Sunday, April 02, 2006

"You cannot call yourself Catholic if you are pro-choice"

I've been seeing letters to the editor lately concerning Democratic elected officials who vote pro-choice and are Catholic. These letters claim that these politicians should not be able to call themselves Catholic if they do not accept all the Church's teachings on all matters.

That reminds me of a story my father told me about his mother and their Polish-American neighbors when they lived in East Chicago, Indiana in the 1920s. My grandmother would hear the neighborhood women talking as they all hung up laundry in their backyards and was surprised to hear these devout Catholic women discussing using birth control. My grandmother, a Methodist minister's wife, was surprised and asked if their priest didn't tell them about Catholic teaching on family planning. The Polish-American women said, "Yes, but we don't listen to him about that."

These letter writers try to imply that it is only Democratic elected officials who are picking and choosing which Church teachings to follow, but that is obviously not true. The majority of American Catholics have been rejecting the Church's teachings on birth control for many generations, although only the elected officials among them are forced to take a public stand on the issue.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

One thing to also consider about Europe and religion is if you look at their population the traditional, more liberal, base is being replaced by the modern conservative Muslim base they are importing to fill the countries labor requirements, caused by a trend of avoiding birthing and raising children like the plague. A problem that will also face the secular base of Europe is that the radical right of Islam tends to have more influence of governmental policies in Islamic culture than the moderate sections. The European traditional population base has eroded to the point where in a few decades that radical conservative Muslims could have control of several of the governments just through voting strength. One column I read predicted that results along that line could be observed as soon as 2010-2020. The current trends in traditional European births (or lack of such) will certainly cause a revolution in basic governmental principals as the more conservatives groups take power all across the European bloc. It should be an interesting culture change to observe. The trend will probably be similar in the US within the next few years as many of the immigrants in this country are coming from Catholic based Hispanic cultures and Islam based Muslim cultures. One thing that has always amazed me is that if the religious right of the Christian voting blocks joined with the voting conservatives in the Muslim community they would become one of the most powerful voting blocks in the nation, yet, they fight and bicker amongst themselves so much they don’t recognize most of their philosophies travel the same trail and lose the advantage they would have in setting government policy.

Anonymous said...

Or you can call yourself paladin which is short for crabby no it all. Are you John Beydler? Just asking.

Anonymous said...

You can be a catholic and have an abortion, you just can't be for abortion.

Anonymous said...

You can be a catholic and have an abortion, you just can't be for abortion.