Vote Bush or Kerry

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prolifematt

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Hello

My name is matt lawrence and I have a question about the presidential elections coming up. I am a junior in high school and I have a catholic religion teacher who this year is voting for Kerry because of the war. I attend a Catholic school in reno nevada called Bishop Manogue. I am trying to tell her that ,as a catholic you can not vote for Kerry( the Five non-negotionables). But she said she can vote who ever she wants ( which she can ) but voting for kerry is not in line with the catholic teachings. Can you give help me out and give me some suggestions in approaching this subject.

Thank you and God bless

Matt lawrence
 
Hey. I’m a Junior in high school too, and I have the same dilemma with my parents. Unfortunately, some people just refuse to follow Catholic teachings when it comes to voting. You should give your teacher the url to the Catholic Answers web site and encourage her to watch the Voter’s Guide Video and/or read the Voter’s Guide online. You can also print out a copy of the Voter’s Guide, or if you have one, pass it on to her. If she still refuses to vote according to the Five Non-Negotiables, well, at least you tried. All that’s left to do is pray for her and other Catholic voters to vote in accord to their faith. Also, you can visit my web page at geocities.com/the_archangel_04 for more info. God Bless!

:blessyou:
 
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prolifematt:
Hello

My name is matt lawrence and I have a question about the presidential elections coming up. I am a junior in high school and I have a catholic religion teacher who this year is voting for Kerry because of the war. I attend a Catholic school in reno nevada called Bishop Manogue. I am trying to tell her that ,as a catholic you can not vote for Kerry( the Five non-negotionables). But she said she can vote who ever she wants ( which she can ) but voting for kerry is not in line with the catholic teachings. Can you give help me out and give me some suggestions in approaching this subject.

Thank you and God bless

Matt lawrence
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I agree with JMJ. The Catholic Answers voting guide is a good start. But remember, there are always some people who cannot (or will not) acknowledge that there is not a moral equivalence between their perspective of the war in Iraq and abortion. Also, who about the issue of stem-cell research and gay “marriage”? Does his/her opinion of the war in Iraq trump both of those too? I wouldn’t go so far as to question their Catholicism (since we can’t judge their hearts), but I would question either their moral compass (i.e. has it been rightly formed) or their logic, which appears fundamentally flawed at the very least.
 
Hi! I’m one of the “fundamentally flawed” to whom voteing for either Kerry or Bush is a vote for murder of innocents. One says no to abortion, stem cell research and “gay marriage” (no such thing exists) and yes to the senseless disposal of thousands of human beings to prove a point. The other says okay to the first three but no to the last. How can anyone vote for either in good conscience? Since being confirmed in the Church only 2 years ago, I see so much that I was blind to before. There are no levels, for lack of a better word at the moment, that condones murder and killing. Do we not believe in the sanctity of life from the moment of conception to the hour of NATURAL death?

So little old “flawed” me will not be voteing this year. I have been disenfranchised. 😦
 
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prolifematt:
Hello

My name is matt lawrence and I have a question about the presidential elections coming up. I am a junior in high school and I have a catholic religion teacher who this year is voting for Kerry because of the war. I attend a Catholic school in reno nevada called Bishop Manogue. I am trying to tell her that ,as a catholic you can not vote for Kerry( the Five non-negotionables). But she said she can vote who ever she wants ( which she can ) but voting for kerry is not in line with the catholic teachings. Can you give help me out and give me some suggestions in approaching this subject.

Thank you and God bless

Matt lawrence
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I’m a teacher teaching juniors in a Catholic high school. The qustion came up in class and I explained it this way. As Catholics we can’t vote fro Kerry because Kerry supports abortion and we can’t support abortion. As soon as you say that a person like your teacher may say to you, “well, then Catholics can’t vote for Bush because he is pro-war.” You might then want to explain to your teacher that abortion is an intrinsic evil and that Catholics can never support it, while war is not considered by the Church an intrinsic evil and governments determine whether it is just or unjust. The Church does not bind all of us, Catholics, in concinence to support or not support a war, although we must always pray for peace. That’s why we can vote for Bush or for any candidate which has fought a war. Does this help?

Antonio 🙂
 
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catsrus:
Hi! I’m one of the “fundamentally flawed” to whom voteing for either Kerry or Bush is a vote for murder of innocents. One says no to abortion, stem cell research and “gay marriage” (no such thing exists) and yes to the senseless disposal of thousands of human beings to prove a point. The other says okay to the first three but no to the last. How can anyone vote for either in good conscience? Since being confirmed in the Church only 2 years ago, I see so much that I was blind to before. There are no levels, for lack of a better word at the moment, that condones murder and killing. Do we not believe in the sanctity of life from the moment of conception to the hour of NATURAL death?

So little old “flawed” me will not be voteing this year. I have been disenfranchised. 😦
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Cat, instead of not voting, you could vote for someone like Mike Peroutka of the Constitution Party. Unlike Kerry or Bush, his positions on the 5 non-negotiables mentioned above are actually 100% in accord with Catholic moral doctrine:
  1. opposes abortion in all cases and situations (makes no exceptions for when they should be legal, which is contrary to Catholic doctrine, and logically indefensible)
  2. opposes same sex marriages and civil unions
  3. opposes all fetal stem cell research (including the federally funded research on the existing lines), which is the Catholic position.
  4. opposes euthanasia in all circumstances
  5. opposes human cloning in all circumstances.
Voting is our civic duty, and if you are disenfranchised with Bush or Kerry, I would urge you to consider voting 3rd Party. In the words of Mother Teresa of Calcutta “God does not call us to be successful. God calls us to be faithful”. Or as the Catechism states, “all are called to holiness” (#2013). We are not called to be “less evil”.
 
Also, you should be aware that not all Catholics agree that it is up to Saddam alone whether his 1990 invasion of Kuwait was just or unjust.

I can’t seem to recall a single case where a government actually decided to engage in a war in the belief that it was unjust. So I guess that means there really is no such thing as an unjust war. :confused:
 
The issue of pro-choice versus pro-life is of grave importance. While the war has caused much controversy between people who believe it is for no good reason, and people who believe it is to stamp out the terrorism of the extremist Mohammedans, we must also note that Senator Kerry has said that he will hunt and kill terrorists, too. A vote for Kerry will not ensure an end to war, or even an end to the one in progress. What is does ensure is the advancement of pro-choice lobbies, gay marriage, embryonic stem cell research, and a host of other Culture of Death agendas which are grievously opposed to Catholic moral principles.
Kerry has openly defied the Magisterium in his public expression of views that go against Catholic teaching. He continues to defy Rome each time he receives Holy Communion without repenting his errant stance on these non-negotiable issues.
 
Thank you mtr01! I really appreciate that information. I thought I would get so much flak for my post and instead got helpful info from you. You made my day. 🙂
 
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catsrus:
Thank you mtr01! I really appreciate that information. I thought I would get so much flak for my post and instead got helpful info from you. You made my day. 🙂
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Hi Cat, I’m glad you found my post helpful. I should have also posted the link to his website for you. To get more information on his positions on the issues, go to www.peroutka2004.com.

I’m sorry you felt that you would get flak for your post, however it is politics we’re talking about, and it is certainly something many ovver which many people loose their charitableness (I’ve been accused of everything from being a closet Kerry supporter to even being a “spy” for the Kerry campaign).

Regardless of all this, I do urge you to vote, but always vote your conscience…even if it means voting 3rd Party. Good luck and God bless!
 
. . . The Holy Father enunciated this principle of the lesser evil with respect to legislation, which while not obtaining the goals which Catholic principles would demand, nonetheless, excludes even worse legislation, or corrects, in part, legislation already in force that is even more opposed to Catholic principles.
A particular problem of conscience can arise in cases where a legislative vote would be decisive for the passage of a more restrictive law, aimed at limiting the number of authorized abortions, in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to be voted on. … In a case like the one just mentioned, when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects. *Gospel of Life *73] This same principle has immediate bearing on choosing among candidates, some or even all of whom may be anti-life and anti-family. Voters should try to minimize the damage done to society by the outcome of an election, even if that outcome is not wholly satisfactory by Catholic principles. . . .

. . . However, I think it is most frequently motivated by a sincere desire to elect someone whose views they believe coincide best with Church teaching. This is certainly praiseworthy. Yet, human judgments in order to be prudent must take into account all the circumstances. Voting, like politics, involves a practical judgment about how to achieve the desired ends - in this case the end of abortion as soon as possible, the end of partial-birth abortion immediately if possible, and other pro-life political objectives. A conscience vote of this type could be justified if the voter reasonably felt that it could achieve the ends of voting. The question must be asked and answered, however, whether it will bring about the opposite of the goal of voting (the common good) through the election of the worst candidate. That, too, is part of the prudential judgment. . . .

ewtn.com/vote/voting_faq.htm
 
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catsrus:
Hi! I’m one of the “fundamentally flawed” to whom voteing for either Kerry or Bush is a vote for murder of innocents. One says no to abortion, stem cell research and “gay marriage” (no such thing exists) and yes to the senseless disposal of thousands of human beings to prove a point. The other says okay to the first three but no to the last. How can anyone vote for either in good conscience? Since being confirmed in the Church only 2 years ago, I see so much that I was blind to before. There are no levels, for lack of a better word at the moment, that condones murder and killing. Do we not believe in the sanctity of life from the moment of conception to the hour of NATURAL death?

So little old “flawed” me will not be voteing this year. I have been disenfranchised. 😦
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We need to vote for whoever will do the least harm.

In Christ,
Nancy 🙂
 
The following is a summary (as brief as I can make it) of an article that appeared in the Catholic Northwest Progress October 7, 2004.

A memo to Cardinal McCarrick of Washington DC from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the faith, contained a footnote that has generated much discussion among theologians on the topic of Catholic voter responsibility.

The footnote contained two parts, the first said that a Catholic voter would commit the grave sin of formal cooperation with evil “if he/she were to vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidates’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia.”

The second half of the footnote said, “When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.”

The rest of the newspaper article described differing views on what “proportionate reasons” might be. As you can imagine, those views differed widely - even among Catholic theologians and priests.

The whole issue is probably not completely summarized by a couple of footnotes but these do seem very significant in the ongoing debate on Catholic voter responsibility.

peace,

-Jim
 
My response is simple; Bush. He is more pro-life, Kerry is pro-choice. Bush is against gay marriage, Kerry is for it, from what I’ve heard.
 
The candidate who will do less harm. How many new Supreme Court or Federal Court Justices will gain office under the next president? Which man do you want to nominate the choices?
 
Last time I checked, Kerry is not (or was not) against the war. He is using the war issue because that is his only ticket for election. I think I would’ve understood the reasons of a catholic voting for Kerry if Kerry was not catholic. The fact that he claims to be catholic and does everything to defy the teachings of the Church should alert a serious catholic about his/her own faith and the message it sends out to the world.

During this election, if Bush gets the majority of the catholic votes, it will prove to the world and Americans that American catholics are serious about their faith and don’t gang up behind a catholic candidate just because he is catholic. It is the hate for Bush that leads many atheists, liberals, democrats and some republicans to vote for Kerry not for the issues he stands for. And no one will accuse those who vote for Bush that they were lured by his eloquence and blinded by his charismatic presence. The issues at hand demand that we make a conscious and learned decision and not an emotional one.
 
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prolifematt:
Hello

I am trying to tell her that ,as a catholic you can not vote for Kerry( the Five non-negotionables). But she said she can vote who ever she wants ( which she can ) but voting for kerry is not in line with the catholic teachings.
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I would charitably warn her of the canonical penalty of excommunication for any and all who formally cooperate in the procurement of an abortion. This penalty incurs ‘latae sententiae’ (by the act itself). With such a grave penalty, one can see which issue one must first and foremost vote on. And one would be in very grave sin to intentionally vote for someone who would most definately sway legislation towards the realm of making abortions widespred and without restriction.

While it is true she can vote for anyone she want, it is also true she can murder anyone she wants as well. It still doesnt give her the right to. While George Bush is not perfect in all of the areas, John Kerry supports every one of the forbidden non-negotiables, and may cause irreperable ahrm to the pro-life movement if elected.

Ask her to look for, or show her some photos of aborted fetuses, torn apart by the sharp instruments of murderous doctors and thrown into garbage bags. Many people do not realize the actual reality of abortion. There are no other issues of any even remote comparison to abortion. Many also do not realize that well over 100 million babies have been murdered throughout the world because of abortion. You have no rights, any rights in this country or any other, if you are murdered before you have a chance at life.

War is no comparison. For one thing, every president has sent troops to one place or another to kill people. Voting for John Kerry will not eliminate the tragedy of war. And remember, wars can be just, and that decision is not ours to make. Homosexuals cant have ‘unions’ if they are never allowed to be born. The elderly can not be euthanized if they awere never born, etc,There is ONE MAIN ISSUE. PERIOD.
 
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