Voting pro-choice always immoral?

[estesbob]

.

This thread is a good example of the problem with so called “Social Justice” issues and organizations. Church teaching gets inverted and used for a political end.

Exactly.

 

[buffalo]

The President has veto authority. Notice he had no difficulty stopping spending on children’s health care.

He also happens to be the head of the party which controlled congress during most of his tenure.

It is obvious and a misdirection when one says this president spent the most of all presidents. Duh!

What is the percentage of GDP? That is more relevant.

I do wish the rate of spending increase under Bush went down.

 

[estesbob]

It is obvious and a misdirection when one says this president spent the most of all presidents. Duh!

What is the percentage of GDP? That is more relevant.

I do wish the rate of spending increase under Bush went down.

I do too. Are the last time I checked president had no power whatsoever to spend money. I believe that is the duty of the legislative branch.

Whatever you ask the Democrat leadership what they would cut out of this excessive spending it’s always the military and raise taxes. The reality is that it is entitlement programs which by law can’t be touched that causes the biggest increase

When Bush tries to show some fiscal responsibility like trying to prevent the S-CHIP program becoming another runaway entitlement he is savaged by the Democrats in Congress in the mainstream media.

One thing I always keep in mind when people are clamoring for rights and social justice is at one cannot enjoy either unless they’re allowed to be born. There simply is no issue facing this nation more important than abortion.

 

[SoCalRC]

He has a personal opinion on a concrete matter. Has he said Church teaching means this war is unjust?

No, I’ve stated that two consequtive popes have, in their capacity as Pope, declared the war evil and questioned the application of just war doctrine.

When a Pope speaks as the Pope, it is inherently a Church teaching. It is not an infallible teaching (unless the Pope speaks Ex Cathedra). This seldom happens, it has not even happened in the case of abortion.

You are welcome to disagree with this, but, yet again, consider the dogmatic constitution:

“If anyone should say that the Roman Pontiff has merely the function of inspection or direction but not full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the whole Church, not only in matters pertaining to faith and morals, but also in matters pertaining to the discipline and government of the Church throughout the entire world, or that he has only the principal share, but not the full plenitutde of this supreme power; or that this power of his is not ordinary and immediate over all Churches and over each individual Church, over all shepherds and all the faithful, and over each individual one of these: let him be anathema” - Vatican Council I, Dogmatic Constitution of the Church of Christ, #3

Questioning the Pope’s right to make moral judgements for all of us on the application of Church teachings appears to be “anathema”. Excommunication is seperation from the Body of the Faithful. Anathema is seperation from the Body of Christ.

It is not uncommon to pick and choose Church teachings to follow. Our current Pope has written on this many times. He refers to it as the “Dictatorship of Relativism” and has described it as the “central problem of our faith today”. There is a tendancy among some Catholics to think that this is all somehow a code word for abortion, or a small subset of teachings, but the concepts are explained pretty well in his books. THE DIALECTICS OF SECULARIZATION, VALUES IN A TIME OF UPHEAVAL, and ON THE WAY TO JESUS CHRIST are all worth reading, though his works are more difficult for someone new to theological writing than John Paul II’s.

 

[SoCalRC]

It is obvious and a misdirection when one says this president spent the most of all presidents. Duh!

Yes, that CATO INSTITUTE sure is a bunch of left wing tools, out for the downfall of God’s party…

I always find it most entertaining when you feed material from right wing world to right wing world in an unexpected context.

When I do it to the lefty nuts, they get hurt and embarrassed. Devoted righties, it has gotten different. It is almost as if any coherent connection to even what was said a day or week ago has become completely irrelevant.

A good example would be the rhetoric on Iraq. Up until last weekend, the key word was “AQ” or “AQI”. Suddenly (starting over the weekend), the greatest threat is certain militias and Iran. Yet no one seems to notice that the rhetoric turned 180 degrees over a weekend. Somehow we defeated the largest threat to freedom, had another threat grow and take its place, all without making a single news cycle…

It would be entertaining if real lifes and huge amounts of human suffering were not involved.

 

[Ender]

No, I’ve stated that two consequtive popes have, in their capacity as Pope, declared the war evil and questioned the application of just war doctrine.

I can believe that the popes have said that the war in Iraq is an evil, in the sense that all wars bring evil to the people involved in them. I do not believe that either of them declared this war evil in the sense that anyone participating in this war participates in evil. I’m sure you can point to their exact quotes so I can look at the context of their remarks.

That you mention their questioning whether the just war doctrine was properly applied implies to me that they have not said this was an immoral war. If they cannot state flatly that the doctrine was improperly applied they cannot claim that the war was immoral, which argues against the correctness of your first claim. They can only say that, to them, there didn’t appear to be sufficient grounds for going to war … which is clearly not the same as condemning the war as evil.

Ender

 

[Ender]

You made this allegation back in post #82:

torture of a man’s wife and children to get him to confess to owning an aviation radio found in a hotel, like that bad person Abdallah Higazy.

I asked you to specify what was done to the woman and children that you believe constitutes torture, instead you threw out another stream of accusations. You are very quick with these allegations; I’d like you to back this one up. What was done in the case of Abdallah Higazy that constituted torture? Please proved a link to your source.

Ender

 

[SoCalRC]

I’m sure you can point to their exact quotes so I can look at the context of their remarks.

I would recommend that all Catholics read the Pope’s Easter remarks in their entirety.

But, I’m happy to get you started with coverage of an Interview of Ratzinger from before the war. From the Italian Press:

Is the war that has been announced against Iraq a just war? “All I can do is invite you to read the Catechism,” Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger replied with a mischievous grin, “and the conclusion seems obvious to me…” For the guardian of Catholic orthodoxy, the obvious conclusion is that the military intervention that is taking shape “has no moral justification” (September 20, interview on the Italian national news program). The Catechism, Ratzinger explained, does not embrace a pacifist position a priori; indeed, it admits the possibility of a “just war” for reasons of defense. But it sets a number of very strict and reasonable conditions: there must be a proper proportion between the evil to be rooted out and the means employed. In short, if in order to defend a value (in this case, national security) greater damage is caused (civilian victims, destabilization of the Middle East, with its accompanying risks of increased terrorism), then recourse to force is no longer justified. In light of these criteria, Ratzinger refuses to grant the moral status of just war to the military operation against Saddam Hussein. The Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith added another consideration: “Decisions like this should be made by the community of nations, by the UN, and not by an individual power.”

It is perhaps paradoxical that in this grave international crisis the Holy See finds itself in a diplomatic and political position closer to the Social-Democratic Germany of Schroeder and the orthodox Russia of Putin than to the America of George W. Bush. But this is precisely the situation. And the Church, fortunately, does not let herself be imprisoned by partisan logic. Rather, she is one of the few “powers” free to have as her sole criterion the passion for truth and compassion for all men, especially the poorest and most defenseless.

If you think he has become less outspoken since conflict actually started or he has become Pope, best do a little searching of your own. When asked about Weigel’s use of the Catechism in some of his just war arguments, Ratzinger went so far as to suggest that the Catechism might well need to be changed to make it “immune” to twisted logic.

That you mention their questioning whether the just war doctrine was properly applied implies to me that they have not said this was an immoral war

Notice the quote above. If a war does not meet the specific critieria for a Just War, it is intrinsicly evil in Catholic Tradition. This dates back to Augustine and the origins of Just War tradition .

Not to be dismissive, but like the Pope’s intrinsic ability to teach and provide moral guidance to the Church in it’s entirety, this is Catholicism 101.

As far the Court of Appeals, etc. You are apparently mistaking me for a fan of dittoheadism. You have the defendant, you have the court. Go, read, study. I picked something that has gotten virtually no media attention (hence no precanned right wing response) for a reason.

Think of it as a family values thing. If you spoon feed someone, they have no appreciation for what they are receiving and easily treat it with disrespect. Even my severely disabled son knows how to wash dishes and clean a toilet. It isn’t a matter of extracting slave labor from children, but attempting to insure that they will appreciate the true value of things and appreciate the people who do them for you later in life.

 

[SoCalRC]

I’m actually going to take a ‘closing shot’ of sorts. Several folks have insinuated that I obviously don’t think much of George Bush and Republicans.

My answer to that? Duh.

Look at my handle, what would one expect? Many folks here seem convinced that the GOP is “us” against “them”, as in evil liberals, or whatever.

But I’m older, and I remember that for most of my life, we were “them” for the same crowd. My father gew up on the south side of Chicago. He hoped that sports would give him a way to college. But his stint as a Captain in the USMC cost him his leg. Thankfully, the GI bill got him the education he wanted, and someone he served with wanted to use family connections to even get him a great job.

One catch. Lie about being Catholic. My father’s decision? We lived without running water and he taught and coached at an essentially ‘black’ high school in southern Ill. We could only get a Catholic education up to the 3rd grade. When I entered public school, I got the ‘class, this is…’, just like the movies. But it was followed by an explanation that I was Catholic, which is generally considered to be inferior to WASP lecture…

Think this is ancient history? Try looking were Republican candidates go to get annointed by today’s “religious right”. Remember when Bush went to Bob Jone’s University in 2000? The official curriculum there teaches that Catholicism is a cult unrelated to Christianity. Here it straight from Bob Jones Jr:

“[Catholicism is] not another Christian denomination. It is a satanic counterfeit, an ecclesiastic tyranny over the souls of men…It is the old harlot of the book of the Revelation—‘the Mother of Harlots.’…[All popes]are demon possessed.”

(From THE NEW ANTI-CATHOLICISM by Philip Jenkins)

Think this is fringe? Look how many graduates of these ‘institutions’ are being placed in all the adminstrative branches of government. That’s right, call, say, the US justice department and you have a spectacular chance of talking to someone who whole heartedly believes that you hate Christ and really worship Satan.

So, knock yourselves out. Tell yourself, ‘they must be my friend, look at what they have to say about abortion…’ Me, I’ll stay skeptical. Look at how the GOP still stirs up the base. Race and Immigration. Are we soooo pro life, so in touch with our believe about the sanctity of the human person, that it has escaped our attention that not only are these immigrants human beings (who we claim to treasure), overwhelmingly poor (hence people we have special obligations to under our Faith), they are overwhelmingly Catholic!

And I won’t be doing a lot of cheering for empty gestures on the issues I care about.

 

[Gamera]

Why does every presidential election have to be a choice between the lesser of two evils? Hmm … who to vote for, Lex Luthor or the Joker? I’m torn. I don’t approve of Luthor’s nuclear-blackmail-of-Metropolis policy, but I do approve of his plan for a cyclically balanced budget. Plus the Joker has that whole poisoning-the-city-reservoir scandal.

 

[po18guy]

Yes, we Roman Catholics certainly are stupid that way. Just because the Pope tells us that it is related to a consistant conception-to-natural-death concept of pro-life, many of us willfully suppress our vengeful human nature and follow. Thank goodness there are sensible Christians around to minimize Roman Catholic harm. You know, practical religious folks like Caiphus, who had the good sense to note that it would be better to sacrifice the one for the sake of the nation!

My reply was to the social liberals campaigning in favor of abortion, which is the death penalty for the innocent, all the while campaigning against death for the guilty. How’s that consistent?

 

[SoCalRC]

My reply was to the social liberals campaigning in favor of abortion, which is the death penalty for the innocent, all the while campaigning against death for the guilty. How’s that consistent?

They don’t see a developing fetus as a human being. It is hardly a new distinction. One did not achieve human status (nefesh) in Jewish law at the time of Jesus until birth (first breath, like Adam). If a fetus threatened the life of the mother, abortion was considered a moral obligation.

Still, it was arguably the most pro life culture on earth in that regard. Most abortions were prohibited, and infanticide utterly so. Not so among the gentiles. Burying unwanted newborns was a problem the Church battled for about 1000 years.

So we are discussing two very broken versions of Catholic teaching, people who fail to recognize humanity in the very weakest of us and people who cannot seem to hold anything but fetal tissue in truly high regard. It seems doubtful that either stunted version truly appreciates life in the sense described in the GOSPEL OF LIFE.

Politically, they make some sense. I can recall LBJ predicting that, with the Democratic caucas supporting civil rights the South would turn Republican for the rest of his life and the interviewer’s. I used to think that was too optimistic, though Virginia voters turning on Allen after his overt racist remarks last year has me wondering if he might have gotten it about right. Still, it would be silly to assert that “angry white males” aren’t an important GOP demographic. So it makes sense to celebrate life primarily in a context that does not put it in direct conflict with racism and xenophobia.

Likewise, being “pro choice” is the Dems attempt at balancing and appeasing its own caucas. It is convenient to think of it as just capitulating to radical feminists and “reproductive rights”, but it quite likely also has a lot to do with the working poor, who disproportionately procure abortions in the US.

 

[mozart-250]

My reply was to the social liberals campaigning in favor of abortion, which is the death penalty for the innocent, all the while campaigning against death for the guilty. How’s that consistent?

I have always felt opposition to abortion was a liberal position (protection of the rights of the most vulnerable of our society who are unable to speak for themselves).

Thus the pro-abortion liberals of today are the ultimate hypocrites. BTW I make a distinction between pro-choice and pro-abortion, unfortunately the liberals of today besides being pro-choice are also overwhelmingly pro-abortion.

The day that liberalism returns to its core values and opposes abortion will be the day that I rethink liberalism.

 

[fix]

No, I’ve stated that two consequtive popes have, in their capacity as Pope, declared the war evil and questioned the application of just war doctrine.

When a Pope speaks as the Pope, it is inherently a Church teaching. It is not an infallible teaching (unless the Pope speaks Ex Cathedra). This seldom happens, it has not even happened in the case of abortion.

The ordinary and universal magisterium speaks infallibly as well. Just because some issue has not been formally declared infallible does not mean it is fallible.

You are welcome to disagree with this, but, yet again, consider the dogmatic constitution:

Questioning the Pope’s right to make moral judgements for all of us on the application of Church teachings appears to be “anathema”. Excommunication is seperation from the Body of the Faithful. Anathema is seperation from the Body of Christ.

It is not uncommon to pick and choose Church teachings to follow. Our current Pope has written on this many times. He refers to it as the “Dictatorship of Relativism” and has described it as the “central problem of our faith today”. There is a tendancy among some Catholics to think that this is all somehow a code word for abortion, or a small subset of teachings, but the concepts are explained pretty well in his books. THE DIALECTICS OF SECULARIZATION, VALUES IN A TIME OF UPHEAVAL, and ON THE WAY TO JESUS CHRIST are all worth reading, though his works are more difficult for someone new to theological writing than John Paul II’s.

I say again please show us where the Pope has bound anyone’s conscience in the matter of the war in Iraq. Please provide citations.

One of the problems with your misapplication of Church teaching is that you attempt to bind others in a way that the Church has not. Such things would seem to be contrary to the faith. It seems to be a way to place ourselves above the Church.

 

[LCMS_No_More]

The ordinary and universal magisterium speaks infallibly as well. Just because some issue has not been formally declared infallible does not mean it is fallible.

I say again please show us where the Pope has bound anyone’s conscience in the matter of the war in Iraq. Please provide citations.

One of the problems with your misapplication of Church teaching is that you attempt to bind others in a way that the Church has not. Such things would seem to be contrary to the faith. It seems to be a way to place ourselves above the Church.

Here’s the way I look at it. The Pope says it, I do it. Period.

 

[fix]

Here’s the way I look at it. The Pope says it, I do it. Period.

Good, as do I.

Frankly, I do not support capital punishment or the war. That does not mean my opinion is above anyone else’s opinion. That is because they are matters of free opinion.

The spirit of feenyism seems to be alive? We want to be more Catholic than the Church.

 

[LCMS_No_More]

Good, as do I.

Frankly, I do not support capital punishment or the war. That does not mean my opinion is above anyone else’s opinion. That is because they are matters of free opinion.

Perhaps, but isn’t just a good idea to always listen to Peter? You can’t go wrong doing that (there have been exceptions, but they’re RARE!).

The spirit of feenyism seems to be alive? We want to be more Catholic than the Church.

Nope because Feeneyism is an extreme application of EENS. This isn’t even close.

 

[fix]

Perhaps, but isn’t just a good idea to always listen to Peter? You can’t go wrong doing that (there have been exceptions, but they’re RARE!).

Sure, his opinion deserves special respect. But, it is an opinion not a teaching that requires assent.

Nope because Feeneyism is an extreme application of EENS. This isn’t even close.

It is a symptom of the same problem. We should obey the Church and not claim the Church binds when She does not. That is no service to the truth.

 

[SoCalRC]

One of the problems with your misapplication of Church teaching is that you attempt to bind others in a way that the Church has not. Such things would seem to be contrary to the faith. It seems to be a way to place ourselves above the Church.

It just occured to me that the voice you are most arguing in might be one in your own head. When have I tried to bind anyone’s concience?

I have actively encouraged people to vote their faith as a coherent and complete entity, and provided an authoritive quote from the Church which instructs the same.

I have expressed my own misgivings about the moral implications of given things and stated that I find the Popes’ (pural) position on theologically compelling. In fact, I think John Paul’s comments about Iraq are downright prophetic.

I also have asserted that the Pope reflects Primacy, an important aspect of our faith.

What I have said is that evil means lead to evil ends. This can be seen in our teaching on abortion. Even for a laudable goal, such as saving a mother’s life, the evil act is not permitted.

That is what we are talking about here. If you legitimately believe that preemptive war in Iraq meets just war tradition, fine, that is a disagreement. But what I have said is that should someone not believe that Iraq was a just war, yet voted to support it for other reasons, then that person has participated in a “grave moral disorder”. Per the reasoning in Pope Benedict’s “Sacramentum Caritatis”, such a person should not present him/herself for communion.

There is nothing prudential about it. In June the Holy See specfically asked the President of the US to fulfill a moral obligation to the hundreds of thousands of Christians being murdered and terrorized in Iraq. We responded by extending more aide to the Sunni militia groups that had been identified as the principle persecutors. If this act is not covered by an application of Just War Tradition, then it is murder - an infallible teaching in our faith (FWIW, non-torture of prisoners is also widely considered an infallible teaching by moralists, which is why it is a criteria that must be met under Just War Tradition).

 

[SoCalRC]

Sure, his opinion deserves special respect. But, it is an opinion not a teaching that requires assent.

The Pope, speaking as Pope, on the proper interpretation of Church teaching, is an “opinion” not a “teaching”!!!

I’m sorry, but you appear to be confusing Roman Catholicism with the Protestant Reformation. Your statement is precisely the same fallacy that the First Vatican Council was called to address.

In fact, it is precisely what the article in the dogmatic constitution I quoted above was intended to clarify. The Church has acknowledged that there is room for disagreement on some teachings, but also has clearly stated that rejecting the Pope’s absolute right to teach goes beyond making one non Catholic, it can inherently make one non Christian - anathema, seperated from the Body of Christ.

Any thought that the Second Vatican Council, or DOMINUS IESUS, substantially weakened this position seems to have been dispelled in June when Pope Benedict approved the release of a document from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith regarding the “Unicity and Salvific Universality of the Church”:

vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20070629_responsa-quaestiones_en.html