Do any CAF members who lean towards the Democrat party put any kind of pressure on the Party or on Democrat candidates to change their Pro-Choice (pro

  • Thread starter Thread starter Peeps
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
HolySpirit said:
Martin Luther King is not Catholic.

Following an order to attack and kill the enemy is not a sin in the Catholic Church. Catholics have a long and proud history in military combat
Click to expand...
Dr. Kings words speak truth even though he wasn’t Catholic. You think Pope Francis is pro-war? Its sad to hear other Catholics call our Pope a Liberal, hating him.
 
Last edited:
Yes I think Pope Francis is pro war. If he was alive during WWI or WWII, he would have supported the war effort. You would be hard pressed to find anyone in the free world that didn’t support the effort.
 
HolySpirit said:
Yes I think Pope Francis is pro war. If he was alive during WWI or WWII, he would have supported the war effort. You would be hard pressed to find anyone in the free world that didn’t support the effort
Click to expand...
Those wars were different. I’m talking about today’s imperialistic invasions on country killing innocents.
 
Last edited:
I really don’t know how the Pope would feel. His feelings are irrelevant. The final arbiter of sin is God.

In America we hold elections. Since Pope Francis has never run for office in America, his opinion really does not matter. As a society, we decided that the war in Iraq was a just and necessary war. If someone should be killed based on a lawful order, it is not a sin.

The Pope is not a King. He is the Bishop of Rome and the Pope. His opinion on Iraq means nothing to the soldier who is simply doing his job.

Now abortion, on the other hand…

Abortion is a sin.
 
If that is what you think Iraq & Afghanistan are, you have drunk way too much Kool-aid.

The number of people killed by the oppressive regimes in the middle East far out number the amount of casualties infliced by the US.
Sadaam nearly eradicated the entire Kurdish population! 😨
 
The civil wars and rivalries in those states are the direct consequences of the borders drawn by the Western nations after World War I. We did not make Saddam Hussein do what he did, but the way the western nations drew those borders led to that conflict. Tamara Sonn has a great book on the topic called Islam: History, Religion, and Politics. I highly recommend it!
 
Last edited:
The early Jesus movement was pacifist. It wasn’t until Constantine legalized Christianity that theologians like Saint Augustine began developing notions like the just war theory in order to reconcile the need for state security with Christian pacifism. Most Catholic scholars are recognizing the just war tradition as dated and relying more on the just peace tradition, which essentially states that the only legitimate group to declare war is the United Nations and that the only just cause for going to war is imminent self defense.

Just wars really have to follow a narrow set of conditions. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan would not meet those standards under the modern just war tradition or under the just peace tradition.
 
Last edited:
Sadly, MOST typical people don’t work for change, in any party, and on any issue. Voting – if even that – is usually the only political engagement.

I don’t identify as Dem or Republican, but I vote with who I see is more accord with Catholic principles.
 
Sadly, for many, even IF the Republican Party is more in line with Catholic teaching, many prominent faces in the GOP are NOT very representative of TRUE Catholic social teaching.

Regardless, neither party is Catholic.
 
Last edited:
EvangelistVictor said:
You think Jesus or any of the Biblical Saints would of volunteered to invade Iraq, and kill people on behalf of the US Government?

I’d rather go to jail if there was a draft than kill innocent people overseas.
Click to expand...
How many were innocent? Of the more reasonable figure of 200,000, a large number were combatants. Combatants get killed in wars. Saddam Hussein killed about a million people in his time. Would you feel better about it if he killed another million before his death?
 
Ignatius64869 said:
The early Jesus movement was pacifist
Click to expand...
No reason to believe this. Plenty of reason to disbelieve it.

It may be recalled that Jesus did not chide the Centurion for being an officer in the quite brutal Roman army. On the contrary, he declared that he had not found so great a faith in all of Israel. He did not tell the Centurion to resign.

Look at Luke 3:14 and see what Jesus said about soldiers: "some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?” He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely-be content with your pay.”

Did he tell them not to be soldiers or not to engage in war? No, he did not.
 
Ridgerunner said:
No reason to believe this. Plenty of reason to disbelieve it.
Click to expand...
The opposite is the case. You are basing your conclusion on one example of what Peter did not say in one particular scriptural account. Furthermore, pacifism was not the theme in that passage, so it would have been incredibly odd for the author to have included it. Lastly, it does not follow that it did not happen simply because it was not included in the text.

However, if we look at what Jesus did say, we come away with many more quotes supporting the academic conclusion that the early Jesus movement was largely pacifist in nature. Refer to Matthew 5:9 and Matthew 5:38-48. Furthermore, Jesus says to love one’s neighbor as one’s self, and when he is asked who one’s neighbor is, he replies that one’s neighbor is one’s most bitter enemy. Of course he also tells one of his apostles to put his sword away, for those who live by the sword will perish by the sword (Matthew 26:52). You might also refer to the antimilitarist sentiment in Luke 19:41-44. Jesus echoes much of the Old Testament prophets’ antimilitarist sentiments. The Old Testament and New Testament, taken holistically, are very antimilitarist and very much for nonviolent resistance.

There is also significant historical evidence that many converted Christians claimed exemption from military service for the first three hundred years and refused to resist violently. Religion historian Roland Bainton states, “The age of persecution down to the time of Constantine was the age of pacifism to the degree that during that period no Christian author to our knowledge approved of Christian participation in battle.” Tertullian even wrote, “only without the sword can the Christian wage war; for the Lord has abolished the sword.”

Kleiderer, Minaery, and Mossa note that the overwhelming evidence seems to indicate that “Jesus did not engage in violence and, indeed, preached the opposite–that one should refrain from taking vengeance, that one should not meet violence with violence or do violence to anyone that one should love one’s enemies.” Then, most early Christians took his word for it and practiced what he preached. The religion was likely not organized enough to say that all Christians were pacifists. Indeed, some were less satisfied with the pacifist approach than others. However, the evidence seems rather clear that most Christians were pacifists for the first three hundred years.

For more, I highly recommend Just War Lasting Peace: What Christian Traditions Can Teach Us. It was written in 2005, so it is a bit dated now, but it is an invaluable take on the just war tradition in the Church, the development of the just war tradition over the centuries, and it includes an excellent preview (though it does not go as far as leading Christian scholars on this topic are going today) of where the tradition will go from here.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top