Nothing political about my vote

This contributor's position is nothing short of terrifying and contains all the absurd inconsistencies one would expect from someone motivated to vote in this way.

Shame on Islam!

ALT:

What banning 'Shariah law' means for Oklahoma Muslims
By Nihad Awad __ ISHLAMBi or ESAU-i!

OYE...!

What banning 'Shariah law' means for Oklahoma Muslims

By: Nihad Awad & CO.

BY NIHAD AWAD | NOVEMBER 5, 2010; 3:38 PM ET

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You have chosen to vote for the people who rejected Jesus' teachings on welfare because they say they will do something about abortion, but they have proven over the past three decades that they will do nothing. All they will do is assure you that they are anti-abortion and you jump to vote for them, even though their deeds have never once supported their words.

You and the bishops have been played as suckers. They will do the things that Jesus condemned, they will do nothing about what Benedict condemns.

The only problem with 1 issue voting is how short sighted it is, especially in regards to abortion. If you have an anti abortion candidate, yet someone who doesn't look at the big picture of sexuality & how those outside the church view it, it won't change a thing & perhaps even make it worse.

Unfortuately, I agree with gladerunner. I am a devout Catholic and a rabid Danielle Bean fan, but I feel as though I've been duped by the party that says it's pro-life. Has one abortion been stopped since they were in power? Bush and his republican congress couldn't even save Terry Schiavo. They wanted my vote, they got it and they did nothing about the one issue I care about the most. The thing that bothers me the most is they could have done something if they wanted to. But, they just wanted my vote. It would be different if they tried to stop abortion and failed. A few pro-life supreme court justices were appointed and maybe in the future that will help. I'm not convinced it will and I don't think it was worth a war, an economic collapse and horrid education reform to get those two on the court. I won't be duped again. I can't bring myself to vote for candidates that say they endorse abortion either. So instead of voting these past several elections, I pray.

I am a practicing Roman Catholic but I think the church is a one issue Church. What happened to euthanasia, capital punishment,war. I really don't hear the bishops speaking out on those issues.The matter of health insurance what is the bishops plan since they do not like the one in place? I really think that they have to start looking at the big picture. All the recent surveys tell us that people are not going to church and marring in civil ceremonies. The bishops had better start addressing these issues.

The notion of a single-issue voter is an absurd simplification of Catholic theology and morality, it suggests that your morality is only expressed in one arena, and the rest are of no-consequence.
What about:
the death-penalty?
War?
Environmental destruction?
Actual slavery perpetrated by corporations worldwide?
Racism/and ethnic policies?
Caring for the poor and the widows, like Jesus said?
Responding to genocide?
Ultimately, your view on voting suggests we should vote only for a candidate who will defer to Rome on all matters that have any moral importance.
How could you in good conscience ever vote for any candidate for office, even if you could actually assume that what they said they would do they actually would do, (which you cannot)?

Why does anyone believe that they have the right to make another's choice for them? Abortion is what it is. However I feel about that, or whatever I think about that, if I am not the one who is pregnant, it should not be up to me. Is abortion used irresponsibly? Yes, like every other human-made technology. The woman who wrote this piece said something interesting. She said that when you boil it down we are all eventually single issue voters. I disagree. I appreciate her honesty, that she herself is ultimately in a black and white mindset, but I am not, and neither is everyone else.

Pagan,

You realize that abortion is not a religious issue, right? Granted, there are people of faith who attack abortion from that perspective, and that's fine.

But the overriding issue in regards to abortion is fixed and determinable. And it has nothing to do with Christianity or on the definition of a "baby."

Abortion, in the truest sense of the word, is simply an act of irresponsibility. It is a convenient alternative for someone who lacks the capacity to be held accountable for their actions (with the obvious exceptions involving rape or incest).

While I am against an attempt to make abortion illegal, I certainly would contend that significant resources need to be mobilized in an effort to promote a greater sense of responsibility in regards to sexual intercourse and its consequences. This is especially true at the young adult level.

So, when you say you're merely defending women's rights, what you really are doing is encouraging a pattern of behavior that runs counter to what we, as a society, should be valuing most.

Namrons

The Catholic Church does indeed have a tortured interpretation of human sexuality, which leads it to false doctrines and conclusions that demonize gay people. You are deceived.

"I never have and I never will vote for a candidate that supports legalized abortion."
Which unfortunately makes you very gullible. How many of the pro-life politicians that won their elections with your help actually did anything to accomplish this goal of abortion prohibition?
If I were running in a district that was heavily Catholic, I‘d be sure to get your vote. Heck, I’d be pro-whatever-you-want. Especially if the likelihood of any meaningful legislation ever coming to the floor on that issue was as paltry.
Methinks you’re being pandered to. This is exactly what happens to single issue voters, you make it so darned easy.

It's your right to keep belonging to an ever-shrinking group if you so choose.

...focusing on the priest pedophile problem in the Roman Catholic Church, most American churches being hit with child sexual-abuse allegations are Protestant, and most of the alleged abusers are not clergy or staff, but church volunteers...."

This is why you have earned so much disrespect - denial. Somehow for you and your kind the evil done by the priests is always someone else's fault.

Then your bishops, your cardinals, your leadership all the way to the pope -- more worried about the public relations issue than they are the children.

I know, it's useless trying to show you the hypocrisy because you will deny all wrongdoing. You support a church which supported priests who molested children.

That IS a fact, and your denying it means you are an accessory after the fact. You bear responsibility.

If Danielle Bean was aborted 45+ years ago, I wouldn't of read her nonsense.

Keep abortion legal!

Everyone ranks issues according to their own priorities and convictions and then votes accordingly. It is an authentic person who listens to the issues, applies her reason, and then goes to the voting booth. Whether you agree with the author's view of abortion or not doesn't really matter here. Pointing out that each voter has an issue that rises to the top of her priority list is a fair assessment.

Or, in realizing that without the right to life all other rights are moot, you just might agree with the author after all. How can we defend someone's right to, say, assemble, if we can't guarantee them the right to live long enough to do so?

Well, if you vote 'single issue' cause you want to give someone else control over what happens in your own body due to a religious doctrine, that a) Doesn't give you the right to take that moral choice away from others.

And b) Also makes you responsible for everything *else* you voted for in order to try and do so. That includes wars, corporate greed, oppression of LGBT people, impoverishing living children and their families, cutting social services to the poor, people losing their homes, ...the whole enchilada.

Doesn't sound very 'moral' to me.

If you don't want people having abortions, your religion is free to preach people should not. It doesn't give you the authority to decide your 'single issue' overrides all other concerns as well as the rights of others, even those who may not share your beliefs or allegiances.

Our country is unique in that we get our rights from our creator, rather from our own government. Therefore it is impossible to separate religion from government, because the determination of what rights we have, and when we get them is a religious belief.

When this country was founded, all of the European countries operated under the premise that human beings start out with no rights at all, and they are granted rights by their government. Our country stood in opposition to this, and stated that our rights come from our creator, and we give up some of these rights in creating a government. In Europe, government was created by God, and then rights were given to people by this government. In America, people created the government, not God, and people got their rights from their creator, not from their government.

Thus, in our country, it is impossible to leave religion out of politics, when the issue is when do human rights start.

The thing that I keep reading from many of these comments is the assumption that whatever religion or sect of religion one follows is correct in its teachings or beliefs. The assumption that any religion is the correct and that its teachings should be applied to all is pretty arrogant thinking. No matter how strongly you have faith or believe in something does not make it right or the right thing to do. Realize that this basis of thinking can apply to all religions and those without religion equally.

Following the Catholic Church's teachings on abortion is probably something that Roman Catholics should do.

The rest of us, however, are left with the idea that perhaps the hierarchy of the Catholic Church want us to obey church teaching/Canon Law, even though we are not Catholics.

If you are against abortion in all circumstances, don't have one. If you are against abortion but carrying your baby full term would almost certainly kill you then there seems to be a moral dilemma: the fetus _must_ be allowed to live, according to your church, but by doing so so you _must_ be committing suicide, a sin according to your church.

Hard to differentiate what's "God's will" is in that case, yes?

Thanks Danielle!

@Eezmamata: The Catholic Church is universal not national as you suggest and we all agree that child abuse is a despicable sin but consider that "despite headlines focusing on the priest pedophile problem in the Roman Catholic Church, most American churches being hit with child sexual-abuse allegations are Protestant, and most of the alleged abusers are not clergy or staff, but church volunteers...."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0405/p01s01-ussc.html

@DanielintheLionsDen: The Catholic Church has the most coherent teaching on sexuality out - the beauty of the Theology of the Body bears witness to this, and it has has no anti-gay agenda - read our Catechism. It is for this reason that we are under heavy assault from the evil one and its effects are felt within and without the Church.

I'm a lifelong Presbyterian, so I understand I'm a fish out of water. However, I do object to the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church prioritizing certain lives over others (where is the admonition to vote against politicians who support the death penalty?), and I do object to the reduction of complex human beings to a single secular political issue. It demeans the complexity with which God endowed us when He created humanity.

It's one thing for the church to come out in favor of or in opposition to a ballot measure. It's another when it's a living, breathing child of God.

As I noted on Father Pavone's piece, I realize this has zero relevance in the Catholic Church, but the 1647 Westminster Confession, which almost all Presbyterians subscribe to, has something useful to say on the subject:

"God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in anything contrary to his Word, or beside it in matters of faith or worship. So that to believe such doctrines, or to obey such commandments out of conscience, is to
betray true liberty of conscience; and the requiring an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also."

It's sad when people vote based on fairy tales and superstition.

Yup, I'm a single-issue voter as well. Proud to be Catholic (convert, I am) and will not vote for a candidate that supports legalized abortion.

The vatican is a foreign power, a foreign country led by foreign leaders.

You taking instructions from a foreign power like this makes you a traitor.

And Leticia, no church has earned greater disrespect than your church for the way it handled your child molesters. Your church has shown more disrespect for children than any in human history.

No single group has provided more social services, health care, or education in America than the Catholic Church.We have earned the respect of the American people.

The Catholic Church stood with Dr Martin Luther King Jr in the trenches of the Civil Rights Movement, and we stand with his niece, Dr Alveeda King, as she fights for the civil rights of unborn Americans.

Slavery was a moral issue and a civil rights issue, as was civil rights, and abortion. The strong will not dominate the weak without hearing from Holy Mother Church.

I am so proud to be a Catholic on Election Day, I wear my biggest Miraculous Medal in the voting booth.

No single group has provided more social services, health care, or education in America than the Catholic Church.We have earned the respect of the American people.

The Catholic Church stood with Dr Martin Luther King Jr in the trenches of the Civil Rights Movement, and we stand with his niece, Dr Alveeda King, as she fights for the civil rights of unborn Americans.

Slavery was a moral issue and a civil rights issue, as was civil rights, and abortion. The strong will not dominate the weak without hearing from Holy Mother Church.

I am so proud to be a Catholic on Election Day, I wear my biggest Miraculous Medal in the voting booth.

No single group has provided more social services, health care, or education in America than the Catholic Church.We have earned the respect of the American people.

The Catholic Church stood with Dr Martin Luther King Jr in the trenches of the Civil Rights Movement, and we stand with his niece, Dr Alveeda King, as she fights for the civil rights of unborn Americans.

Slavery was a moral issue and a civil rights issue, as was civil rights, and abortion. The strong will not dominate the weak without hearing from Holy Mother Church.

I am so proud to be a Catholic on Election Day, I wear my biggest Miraculous Medal in the voting booth.

Don't you think that the Catholic Church's extreme confusion over human sexuality, and its aggressively pursued anti-gay angenda, at least puts into question, its claim of moral authority on other issues?

I do.