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Tietrack
Guest
If your not going to vote and voting is just a sham, why not renounce your citizenship and put your words into action. Send a message to to the country that you think this election “thing” is a big sham.
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gilliam
Guest
US Bishops: Faithful Citizenship Quiz
usccb.org/issues-and-action/faithful-citizenship/all-catholics/faithful-citizenship-quiz-questions.cfm
usccb.org/issues-and-action/faithful-citizenship/all-catholics/faithful-citizenship-quiz-questions.cfm
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gilliam
Guest
Catholics Care. Catholics Vote
usccbmedia.blogspot.com/2012/04/catholics-care-catholic-vote-series.html
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HappyPagan
Guest
In my eyes THIS is the party for Catholics constitutionparty.com/party_platform.php#TOP as it is the most inline with the Church’s teachings.
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Zosimus41
Guest
I say let the electorial college sort it out.
Its not like the popular vote will over turn any way.Might help if you live in a swing state though.
If you live in a democratic state and vote repulican your wasting your time.
It would be interesting to score the national popular vote with the EC.
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Rich_Olszewski
Guest
No! The lesser of two evils supposes that one man’s policies are more evil or less evil than the other’s. The phrase doesn’t make sense if the policies are equal in evil.
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Rich_Olszewski
Guest
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gilliam
Guest
And throw away your vote so that there is a better chance that the worse of the 2 will be elected. Not a great move, IMHO.
meltzerboy
New member
I suppose the electoral college serves a purpose because otherwise the election might be determined only by the populous urban centers. But I would still prefer a pure democracy based on one man, one vote. Speaking of votes not counting, I recall during the Bush-Gore election that I had to vote by paper ballot since I had just moved from PA back to NY. I observed my ballot was placed in what looked like a garbage can and asked the official, half-jokingly, whether these paper ballots would really be counted. He simply smiled and said he didn’t know.
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MarcoPolo
Guest
That is the question that one must answer. In my state, it’s not going to make a lick of difference. Too many people here buy the false 2-party dichotomy.
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MarcoPolo
Guest
My campaign is online where many voters lurk, and it’s free to campaign.
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Prodigal_Son1
Guest
There you have freedom in America…
If you think persuasion to a single view, and everyone must agree with you, it’s not freedom.
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Prodigal_Son1
Guest
If voting for the best candidate according to my faith in God is throwing away a vote, and I must vote for one of the two major parties, it’s not freedom.
Christ said lukewarm is not where one should be, yet many are saying one must vote for the lesser of two evils?
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exnihilo
Guest
I agree completely. Politics is force. As George Washington said:
‘Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.’
Politics naturally attracts bad people who want to use force to control their fellow man. When combined with a democracy whose people are becoming less knowledgeable, less rational and more immoral the results are bound to be terrible absent miraculous intervention. You can’t fix this by voting since the very people who most need to be fixed are participating in the vote themselves.
Why would you have to renounce your citizenship to do that when simply not voting will do. Besides if one does renounce their citizenship they are subject to exit taxes. And you have to be a citizen of some other country. This country if not itself a US style democracy is then in danger of being invaded and taken over by the US which has claimed and exercised the right to impose US style democracy upon the world.
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eightandsand
Guest
I fail to see how voting for the lesser of two evils is better than not voting for either of the two evils. As the old saying goes, if you make a deal with the devil, expect to get burned. In my opinion, adherence to the machiavellian lesser of two evils logic is why we are in this mess to begin with. It is why things can only get worse. It is akin to a frog boiling slowly in water. But this is just my opinion.
Here is what Cardinal Burke (the current Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura) has said on this subject in a pastoral letter (“On Our Civic Responsibility for the Common Good”) when he was then Archbishop of St. Louis:
“The Church, however, also recognizes that it is sometimes impossible to avoid all cooperation with evil, as may well be true in selecting a candidate for public office. In certain circumstances, it is morally permissible for a Catholic to vote for a candidate who supports some immoral practices while opposing other immoral practices. Catholic moral teaching refers to actions of this sort as material cooperation, which is morally permissible when certain conditions are met. With respect to the question of voting, these conditions include the following: 1) there is no viable candidate who supports the moral law in its full integrity; 2) the voter opposes the immoral practices espoused by the candidate, and votes for the candidate only because of his or her promotion of morally good practices; and 3) the voter avoids giving scandal by telling anyone, who may know for whom he or she has voted, that he or she did so to advance the morally good practices the candidate supports, while remaining opposed to the immoral practices the candidate endorses and promotes.”
“A Catholic may vote for a candidate who, while he supports an evil action, also supports the limitation of the evil involved,** if there is no better candidate.** For example, a candidate may support procured abortion in a limited number of cases but be opposed to it otherwise. In such a case, the Catholic who recognizes the immorality of all procured abortions may rightly vote for this candidate over another, more unsuitable candidate in an effort to limit the circumstances in whichprocured abortions would be considered legal. Here the intention of the Catholic voter, unable to find a viable candidate who would stop the evil of procured abortion by making it illegal, is to reduce the number of abortions by limiting the circumstances in which it is legal. This is not a question of choosing the lesser evil, but of limiting all the evil one is able to limit at the time.”
“Thus, a Catholic who is clear in his or her opposition to the moral evil of procured abortion could vote for a candidate who supports the limitation of the legality of procured abortion, even though the candidate does not oppose all use of procured abortion,** if the other candidate(s) do not support the limitation of the evil of procured abortion. **Of course, the end in view for the Catholic must always be the total conformity of the civil law with the moral law, that is, ultimately the total elimination of the evil of procured abortion.”
BUT, Archbishop Burke goes on to clarify that:
“But, there is no element of the common good, no morally good practice,that a candidate may promote and to which a voter may be dedicated, which could justify voting for a candidate who also endorses and supports the deliberate killing of the innocent, abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, euthanasia, human cloning or the recognition of a same-sex relationship as legal marriage. These elements are so fundamental to the common good that they cannot be subordinated to any other cause, no matter how good.”
In an interview with Kathryn Jean Lopez (nationalreview.com/articles/227481/archbishop-ray-clarity/kathryn-jean-lopez), Cardinal Burke stated:
“If a Catholic knowingly and deliberately votes for a person who is in favor of the most grievous violations of the natural moral law, then he has formally cooperated in a grave evil and must confess his serious sin. Since President Obama clearly announced, during the election campaign, his anti-life and anti-family agenda, a Catholic who knew his agenda regarding, for example, procured abortion, embryonic-stem-cell research, and same-sex marriage, could not have voted for him with a clear conscience.”
Other bishops, like Bishops Finn of Kansas City, Bishop Hermann of St. Louis, and Bishop O’Brien of Baltimore, to name a few, all echoed these sentiments at the time of the 2008 elections.
Here is what Cardinal Burke (the current Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura) has said on this subject in a pastoral letter (“On Our Civic Responsibility for the Common Good”) when he was then Archbishop of St. Louis:
“The Church, however, also recognizes that it is sometimes impossible to avoid all cooperation with evil, as may well be true in selecting a candidate for public office. In certain circumstances, it is morally permissible for a Catholic to vote for a candidate who supports some immoral practices while opposing other immoral practices. Catholic moral teaching refers to actions of this sort as material cooperation, which is morally permissible when certain conditions are met. With respect to the question of voting, these conditions include the following: 1) there is no viable candidate who supports the moral law in its full integrity; 2) the voter opposes the immoral practices espoused by the candidate, and votes for the candidate only because of his or her promotion of morally good practices; and 3) the voter avoids giving scandal by telling anyone, who may know for whom he or she has voted, that he or she did so to advance the morally good practices the candidate supports, while remaining opposed to the immoral practices the candidate endorses and promotes.”
“A Catholic may vote for a candidate who, while he supports an evil action, also supports the limitation of the evil involved,** if there is no better candidate.** For example, a candidate may support procured abortion in a limited number of cases but be opposed to it otherwise. In such a case, the Catholic who recognizes the immorality of all procured abortions may rightly vote for this candidate over another, more unsuitable candidate in an effort to limit the circumstances in whichprocured abortions would be considered legal. Here the intention of the Catholic voter, unable to find a viable candidate who would stop the evil of procured abortion by making it illegal, is to reduce the number of abortions by limiting the circumstances in which it is legal. This is not a question of choosing the lesser evil, but of limiting all the evil one is able to limit at the time.”
“Thus, a Catholic who is clear in his or her opposition to the moral evil of procured abortion could vote for a candidate who supports the limitation of the legality of procured abortion, even though the candidate does not oppose all use of procured abortion,** if the other candidate(s) do not support the limitation of the evil of procured abortion. **Of course, the end in view for the Catholic must always be the total conformity of the civil law with the moral law, that is, ultimately the total elimination of the evil of procured abortion.”
BUT, Archbishop Burke goes on to clarify that:
“But, there is no element of the common good, no morally good practice,that a candidate may promote and to which a voter may be dedicated, which could justify voting for a candidate who also endorses and supports the deliberate killing of the innocent, abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, euthanasia, human cloning or the recognition of a same-sex relationship as legal marriage. These elements are so fundamental to the common good that they cannot be subordinated to any other cause, no matter how good.”
In an interview with Kathryn Jean Lopez (nationalreview.com/articles/227481/archbishop-ray-clarity/kathryn-jean-lopez), Cardinal Burke stated:
“If a Catholic knowingly and deliberately votes for a person who is in favor of the most grievous violations of the natural moral law, then he has formally cooperated in a grave evil and must confess his serious sin. Since President Obama clearly announced, during the election campaign, his anti-life and anti-family agenda, a Catholic who knew his agenda regarding, for example, procured abortion, embryonic-stem-cell research, and same-sex marriage, could not have voted for him with a clear conscience.”
Other bishops, like Bishops Finn of Kansas City, Bishop Hermann of St. Louis, and Bishop O’Brien of Baltimore, to name a few, all echoed these sentiments at the time of the 2008 elections.
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eightandsand
Guest
Also, the 1917 Code of Canon Law punished abortion with excommunication. The revised canonical legislation continues this tradition when it decrees that a person who actually procures an abortion incurs automatic (Latae sententiae) excommunication" (Canon 1398) " The excommunication affects all those who commit this crime with knowledge of the penalty attached and thus includes those accomplices without whose help the crime would not have been committed" (Canon 1329).
In the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 1974 “Declaration on Procured Abortion” there is a discussion of “Morality and Law” (#19-23). “Man may never obey a law which is in itself, immoral and such is the case of a law which would admit in principle, the liceity of abortion. Nor can he take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law or vote for it. Moreover, he may not collaborate in its application. It is, for instance, inadmissible that doctors or nurses should find themselves obligated to cooperate closely in abortions and have to choose between the law of God and their professional situation.” (22)
Pope John Paul II in “Evangelium Vitae” states “I declare that direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being. … No circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever make licit an act which is intrinsically illicit, since it is contrary to the law of God which is written in every human heart, knowable by reason itself and proclaimed by the Church” (EV 62C).
In the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 1974 “Declaration on Procured Abortion” there is a discussion of “Morality and Law” (#19-23). “Man may never obey a law which is in itself, immoral and such is the case of a law which would admit in principle, the liceity of abortion. Nor can he take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law or vote for it. Moreover, he may not collaborate in its application. It is, for instance, inadmissible that doctors or nurses should find themselves obligated to cooperate closely in abortions and have to choose between the law of God and their professional situation.” (22)
Pope John Paul II in “Evangelium Vitae” states “I declare that direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being. … No circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever make licit an act which is intrinsically illicit, since it is contrary to the law of God which is written in every human heart, knowable by reason itself and proclaimed by the Church” (EV 62C).
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JimR-OCDS
Guest
Remember, Paul Ryan was part of the GOP controlled congress when George Bush was president, that spent us back into debt, after taking office with a surplus.
He was voted for every program Bush put forward, that was not funded, including the Medicaid Prescription Drug program, which even Ted Kennedy voted against, because it was written for three pharmaceutical corporations.
Ryan is the type of Republican which forced me to leave the party and become an independent.
So, I’m an independent that will vote for none of the above.
Jim
He was voted for every program Bush put forward, that was not funded, including the Medicaid Prescription Drug program, which even Ted Kennedy voted against, because it was written for three pharmaceutical corporations.
Ryan is the type of Republican which forced me to leave the party and become an independent.
So, I’m an independent that will vote for none of the above.
Jim
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gilliam
Guest
Catholics have a duty to vote: ewtn.com/vote/voting_faq.htm
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Abba
Guest
Hear! Hear!
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