Permit this old man a detailed response.
Your Christianity certainly has a cerebral influence, yet is Christocentric. What Christianity could be difference? And, too I think we disagree on some things, but we agree on commitment to the Catholic Church. To which you’ll get no argument from me.
However I think I am strongly influenced by my history as an Irish Catholic, who lived in the US during the late 60s. I must have influenced my children, as one of them still has a portrait of John F Kennedy on his wall. I find it difficult to consider supporting a Republican. I think they cynically exploit Catholics. Has any Republican overthrown Roe vs Wade? No – Roe v Wade is as hard to overcome as any decision by our Supremes; why we have to settle too often for incremental pro-life gains. However, would the justices Alito and Roberts (or Scalia and Thomas) come out of any Democrat? For over two decades, the Democrats have made abortion a litmus test for judicial appointments at ever federal level; e.g., ‘borking’ Bork and attempting to do so with Thomas. One of the ad-campaign points of the Democrats has been that B.O. will make for an iron-clad Roe v Wade supporting cast of justices. Add F.O.C.A. (and good-bye ‘incremental pro-life gains’) to that, from out of B.O.’s projected first acts as President, and backing B.O. is like fostering blood-letting as a physician’s best procedure. Frankly, JFK would agree with Republicans on one point after another, not simply ‘culture of life’ issues. He was far more conservative than most Democrats, including you and even his own daughter, it seems, remember. I favor the allusion that has B.O., et al, effectively translating JFK’s famous injunction: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” into “Ask not what you can do for your country, but what your country is going to do for you.”
I think I really am very tribal. I support my tribe. I may have sounded very liberal and ecumenical but when the chips are down I support my own. Might you be confused about who are ‘your own’? You are getting to an age where your apparent ‘tribe’ would set you off on an ice floe, to shorten your unfortunate (and expensive) dotage. I sadly blush to admit that I have found tribes about my very Catholic Midwest America that are uniformly Catholic by breath but not-so-very by actions. For one thing, find them-and-theirs in the Sunday-morning pews.
I would find it hard to support the apostate Palin, bur easy to support the Irish-Catholic Joe Finnigan Biden. McCain, who considered that some evangelicals were agents of intolerance, is not anti-abortion. Is a little murder OK? Come off it! McCain is more pro-life and anti-abortion than any prominent Democrat. But, further, one needs to be Catholic to submit to ‘Catholic’ dogma? [The shadow of: ‘only them there Catholics get into heaven’.] Biden barely qualifies, in my book, as a Catholic; indeed, like B.O., he seems to take guidance from his own lights, not the Church’s – is he any less an apostate, then? With confusion about ‘tribe’ and all, are you masking off truth from your considerations?
I am moved by the oratory of Obama, combining JFK and Martin Luther King. HARDLY does B.O. invoke the best of JFK and MLK. The man is clearly too full of himself. Ego-bound rhetoric does not a statesman make.
The American pro-life movement is too narrow. Pro-life should be about having life and having it to the full. This means good education, good health care and a decent income for all. NONE – education, health, income, etc. – of which a baby forced into death can ever have, eh? To paraphrase Saint James, show me your pile of issues worth my efforts, and I will show you my one-issue that needs must precede them.
I have read replies in CE, where my "new-age anti-Catholic drivel" has been condemned saying it is better to support an evangelical who is against abortion, rather than a cafeteria Catholic. And, though there may be an injustice in so condemning you, but where, in citing that a pro-life Protestant (or Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu, animist, atheist, anti-theist, agnostic, what-have-you) is better than a pro-death alleged Catholic? How is any of the former not simply more correct than the latter, but far less misleading and scandalous?
I disagree. We support our own. We hang together, not separately. Some Catholic politicians may be b***ds, but they are our B***ds, as I have said before. Some Catholic bishops may have failed to deal adequately with pedophilia, but they are our bishops and we stick with them. Ahh – let’s mix the apples and oranges now, huh? It was very similarly like the Democrats who insisted on letting Fred and Fannie get us into financial hot-water that such partisan-agenda-driven ‘liberals’ in and out of the Church LONG-ago (1950s) questioned (as urging) letting homosexuals into the ordained ranks. So – the bishops let them in – to have further ‘liberals’ add that their homosexual (NOT pedophiliac, 90% of the time) actions could be cured by simply moving them about, parish to parish. And so – seemingly – you favor ‘tribes of buzzards’ [my faux translation of ‘b****s’], do you? More, we may have tribes of fools, about us; however, circling the wagons does not make the tribe less foolish.
Anyway, you have said you will keep me in your prayers, I appreciate this. I remember you and all my friends in CE. I appreciate their support and welcome the opportunity to debate with them and be supported by them. T’ain’t a one of us here doesn’t need all the prayers of all others – I persist in prayer for all of us-and-ours to get into a deliriously ecstatic group-hug right in front of the Celestial Throne, by-and-by.
Peace be unto you – His peace I pray for you.
