I noted a couple of things as I read through this thread which I will seek to address briefly. My comments are, of course, my own view on the matters and all are free to accept or reject them.
Chrish1975:
You said that, “The US government does not pay for abortions except for when the life of the mother is in jeopardy.”
This may be technically true, but the U.S. Government DOES fund Planned Parenthood which is one of the largest abortion providers (directly or indirectly) in the country is it not? So we can certainly question why our government - which is perennially strapped for cash - should be funding such an organization in the first place.
benjammin:
You wonder why you should pay taxes when, “they are being used for abortions”. This is a fair question. Perhaps the answer lies in how one looks at it.
Are YOUR tax dollars being used to fund abortions? The federal government is funding huge numbers of projects, groups, the military, and so forth - so much so that they are spending more than they take in. Maybe YOUR tax dollars are being used to fund repairs to the federal highway system.
I know that this is maybe a naive way to look at it but it can offer some perspective.
I note that you were rather abrupt in your response above, referring to “Cafeteria” Catholics and they should either accept Church teaching or get out.
If we apply this same attitude to the political arena, we have something that sounds like the old slogan, “America - Love it or Leave it”.
The truth is that In both cases, our faith or out country, it is necessary to accept certain thing that we either don’t personally agree with or don’t understand or wish was done differently or with people who do sinful things. In short, we have to deal with things that are troubling to us. We do the best we can in each case.
Finally - in answer to the proposal in your OP. As I said earlier, it is a fair question, but one must consider carefully what they hope to accomplish by a given act of civil disobedience. Obviously the loss of your taxes, or the cost of your prosecution and incarceration will have no real effect on the government pocketbook or policy. Of course if a large number (many many thousands) were to participate in such a revolt the effect might be more profound. But overall, can we say that this would be a good way to go about changing policy? I suspect that it is probably not.
Of course, if one is not looking at the bigger picture, and simply makes the decision on personal conviction…then as mentioned above, the Church will neither support or condemn the person.
Peace
James
