

”(1.) It's likely you're correctly reporting what the Church has said re: economic systems. I'd like you to give me a reading list, though, so I can check it out for myself. If you'd be so kind?”

Well, first off, I would suggest simply doing a web search on Christian Democracy. The New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia has a good entry on it, and I will quote the description I find most relevant for our discussion:

“Christian democracy recognizes in principle and in fact that the popular social question cannot be limited to the question of justice, nor of charity; but that it ought to establish a harmony between the claims of the first and the pleadings of the second, avoiding the excesses of anarchistic individualism as well as those of communism, socialistic or otherwise.”

The article does note that Christian Democratic parties may have strayed from the original intent of the Popes who first outlined it, but that is because of the individualist/statist false dichotomy that dominates politics in all the Western countries. We might take some lessons from Gandhi’s economic proposals.

If you haven’t already read them, you should read Quadragesimo Anno and Laborem Exercens, not to mention the section in the Catechism about social justice. Maybe you have read it – it can never hurt to read it again. We don’t really need a long reading list to understand what our orientation ought to be.

Regarding point 2, you didn’t capture my objection at all. My objection is that if the Church’s goals regarding social justice – and by extension, its understanding of human dignity and value - are to at all be taken seriously, then it is upon us to discover the best means to attaining them.

There might be a range of acceptable solutions but we certainly cannot persist in an ideological deadlock. Paralysis by analysis will leave millions of people hungry. So we have to be reasonable, and what the Church has clearly rejected is market chaos and individualism, as well as excessive statism.

Joe:

Apparently you and I are not nearly so far apart as I'd originally thought, Joe.

Fair 'nuff. The law should permit this approach for those who voluntarily enter it; I could get behind incentives for investment if the results look promising.

Then I did misread your inclinations.

Hmm. You would acknowledge, would you not, that (a.) Social Darwinism is not the same as free-market capitalism; (b.) the latter can be animated by intentions opposite to the former; and (c.) free-market capitalism is largely an untried system, but its closest approximations are seen, with varying emphases, in the U.S. (especially the south and southeast, where local governments are more business-friendly), Hong Kong prior to reunification, and to a lesser degree in Costa Rica, Australia, Ireland...?

I don't know if those examples represent what you have in mind when you refer to "right-libertarian" economies; I certainly wouldn't call them Social Darwinism, which I oppose and consider not only evil, but potentially inimical to free trade, individual rights, and inviolable contracts, which are requirements of free-market capitalism as I understand and support it.

I do not, myself, consider left-liberal Welfare Statism to be preferable to the examples I gave. I think it subjects the individual to the servile state; I think it contributes to dependency and usually to poverty. I think it concentrates in the government far too much power over the individual for mere human beings to be trusted with. Libertines (not libertarians) complain that the state should not be in our sex lives; but our sex lives probably account for less than a twentieth of our time, even for newlyweds. Our work and our shopping is easily one third of our lives; and the large majority of our waking hours. Should fallible men, prone to the temptations and ambitions of men, have so much say in that?

No disagreement.

It is true, it's just not sufficient. It is a beginning. It is what happens when free-market solutions are faintly, haltingly implemented, over left-statist objections, under crippling compromises. And yet is is already better than any prior system's result. When every poor family, not just a single-digit percentage thereof, owns significant appreciating assets, and has the education to manage them, we'll be approaching the threshold.

R.C.,

Whoa! Not so fast! You can't just throw in your opinion that legal abortion equals infanticide into what motivated better than half of the members of the Illinois legislature to vote against BAIPA.

The problem I see is that you are attaching your opinion/equation to my argument, thereby attempting to morph it into what was never my argument and into what you want my argument to be. Doesn't work that way.

Nice try though.

First things first:

What I said wasn't true was your claim that 401Ks help people escape poverty. 401Ks are a perk that come along with jobs that go to more educated or skilled workers. Meaning, chances are, you're out of dire poverty if you have a 401K, but not because of it.

Now, to answer the three points:

"Hmm. You would acknowledge, would you not, that (a.) Social Darwinism is not the same as free-market capitalism;"

In theory no. In practice, if it is free-market capitalism combined with individualism, this is what it becomes. Free-market capitalism on the basis of community rather than individual ownership/power would not become Social Darwinism.

"(b.) the latter can be animated by intentions opposite to the former;"

Maybe, but I don't see how it is relevant.

"and (c.) free-market capitalism is largely an untried system"

So is purely Marxist communism. The question is, what happens when the main ideas are animating policy makers? De-regulation, tax cuts, and privitizations are certainly being tried out all the time, with mixed and sometimes disastrous results (private prisons being a prime example).

"I do not, myself, consider left-liberal Welfare Statism to be preferable to the examples I gave. I think it subjects the individual to the servile state; I think it contributes to dependency and usually to poverty."

I think Welfare Statism is a result of dependency, not the first cause of it (though it does perpetuate it). Welfare Statism came about originally under Otto Von Bismarck, no leftist or socialist - it was started to undermine the systemic change that socialists wanted by showing that the state could mitigate the worst excesses of unfettered capitalism.

I don't think anyone who is currently benefiting from welfare (in the general sense, not just welfare checks) is going to share your view. I think they would be well within their rights to ask:

"if you want to take away welfare, what will we have in its place? We have been told we don't own our jobs, that employment is not a right, that property is not a right - what will we do?"

If the answer is, "the market provideth", they are still within their reason to reject that claim as directly contrary to their immediate interests.

I don't like the welfare state but I think it is unreasonable to dismantle it without having first created the infrastructure for self-sufficient economic communities subject to local control. Otherwise you are asking for a revolution.

Joe:


Certainly. Compare that with 100 years ago, when the numbers were 99% and 1%. Or 50 years ago, when the numbers were 90% and 5%. We have not done enough; but then the policies which would overcome poverty by allowing the poor to own something are always everywhere shouted down by the left in favor of policies which help the poor by distributing a monthly pittance.

Medical Savings Accounts are shouted down in favor of government-operated health care. Retirement Savings Accounts are limited to a tiny percent of income...but 15% is taken into a Social Security System, involving an account the person doesn't own, yielding rates that scarcely keep pace with inflation. Education Savings Accounts containing education-expense vouchers are shouted down in favor of government-owned schools given "for free"...but take your kid instead to private, religious, or home-school, and the money allotted for that kid stays in the system.

Again the running theme is that, like obedience to Christ's moral teaching, the problem is "not that it's been tried and found wanting, but that it's badly wanted (needed) and rarely tried."


Well, I wouldn't call it a "perspective." It is a layperson's error. It is not economics. It is false, except in countries where the state or lawlessness prevents markets, contracts, and property rights from functioning: Only then does the zero-sum game emerge.

The U.S. has not gone up while others were kept down. It, and a lot of others, have gone up (looked at Ireland's economy recently) while others have kept themselves down by disregarding the laws of economics. It was never a zero-sum game; economic reality forbids that.

The reason is because no voluntary exchange happens unless doing so increases the wealth on both sides. Period. Raw materials are scarce, and zero-sum in the short term, but account for far less than a tenth of the economic value of world GDP, and are of no account in the long term. The remainder is information, ideas, mind: How to put it together and how to use it.

And thinking, inventiveness, and creativity are not zero-sum. Provided that their contracts are honored and their property (however small at the start) protected, everyone may get into the game as often as they wish. If this were not true, America would be poorer than Europe, Europe poorer than China, China poorer than Venezuela, and perhaps Albania richest of all. That the outcome is the reverse, indicates that the laws of economics "are not mocked."

Watch out, I got a million of 'em.

Anyhow, I'll throw this one out to the crowd:

Does anyone disagree with the proposition that the repeal of Roe vs. Wade would, after states had time to react legislatively, and with all other things remaining equal, result in a net reduction in infanticide? Anyone? Hello?

Prediction: I'll be hearing crickets.

It doesn't matter if you support Roe because you think it's well-crafted Constitutional Law (though it isn't; it stinks).

It doesn't matter if your motive for supporting ("protecting," if you prefer the term) Roe is just because you like rulings which remind you of caviar.

The plain fact is that the overarching effect of Roe in U.S. law is to deny any authority to the states to regulate abortion.

Were this a small, incidental, low-impact effect, I would have no problems if you told me that Obama defeated BAIPA in order to protect his favorite piece of legislation named after fish eggs, because it reminded him of his wedding reception. I could then call his motives pure.

But the effect of Roe is not small or incidental. It is earth-shaking: Roe thunders "infanticide" from a column-studded court adorned with sculptures of Hammurabi and Moses and Mohammed and the Ten Commandments. Anything else to be said about the ruling (such as how poorly reasoned it is) seems titchy and nitpicking by comparison.

A man could not, knowing the facts, support clemency for the Son of Sam on the grounds that he was a dog lover, or for Charles Manson because he was a devotee of the arts. These incidental details are frivolous even to mention.

And that is the case with Roe v. Wade. There is nothing exceptional about it, except that it prevents some states from outlawing or regulating infanticide. Roe has no other meaning in a sentence.

So, yes: If Obama shot down a bill in order to protect Roe, then he shot down a bill in order to protect infanticide.

Since you didn't buy my last burst of Latin, I'll conclude this one differently:

Res ipsa loquitur.

Joe:

I notice you use the word "individualism" the way the popes, in their encyclicals, use it. It bears only the faintest resemblance to what I was taught that "individualism" meant, growing up as a WASP, prior to my exposure to things Catholic.

Individualism, as taught to me in a Christian household and as absorbed by me in a largely Baptist-influenced southeastern U.S. culture, is defined as follows:

(1.) Individuals have free will, which was the first Gift of God to Man after life and existence itself;
(2.) Moral responsibility rests on the individual, for when a group of which he is a member goes morally awry, it is his individual responsibility to oppose that group's moral error;
(3.) Charitable responsibility rests on the individual, for when a person is in need, it is the responsibility of the individual to assist, not to assume some other will do so;
(4.) Responsibility for Thinking rests on the individual, he is not to abdicate his reason by allowing a peer group to do his thinking for him;
(5.) People are Unique Individuals, not cogs in a machine or apples in a basket; the surface appearance of a person which may seem to place him in Group X does not mean he is bound to that group or that the group has no variation therein, nor that he as an individual merits any treatment, good or ill, that is merited by any other individuals of that group;
(6.) Morality and Creativity are the choices by which individuals change the future of the world;
(7.) Individuals are eternal souls, for good or for ill. Twenty million years from now, when every political party, race, corporation, clique, class, collective, country, and continent has crumbled to dust and been forgotten, each individual will either be damned, or living in paradise with "no less days to sing God's praise than when [they'd] first begun."

Individualism, culturally, never meant "greediness" or "selfishness" to me until I read it amongst Catholic writings. My first reaction was, "Why're they badmouthing something intrinsic to Christian thought?" My second was, "Waitaminute, they're talking about something else."

And nowadays, every time I see a Catholic author using "individualism," I just substitute "selfishness" and move on, with the voice of Inigo Montoya murmuring in my mind's ear: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

I just thought that might be helpful, to understand those of us Christians who use the word "individualism" in a positive way.

Joe:


Well, no, but the junkie doesn't immediately accept the notion that food is better than crack, either.

They have every right to ask that. Free speech.

Whoa! They'll only have been told some of those things if they live in a socialist or communist state. In free market capitalism, they do own their labor (which I presume is what you meant by "jobs") and their property. Property (including the fruits of one's labor) is part of the triumvirate of rights in free-market capitalism (the other two are Contracts and Voluntary Trade).

And is employment a "right?" Yes. I live in a "right to work state," and am glad of it. If you offer a man your services and he's willing to pay you for them, no third party should violate your/his right to do so (with the usual exceptions, of course; e.g. "killer-for-hire").


Ah, now you're talking transition issues. On this I agree. One cannot make welfare junkies go cold turkey; yet endless dependence does not end poverty. So an incremental weaning is required; in the meantime, your cooperatives can grow, with incentives as needed.

But I'll oppose Obama (this is my fig-leaf of acknowledgment of the thread topic!) because his approach is to take the U.S. deeper into welfare-state-ism, after which it'll be that much harder to transition to your voluntary cooperatives.

I think you and I alike can oppose that.

What's nonsensical about it is that contraception is intrinsically wrong. It is a species of sodomy. It harms every person who practices it, and harms many others besides.

Promoting, encouraging, or facilitating an act that is intrinsically wrong is participation in that act. Thus, promoting contraception, especially by providing money for it, is evil.

This is true regardless of how many Catholics use contraception. Thus, the number of Catholics who use contraception is irrelevant. A policy which is evil does not become not-evil simply because a large number of Catholics, black people, left-handed people, people with green eyes, or near-sighted people, are committing some sin.

The use of contraception encourages abortion, because people who use contraception live by the principle that pregnancy is a catastrophe visited on people for no reason. As Obama said, "I don't want my daughter punished with a baby." Why is a baby a "punishment" for a girl who sleeps around? Why was Obama speaking up for his daughter's "right" to abort this "punishment"? Because contraception has already established the principle that everyone has the "right" not to have a baby--even girls who sleep around.

So: Contraception LEADS TO abortion rather than "preventing" abortion, because abortion is merely the violent assertion of a "right" ALREADY assumed when contraception is used--the right to fornicate without issue.

It is interesting that these "devout," "faithful," "knowledgeable" Obama-Catholics, the longer they engage in discussion, the more conclusively they demonstrate their freedom from contamination by familiarity with the Church's thinking on any subject.

BDK,

I love it when people who don't know me get all snotty about "health care." Last year, my family were among those "millions of Americans." I have a genetic disorder called Marfan syndrome. I had to give up the only FT job I've ever had because it deteriorated my health. We moved. My wife took a mid-year teaching position at a largely minority school. They didn't renew her contract because she was white. She got paid through the summer, but lost insurance.
We moved again, and applied for Medicaid. For the first time in my life, I had no health insurance. I didn't even get necessary maintenance stuff done like my INR.

We found out about all sorts of programs that are out there but go unadvertised, like the fact that most pharmaceutical companies will pay for your high-end prescriptions if you have no insurance.

My cardiologist of nearly 20 years gave me a free visit.

The hospital waived most of our medical bills.

After 6 months of battling Medicaid, we were finally approved for the range from April 07-June 08. Retroactive bills were covered, but were already in collections.

In the process, we found out that you can make 4X the poverty level and Medicaid will pay for your contraceptives. *That's* why I say it's all about contraception (that and it's all liberals talk about when they really go on about health care).

Don't talk to me about being poor. My wife and I work four "part time" jobs to make ends meet. I've taught 18 college classes in the past year, all "part time" at different schools. Our kids are on WiC, and we're on Medicaid (for now). We were using food banks for several months, until we found out that, we're all allergic to wheat.

Every year, we depend upon our huge tax refund check (thanks to Bush's child credit, which the demonocrats want to repeal) to allow us to make major expenses and pay off some of our credit card debt.

We've applied for lots of programs. And you know what we've found?

Private charities, and upper middle class donors, are far more generous and willing to help than government programs. My wife made one call to a friend whose husband is a corporate executive (and they're Ron Paul supporting Libertarians who attend Tridentine Mass), and her whole extended family basically adopted us. For months, we were getting checks in the mail from her extended family. *That* is Christian charity.

Our own Democrat-supporting supposedly "care about the poor" relatives tell us that we have too many kids, we should never have gotten married to begin with, and we should be using contraception.

Jesus said we're suppoesd to help each other out of love, not demand that the government solve all our problems.

So: You're campaigning and disputating in favor of a candidate for President--even though you don't know how to find out what policies he is committed to.

There have been one, maybe two very thorough studies of this subject in the last couple of years. The evidence is conclusive: "conservative," anti-Statist people give a great deal more to charity, AND volunteer a great deal more of actual personal time to charitable works, than "liberal," Statist people. This is true of celebrities and the general population. Al Gore's famous three-figure annual charitable giving of a few years ago is NOT an aberration among leftists. And the patterns of giving differ. Nancy Pelosi, who is a multi-multi-millionaire, gives, apparently, little or nothing to actual poor people, but directs her "charitable" giving to elite private schools and the symphony and opera. Among comparable public figures on the "right," vastly more generous giving, directed to people in real need, turns out to be typical, not exceptional.

I will google around and come up with the title(s) of this/these book(s).

RC,

Were the numbers 100 years ago, as you say, really 99% non-owners to 1% owners? 100 years ago we had hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of small farmers who didn’t need stock because they owned land. Now agriculture is an entirely corporate enterprise, consoldiated and taken out of the hands of the independent producer.

50 years ago 35% of American workers belonged to a union and millions more still made respectable money in blue collar trades. Now the unions collaborate with big business to tear apart the American manufacturing base and millions of industrial and blue collar jobs have been lost, to be replaced with low-wage service sector jobs that offer fewer benefits and far less job security.

Ownership is more important and necessary now than it has ever been. Would millions of jobs have been shipped to China if workers owned the factories instead of absentee investors? Would they have been shipped if American businessmen had the slightest qualms about doing business with an oppressive regime? In fact they prefer it, because political repression keeps the cost of labor down. They don’t mind that “big government” policy. It’s economically useful.

They didn’t mind when Pinochet staged his military coup and established a dictatorial regime so that Milton Friedman’s “Chicago Boys” could use Chile as their free-market guinea pig either.

Now on your international economic perspective, you say, “The reason is because no voluntary exchange happens unless doing so increases the wealth on both sides. Period.”

I would point out in response not all of the exchanges have been voluntary, unless, like Hobbes, we consider morally valid exchanges made under duress (i.e., you don’t have to give the mugger your wallet; your choice to live instead of being stabbed is still a voluntary choice). There is a long history of economic coercion, occasionally backed by military force, between the Western powers and the developing world. If you want to get started on learning more about that, research the history United Fruit.

In other words, this isn’t a purely economic argument – it is a political argument, a historical argument as well (which is why I dislike a lot of mainstream economics, which treats economic phenomena as if it were taking place in a political and historical vacuum). Perfectly “free” exchanges may not be zero-sum; when the “exchanges” in question are in fact coerced, what happens during a voluntary exchange is irrelevant. I know this isn’t what you would call the free market in action, but it is an example of what has really taken place between America and other countries.

The point being, that because of this coercion, American citizens have access to a lot of wealth, even the poor ones, as the spoils of economic conquest. That said, there is no excuse for poverty here, or anywhere else in the world.

Your points about individualism are well taken, but to me it is not merely interchangeable with selfishness. To me, individualism is an ideology that holds that individuals can, or should be, economically, politically, culturally and spiritually self-sufficient; that an individual owes nothing to society for his particular skills or abilities, that these are innate; and that all society is ultimately voluntary, meaning, a la Locke (and other social contract theorists), we choose to form government and live in society not because we have to, but because we simply prefer it to the alternative state of affairs, a state of nature or a state of war.

Each of these assumptions are demonstrably false and have been criticized countless times by philosophers from Hume to Hegel and beyond for centuries. They have also been decisively rejected by the Catholic Church, which I think is pretty obviously rooted in Aristotelian political theory, which begins with the observation that we are social animals who live in society by our nature, not by choice.

That DOESN'T mean individuals have no rights - but it DOES mean that no individual right can come at the expense of the common good. None of the rights in our Bill of Rights, for instance, have anything to do with economics.

On to this:

“In free market capitalism, they [workers] do own their labor (which I presume is what you meant by "jobs") and their property.”

Workers only own their capacity to labor. Their actual labor becomes embodied in a product that they in fact do not own. They don’t own it because they accepted terms of work where they have given up ownership of the products of their own labor, their rightful property, in return for a living wage. I don’t believe anyone does this by choice. I believe it is done because either a) people mistakenly believe that labor creates wages, when in fact wages sustain, but do not enrich, labor, or b) they know what they are giving up but see no readily available exit from this system, so the “voluntarily” acquiesce.

The working class can and should reject the capitalist terms and insist on a substantial share in the profits and a share in the decision making power, else they strike, or better yet, form their own companies. It may sound like Marxism (yes, I think Marx was right about this particular thing), but, provided the means to this end were in keeping with Catholic morality (which we would both agree insists upon a respect for the individual that atheistic communism has never had), the end itself would be the most morally acceptable option.

I’m not sure whether more welfare-statism or less is going to make conditions more or less difficult for the voluntary communitarian movement. You may be right about Obama making it more difficult in the long run by creating more dependency. The question of how we “wean” off dependency is an interesting and important one, and needs to be given a lot more thought.

But I’m not voting for Obama anyway – I know I sound like a lefty, a “progressive Catholic”, but I’m really not, and will never vote for a pro-choice candidate.

Chance, I understand the necessity of agreeing to disagree. However, regardless of the expressed reasons for voting against the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, it is still the case that Obama was willing to ALLOW infanticide in order to protect Roe v. Wade. To my mind, the willingness to allow infanticide means that you believe infanticide is of little moral import, and therefore support those doctors and nurses who watch a baby slowly die, unattended and ignored, in a hospital after being born. Anyone who can countenance such a thing, well, let's just say I don't want him a my president.

Dear Change, I'm sorry to have called you "Chance." I'm a huge fan of "Homeward Bound," especially the final scene when Chance comes founding over the hill.

False. Obama's negligence to vote on the bill was, by his own admission, because such things (the willfull deaths of accidentally-born, post-aborted babies) weren't happening. That's right, Obama's response to *NEGLECTING HEALTHCARE* to babies that were born was simply pretend that it never happens. Hardly hyperbolic.

Not on a crusade to increase abortions? I'll actually give you that. Do you know what the "Freedom of Choice" Act is, though? It will abortion into actual law instead of judicial fiat. This will prevent any attempt to overturn Roe vs. Wade and stop any state or local authority from stopping or restricting abortion. According to Obama, this will happen in his first week of office. So sure, he is not on a crusade to increase abortions. He's just on a crusade to make sure there won't be fewer.

Hey, Mark!

Would the unwillingness of Obama supporters, despite indisputable logic and plentiful evidence, to acknowledge that their guy is taking positive, organized steps to prolong and protect infanticide...

...would that qualify as, "The Darkened Intellect Serv[ing] the Fallen Will?"

Just wondering.

JC, Sorry but I have to jump into this....Democrats have NOT been calling for a repeal of the child tax credit...they have been calling for an expansion of it. The tax cuts and credits that Democrats are typically calling for rolling back are the cuts given to the most super wealthy people in the country. And that is because they are fiscally responsible and do not want to continue to pile up debt for our children. Democrats are the one that put back in place "pay as you go" rules when they took a slim majority back in Congress.

Also, from hearing your story you say it was private charities and individuals that were most generous. It sounds like you got health insurance through the government and not through an individual. It sounds like you got a tax refund check from the government, which you rely upon. Your kids participate in the WIC program, which provides nutritional food. I am assuming that the kids are also getting their health insurance through the SCHIP program. The food bank which is mostly private wasn't able to meet your needs due to the wheat allergies, but at most they would have been able to provide is a couple of food boxes a month and that would even be rare for food banks in the U.S. Food banks are able to do that largely because they get major funding through the TEFAP program, which is funded through the Federal Farm Bill.

What are people to do if they don't have a rich friend that can adopt them? What would you have done? Do you really want to get rid of Medicaid, WIC, Food Banks, SCHIP, and any other programs that you may be on. It sounds like you qualify for food stamps as well or at least your kids do. And you may also get the Earned Income Tax Credit, which was put in place by Bill Clinton. Welfare in the traditional sense (AFDC) no longer exists, but there may be a short term program through TANF, which you may get a very little bit of assistance for a time limited period.

None of these programs are designed to meet every need and operate on the assumption of some assistance from private individuals or private charities, but I for one prefer that they are there.

They could operate much more effectively, if Republicans didn't always try to put barriers in the way of people getting access. They divide them up so people have to go to a large number of different offices each with their own individual application and each with their own bureaucratic agency. Some applications are longer than the typical mortgage or loan application. The net result is a huge bureaucratic structure that spends way way too much on administration of the program instead of increasing benefits or saving tax payer dollars. Democrats are leading the fight to streamline these programs, save tax payer dollars on them, and increase the benefits.

Joe:

Re: 99%/1% -> 80%/20% ...we're not being exact enough about what our numbers represent.

Poverty is escaped via appreciating assets (ownership shares in a business, or CD's, or real estate, or whatever).

Poverty persists through ownership only of liabilities (any form of debt, or cars/computers /other goods that need maintenance and don't go up in value).

Re: ownership % 100 years ago vs. now: I'm right that most people didn't own securities then, and more do now. From this point-of-view the gradual spreading of the investor class is true and an improvement.

But you're right that they owned farms and such; this comes naturally to your mind because you're focused on "means of production" and back then, farms were a big part of that.

But the question before us is: Has free-market capitalism as practiced in the U.S. actually produced (despite left-liberal obstruction) an expansion of upward mobility among the poor through ownership of assets (The kind of property that ends poverty)?

Measuring securities, it obviously has; measuring farmland, it obviously hasn't.

Now, securities are assets. Are farms? Are shops? Are...anything else?

The only way to resolve this is to list all the kinds of things a man could own, and for each, ask (a.) is this an asset (value growing faster than inflation) or a liability; and, (b.) how widespread was/is its ownership across different economic classes?

I expect that farms, when considered separately from the labor put into them (which could have been sold elsewhere and is a separate item), are not in fact particularly productive assets except in one way: Land Value. So the family farm would have to be compared against the family homestead in America today...and ownership of those is rather common in America today, even among the poor.

I think you'll find there has been a vast increase in ownership of assets. I think the reason it's not more widely felt is that there has also been a vast increase in the ownership of liabilities, in two forms:

(a.) falling-value possessions
(b.) debt, especially credit-card debt

Take the average poor American family, remove from his household the debt his grandfather never had and whatever crap his grandfather never had that isn't used as a tool in productive work, and what would you get? You'd get wealth, in abundance. Financial freedom and security.

So (another fig leaf) because Obama's policies foster dependency rather than ownership, they're counter-productive. Even your cooperatives would be counter-productive unless they are appreciating assets, of which workers own shares. (Fortunately I think that'll usually be true.)

So the real problem, it seems, is debt, and people living above their means. How to encourage savings and no debt? Well, private investment accounts tied to life-needs like medicine (MSA's), retirement (RSA's) and education (ESA's w/ vouchers) are a start.

But just try to get that past a Democrat Congress! Hence the ongoing plight of the poor.

John,

On the child tax credit: why would the party that supports divorce, contraception, homosexuality, abortion and public schools want to do anything to encourage families to have kids?

Anyway, you're missing my point.
I was responding to two separate claims. One is the question of "health care reform." My point was that the programs *are* out there. I never said anything about repealing them.

The second was a response to that fellow's insistence that voting for government programs is mandated by Jesus' teachings on charity towards the poor. My point there was that Chrisitans are called to individual charity.

Food stamps: my wife spent months trying to get just one month of TANF and food stamps. When she finally had her "hearing" the caseworker said she had too many files ot handle in August, and that she just made the decision not to prioritize ours. They never even gave us the opportunity to appeal until *after* the appeal deadline had passed, and then denied the appeal for appealing too late.

WiC is just a hand-out for big agriculture, feeding childhood obesity by pumping kids full of juice and whole milk. But we take what we can get.

You said something about "government insurance"? Medicaid? In that case, yes, my point exactly: our society already has it; we don't need anything else.

If meant the insurance a public school teacher gets, yeah, it's a lot better than the insurance the Catholic schools give their teachers (bishops are all about not practicing what they preach) but it's nothing compared to what larger corporations give their employees.

You may be right that Republicans are to blame for the bureaucracy of it. But I never claimed to be a fan of the Republicans, and that wasn't my point. My point was that the help is available to those who really need it, and adding more government programs and more bureaucracy to the process won't help anyone.

Ultimately, the care we've gotten on Medicaid stinks. I fail to see how giving the government *more* power to bureaucratize medicine, taking decisions out of the hands of doctors and patients even more than Medicaid and insurance comapnies already do, will help anyone.

It just takes a lot of work and research to get the help that's available. I know a big reason we didn't apply for some of these programs sooner was pride and fear of having government social workers meddling in our lives. It took having no insurance to make us do it.

Mr. Hudson and R.C.,

I still cannot accept as "fact" that the majority of Illinois legislators who voted against BAIPA are all supporters of infanticide. It makes absolutely no sense.

Everyone who accuses Senator Obama of supporting infanticide talks about him as if he were the ONLY Illinois legislator who voted against BAIPA and defeated it. In fact, he was one among the majority who voted against it. This is a messy, inconvenient truth for those invested in making Senator Obama out to be a lone wolf supporter of infanticide. I expect you both to continue ignoring it. Your choice.

Or, is your position that the dozens of other Illinois legislators who voted against and defeated BAIPA did so for some unknown benign reason, and only Senator Obama did so in support of infanticide?

If that is your position, than I am in awe of your omniscience.

Best regards,
CHANGE

Change, there is a simple answer to that question: Every single legislator who voted against the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act is supportive of infanticide to the same degree as Sen. Obama. It makes no difference how many voted for it or against it. Whatever his actual motive, Obama's action allowed doctors and nurses to let babies die unattended after being born. He knew this would be the outcome of his vote; therefore, he willing to let that -- infanticide -- occur. Each of those legislators might have had a different "motive," but the effect of their vote was the same for everyone, a living child is allowed to die surrounded by doctors and nurses who have sworn the Hippocratic Oath. It's quite indefensible, in my opinion.

There's nothing like a Deal Hudson article to kick up some dust! Wonderfully entertaining!

I am reminded of the quote from the great H.L. Mencken: "Under Democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove the other party is unfit to rule- and both commonly succeed, and are right."

I truly wish Catholics would vote for "None of the Above" this election cycle.

Mr. Hudson,

Your "facts" are once again not facts at all but fabrications.

Not a single baby died as a result of the Illinois legislature's vote against BAIPA. Not a single doctor or nurse allowed any baby to die unattended as a result of the Illinois legislature's vote against BAIPA.

As I demonstrated much earlier in our discussion, prior to BAIPA, Illinois state law ALREADY REQUIRED doctors and nurses to care for fetuses born alive during abortions. That is a fact.

When the Illinois legislature voted against BAIPA, it did not cause, support, allow, or in any way condone the death of a single baby. Not one. Illinois state law ALREADY REQUIRED doctors and nurses to care for fetuses born alive during abortions.

You are accusing the Illinois legislature, and Senator Obama, of causing infanticide that simply cannot and has not happened by law in Illinois.

I realize that the infanticide rap laid upon Senator Obama is very fundamental to attempts to demonize him. One problem. As I have demonstrated, it is FALSE.

It didn't work for Keyes because it was a lie, and it won't work now.

CHANGE:

There's no contradiction at all.

The majority who voted against otherwise perfectly acceptable legislation in order to protect Roe vs. Wade did so in order to protect a woman's "right" to obtain, and a doctor's "right" to perform, an act of infanticide.

They did so because, like Obama, they aren't certain it's infanticide, even in the ninth month; and they are sure that their political base won't accept any heresy from them on this issue.

Their lack of certainty comes from a mix of sources, of which willful ignorance and/or determination not to pursue the logic of the issue (for fear of what they might conclude) plays a part, but to varying degrees in each case.

Meanwhile it is in actuality infanticide, and Catholics are obliged by the teachings of the Church to treat it as such.

In those senses (the actual and the willfully ignorant), Obama and the others voted to protect infanticide. The mercy of God is great, but there is moral culpability present regardless.

Make sense?

Their vote against BAIPA shows that they support infanticide. Nobody that I know of has said that only Obama, among all those legislators, supports infanticide. The reason Obama is being discussed more than the others is that ONLY OBAMA IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT.

Your refusal to "accept" this fact is simply gratuitous denial. Indeed, it is a kind of derangement to say that legislators "oppose" the very thing they have voted for.

But that kind of derangement is common. Repeatedly, we've seen Obama-Catholics assert that Obama, Kerry, Kennedy, Pelosi, etc., "oppose" abortion--while these politicians are all on record swearing to keep abortion legal, support only pro-abortion judges, accepting money and endorsements from abortionists, etc.

McCain says he will keep the troops in Iraq. McCain has voted to fund the war in Iraq. This ought to be all the evidence you need that McCain OPPOSES THE WAR! After all, if voting for infanticide proves you're against infanticide...

I want to thank all the Obama-Catholics who've been so industriously posting here at insidecatholic. You have provided a treasure trove of cautionary evidence that once the will has chosen death, the intellect must die.

Chance, if you want to get your man off the hook you need to urge him to do two things: 1) repudiate his earlier promise to Planned Parenthood that the first thing he would as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act, and 2) that he would veto any attempt to overturn the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act as it was passed by the Congress. You could also ask him to promise to reauthorize the Mexico City Policy and protect the Hyde Amendment. All it would take is a single speech on this issue. After all, two of his religious advisers, including Rev. Jim Wallis, have stated the "abortion reduction" should become part of the Democratic Party platform. I know Wallis et al want to pursue this without the help of legal restrictions, but, at least, Obama could promise to protect the legal restrictions that already exist.

Joe:

So that we don't hog the bandwidth on this thread with off-topic discussion, I'm posting some more thoughts on the "cooperatives" idea (and how to systemically help the worker) over in the original thread "The Case For The Workers' Cooperative."

If you're still reading posts here, then I'll see ya' over there.

-- R.C.

RC,

My numbers thus far represent stock ownership, plain and simple.

But the appreciable assets ratio doesn’t look much better. Again when you break it down, the bottom 80% of income earners in the US own 10% of what is called “common stock” – that includes 401Ks and IRAs. The top 0.5% own 30% of it! And I’m fairly certain that these numbers represent a vast increase since the Reagan years, not a decrease.

The only area where the bottom 80% of income earners seem to hold any wealth is in their housing equity, at 35%. And you’re right – since I think ownership of the means of production is more important than just ownership in general, this figure doesn’t mean much to me. Ultimately, while the crumbs and crusts of the table of wealth have been more widely distributed, the main feast to which the few are privy has grown far more lavish and obscene.

I’m still not sure how one actually “escapes” poverty through forms of ownership which are usually bestowed upon workers who are already out of it. To get the kind of job that offers even a remote possibility of stock options, profit sharing, or to crack into the real estate market, requires a level of education that the poor are not getting.

I’m a bit skeptical of your claims regarding debt, not because of what you say (which is true) but what you don’t say – how and why people got into debt to begin with.

Some conservatives say it’s because ghetto kids think 200 dollar tennis shoes are more important than saving for college, so they go into debt for luxury items. This is partially true, but meaningless, since people going into debt is what keeps the capitalist economy running! It’s the old right-conservative double talk; the poor are poor because they spend their money on crap – but consumption is good, necessary, even patriotic because it keeps the economy afloat. Can you imagine what would happen to some businesses, especially the advertising industry, if people actually began saving, began avoiding debt, and living more simple lives? I think it would be considered down right subversive!

But back to why people get into debt in the first place – is it not because real wages have not kept up with inflation? That the cost of living has increased while the earnings of the working class have practically stagnated? Please bear in mind that my solution is not “higher wages”, but more ownership; I think outsourcing to countries that have cheaper labor (because of extreme poverty and political repression) is not only deeply immoral and diametrically opposed to everything the Church teaches about human dignity and the common good, but economically destructive. And I don’t think it would happen if production were owned and controlled locally and cooperatively.

Ha! You caught me right after I just hogged a little more bandwidth. I will see you over there.

"...root yourself to the ground..."

(Okay, that was a slightly more obscure reference. Good band, though.)

Okay, CHANGE, I think I just saw a way to help you feel better about agreeing with us that Obama, and everyone else whose vote against BAIPA was intended to protect Roe v. Wade, were in fact voting to protect infanticide.

Your concern seems to be that you find it unthinkable that Obama and so many others would knowingly vote for infanticide, right?

Okay, so assume it isn't "knowingly."

Now, my own opinion (given earlier) is that to some degree it is "knowingly." Only partially, to be sure; but I think that ignorance is cannot be entirely invincible on this topic. I think that there is some self-deception and wishful thinking involved, and that, to that extent, these politicians are morally culpable.

But perhaps you don't buy that. Fine! Assume for the sake of argument that Obama et alia are invincibly ignorant that abortion is infanticide.

In that case, Obama didn't think he was voting to protect infanticide. But you, with your conscience informed by the Church, know better. (Unless you deny Church teaching on this subject.)

So, where does that leave us?

It leaves us with Obama in a better position, morally...but you, and any Catholic considering voting for Obama, are not off the hook. Because you DO know better.

So perhaps our guess as to the state of Obama's soul changes if we look at the matter that way.

But the state of your vote doesn't change a whit. It remains a fact that if you claim to be an obedient Catholic, you can only vote for Obama if you can argue that his position on all other items strongly outweighs his position on abortion. And the fact that the Church teaches that abortion is important enough to outweigh other issues makes *that* argument, uh...rather tenuous.

Make sense?

I saw Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton in Unity, NJ today. The word "phony" kept coming to my mind over and over again. Deal and Krauthammer (the Post, today) are simply stating the obvious. Right on, Deal!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRdLpem-AAs

Poverty is because they don't print enough money for the poor, just for the rich.

Fr. Joseph:

{quote]Poverty is because they don't print enough money for the poor, just for the rich.[/quote]

I'm not sure how to respond to that. It's false...but my guess is that either you're being ironic, or your intended meaning is something I can't guess.

Adult Poverty in the U.S., at least, is caused by youth, a combination of poor decisions by the individual, poor decisions by his parents, and poor decisions by those responsible for creating the social infrastructure which surrounds him...and nearly always in that order of priority.

Printing money -- or expanding the supply of it through "book entries" at the Fed and investment banks -- only causes poverty when too much is "printed," devaluing the savings people have set aside. The current low value of the dollar is an example; the result of rates set too low too much of the time for too long.

But I won't say much more than that because I'm entirely unsure what you were trying to say in the quoted statement.

Nobody seems to mention the dangers of letting Liberals curtail our Freedom of Speech and our Freedom of Religion. I think this could potentially be an even more vital issue than abortion, because if some of the extremists get
their way (and they are making minor headway here and there), we won't even be able to teach that abortion is wrong, let alone vote against it.

I doubt Obama has mentioned the issue at all, but it is a serious reason to fear liberal judges. I'm sure to those who aren't paying attention to this issue I sound like a ranting conspiracy theorist (and I can't stand those guys), so I'll explain.

Hopefully we all know what's going on in Canada, where it is becoming increasingly illegal for Christians to say homosexual behavior is sinful. And people are being charged with crimes for saying Muslims might take over Europe. Of course we live in a "free country," unlike Canada, but how long until our Liberals are able to follow their lead? If we pay attention it turns out they already are. For example the Colorado "right" of men to not be excluded from women's restrooms, or the case in New Mexico where a photographer was had to pay a few thousand dollars for refusing to photograph a gay co-commitment ceremony. Do we want to keep heading in this direction? Do we want to give atheists their wish, and make teaching (and practicing) our religion illegal?

The USSR was quite happy to redistribute wealth, but it also killed Christians for going to church. I guess people who think the murder of innocents and the attacks on our freedom of religion are less important than increasing our socialism must think differently than I do. Anyway, if you want the complete stories, look them up at lifesitenews.com .

Oh well, I still sound like I'm a ranting conspiracy theorist... I'm not saying these things are bound to happen. I'm just saying that this seems to be the direction we are heading, and I'd rather starve free than starve in a Gulag.

Several people posting here seem to be terribly confused about a few basics. One such is the fact that Christ's directive/command to feed/clothe/shelter/comfort the poor and oppressed, and to visit those imprisoned, is a personal command. He ordered His disciples to go out and do so, and to lead by example. He did not say, 'Go get a gun and hold it to that rich fellows head and take his money and go do ...' No. He made it clear that it is a personal thing. He also made clear that His followers were to be different, and also that there is a clear difference between those of the world, and those of His who are in the world.

Society cannot do what must be done by Christians, one to one. Society is representative of Caesar, while Christians represent the True King of Peace.

And Fr. Joseph is exactly right in his analysis of the Catholic concepts engaging life, i.e., abortion as differentiated by the war in Iraq.

"Obama's Catholics will do everything they can to avoid the infanticide question -- along with all that it symbolizes -- and will try to foster a moral equivalence between their positions on prudential matters and the non-negotiable life issues ("How Obama's Catholics Will Dodge the Infanticide Problem," 5/12/08)."

This strategy might best be called "Using the seamless garment to hide the bodies." Will it be big enough for 50 million more?

Shan Gill,

With all due respect, I believe you are the one who is slightly confused here.

Assuming you are a Catholic, you ought to know that there is a vast and rich body of Catholic social teaching which has a lot to say about the role of the state, markets, communities, labor, individuals, institutions, etc.

It makes quite clear that "society" is in fact supposed to do all of those things you mention - that society is supposed to be animated by Christian principles, and that those principles are to be embodied in real institutions that make a real difference in people's lives. And it has said that states and governments do have a role to play in attaining the common good, in regulating free markets, in collecting taxes, in establishing welfare for the truly need.

It has also, much to my liking, stressed the need for going "beyond the state" through self-sufficient, cooperative communities. What I don't think it does is reduce government action to evil coercion, and until we are indeed in a position to move beyond the state, we can't simply pull the plug on the needy.

My new friend Tim Shipe has a good idea - parishes need to organize nights where the social teaching is actually taught to Catholics. Clearly the need is great, especially in the election season.

Plain and simple, here is why Obama will not be elected.

People are finding out that he is the puppet of the CFR/UN and that he is a communist.

He even has large posters of the murderous dictator Che Guevara in his campaign offices.

Shame on Catholics, or ANYONE who would vote to empower the CFR/UN/COMMUNISM who reveres a mass murderer this way!

I'm a 47-year-old, relatively new Catholic (converted through the RCIA process in 2006) and I love the rich theology, have embraced the doctrine of the Church and have been blessed by the love and guidance of the people in my parish.

I continue to pore over the CCC, read up on the rich body of Catholic social teaching and study as theology as I can. This has been a great series of posts and I thank InsideCatholic for its work on this important issue.

With that said I have a couple of questions for the group:

1) Like others, I have trouble with Obama because of his pro-abortion stands. I also worry about compromises McCain might make. From a Catholic perspective, who are our third-party choices?

2) Can you provide names of some theologians/books that may help on the subject of Catholic social teaching.

Thanks.

Montana Dan

I note with amusement that the poster "Change" refers to infanticide as a "wedge issue." I suppose the plight of Jews during the Holocaust or that of slaves in the antebellum American South would have been "wedge issues" to this person as well. "Sure you want to save Jews and blacks. But that's not going to put food on the plates of poor people, or bring down the price of gasoline!" This is merely a useless, amoral, and intellectually dishonest attempt to trivialize the rightful concerns of millions of Americans over the slaughter of the unborn. God save us from Obama and his brainwashed extremists.

It seems as if many of the people that post their "opinions" on this topic are attempting to justify a personal point of view which may or may not be consistent with Catholic teaching.
I wonder how each of these people identify themselves? Are they Democrats, Irish, Italian, American-Italian, or are they Catholics that happen to happen to have one or more of the above characteristics?
What I would propose is that they form their conscience in conformance with the Church; not the "party", not the nationality, etc. It is sometimes difficult to vote in a way which acknowledges that certain issues are either right or wrong because other "issues" have some moral weight. We are blessed as Catholics to have the 2,000 year teaching authority of the Church to help us PROPERLY form our consciences on difficult issues. We would do well to STUDY what the Church teaches!

Hi Dan,

I asked my bishop for advice about the upcoming election. He said, if neither choice is perfectly in keeping with the Catholic conscience, don't throw your vote away (by voting for a third party candidate), but choose the candidate who will eventually lead us to a greater respect for human life. I think McCain's positions on non-negotiable issues like abortion are more in line with the Church's teachings than Obama's. I don't have any book recommendations to you, but would encourage you to email your bishop. My bishop responded to my email within a week. Best wishes!

Reading this discussion is very disheartening.

Debating about the war, economic policies, etc. is all well and good, but if a person votes for a pro-abortion candidate, it is disingenuous for him or her to say that he or she in in line with Catholic teaching. In fact, it is a lie for such persons to call themselves "Catholic." A Catholic, however poorly catechized he or she may be, has NO excuse to ever vote for a "pro-choice" politician.

None. Never.

This is a non-negotiable position -- not because I say so, but because the (leftist) USCCB has made it clear that pro-life is THE issue. Catholics who don't accept that (moral teaching plus magesterial authority) are NOT Catholic in any true sense.

Thanks for your remarks and guidance, Molly. It is appreciated. All the best to you and others for the summer.

It appears to me that the #1 political issue for many Catholics is abortion. If a candidate is in favor of legalized abortion, they are immoral and should be voted against.

Would it be appropriate to discuss the legitimacy of this claim? Many conservative Catholics claim that while they may vote for a politician who helps weaken social services provided by the government, they still support social services provided by religious institutions. What then if this point of view is applied to abortion?

Many studies claim that abortion rates do not go up or down with legalization (this is one example: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21255186/). Would it be more effective for Catholics to then focus on creating social services that help reduce abortions instead of focusing on making it illegal?

I am a Catholic Brit of Irish descent living in Indonesia so I am not all that clued up to the so called abortion debate as it occurs in the states. I am however against abortion as are most the people I know in Indonesia. Recently my niece got pregnant outside marriage. In discussing her future with the family the word abortion never came up!

However my understanding is that the issue is called “The right of women to choose”. This raises a number of dilemas, not just for Catholics. Most major religions believe that Human Beings were put on this world and given the right to choose how they lived their life and they would be answerable for these choices in the next. Had God decided that the absence of murder and abortion was greater than a Humans Beings right to choice then He could have stopped this with a single desire but He didn't. God allowed Humankind to have free will; something the Angels did not have. In the USA we have a situation where people are trying to take away a persons right to choose - which God never did - can someone please explain the logic of this as a Catholic..

As Anne said it might be more effective for Catholics to focus on creating social services, lines of communication and education that help reduce abortions instead of focusing on making it illegal?

The last question I would like an answer to is, “How does one intend to separate Church for State with this kind of debate going on?”.

First of all, the Angels have free will. Freer than ours. If you think they don't, you need to brush up on the concept of Angels, or free will, or both.

People are working to "take away" the right of a woman to choose to kill her baby for the same reason that society has "taken away" the right of bank robbers to rob banks, rapists to rape, axe murderers to axe murder, embezzlers to embezzle, swindlers to swindle, etc.

If the argument "If God really thought abortion was evil, he wouldn't allow anyone to choose it, thus human laws against abortion are a violation of God's plan" were valid, then human laws against bank robbery, rape, fraud, axe murders, etc., would also be a violation of God's intentions.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has used this argument several times in public: I was taught as a Catholic that we have free will. Thus, in upholding the Right to Choose, I am upholding the Catholic Faith.

Ever wonder what "the sin against the Holy Spirit" is? That's it, right there.

When Jesus calls it "the sin that cannot be forgiven," he is telling us that there are in truth, here on earth, certain citizens of Hell who have simply not yet died.

I am unaware of any syllable uttered by Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington regarding this particular blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, rather routinely uttered by Pelosi and other pro-abortion Catholics in public life.

There is a difference between charity and justice.

Catholics are OBLIGED to oppose the "legalization" of abortion, because it is strictly unjust to refuse to recognize the right to life of any person or group of persons.

Catholics are at liberty to hold various opinions about the provision of charity--what are the best means, what are the best agencies, etc.

Catholic are strictly OBLIGED to OPPOSE any law or public policy by which some group of people may be murdered with impunity--and that's what it means to have legal abortion.

Not only is legalized abortion strictly unjust, it also means, in principle, that the state has the authority to KILL ANYONE. Anyone who accepts "legal" abortion also accepts, in principle, the totalitarian State, and mass murder.

The primary goal of pro-life Catholics (i.e., all practicing Catholics) in America is NOT "reducing abortion." The pro-life movement is not, primarily, about providing a bowl of soup or a winter coat. It is about reversing the direction of the State we live under--which has claimed for 35 years that it has the authority to define that certain people may kill certain other people. Such a government is godless, murderous, and illegitimate. It will collapse violently and disastrously if its course cannot be reversed peacefully.

I have recently come across this thread and have been reading with great interest as an Australian Catholic wife and mother.
The American politics is covered in the media here but I have to say, I have learned quite a lot from this discussion.
Most notably, "R.C" who has provided quite witty, informative and researched posts. Kudos to you. :)
I have had a sneaky suspicion Barack was not all he was cracked up to be, and seeing evidence presented of what he has said, done and voted for in the past confirms my woman's intuition he is a dark soul.
If I was a registered voter in your country, he would NOT be getting my endorsement.
Good luck in November.
Sincerely
Kate

Much of the reasoning for supporting Obama is a rationalization of why social justice outweighs infanticide. One of the problems with this reasoning is that social justice requires the end of infanticide/abortion.

And yes, we need to call abortion infanticide and not just an opinion. The only true difference between a baby who is aborted at 35 weeks and a baby who is delivered at 36 weeks is want. Both of these children have finger prints, have personalities, have fully functional nervous systems to allow them to feel pain, and their own unique DNA. They are both children.

To say that a child receives their soul during the procedure of birth is unwarranted. What about birth would infuse a soul in a child? Why would a Cesarean section infuse a soul just as a birth canal birth? If the child is wanted, then it is delivered. If the child is not wanted, then it because ‘not a child’ and is then aborted. The law even distinguishes between wanted fetal deaths (fetal homicide) and not wanted fetal deaths (abortion).

In reality, the fact that a life is wanted or not does not make it any less of a life and we must remember that only God can create life. We just cooperate with Him in the creation. Killing a child at is a homicide regardless of whether that child is in or out of the womb.
Would the democratic policies of socialism reduce abortion? To answer this question we should look at a few points.

1. Do ‘rich’ families never have abortions? The answer to this in No. The families that people deem as rich do have abortions. They also have depression and other difficulties that are usually just associated with not having all of the money that you want.

2. Is the Government effective in providing for its people in poor areas? To answer this one, lets look at Chicago. This area in Illinois has a tax rate of 9% to fund many of the policies that Obama and his Democratic Leadership are trying to foist upon the rest of the nation. Chicago has the one of the worst school systems in both the graduation rate and the children’s scores. They have one of the highest murder rates in the country. Unemployment is one of the nation’s worst. Crime rates are some of the worst in the nation. This is the outcome of Obama’s policies. It does not seem like the things that social justice works to have as an outcome.

3. Health Care. If you only listen to the Mass Media, you would say that McCain’s plan for Health Care is terrible and that Obama’s plan is wonderful. This just isn’t true.

The socialized medicine of Europe and Canada does not work well. If you think it does, ask my cousin who lives in London who broke his leg one afternoon. He lay overnight with a compound fracture overnight because in socialized medicine, doctors get paid the same amount if they work 8 hours or if they work 10 hours; or if they do well or not. There is not drive to succeed or do well. The doctors in London leave at 5pm. If you are sick or injured after that, it is too bad for you. The next day my cousin barely survived with his leg because of the infection that set in. This is not an isolated case.

How well will our children do with this type of Health Care in the United States? There is really no ‘Care’ in that health care. Currently in the United States, a hospital emergency room can’t turn you away without treating you. Children without insurance plans can get treated for emergencies now, here in the US, and even after 5pm. They can’t in socialized medicine states; not after ‘hours’. And actually, John McCain’s plan is not too bad. It would actually help people get less expensive health care. This note is going to be too long as it is, so I will leave that explanation for later.

4. Just for kicks, let’s talk about the minimum wage. I do not understand why people think that raising the minimum wage will help poverty. The number 1 expense for any product is labor. If the government causes the expenses for labor to rise, 1 of three things happen at each company:

.....continued below

a. The company can’t make the necessary profits and it folds and the workers are laid off. These workers are now unemployed.

b. The company can’t make the necessary profits so it reduces its number 1 expense by reducing the labor force. Workers are laid off and are now unemployed.

c. The company raises the prices of their goods. Now the worker’s salaries have increased (if they still have jobs), but most of their expenses have also increased so now they have even more difficulty buying the things that they need.
None of these scenarios do anything to reduce poverty. They just make it worse.

5. What programs does the Government fund to reduce real health issues in America’s poor? How have these programs reduced other killers of Americans, such as smoking and obesity? These are also killers of the poor. The current government programs for these things are ineffective at best and do nothing to help our poor.

So, no, the socialism that Obama encourages, does not seem to decrease the amount of abortions at all.

People also use the Iraq war and the fact that McCain does not have a time-line to pull out of Iraq is a reason to vote for Obama.

Yes, war sucks, but that is not the issue right now. Let’s go back to Chicago for a moment. More people were murdered in Chicago alone (Americans killing Americans) in the last 6 months than people were killed in Iraq the last 6 months. Over 10,000 Americans are murdered each year in America. The number of people who are killed in Iraq, in total, barely compares with 1 year of murders within the United States.

Where is the concern about that? Are Government programs keeping that from happening? If they were, then Chicago would have a much lower murder rate.

Yes, war sucks. But America surrendering in this war is not an option. The boost it would give to all of the terrorists would be unspeakable. These people HATE America. These people will do anything to kill Americans. I am not exaggerating. Did 9/11 teach you anything? Do you think the terrorists will suddenly like us if we surrender in Iraq? No, if this happens, the terrorists will be able to claim a victory. This will do horrific damage to vulnerable countries and Israel. This will also move the war back on to American soil. If you desire peace in the world and at home, you cannot allow a surrender in Iraq. The main reason why the war in Iraq is even an issue is because the Mass Media keeps on pushing it on us as an issue. Would you think about it every week if there was not a new and breaking story about it?

Also, the Mass Media and the current Democratic Leadership like to blame Bush and the Republicans for the current financial situation. This is so totally untrue, that it is hard to listen to it. The Clinton administration is the one that pushed for the risky loans from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Republicans, including McCain and Bush tried to get regulations tightened up to avoid the meltdown which has occurred. Democrats blocked this effort in 1999, 2003, 2005, and 2007.

The financial meltdown has nothing to do with Bush’s policies. Actually, if you look back at the economy over Bush’s tenure, it looks pretty good. Aside from the slight recession in 2001 that could also be attributed to Clinton’s policies, up until 6 months ago, America’s economy was doing very well with record low unemployment rates. You can’t honestly say that Bush’s economic policies are terrible. The poor were better off under Bush’s reign than they were under Clintons. It also goes against the arguments that socialism is better for people. And just why isn’t the Mass Media getting into the nitty gritty of this story because the public ‘has a right to know’?

....continued below

I would also like to address the attitude that conservative policies and people don’t care for the poor. This is also not true. The difference between conservatives and liberals on this is that conservatives choose to spend their own money, time, and talents helping the poor. They are more likely to donate to charitable causes than the liberals. They are more likely to volunteer than the liberals. Don’t believe me? See the post by RC regarding the amount of charitable deductions the Obama’s made. Senator Biden is not much better with and average of just over $300 per year of charitable contributions made in the last 4 years. I know many conservative Catholics who try to use the bible’s 10% tithing as a guide.

I hate to be quite so blunt in my next topic, but there is no other way to put it. The poverty level is a statistic. Even Jesus said that there will always be the poor. It does not matter what the gap is between the rich and the poor, even if it is $1. There will always be the statistical bell curve where x% of the population is below a poverty line. See the comments that RC made between America’s poor and Romania’s poor. Also, if we truly believe that God will provide for everything that we need, then it is not a terrible thing to be poor. I grew up poor. But we had everything we needed and I think, having overcome it, are better for it.

Basically, even if you ignored the teaching of the church that places Abortion as an immoral act and tried to use other reasoning, such as social justice, care of the poor, etc; then you still can’t vote for Obama because his policies for those things do not result in social justice. They actually make things worse.

Comments Catholic Campaign for Human Development Has Given ACORN $7 Million
by Phyllis Schlafly
11/11/2008

Full Story: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=29441


Do you wonder why 2008 election data shows that the majority of Catholics voted for Barack Obama even though his record as Illinois state senator proves him the most pro-abortion candidate who ever ran for president?

Perhaps one answer is that on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, millions of Catholics will again be putting in their church's collection plate their annual donation to what the pre-printed envelope calls "Campaign for Human Development: The Catholic Church working to end poverty and injustice in America; We'll turn your dollars into hope for the poor of our nation."

The generous Catholics who respond to that well-phrased appeal probably think they are making a Good Samaritan gift to provide necessaries to the down-and-out. Most would probably be shocked to learn that the money donated to the Campaign for Human Development (CHD) does not go for charity but for radical Obama-style community organizing.

Over the last 10 years, CHD has given $7.3 million of Catholic-donated dollars to the Saul Alinsky-style group called ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). When in 1998 some Catholics complained that CHD grants were not used for Catholic charity but were actually funding groups opposed to church teachings, CHD changed its name to Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD).

The name change did not redirect the flow of money. In 2007 alone, CCHD increased its support of ACORN, giving it 37 grants totaling $1,037,000.