Yes I am I hope. I’ve studied Humanae Vitea too. I am pro-life. Hope I did not write something that caused you to think I wasn’t. Weighing things out is much harder than researching one single issue tho.
That is great. HV was the document that opened my eyes, started to make me ask questions. In fact it took over a year to decide to cross the Tibur.
The above being said I am not a one issue voter and in fact I ended up also looking at social justice issues particularly immigration, but others as well. In the past I have been a supporter of the fortress America mentality, parts of which I still agree with. Recently I started looking into this immigration issue as well and I have changed my perspectives considerably, but not totally. I actually believe that Supply and Demand have a significant part in the immigration issue, and at least part of this issue is possibly linked to 1973, which would mean that our immigration issues could be a 2nd or 3rd order effect of aboration policies. Prior to the late 1980’s we had some illegal immigration, but nothing like now.
rawstory.com/news/2007/Zell_Miller_Abortion_has_shrunk_our_0309.html
I am sure that it will be very hard to prove this linkage. Planned Parenthood will defend its position as strongly as the Tobacco Institute used to declare “Their is no provable link that smoking causes cancer” This logic of course is bad, but I am sure they will use it and probably effectively for a long time.
Anyway every businessman knows the link between supply and demand but I am sure some will try and ignore it in this case.
I am glad you are not pro-abortion and I believe your stance on this thread is that no single issue should determine a vote. Please correct me if I have this wrong?
I would agree with your stance with a caveat. One must consider proportional harm. The same logic that is used by the Church with regards to Just War. With that said the severity of a single issue could outweigh all others. It just depends on that weight that one gives to that single issue.
It does upset me that the Church talks about proportional harm with regards to votes, but does not clearly state where abortion falls and leaves the faithful to flounder with determining this on their own. Some Bishops say one thing some say anothor. Each member of the Church trying to piece together church statements and weighing Social Justice or other likes and dislikes against this issues. Maybe China and other countries that have State mandated Death Camps are why the church won’t come out more strongly. I am not sure what the reasoning is. I know that this is NOT a party issue, although some would like to make it a party issue. It is in fact a moral issue, a Christina issue, a Catholic issue. It sure would be nice for Rome, the POPE, to give a CLEAR example when it would be appropriate to vote Pro-Death under the proportional harm guidelines.
Voting Pro-Death would be ok, in my opinion, if my alternative choice was someone like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has declared as soon as he gets nuclear weapons he intends on using them. Short of voting for a mass murderer I cannot find any social justice (political) issues that would outweigh the millions of innocent babies that are are being killed that would allow me to vote in this manner. Can you?
I think many here that try and defend the position that a voter is NOT responsible for what their candidates do are claiming some form of ignorance that I really do not think is present. Regardless, even if the ignorance is present I personally don’t think it is invincible, but I am not God and cannot judge what he will or will not do with any single individual. It is the same with every other sinner with regards to us judgeing them. The Sin itself however we can judge, but the individual is judged by God alone. To this end I would say that a vote for a candidate would be like a vote on a jury for a death sentence. Not exactly the same but the logic would flow something like:
The jury member is NOT actively going to Kill the criminal. They will hand the votes to the Judge. The judge will then validate the counts and sentence the criminal and then hand the prisoner over to the Jailers. The Jailers will then turn the criminal over to an executioner who will kill the criminal.
I do not believe that most people would take the stance that a jury member had no part in the execution? In fact I think most people would make a direct link to the vote caste in that jury to the death of the criminal. Why is such a clear linkage not made with abortion… In my opinion it is a Pontius Pilot like reaction, a cowards way out, and they just don’t want to take the blame for the death of the children. Most however in the case of the criminal will publicly and proudly proclaim they took another guilty life in the pursuit of justice.
Jury member = Voter
Judge = Politician
Jailer = Planned Parenthood
Executioner = Abortionist
To me those that decry the death penalty as wrong must also decry abortion, unless they are not truthful to themselves. This also goes in reverse, although the Church is a little more clear on the Death penalty with regards to Societies responsibility to protect citizens. I think that killing criminals is much more defensible in Church doctrine but my whole point in using this example is that the connection between the vote of a Jury is no different then a vote in a booth for a candidate.
I am sure someone will disagree and argue that voting against the unborn is acceptable with Church teaching I just hope they are willing to consider proportional harm and culpability and accountability for making such claims. Hopefully only those not claiming to be Christians will side with death, but we seem to constantly find people that will try and argue between the lines of Church teaching to allow them to harm kids.
Have a great Saturday…Cheers…
God bless!
and I only hope everyone else on CAFassents with us on ID. Alleluia! :grouphug:
