A Sanders Fan Asks About Church Teaching on Voting
A reader writes:
I know. I know. "Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both 'No' and 'Yes'." Still and all, that's what we're looking at here. With God's blessing, we can take a step toward thinking with the mind of Christ in a world of complicated and competing goods. Or, with my incompetence, I can perhaps leave you paralyzed in moral confusion--which can itself inspire you to try to learn more (hint: start with the Catechism.
To begin with, let's start with full disclosure. As I made clear some five years ago, I will not be voting for either major party candidate, since I believe that, in a national election, the only thing my vote changes is not the outcome of the election, but me. Voting is, particularly in a national election, the stone in the stone soup of civic and social involvement. Of all the things you can do to help order the common good, voting is the least impactful on the outcome of the political process. But it is enormously and cumulatively impactful on the soul of the voter and, over the course of decades, can immunize the voter to compromise with evil on greater and greater issues as he seeks to support his party (a subject to which I will return at a later time).
The result, in the case of the pro-life movement, has been the triumph of a political system in which nobody really votes for a candidate anymore. They merely vote against a candidate they detest more. Meanwhile, one party pretends to care about abolishing abortion (while its real energies are usually devoted to fighting the Church in favor of other evils it deeply supports) and the other party pretends to be afraid of abortion's abolition.
Here's the deal: Americans don't like abortion. And Americans have no intention of getting rid of it either. For their part, politicians are creatures driven by the task of vote-getting. And when a vote-seeker looks at the demographics he sees this: Only 20% of Americans (at best) think that abortion should be outlawed, just as only 25-30% believe in "abortion on demand without apology". The other 50-60% don't like abortion, don't want to think about it, and don't want to outlaw it. They wish that something or other could be done for a pregnant teen, don't want to do it themselves, and so sigh and resign themselves to letting them abort that kid because "who am I to tell her she's gotta face rejection by her boyfriend and parents, as well as lifelong poverty?". Like it or not, that's what 50-60% percent of our neighbors think and feel. And that's why Planned Parenthood can (dubiously) claim that 60% of Americans oppose a 20 week abortion ban and pro-lifers can similarly claim that 60% of Americans say abortion is morally wrong. Both are credible in their claims, because the American people are completely muddled about the question and believe both simultaneously. Like it or not, we prolifers who want abortion outlawed are a distinct (and it appears permanent) minority.
What this means for politicians is simple: find a way to harvest votes from the muddle. And the tried and true method for doing that with both parties is, every four years, to hiss darkly to their end of the ideological spectrum "If The Other Guy wins, your darkest fears will be realized. But if we win, then your wildest dreams will come true."
The result is that, on the Left, candidates (early in the election) try to scare their base (dominated by the 20% who are abortion zealots) with "Handmaid's Tale" visions of a theocratic fascist regime herding women into breeder camps. At the same time, these Lefty candidates promise a glorious future in which the right to abortion will never ever be questioned again. Then (later in the election) when the candidate needs to appeal to the mushy middle, all that gets dialed back to accommodate people with all the qualms. Want proof? Remember all the hysteria in 2008 about how Obama was going to sign the Freedom of Choice Act on his first day in office as he himself promised? Yeah. That was talk for the 20% on the far Left. And the moment he was elected, the Freedom of Choice Act was never heard from again. Why? Because politicians on the Left don't want to spook that 60% in the middle if they don't have to since they want their vote next time. Americans have an uneasy peace with Roe, they figure, so why rock the boat?
Meanwhile, on the Right the 20 out of 35 years in which the GOP has owned the White House (including periods in which they also owned the Congress as well) have not produced much indication of interest in overturning Roe either. Such GOP appointees as O'Connor, Souter, Kennedy, and John "Roe is settled law" Roberts, as well as the preposterous nomination of pro-abort Harriet Miers have consistently made clear that there is no serious interest in overturning Roe.
But there is great interest in harvesting votes at election time.
So, for instance, a Rand Paul will make a play for the ardent prolife base out at the other end of the bell curve by sponsoring a Life at Conception Act. But he will also allay the fears of the mushy middle by assuring them that, while he dislikes abortion as they do, he will also make "thousands of exceptions" so that abortion will still go on. Likewise, for decades, pro-lifers have been told that, this time for sure, a GOP win will mean that the Supreme Court will finally be peopled with prolife jurists who will overturn Roe. George Weigel resuscitates this hope again in a recent issue of First Things:
But this year, of all years, that hope is profoundly challenged by the ascendancy of Donald Trump. In 2012, many and many a reader told me that, rather than vote for a third party candidate, I was "morally bound" to vote for the "lesser of two evils" and for a candidate who "had a hope of winning". In English, this meant "Vote for Romney or God will judge you responsible for the death of the unborn." One even likened my refusal to do so in the last election with (incredibly) the sin of Onan. (There was, of course, never any consideration of the possibility of voting for a candidate who does not intend to do evil but instead aimed to do good.)
Now here's the problem for a constituency that has, for decades, been catechized to believe "Vote the lesser of two evils or the baby gets it": on the question of abortion, there is essentially no difference between Trump and Sanders.
Oh sure, Trump has professed a prolife "conversion" about ten seconds ago, in order to get the prolife electorate to vote for him, but it is transparently fake, and anybody can see that from the fact that after his "conversion" he was trumpeting abroad how "phenomenal" his ardently pro-abortion sister would be as a Supreme Court judge, as well as making excuses for (but not apologizing for) taking vengeance on his infant nephew with cerebral palsy (cutting off payments for his medical care) in a spat over Daddy's money. His non-apology: "I was angry [at the boy's parents that] they sued." More recently, we have seen Trump simultaneously pander to a gullible prolife organ about Roe while simultaneously defending the funding of Planned Parenthood. All of which is to say we have absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe he has really rejected a word of this:
If this sounds familiar, it's because it is identical to Clinton's famous formula of wanting abortion "safe, legal, and rare"--which is pretty much standard boilerplate for the whole Democratic party--including Bernie Sanders.
So should the GOP go completely insane and nominate Trump, anybody who says we must vote for the lesser of two evils will have to select some evil other than abortion to make a comparison with Democrats. And if the metric is still the preservation of human life then somebody who seriously cares about being prolife will have to reckon with the fact that Trump, in addition to being every bit as pro-abortion as Sanders, also favors committing war crimes. He has called, for instance, for the deliberate cold-blooded targeted murder of innocent women and children in war:
Relatedly, Trump has called for the resumption of the grave sin of torture, and without even the lying excuse typically offered by partisans of this evil, that it "keeps us safe" by giving us valuable intelligence. On the contrary, he says, "Even if it doesn't work, they deserve it anyway." (Dilawar, an innocent cab driver who was beaten to death by the US, and Gul Rahman, an innocent man who was frozen to death by the US, could not be reached for comment.)
Similarly, his spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson has remarked (without rebuke from Trump): "What good does it do to have a good nuclear triad if you’re afraid to use it?” (Pierson has also made a number of nakedly anti-Catholic remarks on Twitter, indicating either a remarkable fecklessness in Trump's vetting process for campaign spokesperson or his private assent to her anti-Catholic views. Catholics who thrill at the thought of his eagerness to strip Muslim-Americans of their first amendment rights should bear in mind the old saying, "First they came for the Muslims..."
Trump has likewise encouraged, both by his silence and his words, mob violence on the basis of race. On multiple occasions, his followers have beaten up Latinos and African-American (even at his own rallies), and have gone so far as to shout that the victim should be set on fire or to cry "Sieg Heil!" Trump's responses have been either silence, or to call his followers "passionate" or even to suggest that the victim had it coming. Recently (and not for the first time), he has given aid and comfort to white supremacists and even Nazi (yes, actual Nazi) voices by retweeting, for instance, the work of a man who elsewhere on his site depicts Trump in a German uniform preparing to murder Bernie Sanders in a gas chamber. Indeed, 62% of the people Trump retweeted during the week of January 24-30 follow multiple white supremacist accounts--accounts like this one.
And, of course, we are already familiar with his mockery of the disabled, his casual willingness to call women "pigs" and "dogs", breastfeeding mothers "disgusting" and his willingness to mock even American POWs.
All of this, from the perspective of Catholic teaching, which calls for the preservation of human life from conception to natural death, as well as the dignity of the human person, has the paradoxical effect (if you absolutely insist on voting for the "lesser of two evils") of compelling a vote for Sanders should it come down to a contest between him and Trump, since (though he agrees with Trump on abortion) Sanders rejects the many evils Trump advocates in addition to abortion. (We are not, of course, looking at the rest of Sanders' platform, which has many debatable positions. Rather, my point is to give an example of how a legitimately Catholic prolife moral calculus might really wind up concluding that Sanders demanded our assent.)
Sanders? The pro-abort? But, but! Cardinal Ratzinger said in 2004:
Sez who? Sez Cardinal Ratzinger in the same letter:
But! If you vote for somebody, not because you support their advocacy of grave evil, but because you are trying to prevent an even graver evil, or because you think there is some proportional good supporting them will achieve, you are not committing a sin and are only offering remote material cooperation with evil. Bottom line, the Church says that you can, under certain circumstances, vote for a pro-abort candidate. Meaning it is on the cards that, under certain circumstances, my reader might be able to vote for Bernie Sanders. That's not me talking, remember. That's the future Benedict XVI talking.
Not, I repeat, that I will vote that way myself. As I have said, I think the main thing a vote changes in a national election is the voter and what he is willing to tolerate. So I'm probably going to cast my vote for Joe Schriner, a Catholic who, as far as I can see, adheres to the teaching of the Church completely and who, mirabile dictu, advocates no grave intrinsic evils at all. I prefer to have a candidate I can vote for, rather than a candidate I have to hold my nose to support in order to really vote against somebody else.
But, that said, I think it important that, in this election year (and Year of Mercy) of all years, Catholics should be merciful to one another as they struggle to think with the Church (as my reader obviously wants to do or he would not have written to ask how to do so). That applies as well to supporters even of the horrendously awful Trump since (God alone knows how) some Catholics may well feel bound in conscience to vote for him. I will be happy to argue with them since I believe them dead wrong. But I plead with all but our bishops to refrain from arrogating to themselves the right to excommunicate people for their various moral calculations in determining who they can vote for. Unless a Catholic flat out tells you "I'm voting to support [insert grave intrinsic evil here]" assume they are voting with a good will and trying to live according to the teaching of the Church. It's what Pope Benedict XVI (and more importantly, God) would want.
Next time, I want to ponder how it has come to pass that, after 35 years of faithful service to the Republican party, prolife Christians are already being told (and lamely trying to tell themselves in some cases) that a pro-partial-birth abortion, quadruply-married strip club owner who says that he has never seen any need to ask God for forgiveness and whose mouth is a fountain or brutality, lies, arrogance and racism could somehow be somebody they "must" support. How did we get here? And how do we avoid being dragged any further away from our goal of saving children by this repeated and now spectacular Mission Creep that afflicts us each and every election cycle? On that, more next time.
Could you please write something about voting for non-prolife candidates? I'd like to tattoo Bernie Sanders somewhere on me, but first I need to know catholic teaching on this. What is church teaching here? I feel like abortion aside, someone like Sanders is more pro-catholic teaching than any "pro-life" Republicans. I shouldn't put quotes over pro-life. I'm sure some are. Nevertheless, is it ok to vote for Sanders and if so, how does one justify voting for a pro choice candidate? Just thought it would be a great and much needed articleFulfilling a long-standing death wish, I agree with you that this is an interesting question and will make an interesting article guaranteed to stir passionate debate. However, I also have to point out that the first thing to know about Church teaching on such matters is that, if I do my job well here, you will discover that the Church has no teaching per se about whether or not you should vote for Bernie Sanders or anybody else (though it does urge you to vote). The Church's intellectual and moral tradition on such questions is not geared toward telling you what to think, but how to think: how to navigate the varying prudential decisions that must be made in order to cast a vote with a reasonably quiet conscience. And that means different Catholics will arrive at different conclusions in good faith.
I know. I know. "Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both 'No' and 'Yes'." Still and all, that's what we're looking at here. With God's blessing, we can take a step toward thinking with the mind of Christ in a world of complicated and competing goods. Or, with my incompetence, I can perhaps leave you paralyzed in moral confusion--which can itself inspire you to try to learn more (hint: start with the Catechism.
To begin with, let's start with full disclosure. As I made clear some five years ago, I will not be voting for either major party candidate, since I believe that, in a national election, the only thing my vote changes is not the outcome of the election, but me. Voting is, particularly in a national election, the stone in the stone soup of civic and social involvement. Of all the things you can do to help order the common good, voting is the least impactful on the outcome of the political process. But it is enormously and cumulatively impactful on the soul of the voter and, over the course of decades, can immunize the voter to compromise with evil on greater and greater issues as he seeks to support his party (a subject to which I will return at a later time).
The result, in the case of the pro-life movement, has been the triumph of a political system in which nobody really votes for a candidate anymore. They merely vote against a candidate they detest more. Meanwhile, one party pretends to care about abolishing abortion (while its real energies are usually devoted to fighting the Church in favor of other evils it deeply supports) and the other party pretends to be afraid of abortion's abolition.
Here's the deal: Americans don't like abortion. And Americans have no intention of getting rid of it either. For their part, politicians are creatures driven by the task of vote-getting. And when a vote-seeker looks at the demographics he sees this: Only 20% of Americans (at best) think that abortion should be outlawed, just as only 25-30% believe in "abortion on demand without apology". The other 50-60% don't like abortion, don't want to think about it, and don't want to outlaw it. They wish that something or other could be done for a pregnant teen, don't want to do it themselves, and so sigh and resign themselves to letting them abort that kid because "who am I to tell her she's gotta face rejection by her boyfriend and parents, as well as lifelong poverty?". Like it or not, that's what 50-60% percent of our neighbors think and feel. And that's why Planned Parenthood can (dubiously) claim that 60% of Americans oppose a 20 week abortion ban and pro-lifers can similarly claim that 60% of Americans say abortion is morally wrong. Both are credible in their claims, because the American people are completely muddled about the question and believe both simultaneously. Like it or not, we prolifers who want abortion outlawed are a distinct (and it appears permanent) minority.
What this means for politicians is simple: find a way to harvest votes from the muddle. And the tried and true method for doing that with both parties is, every four years, to hiss darkly to their end of the ideological spectrum "If The Other Guy wins, your darkest fears will be realized. But if we win, then your wildest dreams will come true."
The result is that, on the Left, candidates (early in the election) try to scare their base (dominated by the 20% who are abortion zealots) with "Handmaid's Tale" visions of a theocratic fascist regime herding women into breeder camps. At the same time, these Lefty candidates promise a glorious future in which the right to abortion will never ever be questioned again. Then (later in the election) when the candidate needs to appeal to the mushy middle, all that gets dialed back to accommodate people with all the qualms. Want proof? Remember all the hysteria in 2008 about how Obama was going to sign the Freedom of Choice Act on his first day in office as he himself promised? Yeah. That was talk for the 20% on the far Left. And the moment he was elected, the Freedom of Choice Act was never heard from again. Why? Because politicians on the Left don't want to spook that 60% in the middle if they don't have to since they want their vote next time. Americans have an uneasy peace with Roe, they figure, so why rock the boat?
But there is great interest in harvesting votes at election time.
So, for instance, a Rand Paul will make a play for the ardent prolife base out at the other end of the bell curve by sponsoring a Life at Conception Act. But he will also allay the fears of the mushy middle by assuring them that, while he dislikes abortion as they do, he will also make "thousands of exceptions" so that abortion will still go on. Likewise, for decades, pro-lifers have been told that, this time for sure, a GOP win will mean that the Supreme Court will finally be peopled with prolife jurists who will overturn Roe. George Weigel resuscitates this hope again in a recent issue of First Things:
With a view to encouraging that, here are two suggestions for what Catholics in America might ponder before November 8.The thing is, nothing really happens and very little changes, even when the GOP owns the White House and both houses of Congress. But a significant and useful constituency has the carrot of prolife action dangled in front of it, as well as a stick which, when applied, makes clear to prolifers that if they expect some quid they better cough up the pro quo. So support on everything from unjust wars to torture to tax plans to hostility to refugees to maintaining the death penalty to a host of other things having nothing to do, or in obvious and direct conflict with, the Church's prolife teaching magically becomes part of the "prolife agenda" and prolife people find themselves working harder and harder for the GOP while getting more and more distracted from the original simple goal of ending abortion. Still and all they tell themselves hopefully, "As long as you vote for the lesser of two evils, you are A OK."
(1) The most important numbers to keep in mind between now and Election Day are “78,” “80,” and “83.” Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer will be 78 by November 8; Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy will be 80 by then, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be 83. If the actuarial tables mean anything, those numbers suggest that the next President of the United States is likely to get two, perhaps three, and just possibly four, nominations to the Court.
But this year, of all years, that hope is profoundly challenged by the ascendancy of Donald Trump. In 2012, many and many a reader told me that, rather than vote for a third party candidate, I was "morally bound" to vote for the "lesser of two evils" and for a candidate who "had a hope of winning". In English, this meant "Vote for Romney or God will judge you responsible for the death of the unborn." One even likened my refusal to do so in the last election with (incredibly) the sin of Onan. (There was, of course, never any consideration of the possibility of voting for a candidate who does not intend to do evil but instead aimed to do good.)
Now here's the problem for a constituency that has, for decades, been catechized to believe "Vote the lesser of two evils or the baby gets it": on the question of abortion, there is essentially no difference between Trump and Sanders.
Oh sure, Trump has professed a prolife "conversion" about ten seconds ago, in order to get the prolife electorate to vote for him, but it is transparently fake, and anybody can see that from the fact that after his "conversion" he was trumpeting abroad how "phenomenal" his ardently pro-abortion sister would be as a Supreme Court judge, as well as making excuses for (but not apologizing for) taking vengeance on his infant nephew with cerebral palsy (cutting off payments for his medical care) in a spat over Daddy's money. His non-apology: "I was angry [at the boy's parents that] they sued." More recently, we have seen Trump simultaneously pander to a gullible prolife organ about Roe while simultaneously defending the funding of Planned Parenthood. All of which is to say we have absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe he has really rejected a word of this:
If this sounds familiar, it's because it is identical to Clinton's famous formula of wanting abortion "safe, legal, and rare"--which is pretty much standard boilerplate for the whole Democratic party--including Bernie Sanders.
So should the GOP go completely insane and nominate Trump, anybody who says we must vote for the lesser of two evils will have to select some evil other than abortion to make a comparison with Democrats. And if the metric is still the preservation of human life then somebody who seriously cares about being prolife will have to reckon with the fact that Trump, in addition to being every bit as pro-abortion as Sanders, also favors committing war crimes. He has called, for instance, for the deliberate cold-blooded targeted murder of innocent women and children in war:
"The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don't kid yourself. When they say they don't care about their lives, you have to take out their families," Trump said.The term for this, both in Catholic moral theology and in US law, is "murder". If you excuse such murder on the basis that the ends justify the means, congratulations: you have just joined the ranks of those who say exactly the same thing about the killing of innocent unborn human beings.
Relatedly, Trump has called for the resumption of the grave sin of torture, and without even the lying excuse typically offered by partisans of this evil, that it "keeps us safe" by giving us valuable intelligence. On the contrary, he says, "Even if it doesn't work, they deserve it anyway." (Dilawar, an innocent cab driver who was beaten to death by the US, and Gul Rahman, an innocent man who was frozen to death by the US, could not be reached for comment.)
Similarly, his spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson has remarked (without rebuke from Trump): "What good does it do to have a good nuclear triad if you’re afraid to use it?” (Pierson has also made a number of nakedly anti-Catholic remarks on Twitter, indicating either a remarkable fecklessness in Trump's vetting process for campaign spokesperson or his private assent to her anti-Catholic views. Catholics who thrill at the thought of his eagerness to strip Muslim-Americans of their first amendment rights should bear in mind the old saying, "First they came for the Muslims..."
Trump has likewise encouraged, both by his silence and his words, mob violence on the basis of race. On multiple occasions, his followers have beaten up Latinos and African-American (even at his own rallies), and have gone so far as to shout that the victim should be set on fire or to cry "Sieg Heil!" Trump's responses have been either silence, or to call his followers "passionate" or even to suggest that the victim had it coming. Recently (and not for the first time), he has given aid and comfort to white supremacists and even Nazi (yes, actual Nazi) voices by retweeting, for instance, the work of a man who elsewhere on his site depicts Trump in a German uniform preparing to murder Bernie Sanders in a gas chamber. Indeed, 62% of the people Trump retweeted during the week of January 24-30 follow multiple white supremacist accounts--accounts like this one.
And, of course, we are already familiar with his mockery of the disabled, his casual willingness to call women "pigs" and "dogs", breastfeeding mothers "disgusting" and his willingness to mock even American POWs.
All of this, from the perspective of Catholic teaching, which calls for the preservation of human life from conception to natural death, as well as the dignity of the human person, has the paradoxical effect (if you absolutely insist on voting for the "lesser of two evils") of compelling a vote for Sanders should it come down to a contest between him and Trump, since (though he agrees with Trump on abortion) Sanders rejects the many evils Trump advocates in addition to abortion. (We are not, of course, looking at the rest of Sanders' platform, which has many debatable positions. Rather, my point is to give an example of how a legitimately Catholic prolife moral calculus might really wind up concluding that Sanders demanded our assent.)
Sanders? The pro-abort? But, but! Cardinal Ratzinger said in 2004:
Regarding the grave sin of abortion or euthanasia, when a person’s formal cooperation becomes manifest (understood, in the case of a Catholic politician, as his consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws), his Pastor should meet with him, instructing him about the Church’s teaching, informing him that he is not to present himself for Holy Communion until he brings to an end the objective situation of sin, and warning him that he will otherwise be denied the Eucharist.Yes. He certainly did. And he's absolutely right. And if my reader were in any way indicating he supported Sanders because he supports abortion, he'd be in exactly the pickle Cardinal Ratzinger describes. But my reader is obviously not trying to support abortion. What he's trying to do is support the other things Sanders advocates, many of which are obviously and immeasurably better than what Trump advocates. And in a contest with a GOP candidate such as Trump whose views on abortion are indistinguishable from Sanders, there is therefore a case to be made that my reader can do so without incurring any sin at all.
Sez who? Sez Cardinal Ratzinger in the same letter:
A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favour of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.In other words, if you vote for somebody who advocates grave evil (abortion, euthanasia, torture, etc.) because of the grave evil they advocate, you are guilty of advocating the grave evil yourself and therefore are unworthy to present yourself for communion.
But! If you vote for somebody, not because you support their advocacy of grave evil, but because you are trying to prevent an even graver evil, or because you think there is some proportional good supporting them will achieve, you are not committing a sin and are only offering remote material cooperation with evil. Bottom line, the Church says that you can, under certain circumstances, vote for a pro-abort candidate. Meaning it is on the cards that, under certain circumstances, my reader might be able to vote for Bernie Sanders. That's not me talking, remember. That's the future Benedict XVI talking.
Not, I repeat, that I will vote that way myself. As I have said, I think the main thing a vote changes in a national election is the voter and what he is willing to tolerate. So I'm probably going to cast my vote for Joe Schriner, a Catholic who, as far as I can see, adheres to the teaching of the Church completely and who, mirabile dictu, advocates no grave intrinsic evils at all. I prefer to have a candidate I can vote for, rather than a candidate I have to hold my nose to support in order to really vote against somebody else.
But, that said, I think it important that, in this election year (and Year of Mercy) of all years, Catholics should be merciful to one another as they struggle to think with the Church (as my reader obviously wants to do or he would not have written to ask how to do so). That applies as well to supporters even of the horrendously awful Trump since (God alone knows how) some Catholics may well feel bound in conscience to vote for him. I will be happy to argue with them since I believe them dead wrong. But I plead with all but our bishops to refrain from arrogating to themselves the right to excommunicate people for their various moral calculations in determining who they can vote for. Unless a Catholic flat out tells you "I'm voting to support [insert grave intrinsic evil here]" assume they are voting with a good will and trying to live according to the teaching of the Church. It's what Pope Benedict XVI (and more importantly, God) would want.
Next time, I want to ponder how it has come to pass that, after 35 years of faithful service to the Republican party, prolife Christians are already being told (and lamely trying to tell themselves in some cases) that a pro-partial-birth abortion, quadruply-married strip club owner who says that he has never seen any need to ask God for forgiveness and whose mouth is a fountain or brutality, lies, arrogance and racism could somehow be somebody they "must" support. How did we get here? And how do we avoid being dragged any further away from our goal of saving children by this repeated and now spectacular Mission Creep that afflicts us each and every election cycle? On that, more next time.
Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/mark-shea/a-sanders-fan-asks-about-church-teaching-on-voting/#ixzz3yxp8jvSg
No comments:
Post a Comment