I'm Done Now.
May. 14th, 2004 11:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
richardf8With extending anything resembling tolerance for the Catholic Church.
My reasons can be found in this pastoral letter that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chipuni has been kind enough to reproduce in his journal.
I had been holding this cartoon back, as being perhaps too hateful for public consumption. But I have decided that such courtesies are misplaced.
Most irksome is this paragraph:
There must be no confusion in these matters. Any Catholic politicians who advocate for abortion, for illicit stem cell research or for any form of euthanasia ipso facto place themselves outside full communion with the Church and so jeopardize their salvation. Any Catholics who vote for candidates who stand for abortion, illicit stem cell research or euthanasia suffer the same fateful consequences. It is for this reason that these Catholics, whether candidates for office or those who would vote for them, may not receive Holy Communion until they have recanted their positions and been reconciled with God and the Church in the Sacrament of Penance.
This basically requires that a Catholic voter relinquish his right to cast his ballot in secret by confessing and doing penance for it. It is precisely to oppose this sort of fear of retaliation that we have a secret ballot in this country.
The paper and ink that have been flying out of the Church in an effort to co-opt our political system constitute nothing more nor less than an act of War, being nothing more, nor less than an attempt to undermine the Government of the United States of America via spiritual blackmail.
The Catholic Church has more blood on its hands than any other extant institution on earth. For it to speak in such sanctimonious terms of the high value of fetal life and the urgency of overturning Roe v. Wade so that women can once again die as a result of back-alley abortions is the peak of hypocrisy. It is apparently acceptable, however, to vote for pro death-penalty politicians, in spite of the fact that the death penalty violates church doctrine as well.
This does not even begin to touch upon the hypocrisy of a church that labels two people of the same gender who seek legal recognition of their commitment to each other "deviant" while refusing to deal in any meaningful way with priests who pursue transitory, non-consensual sexual relationships with children.
It should be noted that this is in no way an attack on the Catholic laity, who, for the most part, I expect will greet this pastoral letter as one more indicator of the degree to which the church is out of touch with the realities in its parishes.
My reasons can be found in this pastoral letter that
chipuni has been kind enough to reproduce in his journal.I had been holding this cartoon back, as being perhaps too hateful for public consumption. But I have decided that such courtesies are misplaced.
Most irksome is this paragraph:
There must be no confusion in these matters. Any Catholic politicians who advocate for abortion, for illicit stem cell research or for any form of euthanasia ipso facto place themselves outside full communion with the Church and so jeopardize their salvation. Any Catholics who vote for candidates who stand for abortion, illicit stem cell research or euthanasia suffer the same fateful consequences. It is for this reason that these Catholics, whether candidates for office or those who would vote for them, may not receive Holy Communion until they have recanted their positions and been reconciled with God and the Church in the Sacrament of Penance.
This basically requires that a Catholic voter relinquish his right to cast his ballot in secret by confessing and doing penance for it. It is precisely to oppose this sort of fear of retaliation that we have a secret ballot in this country.
The paper and ink that have been flying out of the Church in an effort to co-opt our political system constitute nothing more nor less than an act of War, being nothing more, nor less than an attempt to undermine the Government of the United States of America via spiritual blackmail.
The Catholic Church has more blood on its hands than any other extant institution on earth. For it to speak in such sanctimonious terms of the high value of fetal life and the urgency of overturning Roe v. Wade so that women can once again die as a result of back-alley abortions is the peak of hypocrisy. It is apparently acceptable, however, to vote for pro death-penalty politicians, in spite of the fact that the death penalty violates church doctrine as well.
This does not even begin to touch upon the hypocrisy of a church that labels two people of the same gender who seek legal recognition of their commitment to each other "deviant" while refusing to deal in any meaningful way with priests who pursue transitory, non-consensual sexual relationships with children.
It should be noted that this is in no way an attack on the Catholic laity, who, for the most part, I expect will greet this pastoral letter as one more indicator of the degree to which the church is out of touch with the realities in its parishes.
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no subject
Date: 2004-05-16 01:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-16 04:32 am (UTC)Thus, apart from the Pope's seemingly arbitrary pronouncement, it is difficult for me to see why the anti-war position should enjoy a privilege over the pro-war position.
In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that I was never opposed to the idea of removing Saddam Hussein. My chief reason for opposing the war was the certainty I felt (now borne out) that Bush would botch it as badly as he's botched everything else he's ever touched.