Monthly Archives: October 2008

Let Those Who Have Eyes See

Doubtless many have seen this already, but if you haven’t, you should.  Cardinal Egan of New York published an impassioned plea with a simple message:

But you might protest that all of this is too easy. Why, you might inquire, have I not delved into the opinion of philosophers and theologians about the matter? And even worse: Why have I not raised the usual questions about what a “human being” is, what a “person” is, what it means to be “living,” and such? People who write books and articles about abortion always concern themselves with these kinds of things. Even the justices of the Supreme Court who gave us “Roe v. Wade” address them. Why do I neglect philosophers and theologians? Why do I not get into defining “human being,” defining “person,” defining “living,” and the rest? Because, I respond, I am sound of mind and endowed with a fine set of eyes, into which I do not believe it is well to cast sand. I looked at the photograph, and I have no doubt about what I saw and what are the duties of a civilized society if what I saw is in danger of being killed by someone who wishes to kill it or, if you prefer, someone who “chooses” to kill it. In brief: I looked, and I know what I saw.

Read the whole thing.

H/T: Pro Ecclesia and Cranky Conservative

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Measured Rhetoric Is More Effective

A good part of what I was trying to say in my Socialist post the other day concerned the relationship between precision in political rhetoric and its ability to persuade; in short, I think that “toned-down” rhetoric is more likely to convince an interlocutor (let alone an observer)  of at least the plausibilty of one’s position than is the “speaking truth to power” approach.

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Trust Your 401(k) to Uncle Sam?

The government of Argentina plans to nationalize, read steal, the private pensions of Argentinian citizens.  Good thing we’re Americans right?  That could never happen here, right?   Depending on how the election next month goes, maybe it could happen here?   Hmmm, that investment strategy of gold in coffee cans buried in the back yard is sounding better and better.

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A Huge Switch Among Catholics Towards McCain

The most accurate poll from the 2004 presidential election, the Investors Business Daily (IDB) poll, shows a phenomenal 20 point switch towards Senator McCain among Catholic voters .  In the previous IDB tracking poll Senator Obama once held a commanding 11 point advantage among Catholic voters.  In the latest tracking poll Senator McCain now has a nine (9) point lead among Catholic voters over Senator Obama.  Senator McCain leads Senator Obama among Catholic voters 48% to 39%.

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Let the Bishops Interpret Their Document

The dotCommonweal blog links to a Vox Nova post by Mornings Minion reacting to the clarifications which various bishops have issued to their dioceses on the USCCB document Faithful Citizenship and its application in the coming election. However, there are clearly some serious problems with MM’s analysis, and I think it’s worth looking at them in order to try to understand what our bishops are saying during this election season. MM opens provocatively:

In recent weeks, we are seeing something of a backlash against the USCCB’s Faithful Citizenship document– the most articulate and theologically sophisticated treatise of these issues by the US bishops ever– mainly by the usual suspects, but also by a small but vocal minority of bishops.

More than sixty bishops have thus far issued letters or statements in which they have provided further guidance on how Catholics should apply their judgement to the principles articulated in Faithful Citizenship — mostly with a mind to emphasizing the important of “life issues”. The Faithful Citizenship document was approved by 250 of the bishops in session, so clearly, the document as it stands represents a wide consensus of the Catholic bishops in the United States. And yet, with more than sixty bishops issuing their own explanatory documents, there is clearly some sort of disagreement going on.

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The Other Father Duffy

 Last week I posted on Father Francis Duffy who served as chaplain of the Fighting 69th in World War I.  In World War II there was another Father Duffy,  John E. Duffy, also an army chaplain.

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The AIDS Epidemic And Politics

Frequently in discourse with non-Catholics, or some Catholics even, when the issue of contraception and the AIDS epidemic arises, there is uneasiness about the Church’s teaching on dealing with this deeply troubling matter. One might argue that by maintaining opposition to the use of condoms, the Catholic Church contributes rather to the spread of AIDS in Africa, for if the “Vatican hierarchy” cared more about people’s lives than rigid doctrines that even most Catholics reject, they would change their view to prevent the spread of AIDS. Why? It is the more “pro-life” thing to do given that it would save millions from dying from unprotected sex.

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Bishops Call For Both/And Approach to Life

Election fever is catching everybody these days, even bishops, and since it’s so fashionable to issue clarifying statements about the 30+ page Faithful Citizenship document, Cardinal Justin Rigali (chairman of the USCCB* Committee on Pro-Life Activities) and Bishop William Murphy (chairman of the USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development) have issued a clarification about clarifications of Faithful Citizenship.

Though my tone in stating this is flip, there’s some very good material in the two page letter:

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Both Candidates Are Wrong on Taxes

With each presidential debate it struck me more that both presidential candidates are wrong about taxes: wrong both in that neither man’s proposals are realistically enactable, in that they are not the correct responses to our current circumstances, and that they suggest some basic problems with their political philosophies.

McCain wants to provide a tax cut to all tax payers — though since the vast majority of real tax dollars paid by those in the top 10% of the income spectrum, the greatest savings will be experienced by “the rich”. McCain also wants to cut the corporate tax rate to bring it in line with other developed nations. And he promises to cut spending so much that he’ll nonetheless balance the budget.

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Equal Time II

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“It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”

Mark Twain

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Bishop Joseph Martino: "No Social Issue Has Caused The Death Of 50 million People"

Last week InsideCatholic.com editor Deal Hudson complained about the use of the Bishops’ document “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship” to justify a vote for Senator Barack Obama — who as Robert P. George persuasively argued, is “not merely a pro-choice politician, but rather as the most extreme pro-abortion candidate to have ever run on a major party ticket”.

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The Lion of Pennsylvania

Much has been said of Archbishop Chaput’s statement on pro-choice politics and their standard bearers.  Rocco Palmo of Whispers in the Loggia now reports that Bishop Joseph Martino of the Diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania, made another bold statement for the most defenseless among us.

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Calling a Spade an Earth-Destroying Instrument of Destruction

This started out as a reply to Chris’s “We’re All Socialists Now” post, and just kept going, so I decided to make a whole post out of it instead of clogging the comments.

There is a huge intellectual dishonesty in all of politics, in which it is never so important to simply call a spade a spade, but to distort it for political benefit. A spade to one party is the earth-tearing, vegetation-mutilating instrument of doom, while to the other party it is the vehicle of agricultural and personal independence.

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Prayers Over Politics

 

Senator Obama is leaving the campaign trail on Thursday until Saturday to visit in Hawaii his gravely ill maternal grandmother Madelyn Dunham.  I trust that all Catholics, especially Catholics who, as I do, support Senator McCain, will pray for Madelyn Dunham and Senator Obama.  Catholics understand the neverending need for God, especially at moments of grave illness, and that all of us are totally dependent on God’s mercy, grace and love.  This is a useful reminder that people we oppose politically are still, like us, poor sinners who need our prayers, as we need theirs.

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We're All Socialists Now

One of the things that quickly tires me is overblown political rhetoric; although it’s easy to give in to the temptation (I sure have a time or ninety), it simply serves no good purpose in advancing a civil and constructive political discourse. I’m all for making arguments for and against candidates (see the post below), but demonization is practically the standard, not the exception these days.

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The Dilemma of the PLCOS

It occurred to me recently that the typical Pro-Life Catholic Obama Supporter finds himself in a bit of a pickle… on the one hand, he obviously hopes (and prays?) that Senator Obama wins the presidential election; on the other hand, in order for his repeated assurances that there’s just no way that Obama’s abortion extremism will ever come to pass, he must similarly hope (and pray?) that the Illinois Senator’s party does not do as well as it appears it will, because if the Democrats do succeed in making substantial gains in the House and especially the Senate, then that abortion extremism has a very good chance of in fact becoming law.

So… go Obama, go GOP???

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The Moral Content of Politics

Amy Welborn had a post the other day making a very important point, summing up much of what I’ve been thinking but not successfully putting into words for much of the interminable lead-up to this election. Amy asks:

[I]s Catholic politico-talk, particularly in the present moment, as most of us are engaging in it, taking place essentially on the level of vague assertions, associations and concepts? And – are we avoiding and ignoring the way that government and political processes actually work?

She singles out two particular areas in which Catholic bloggers have often imbued politics with too much weight, and thus divorced it from what it is.

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Biden and Def Con 1

Joe Biden, Democrat candidate for Veep and human gaffe machine, dropped his unintentional comic relief personae and became very serious in a meeting of Democrat fund-raisers on October 19,  in Seattle, Washington.   He predicted that within six months of the election of Obama an international crisis would be generated to test the mettle of the young and untried President.

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Reflections on Death

My wife’s grandfather, Dave, died Saturday night after a long fight with a rare form of Lou Gehrig’s disease. As opposed to the more common forms that start in the appendages and work their up, this started immediately at the head and worked its way down. In his last days, he could not feed himself, speak, bathe himself, or even write to communicate with others what he needed. It was a difficult time for everyone; for my wife’s grandmother, who has divorced once and buried a second husband already; and for the rest of the family, who have felt as though they were just marking time, especially as week by week the reports of his health bore increasingly bleak news.

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The War on Joe the Plumber

Since Joe Wurzelbacher asked a question of Senator Obama on October 11, 2008 which proved to be potentially damaging to the Obama campaign, the following has happened to Mr. Wurzelbacher:

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Those 'Fishy' Polls

If you’ve been watching only the network newscasts and CNN and MSNBC as well as reading only the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Boston Globe you would think that the U.S. presidency was all but a done deal for Senator Barack Obama to win the White House.  Poll after poll shows Senator Obama with 10, 11, and 12 point leads over Senator John McCain.  With traditional red states like Virginian and North Carolina showing Senator Obama with leads of up to eight (8) points McCain supporters should be worried.

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Powell for Obama

I just read over at Vivificat that former Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell has endorsed Barack Obama for President. To tell the truth, although Powell is a Republican, I am not surprised. I am shocked and saddened though that another African American political figure has decided o support the most pro-abortion candidate in the history of the US. Does Gen. Powell not know of the genocide of his people, not in Darfur but here in the abortion mills of America? As I stated months ago on my personal blog, as much as I would love to see a black President I can never support an African American candidate like Obama. Despite his smooth words, his downright hostility to the pro-Life cause is sickening and keeps me from ever supporting him, even if I agreed with his other economic and social policies. It saddens me to see that so few of the black electorate and elected officials care at all that the future of their community destroyed.

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The Pro-Life Movement On The Left

Most Americans who are pro-life do not experience it from the left side of the political spectrum. Without a doubt, it is terribly difficult to be pro-life on the political left. The current political landscape in America presents a dire problem for “pro-life progressives,”even more so if they’re Catholic and observe the Church’s teachings. Pro-life progressivism is a growing, still voiceless, movement in the Democratic Party. There is a sense of alienation from pro-choice Democrats in regard to “women’s issues” (abortion) and “life-saving scientific research” (embryonic stem cell research) as well a sense of being out of place amongst conservative Republicans whom we might agree with on a few issues, but disagree with on a host of others and perhaps fundamentally on political philosophy. This movement (I think) is really reflective of many Americans, who not only oppose abortion and euthanasia, but would like to see “life issues” extend to the 30,000 children who die globally each day from poverty and preventable disease, issues of genocide in places like Darfur, human trafficking, health care, foreign policy issues of war and peace, and even to environmental stewardship. Many Catholic Democrats see this as what the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin coined as the “consistent life ethic.”

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Obama's Pie Problem

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