Democrats Set Their Sights on Winning Back Catholics

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ridge,

As another cradle democrat, I agree almost totally. (Though I did get to vote for a genuine pro-life democrat for IL governor less than a decade ago - he lost).

The only thing I have to add is that I have come to believe that many among the democratic party don’t really care any more for the poor than the most heartless of republicans. They talk the talk and vote the vote because it satisfies a certain constituency. They don’t want their programs to WORK. They want them to guarantee continued votes for their party. Its a cynical policy that works all too well.
 
bones_IV said:
What are you talking about?! We have Bishop Burke, Bishop Chaput, Bishop Bruskewitz as examples.
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No, I certainly agree and if any of them got their own national show, I’d watch it…religously…😃

Perhaps Cardinal Pell was a bad example of what I was trying to say. I just mean I wish we had someone who was regularly in the public spotlight who could speak authoritatively about morals and the Catholic Church with the visibility of a Falwell or Graham without the negative connotations of the former.

Coincidentally I just read a text for an adult cetechesis class on Catholic Identity which compared and contrasted Bruskewitz with a liberal bishop somewhere in one of the urban areas of the upper Midwest. While the author spoke admiringly of Bruskewitz he seemed to condescendingly imply such “orthodox” methods wouldn’t work outside a rural diocese.:confused:
 
“Democrats set thier sights on winning back Catholics.” LOL
Nazis set thier sights on winning back Jews. Abortion abortion abortion.
 
Brian_C said:
No, I certainly agree and if any of them got their own national show, I’d watch it…religously…😃

Perhaps Cardinal Pell was a bad example of what I was trying to say. I just mean I wish we had someone who was regularly in the public spotlight who could speak authoritatively about morals and the Catholic Church with the visibility of a Falwell or Graham without the negative connotations of the former.

Coincidentally I just read a text for an adult cetechesis class on Catholic Identity which compared and contrasted Bruskewitz with a liberal bishop somewhere in one of the urban areas of the upper Midwest. While the author spoke admiringly of Bruskewitz he seemed to condescendingly imply such “orthodox” methods wouldn’t work outside a rural diocese.:confused:
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What an insult! The trouble with the Catholic Church in this country is a plethora of liberal bishops who know better than the church what we should think.
 
I know what politics is but I no longer believe in it. There are really only two parties to vote for and I’m unconcerned about how any politician labels himself or herself. I look at their record, I look at what they are for and against. Then I pray.

If anyone out there feels led, why are you waiting for someone else? Perhaps God wants you to get involved. Most of us may already be in the midst of what God wants us to do, but more Catholics should speak up, politely but firmly.

No more wishy-washy Catholocism. Think. Pray. Contact.

God bless,
Ed
 
Brian_C said:
No, I certainly agree and if any of them got their own national show, I’d watch it…religously…😃

Perhaps Cardinal Pell was a bad example of what I was trying to say. I just mean I wish we had someone who was regularly in the public spotlight who could speak authoritatively about morals and the Catholic Church with the visibility of a Falwell or Graham without the negative connotations of the former.

Coincidentally I just read a text for an adult cetechesis class on Catholic Identity which compared and contrasted Bruskewitz with a liberal bishop somewhere in one of the urban areas of the upper Midwest. While the author spoke admiringly of Bruskewitz he seemed to condescendingly imply such “orthodox” methods wouldn’t work outside a rural diocese.:confused:
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Could you point us to the article, possibly?

I must say that I tend to agree with the premise, if for no other reason that that the bishops in major urban centers are often, themselves, beholden to the financial influences of powerful donors who would prefer not to be publically challenged and have the bishop stay out of their hair. Though the real problems are actually much more complex than that alone.
 
I love how people think that the Church should not get involed with politics. If you are a Catholic senator ,and you support abortion you should be excommunicated. Faith is supposed to determine politics. Which one is greater? Politics or faith?

Let me just say this: why can’t a republican or democrat just stand up and say “I do not want abortion period. I will make it illegal.” If we can get “separate, but equal” overturned then why can’t we get this overturned?

Also, people seem to think, democrats especially, that the Church should have nothing to do with politics. What a load of bunk. If the Catholic Church built Western Civilization from the carcass of the Western Roman Empire then it has every right to have its say in the political world!

If the Democrats want to win Catholics then they are going to have to drop their negative attitude towards the Church, support the major moral teachings of the Church, and not go against major moral teachings of the Church.

The Catholic Church weilds the most power in the entire world. The Vatican can sway hundreds millions across the globe. I think that nations who wish to be “totally secular”, which is impossible because their can be no such thing as not having a religion, are scared of the Church having and gaining power in the modern world. This applies to democrats and republicans.

A third party would be nice, but how is that possible? The parties today (in the USA) are built on the media. In order of the party to be recognized it has to be dramatically different, interesting, and attractive, so that the media will pick up on it.

God speed.

Vigis
 
Vigis said:
Let me just say this: why can’t a republican or democrat just stand up and say “I do not want abortion period. I will make it illegal.”
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They won’t say that, Vigis, because they want to get elected. They fear offending anyone who might represent another vote for themselves, who might say, “I’m not gonna vote for that moron–he’s a jerk!”

Why do they want to get elected?

Is it so they can represent the people in their districts or States? No.

So they can work to make the country a better place? No.

So they can try to get their agendas pushed through into law? No.

They want to get elected because legislators are paid lots and lots of mon-ey. Between what we’re stupid enough to allow them to get away with and not rise in an armed insurrection, and what they get in bribes from special-interest groups, political action committees, and lobbyists, members of Congress make enough cash in four years that Average Joe American could live off the same amount for the rest of his life.

They do it for the cash. Ronald Reagan was not lying when he said that “politics is the world’s second-oldest profession, and it bears a striking resemblance to the first”.

However, I agree with you. It would be incredibly refreshing to hear somebody stand up and say, “I’m running for office. This is what I believe in: re-building our own economic infrastructure, outlawing abortion, lowering taxes, protecting our borders, abolishing homosexual ‘marriage’, refusal to fund stem-cell research, making ‘assisted suicide’ a capital crime, tighter controls on obscenity and pornography, universal health insurance for every citizen, and putting the Ten Commandments inside every freakin’ courtroom in America. These are what I believe in, I will not deviate from them, and I will work to make them reality. If you’re offended by that, too damn bad. Don’t vote for me.”

Of course, the press would paint such an individual as a dangerous lunatic, and would make sure that his campaign never got off the ground through “normal means”; but it would be interesting to see how many votes somebody like that would garner.
 
You are pretty much right about that Wolseley though not all politicians are like that. Many of them are sadly. What this country needs are more politicians like Teddy Roosevelt or FDR. Both of them were great presidents. Teddy knew what to do and he got it done. He did not have to go through some burreacracy to get the job done. If he wanted another national park all he had to do was say,“I want this to be a national park”, and bam it happened. FDR knew how to get the economy going, and how to get us out of the Great Depression, and he did.

Hey what is the world’s first oldest proffession according to Reagan?

God speed.

Vigis
 
Maranatha said:
Democrats Set Their Sights on Winning Back Catholics

A Roman Catholic nun who leads a social justice advocacy group called Network, Simone Campbell rarely got a phone call from Capitol Hill before the 2006 election. Campbell, based in Washington, D.C., says she “wore her knuckles bare” fruitlessly knocking on lawmakers’ doors, particularly those of Democrats who should have been natural allies on issues like raising the minimum wage and comprehensive immigration reform.

Then came last year’s midterm elections. Campbell joined a new Catholic voter-turnout operation working to reverse the wilting Catholic support Democrats had seen in 2004. After her efforts helped elect Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown in Ohio and Bob Casey Jr. in Pennsylvania, her phone began ringing. Campbell’s group is now regularly invited to meetings with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. On a recent conference call about immigration with other religious activists, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York announced at the last minute that she wanted to jump on. Campbell was asked to give the closing prayer at a big Democratic National Committee meeting last winter. “I stopped being a pariah,” she says. “Now, I’m value added.”

more
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They need to change their platforms on abortion and gay marriage to bring me back into the fold. Right now I’m a firm Independent.
 
the recent attempts of the democrats to pander to the religious community (without significantly altering their stances that offend said community) remind me of the republicans’ half-hearted attempts to woo minorities to come over to their camp.
 
Riley259 said:
They need to change their platforms on abortion and gay marriage to bring me back into the fold. Right now I’m a firm Independent.
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Yes, me too! I voted Democrat until I realized I was supporting abortion. I had to quit that. Now I vote Republican because in Chicago area all the Catholics and Democrats are proabortion.
 
FDR was a dreadful president whose increased spending did nothing to end the Great Depression. I will never consider that man to be a great President.

The Democrat Party used to be for the “little guy”. It hasn’t been for decades. The Democrat Party is owned and operated by the lunatic Left - abortion, gay marriage, Planned Parenthood, NARRAL, the lawyers union (ABA), the teachers union (NEA), envoirnmental extremists, animal “rights” groups, Hollywood…

Between the two, the GOP has the greater room for influence. Politics is a man-made institution and will never be perfect on this Earth. The GOP can be influenced. God knows the Evangelicals have done it.

Now, if one is a “peace and justice crowd” Catholic, as Bill Donahue puts it, and sees the primary role of the Federal Government as dispensing taxpayer-paid assistance to the poor and elderly, then this Catholic will never like the GOP.

The GOP has, and always will have, a small but noisy “moderate” section who does not like religion of any sort and believes in “accomodation” with the Democrats (Arlen Specter). The GOP has its small but equally noisy and in my humble opinion even more obnoxious Libertarian bunch (Jeff Flake, Ron Paul).
The Libertarian bunch is okay with gay marriage, prostitution, porn, abortion, etc. and sees any effort to limit these “rights” as unconstitutional.

My take is that poor people are best assisted by private charities and not government programs.

My observation is that a representative republic works for a moral, generally religious people and nobody else.

The Democrat Party has been on a 40+ year move to emulate the Leftist parties of Western Europe. Its greatest strengths are in the allegedly Catholic Northeastern Corridor and allegedly Catholic West Coast. I fear its soul has been lost.

So many Americans think that once elected, the politicians should simply support what we want. It doesn’t work that way. Letter writing, phone calls, emails - you have to let your elected representatives know what you want done.
 
Fitz said:
Now I vote Republican because in Chicago area all the Catholics and Democrats are proabortion.
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That’s not accurate. A lot of them are, but there are also a number of Catholic Democratic pro-life legislators in the city and the area.

Of course, if you vote Republican in Cook County, you by and large ostracize yourself from having any influence at all in the political process. It’s almost as bad as voting third party just to feel good about standing for something apart.
 
Vigis said:
You are pretty much right about that Wolseley though not all politicians are like that. Many of them are sadly. What this country needs are more politicians like Teddy Roosevelt or FDR. Both of them were great presidents. Teddy knew what to do and he got it done. He did not have to go through some burreacracy to get the job done. If he wanted another national park all he had to do was say,“I want this to be a national park”, and bam it happened. FDR knew how to get the economy going, and how to get us out of the Great Depression, and he did.
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I suppose you would like the Daley legacy, also.
 
chicago said:
That’s not accurate. A lot of them are, but there are also a number of Catholic Democratic pro-life legislators in the city and the area.
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Some individual Democrats are pro-life and also support the traditional definition of family, but the politics of the city and county are solidly pro-abortion/pro-gay. The reality is the small number Democratic politicians in the Chicago area who would be supportive of some critical Catholic issues are nothing more than sheep who follow the liberal agenda when called upon to do so in critical votes by either Daley or Gov Blogo.
 
manualman said:
The only thing I have to add is that I have come to believe that many among the democratic party don’t really care any more for the poor than the most heartless of republicans. They talk the talk and vote the vote because it satisfies a certain constituency. They don’t want their programs to WORK. They want them to guarantee continued votes for their party. Its a cynical policy that works all too well.
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Notwithstanding that neither party has done anything for the poor since Reagan’s earned income credit, there is something to worry about. It may well be that the dems now in control of the party are “Eurocrats” under the skin, and intend to so expand social benefits (likely to the elderly, because they vote in huge numbers, whereas the poor don’t) that American young people will no longer be able to afford to have children, as is the case with Europeans today. Or, at least they won’t perceive being able to do so. It was recently opined that Europeans don’t have children (Poles excepted) because they don’t have children. In other words, if you do not see any point in living for anyone other than yourself, then you will not live for anyone but yourself. The more you live for yourself only, the more you will be inclined to do so, and support those who provide you with ever more benefits at the expense of those (usually younger folk) who earn. It’s a societal death spiral.

Since I do not see the slightest evidence that the dem party wishes to promote family formation (and all evidence is that they are at least insouciant on the subject, if not negative) dem control of all political power could be the beginning of the Eurospiral in America. That’s truly scary. The dem party is far, far from the party of which I was once an office holder.
 
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