Catholics for Bush answers hugetim - Catholics for Democracy

Response

Comment added by hugetim on Wed 22 Sep 2004 - 16:11 h

I apologize for the delay, but I no longer have time to write daily wordy posts like the above (and some of my previous blogwork).

Let's first look at the pivotal Ratzinger quote: "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." My point was that Cardinal Ratzinger did not say that such proportionate reasons need to be abortion related, as you repeatedly claim on your site. For an entire week, you repeatedly propagated the notion that a proportional reason such as:
The more anti-abortion opponent has also deceived the country into supporting an unjust war (which he had been planning since the beginning of his presidency, though he apparently waited until after the end of "major combat operations" to devise a plan for the securing anything in the country other than its oilfields), spitting in the face of the very idea of international law and international authority (indeed defining international cooperation as succumbing to coercion by him, without cracking a smile), setting international cooperation years back in the process (cooperation that is the hope of refugees, people dying of hunger and treatable diseases everywhere), and setting the precedent (as well as defining as official US policy) that any nation that feels (no solid evidence necessary) there is even a possibility that an enemy may attack it at any time in the even distant future has a legitimate "right" to attack and invade "pre-emptively" (actually, preventatively, because pre-emptively is defined as a response to an imminent threat, evidenced by troop movements or other manifest evidence), subject to no one; all of which sets a course for frequent, consuming wars throughout the world in the years to come, rather than working (e.g. Using some of the $200 billion for Iraq) to end the wars that are currently raging throughout the world (e.g. Sudan, Liberia, Congo, Cote d'Ivore, Haiti, Columbia... irreparably disrupting the lives of innumerable already impoverished peoples).

Just an example, which I admittedly do not have time to comprehensively document here. Perhaps, just for the sake of argument, grant the truth of the above (which is in some places an understatement)--could that be a proportionate reason?

Regarding peripheral abortion issues, I do not think of them as unimportant, but you continue to distort their significance when you speak as if "4000+ daily abortions" hang in the balance. As you well know, Bush has repeatedly stated that he does not "think the country is ready" for the overturning of Roe v. Wade. He does not support overturning it, and he has given indications of appointing pro-choice justices to the Supreme Court (while appointing pro-lifers to impotent lower courts). So, the peripheral abortion issues are important, but not important enough to outweigh many other issues of life and death. Finally, it is indefensible to speak of Bush supporting a Culture of Life, given his abortion position (life for you, child, unless you were conceived during incest or rape, or before the country is "ready for" the law to change), not to mention his positions and record on war, "usable" nuclear weapons, the death penalty, and a wide range of environmental and economic justice issues that critically affect the life and life-span of many throughout the world. The Culture of Life is not only about the unborn, and I simply would like you to recognize that. Thus this oft-overlooked quote from the Doctrinal Note on...Catholics in Political Life, the context of which you may wish to emphasize at its expense: "The Christian faith is an integral unity, and thus it is incoherent to isolate some particular element to the detriment of the whole of Catholic doctrine. A political commitment to a single isolated aspect of the Church’s social doctrine does not exhaust one’s responsibility towards the common good."

Since your memory seems a bit hazy on the pre-war weapons inspections, I offer you this pre-war view from the AP:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0317-01.htm
Note: "ElBaradei, who has been monitoring the situation day to day, confirmed that he and Blix had received an invitation from the Iraqis "to visit Iraq with a view toward accelerating the implementation of our respective mandates." He did not say whether he or Blix had accepted.

"I should note that in recent weeks, possibly as a result of increasing pressure by the international community, Iraq has been more forthcoming in its cooperation with the IAEA," he said."

At this point, when the threat of force had demonstrably produced very good cooperation, why did Bush not halt the invasion? And your complaint that "It took MONTHS to show that the intelligence was either wrong or that these weapons were moved (to Syria, Iran) or still remain hidden. And we continue to look even now. How one thinks four more weeks would have solved this is a mystery." That actually made me laugh out loud. If you don't think it's time to draw some conclusions after a year and a half of occupying the country, then your judgment is in question, needless to say. Remember, when you are justifying a war, the burden of proof is on you. You don't blow up a place and say, "We didn't know for sure that they didn't have WMDs" (unless you are a comedian). Take a look at this article, too, for help: http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/03/21/iraq.weapons/

Re your dissent with Just War Theory, I was refering to your Sept. 10 comment in which you said, "Remember, there were many reasons given by the president for invading Iraq, not just the belief they had WMD. There was also the repression of the Iraqi people by Saddam, the defiance of UN resolutions, and ties to international terrorists. Again, war is always a defeat for humanity, but sometimes morally obligatory. The loss of life is regreatable, esp. civilians, but we live in a different world today..." Let me remind you that in Catholic thought, war is permissible only to confront "a real and certain danger," neither of which existed in Iraq, as clearheaded people understood at the time and most everyone admits now. Sept. 11 does not change whether a war is just, as you were tempted to imply. Defiance of UN resolutions does not justify war. Interestingly, we defy UN resolutions (http://www.space.com/news/un_resolution_991103.html for just one example). Ties to terrorists in themselves do not justify war. Interestingly, we have ties to terrorists (Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, para-militaries in Columbia, etc., and the historical examples are much easier because the files are now open to the public). I felt you were suggesting the opposite, but correct me if I was wrong.

Finally, the business about "binding consciences" is a distraction. In principle, we leave the authority to civil authorities to decide when to go to war. In a concrete situation, we citizens must make a suitably informed judgment about whether a war is just and act accordingly. In this case, Pres. Bush has made it very easy for us because his official doctrine explicitly contradicts just war theory (just as we know Kerry's atrocious explicit position on abortion, apart from his atrocious record). We know Bush rejects just war theory that urges restraint, and we know we will likely start another war unjustly (with all the implications this has for the future of peace throughout the world, which I alluded to above). In this case, we are indeed bound to oppose his war policy. In addition, Bush continues to fully support his race to war, even given what he knows now--that Iraq did not pose a real and certain threat--so we are again bound to acknowledge that he is explicitly defying just war theory. Even if you still want to vote for him, I plead with you to at least acknowledge the ways he defies Catholic teaching.

One final word on the Culture of Life. As Catholics, we are called to view the value of every human life equally, whether American or Iraqi, or Eritrean, or Sudanese, etc. That's why it is morally incongruous to spend $200 billion in Iraq for a questionable war (refering to Iraqi casualties as "collateral" as you know) with no evident immediate threat, while doing so little to change situations of hunger and easily preventable diseases (i.e. TB, cholera) from which something like a hundred thousand die every single day. Bush pledged $15 billion for AIDS in Africa, and then provided only a fraction of that amount in the budget immediately afterwards and every year since. Bush has also proposed the Millenium Challenge Account to aid poor countries, standing idly by as funding for it (still extremely inadequate, given other promises we have made through international agreements) is slashed in half. Frankly, I appreciate your zeal about fighting for the 4,000 unborn that die every day, but it is truly scandalous that you speak so infrequently about "the tragic fact that more than 30,000 children die every day as a result of hunger, international debt, and lack of development around the world" (excerpt from the USCCB's Faithful Citizenship; I could just as easily quote the Vatican). But I could care less about these accusations--just acknowledge these issues and I will feel like we can work towards a Culture of Life together, despite our presidential differences.

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Tim, much to respond to and I

Comment added by catholicsforbush on Fri 24 Sep 2004 - 05:46 h

Tim, much to respond to and I will in several posts. Do want you to know that I appreciate your comments and have come to an understanding of some of your beliefs. More on that in future posts here and on the Catholics for Bush blog. I have also placed a link to CfD on the blog. I did want to comment right now on something you wrote.

"So, the peripheral abortion issues are important, but not important enough to outweigh many other issues of life and death."

How do you reconcile such a statement with this statement?

"The inviolability of the person, which is a reflection of the absolute inviolability of God, finds its primary and fundamental expression in the inviolability of human life. Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights -- for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture -- is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition of all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination . . . " (From John Paul II's 1988 apostolic exhortation, The Vocation and the Mission of the Lay Faithful in the Church and in the World (Christifideles Laici))

or this one,

"But being 'right' in such matters [policies on poverty, employment, education, etc.] can never excuse a wrong choice regarding direct attacks on innocent human life. Indeed, the failure to protect and defend life in its most vulnerable stages renders suspect any claims to the 'rightness' of positions in other matters affecting the poorest and least powerful of the human community." (From the US Bishops, Living the Gospel of Life, 1998)

or this one,

Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. Ratzinger memo

or this one,

"The Church recognizes that there are occasions when war and the death penalty are justified, even though such measures are undesirable and should be kept to the necessary minimum . . . Catholics who fully accept the doctrine of the Church can sometimes disagree about whether a given war or death sentence is morally defensible...Abortion is in a different class. As the deliberate taking of innocent human life, direct abortion can never be justified. About the moral principle, there can be no debate in the Church. The teaching has been constant and emphatic." Cardinal Avery Dulles

or this one,

Since abortion and euthanasia have been defined by the Church as the most serious sins prevalent in our society, what kind of reasons could possibly be considered proportionate enough to justify a Catholic voting for a candidate who is known to be pro-abortion? None of the reasons commonly suggested could even begin to be proportionate enough to justify a Catholic voting for such a candidate. Reasons such as the candidate’s position on war, or taxes, or the death penalty, or immigration, or a national health plan, or Social Security, or AIDS, or homosexuality, or marriage, or any similar burning societal issues of our time are simply lacking in proportionality. Bishop Rene Henry Gracida

or this one,

Certainly policies on welfare, national security, the war in Iraq, Social Security or taxes, taken singly or in any combination, do not provide a proportionate reason to vote for a pro-abortion candidate.

Consider, for example, the war in Iraq. Although Pope John Paul II pleaded for an alternative to the use of military force to meet the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, he did not bind the conscience of Catholics to agree with his judgment on the matter, nor did he say that it would be morally wrong for Catholic soldiers to participate in the war. In line with the teaching of the catechism on "just war," he recognized that a final judgment of prudence as to the necessity of military force rests with statesmen, not with ecclesiastical leaders. Catholics may, in good conscience, support the use of force in Iraq or oppose it.

Abortion and embryo-destructive research are different. They are intrinsic and grave evils; no Catholic may legitimately support them. In the context of contemporary American social life, abortion and embryo-destructive research are disproportionate evils. They are the gravest human rights abuses of our domestic politics and what slavery was to the time of Lincoln. Catholics are called by the Gospel of Life to protect the victims of these human rights abuses. They may not legitimately abandon the victims by supporting those who would further their victimization. Archbishop John Myers

or this one,

"If the reasons are really proportionate, and the person remains clear about his or her opposition to abortion, that can be done. What is a proportionate reason to justify favoring the taking of an innocent, defenseless human life? That's the question that has to be answered in your conscience. What is the proportionate reason?" He said that the difficulty of these nuanced ideas is the reason he did not discuss the problem of proportionality in his earlier statements in June. "It is difficult to imagine what that proportionate reason would be," Archbishop Raymond Burke

or this one,

More to the point, however, it is a classic abuse of religion that people will invoke a religious authority to justify violence. There is no act of violence more brutal, or claiming more victims than abortion. It kills 4000 children daily in the United States alone. Practitioners admit under oath that they dismember and decapitate these babies. If people try to equate that with other issues by misquoting a Vatican Cardinal, they are guilty of the most shameless type of abuse of religion -- the same kind of abuse used to justify burning people at the stake. Only this time, we're talking about babies."
Father Frank Pavone

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I'm glad you asked

Comment added by hugetim on Fri 24 Sep 2004 - 16:57 h

I'm glad you asked, because you still seem to be misunderstanding what I am saying. The key point here is that I am not comparing human rights such as the right to culture or education to the right to life, but I am imploring you to aknowledge other issues of the right to life! The sad fact is that just as the unborn do not have a right to life in this country, neither do millions of others throughout the world. You and I both know that removing a feeding tube (or other vital support) can be equivalent to killing someone, that is, euthanasia, even though nothing is done to actively harm a person. In the same way, allowing 24,000 people to die every single day from hunger is equivalent to denying their right to life, frankly, to killing them. Policies that increase the likelihood of war around the world are likewise responsible for countless deaths. Look, it is not me counting these sorts of issues among the "life issues" but the Magisterium (e.g. Faithful Citizenship).

Take another look at paragraph 4 of the oft-quoted Doctrinal Note.... I hardly need to repeat the statement: "In the face of fundamental and inalienable ethical demands, Christians must recognize that what is at stake is the essence of the moral law, which concerns the integral good of the human person." The statement then lists specific issues for which this is the case, beginning with "abortion and euthanasia" and including "the development of an economy that is at the service of the human person and of the common good, with respect for social justice, the principles of human solidarity and subsidiarity" and "the question of peace must be mentioned." The document is very clearly stating that the "Catholic Answers issues" are not the only non-negotiable issues!

And this is consistent with most of your quotes, such as Ratzinger's, "Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia." Notice he says "not all" other issues have the same weight, because he is aware that other issues of life are weighty in the same way, as only makes sense.

In the same way, Cardinal Dulles says "Catholics who fully accept the doctrine of the Church can sometimes disagree about whether a given war..." Sometimes! Because he knows that some wars are clearly unjust, and no informed Catholic may agree with it!

As for individual bishops and priests who argue there is no proportionate reason, they do not acknowledge either the gravity of the reason I have given nor that (sadly) only peripheral abortion issues are at stake this election (i.e. a vote for Bush will simply not save the 4,000 babies per day, so stop pretending like it will).

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Only if you stop pretending voting for Kerry

Comment added by Unregistered on Wed 29 Sep 2004 - 15:23 h

(i.e. a vote for Bush will simply not save the 4,000 babies per day, so stop pretending like it will).

Only if you stop pretending the Kerry will do the same. Saving 4,000 a day of anyone.

At least with Bush we aren't going to take a step backwards with Abortion, stem cell research and euthinasia.

And Partial Birth Abortion and Unborn Child Pain Awarness Act are not periphial abortion issues. I also ask that you put a link in your action alert for the "Unborn Child Pain Awarness Act" We need to act on this now. Here is a link for HR4420

http://www.capwiz.com/nrlc/issues/alert/?alertid=6213786&type=CO

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action alerts

Comment added by hugetim on Wed 29 Sep 2004 - 18:50 h

FYI, I don't control the action alerts--they come from NETWORK. I will check out that bill though. Does it have any chance of passing this session, do you think? Not that we shouldn't start building support for it for next year either way. Thanks.

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Thank you

Comment added by Unregistered on Wed 29 Sep 2004 - 22:59 h

Thank you

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my wish..

Comment added by Unregistered on Sat 25 Sep 2004 - 06:27 h

My wish would be that you look at the archives of Catholics for Bush, Tim. We do talk about these issues. The thing is, for us those are just givens. Of course we know that we must help and care for others. We know that, we are Catholics. We are talking about issues that many of our Catholic brothers and sisters don't seem to even know exist. Do you realize that most Catholics think that because the Pope gave his opinion on the death penalty that it meant that it was written in stone? Do you realize that many Catholics are viewing this war in the same way? Do you realize that many Catholics don't even know there is a Catechism that is available for THEM? If you read our discussions from day one you will see just how many people come to our site and are uninformed on their own religion. Granted some of those people may not even be Catholic and just want to voice their opinions. I just read a commentary from a woman on the CAtholics for Kerry site. I am so sad for her, because for all these yrs she hasn't wanted to subscribe to the Catechism, or the Pope. She wanted the ability to do her own thing. That isn't being a part of our Catholic community totally, that is doing your own thing. Unfortunately, she has left our faith. If you read these people's quotes, you will see that there are many in our community like that. The rules of the Catechism were laid out way before this election. There are some things you can venture your own way about, but there are others that you can't Abortion is one. Before we had this horrific law (and another reason to get rid of it) it didn't matter if you voted for a Democrat or a Republican because there were not these issues of stem cell research, and cloning, abortion. Do we have to do more for the poor , yes, do we recognize that,but that is universal for all of us. Every single one of Catholics for Bush realize the importance of doing everything in our power to make sure that the poor are taken care of.

I am sorry you are such a cynical guy. I do believe (and I am old enough to be your mother so I have had a lot more elections, a lot more experience in seeing things accomplished than you) that President Bush will over turn Roe v Wade. I am also realistic. He needs a few things to happen. We need more Republicans in the Senate (and you are helping thwart that by your vote) so that he doesn't get filibustered when he promotes a judge that he likes. We clearly need 2 Supreme Court Justices to retire. Other than that, you never did answer the question that I have asked, now four times, what has John Kerry done in 19 yrs that has reduced abortion? Why would you be so intent on believing that would change? Are you sure, that you just don't agree with him about abortion? ARe you sure that you aren't one of the people that are filled with hatred for our President and that is clouding your view of things? (anybody but Bush crowd)

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Outstanding!!

Comment added by Unregistered on Mon 20 Sep 2004 - 10:36 h

I too have wondered why when we enter a discussion with many democrats they do not list specific information. Everything is generalities. There are a lot of assumptions, things being read into other things, and a lot of gossip. My wish is that this will stop.
God Bless.

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