On the Catholics for Dean site.
Dear all Catholic Dean sympathizers,
You are under attack by fellow Catholics who do not even recognize our right to support Dean as Catholics. I will post links to blogs and other active debates about the very legitimacy of this site here and update it frequently. Please visit and post links to relevant parts of this site and offer your own arguments and knowledge of Catholic teaching. Fellow Catholics have declared war on us–let’s respond to them with love, reaching out to them with understanding as well as careful argumentation.
My site and others are listed under this paragraph. I love the hyperbole here “Catholics who do not even recognize our right to support Dean as Catholics.” I would like to know where myself or others made such a silly statement. I also don’t remember the declaration of war that I made. Everybody must vote according to their conscience, but their consciences should be formed by Catholic teaching. If I criticize the prudence of voting for Dean in light of Catholic teaching, then how have I attacked or declared war? I have not asked people to go to his site and posts comments critical of his opinion, but the opposite is not true. Why should I be attacked because I think that President Bush overall will advance Catholic teaching in many areas here and worldwide? Don’t I also have the right to support Bush as a Catholic? I also liked the superiority of “let’s respond to them with love.” I would like to know where my statements were not in the bounds of charity? Because I question the underlying facts and prudence of supporting Dean does that make me uncharitable?
One thing I found puzzling that one of the sites Tim listed after the above statement was A Catholic Blog for Lovers. I find this odd since Gerard was kind enough to put Tim’s Catholics for Dean web site on his listing of Catholic blogs. Gerard made no comments himself about Tim’s site, though a couple people in comments questioned him adding this site. I don’t think that this was a loving act.
Another site he specified was Relapsed Catholic, they will have lots of luck responding to her criticisms considering she doesn’t have comments. Out of the two hundred plus active blogs in St. Blogs I doubt if there would be more than one or two that would see the prudence of voting for Dean to advance Catholic teaching.
17 comments
John B: Don’t feel left-out, he also forgot CatholicLight.stblogs.org , GoodForm.stblogs.org , CatholicCitizens.org , FreeRepublic.com , EnterStageRight.com and several others.
Jeff M: Actually, it isn’t hyperbole. When asked via private email to at least admit a case could be made for a Catholic voting for Dean, I answered in the negative. Moreover, I did so not as a political pundit, but in my capacity as a licensed canonist. This pertains to Dean’s strong endorsement of homosexual “marriage”/”civil unions”. As the CDF makes clear in CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING PROPOSALS TO GIVE LEGAL RECOGNITION TO UNIONS BETWEEN HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS, “In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. One must refrain from any kind of formal cooperation in the enactment or application of such gravely unjust laws and, as far as possible, from material cooperation on the level of their application. In this area, everyone can exercise the right to conscientious objection.”
Catholics for Dean….
It still makes me laugh.
I live in Australia and I’M not voting for Dean!
I think it is possible for a Catholic to vote for Dean in a primary election, if it would advance Dean to the party nomination to lose to, er, I mean, to run against President Bush in the November election. I think the principle of double effect can be used to achieve a good result in this instance. But only in a primary election. I have been toying with the idea of voting for Dean in the Michigan primary Feb. 7th, which allows on-line voting, and one does not have to produce any party affiliation to vote in this primary. Michigan, as many other states have done, has cancelled its GOP primary election.
Greetings!
I feel it would be a mortal sin for me to vote for GW Bush.
– He waged an unjust war of agression with proper authorization according to just war docntine (only the UN can enforce UN resolutions) and was warned by the entire ordinary magisterium that thsi war was unjust.
– Cheney, Rumsfled, and Wolfowitz all supported the war since 1997 for the purpose of gaining economic and military superiority over the emerging Eurpean Union, and control of Europe’s supply.Cheney’s own company has profited from war in Iraq and does business in Iran that may be illegal. Powell has admitting no WMDs have been found in Iraq, there was no smoking gun, and no evidence of ties to Al Aqueda. The war was and is about oil and money, and the administration has lied to the American people and the woprld, and they can even stand up and admit and nobody seems to care.
– Bush has paid nothing but lip service to the pro-life cause. Partial borth abortions are rare to non-existent. He explicitly refered to the embryo as “potential life” in his compromise position on stem cell research (where he allows current stem cells to continue to be replicated and studied, and passed no law against stem cell research – just cut federal funding to new research). Bush will not do more to end abortion than any Democrat.
– Bush reinstituted the federal death penalty for the first time in 34 years and has used! The death penalty was explicilty condemned in Evangelium Vitae.
– The Patriot Avt has lead to people being arrested and held without representation or due process, and even shipped abroad to be tortuerd by proxy. Federal judges and legislators are deeming that it violates the constitution, but John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge seem determined to stay the course. Bush wants to be Big Brother.
– Bush claims to be for education, but he cut the most succesful education program ever – Headstart. He also cut school lunch programs for hungry children. He also cut Pell Grants.
– Bush claims to a fiscal conservative, but he has turned a budget surpluss into a half trillion dollar deficit. Discretionary spending has increased at 10 percent per year under Bush, while taxes have been cut to an all time low, and the taxes have one primarily to the “investor class”. The money is not going back into the economy as unemployment remains high (only 1000 jobs created for Dec) and millions remained without affordable health care. An emerging class of working poor is showing up in soup kitchens.
– Bush has alientated the rest of the world. If we were attacked again, we would be without help.
I believe it is sinful to vote for GW. It would violate my conscience as a Catholic.
Peace and Blessings!
jcecil,
I must have missed the part of proper authorization in just war theory. But Dean supported the war in Kosevo that did not have UN cooperation.
Please give me a break on the war was about oil. France and Germany were the ones making money from Iraq oil.
The rare to non-existence of partial birth abortion was something the pro-aborts touted. Just one New Jersey clinic was doing hundreds a year.
Bush can’t pass a law on stem-cell research, that is up to the Congress. Bush did what he had the power to do. Though I also was not pleased with the Solomon like decision that he came to.
You might need to reread the Pope’s Encyclical. It in no way condemns the death penalty in all cases, but said that it should be rare. I also believe that in most cases in modern society that use of the death penalty should be rare.
Sen Boxer (No friend of Republicans) had her staff investigate complaints into the Patriot act made by the hundreds of letters she received. She admitted that in most cases the alleged abuses weren’t even part of the Patriot act and asked the ACLU to submit to her any documented abuses. The ACLU had zero to give her.
Bush’s super-sizing of Government I specifically condemn. I think that everything should be done at the lowest level possible. But your economic statistics are just talking points from the left.
As for Bush alienating the world, that is nonsense. The coalition of countries that supported Bush was far greater than the few dissenters. France and Germany are not the world.
I wonder what candidate you think are not sinful to vote for. All of the Democrat candidates are supporters of the culture of death. Abortion, Euthanasia, homosexual acts. Their plans would not reduce the size of Government and their plans for the economy would be disastrous. What pro-life advances would we see under a Kerry, Dean or Clark?
We can incrementally move towards a culture of life and Bush has done more for the cause then any other President. I wish he was more ardent, but if we would have had Gore then we would have had no progress.
Fr. Pavone’s voting guide I believe is useful for the true Catholic conscience.
http://www.nursesforlife.org/Commentaries/pavone102102.htm
Just out of curiosity, can we volunteer to have our weblogs added to the list? I haven’t commented on this blog yet, but now will do so in the next couple of days. The very idea of voting for a man who not only will perpetuate the abortion holocaust, but has served on the board of the Vermont Planned Parenthood is simply amazing to me…
Consider it an honor: you’re standing up for Truth! I’ll have to start complaining about them (we’ve somehow started specializing in correcting the opinions of our posters . . . he he he).
God bless,
Jay
Voting in a democracyt is messy, isn’t it? At times it sure feels like an exercise in picking the least-offenive candidate.
Re: “Catholics for Dean”, I would call their bluff. I don’t think those behind the sham are Catholics at all, or at least not in good standing with the Church.
How do I get my site listed as a Dean dissident? I need the traffic.
Kat,
They don’t even have the traffic to back up their threat. I have only received a handful of hits from them.
Jeff – I find this “Catholics for Dean” weblog to be…amazing. To ignore the fact that Dean supports the killing of unborn children — even through late-term abortions — is…amazing. I have posted a response at my own weblog.
No problemo Kat, stop by Envoy’s blog.
Greetings!
The evidence is Here that the war was primarily about oil and U.S. military superiority over the European Union and others, rather than the prevention of terrorism or an immediate threat from Saddam Hussein.
Note the dates on the position papers by PNAC and the argumentation they, themselves, use! This is Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and others speaking on a site THEY operate – not some radical left wing conspiracy buff’s interpretation of thier words!
As far as Dean and Kosovo, I’m not sure I back Dean yet, and I would have opposed the use of force in Kosovo, but the U.N. did ultimately authorize the use of force in Kosovo, which contradicts your point about Dean and the U.N.
As far as the reasoning that only the U.N. was authorized to declare war on Iraq, this flows from the Catholic doctrine that a just war must be declared by the proper authority. Par 2309 of the CCC states “The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.”
In the case of the enforcement of a U.N. resolution or a potential future threat of the build up of WMDs, one nation is no more authorized to declare pre-emptive war on another than the state of Texas can declare war on Mexico without U.S. Congressional support. A sovereign nation can only declare war on another in self-defense against an immediate attack or immanent threat of attack.
Iraq had no WMDs, and was no immediate threat to the U.S. Iraq had no proven ties to terrorists or Al Queda. Therefore, the U.S. was not the authorized body to legitimately decide the legitmacy for war that was supossedly justified by the violation of a U.N. resolution. Only the U.N. can make that decision – which is what the Holy Father meant when he continually condemned the U.S.’s use of “unilateral force” as opposed to a “multi-lateral” approach.
Peace and blessings!
gee, i figure that saddam hussein’s track record proves HE is a weapon of mass destruction. . .as are any politicians who vote to keep abortion legal. talk abouting voting your conscience.
3 Cheers for a truly Catholic blog!!
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