Why do some Catholics lean politically conservative?

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From much of the Right, I’ve observed an overarching mentality that poverty is always or almost always somehow the fault of the poor. This presumption poses a serious impediment to tenets of our faith like compassion and charity.
 
And from much of the Left, personal responsibility is a foreign concept. We are all just helpless victims of our circumstances.

Personally, I know no conservative I know believes poverty is always the fault of the person. But a lot of poverty would be eliminated if people graduate high school, something not too hard in the US, and wait until marriage to have a kid. Simple behavioral changes like that.
 
I don’t ‘lean’ conservative; I AM conservative, because I cannot be a liberal and be a Catholic at the same time. Whether it’s the Democrats or the Canadian Liberal party, God is not welcome, nor are those who stay true to His commands. When the Canadian left demands that charitable organizations seeking government grants are required to publicly support abortion, they are forcing us to choose between God and society. That is the easiest choice in the world to make.
 
The left doesn’t have better help for the poor; they just love the poor so much they try to make as many of them as possible.
 
redbetta said:
Conservatives also try to help put the poor. They just have different ideas on how to go about doing it.

Can we stop acting like the left has the monopoly on caring for the poor?
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Other than charitable organizations which both sides of the aisle may or may not endorse, could you outline this “vision” of the conservative party views of “different ideas”. Perhaps outline their platform with examples of how this has played out (to give credence to it) throughout history, especially in times of recession or depression…Thank you in advance
 
DENNYINMI said:
Other than charitable organizations which both sides of the aisle may or may not endorse
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When it comes down to it, conservatives are in favor of private charities conducted by individuals or churches, liberals are in favor of public charities and entitlements run by Big Government and administered by bureaucrats represented by Big Labor organizations.
 
Augustinian, how would you respond to others who say that private charity is not enough; for example, what if someone had a poor hand of cards in life and not only were you someone who couldn’t count on family, but also are failed by the community (or more tragically, your county cannot afford to help you), they are someone with little to no resource (and hope)?
 
What I would say is that the kinds of circumstances which you have laid out are fairly rare, and if you want to establish a government program, narrowcasting it to just those that you list in your post is what needs to be done.

If you have 15% or more of the population living off the public dole, that’s just unsustainable and unnecessary, but that’s what you have with the modern welfare state.

Take the Affordable Health Act aka Obamacare. The stated mission, stated purpose was to care for a limited number of people who both needed and weren’t receiving healthcare. But the implementation of this risky scheme actually affected almost everyone, with tons of minutiae, scores of new taxes and mandates, a massive bureaucracy which can never be dismantled. And a lot of the people who it was supposed to help, still aren’t.
 
Augustinian said:
When it comes down to it, conservatives are in favor of private charities conducted by individuals or churches, liberals are in favor of public charities and entitlements run by Big Government and administered by bureaucrats represented by Big Labor organizations.
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It seems as if only one portion of my question was addressed, and that was the portion that was not in question. I am hoping the person to whom it was addressed may see it and respond with a semblance of sanity…thanks anyways…Looking forward to seeing a definitive outline of conservative principles that assist persons best (according to the statement that I was addressing), most especially in times of depression or recession…without rhetoric. …….so thanx anyways.
 
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You might want to call your local CPC, ask them if they have access to emergency and long term housing.
 
Not even a college degree is somehow a “guarantee” that one will escape poverty, or that poverty will not come upon you.

Entire industries have simply gone away and there are not empty jobs just waiting for those folks. Often they end up in entry level/service industry jobs. Today, I have an income that is less than 1/4 of what I had 15 years ago. In fact, my take home pay is less than it was 30 years ago.

The idea of “work hard and graduate school = a secure life” was true 50 years ago. Not so now.

 
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DENNYINMI said:
Other than charitable organizations which both sides of the aisle may or may not endorse, could you outline this “vision” of the conservative party views of “different ideas”. Perhaps outline their platform with examples of how this has played out (to give credence to it) throughout history, especially in times of recession or depression
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From the 2016 Republican party platform:

…as we have learned over the last five decades, the loss of faith and family life leads to greater dependence upon government. That is why Republicans formulate public policy, from taxation to education, from healthcare to welfare, with attention to the needs and strengths of the family.

We oppose policies and laws that create a financial incentive for or encourage cohabitation…Nearly three-quarters of the $450 billion government annually spends on welfare goes to single-parent households.

Our laws and our government’s regulations should recognize marriage as the union of one man and one woman and actively promote married family life as the basis of a stable and prosperous society.

By making welfare a benefit instead of an entitlement, it put millions of recipients on a transition from dependence to independence. Welfare rolls declined by half as recipients and prospective recipients discovered a better way to reach their goals. Best of all, about 3 million children moved out of poverty.

We call for removal of structural impediments which progressives throw in the path of poor people: Over-regulation of start-up enterprises, excessive licensing requirements, needless restrictions on formation of schools and day-care centers serving neighborhood families, and restrictions on providing public services in fields like transport and sanitation

We will continue our fight for school choice

It seems the major difference between liberal and conservative (or at least Democrat and Republican) approaches is the former focus is focused on addressing immediate needs, and the latter focuses more on the systemic problems. Pregnant, unmarried girls need help. That said, the type of help they have been given in the past has led to the problems we face now: three quarters of all welfare spending goes to single parent households. That is, we’ve been subsidizing the very behavior that causes most of our social problems.
 
What we need to do is move away from the idea that everyone needs to go to college and prepare people in schools for jobs that are actually in demand.
 
Ender said:
We will continue our fight for school choice

It seems the major difference between liberal and conservative (or at least Democrat and Republican) approaches is the former focus is focused on addressing immediate needs, and the latter focuses more on the systemic problems. Pregnant, unmarried girls need help. That said, the type of help they have been given in the past has led to the problems we face now: three quarters of all welfare spending goes to single parent households. That is, we’ve been subsidizing the very behavior that causes most of our social problems.
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A fight for school choice without the means for higher education is an anomaly. A simple high school education without some advanced studies in the area of a vocation is an endless road.

Somewhere, someone thought of the bright idea of 12 years of free public education. It is 2018. Time to up the game for at the minimal 14 years, persons fair better when educated and are less likely to become active in risky behavior. THAT is addressing an underlying condition.!~!~
How conservative politics can frown on what they consider another “freebie” (maybe they consider it socialism, lol) when education is a positive solution to an underlying problem is astounding.

In the meantime, still waiting for some “how-too’s” of a conservative nature. I’ve given one. Education to the minimal of an associates degree, certificate program, or vocational technical training without cost…BUT, that is from the liberal platform.
 
DENNYINMI said:
In the meantime, still waiting for some “how-too’s” of a conservative nature. I’ve given one. Education to the minimal of an associates degree, certificate program, or vocational technical training without cost…BUT, that is from the liberal platform.
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I think this is a perfect example of what distinguishes the liberal and conservative approaches. You (a liberal approach) advocate for greater expenditure and more government (increasing free education to 14 years). The conservative approach is to address the problems with the existing education system by giving parents more choice in their child’s education - thus reducing the government’s involvement.

Keep in mind that a huge proportion of our social problems today are caused by the fact that so many kids don’t even graduate high school. Offering even more school , free or otherwise, isn’t going to help them at all. Our schools are currently doing a terrible job, especially those in the inner cities. Offering more of the same won’t help.
 
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Ender said:
I think this is a perfect example of what distinguishes the liberal and conservative approaches. You (a liberal approach) advocate for greater expenditure and more government (increasing free education to 14 years). The conservative approach is to address the problems with the existing education system by giving parents more choice in their child’s education - thus reducing the government’s involvement.
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The main point is not being addressed. 12 years of public education (no matter how excellent the school district) will not prepare someone for a career to pay bills, rent, healthcare and an eventual family. A career does not mean a Phd, or an “artsy” type of career, it could be welding, or some type of vocation training that extends beyond high school. The wealthy are very aware of this but have the means for beyond what I’m discussing.
For heavens sakes, education is a means to the end of the “welfare” programs conservatives are dismissive of.
 
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Pick up the book "Defenders of the Unborn."

The quick answer is that social changes both inside and outside the Church created a divide among though who remained in the Church–whose faith wasn’t entirely shaken. Democrats began rejecting socially conservative sexual norms and began abandoning the Pro Life cause. Republicans began taking up social conservativism, using the promise to overturn Roe as a way to move a good chunk of the Democratic vote to the Republican Party.

For four decades, single issue voting has lead to lending more of an ear to Republican rhetoric. As such, they buy into it more. They become more loyal Catholic republicans then merely the single issue voters who were moved into voting this way to achieve one end. But they–as we saw with the election of trump–will still get desperate enough to shame those not on the full Republican bandwagon to believe they have a moral duty to vote Republican.

I don’t think it helps either that liberal Catholicism is an idealogy that has major problems. It’s most visible when you look at liberal liturgical abuses. But we often demonizes valid points, failing to see the errors of the traditionalists and the conservatives.

It’s actually for this reason, I’ve liked Pope Francis. The traditionalists have very valid points about the liturgy. The liberals have valid points about clericalism. The solution there is to recognize the laity’s role in the Mass, to rediscover it. The desire to simply give the laity the job of the choir and altar servers denies the role the laity once had. Perhaps that it because it was never spoken about.

And when it comes to Church teaching, we need to look at it’s actual wisdom, not freak out when it develops, not put an agenda against it. We need to embrace all of it, including social justice issues. The whole life movement is not identical to what the seamless garment was in the early 80s.

All these things come only through not becoming too in love with our own ideas, but recognizing that we can fall into great error and still make great points. And the Holy Spirit’s job is to guide that discussion. But so long as we fear each other entirely, and see our brother as our enemy, we impede that dialogue.

Chesteron said the business of progressives was to go on making mistakes. The business of conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. The hard part is realizing there isn’t a perfect parish that balances these things.
 
DENNYINMI said:
A fight for school choice without the means for higher education is an anomaly. A simple high school education without some advanced studies in the area of a vocation is an endless road.
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When I was in school- I graduated in 1974- high school students not destined for college could opt for vocational training in 10th, 11th and 12th grade particularly. Children could take OVT (occupational vocational training) classes in a whole host of different courses from cosmetology to shoe repair, to get them ready for the working world. Further, there other individual classes like typing , bookkeeping, stenography for the young ladies looking for secretarial work.

No need to expand childhood for 2 more years.
 
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