Right wing Catholic groups celebrated earlier this month when Scranton bishop Joseph Martino ordered his priests to read a letter at Mass tacitly proclaiming that it was immoral for Catholics to vote for Obama. Things have been going south for them ever since.
These organizations - groups like Bill Donohue's Catholic League, Deal Hudson's InsideCatholic.com, Fidelis, and Catholic Answers - had hoped this year for a reprise of 2004, when independent Catholic voters propelled Bush to victory in Ohio. Once again, they dumped millions into advertising and media campaigns in an attempt to convince Catholics that abortion is the overriding issue at the ballot box.
But this time around, the faithful aren't buying it. According to the polls, Catholics have consistently named the economy as the number one concern affecting their votes this year. As E.J. Dionne wrote in his Washington Post column yesterday, "Catholics, who are quintessential swing voters and gave narrow but crucial support to President Bush in 2004, are drifting toward Barack Obama. And this time, some church leaders are suggesting that single-issue voting is by no means a Catholic commandment." Indeed, this week both Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Gambino Zavala and Memphis Bishop J. Terry Steib cautioned against approaches to Catholic voting that overlook key social justice concerns.
Like so many things, saying that a candidate's position on abortion makes him or her unfit for the Catholic vote works better in theory than practice. The Catholic right's message loses its effectiveness when voters realize it uses the same logic that impelled Catholic voters to re-elect Bush in 2004 - whose presidency turned out to be a disaster for Catholic values and the nation as a whole. Republican apologists like Deal Hudson conveniently avoid this recent history. But as Melinda Henneberger points out on Slate.com, Catholic voters in Pennsylvania remember all-too-well the past eight years.
A subtle but key shift in the Democrats' abortion messaging has played a key role in changing the Catholic political landscape. While continuing to affirm its traditional pro-choice legal stance, under Obama's leadership the party has embraced abortion reduction measures that provide health care, child care, education, and other essential supports for vulnerable pregnant women. Despite criticism from the right, it's a message that resonates remarkably well with the swing electorate - Catholic or otherwise. Obama's independent voter dials hit the roof when he answered the abortion question in the third debate; McCain's flatlined.
The Catholic right is also flummoxed by a resurgence of Catholic organizing around social justice issues like war, health care, and the economy. Groups such as Pax Christi USA, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, and Catholics United have a long way to go before they match the money, members, and infrastructure of the right's machine. Nonetheless, they have managed to keep up with their competition this year, reaching millions of Catholics through TV and radio ads, direct mail pieces, phone banks, and local press coverage. "Progressive Catholics have finally gotten their act together," Brian St. Paul, editor of Crisis Magazine and InsideCatholic.com told Religion News Service's Daniel Burke this month. "They are more organized and effective. Certainly they are a force."
In an outrageous display of just how desperate the right has become, Catholic League president William Donohue seized this week on "shocking" revelations that Catholics in Alliance had received grant money from George Soros' Open Society Institute. Right wing media organizations like InsideCatholic, Catholic News Agency, and LifeNews.com fell over themselves to report on this "evidence" that the group promotes a left-wing anti-Catholic agenda, only to find, embarrassingly, that OSI supports an agenda often very much in line with Catholic teaching, and has funded programs of Catholic Charities USA, Catholic Relief Services, the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, and many dioceses of the Catholic Church. It was not one of the right's finer moments.
The Catholic right isn't on the ropes quite yet. On Sunday, the Washington Post reported on the movement's redoubled efforts to sway Pennsylvania Catholic voters over the abortion issue, and it will be back to make a splash in the 2010 and 2012 elections - especially if the economy turns around. Regardless of who wins on November 4th, however, it's likely the Catholic right won't be able to claim victory - a remarkable turn of events from four years ago.
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October 20, 2008
Dear Friends,
In the interests of helping expedite a new demand by the McCain campaign, per Rich Davis who today on MSNB’s “Morning Joe” show alleged that "enough questions have been raised by the media" that “all of Obama's small donors should be disclosed online”, my husband and I have decided to step forward and add ourselves to the GOP Hitlist the McCain campaign is apparently compiling for use after the election.
My husband and I are Disability Advocates and Adoptive Parents of Special Needs Children, Catholic and Evangelical Christian, Pro-life with the scars to prove it ---particularly on behalf of youth and adults with disabilities, and we are definitely “small” donors but we have strong feelings about this election, enough that we have committed ourselves and our resources to Sen. Obama, Sen. Biden, and the entire Democratic campaign straight on toward
morning !!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_eugenics
You don't seem to understand that George Soros is in the worldwide business of manipulating economies, often in order to buy elections or overturn a government (I'm talking about Asia, Russia, SA, the UK -- and most recently the US) and part of his approach to this is through brainwashing -- he takes over media outlets in order to influence the people over whom he wishes to take control -- even this is a Soros website. Perhaps you need to do your research on George Soros, so that you can be sure you are making your own decision and not just buying into propoganda.
Obama is the most extreme pro-abortion politician ever: http://www.onetruemedia.com/otm_site/share_view_player?p=7030bd098cca768e72d111
http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2008/01/top-10-
http://www.catholic.org/video/?v=1493
I commend your obviously nobel and generous lifestyle, but I think if you are rationalizing your vote for Obama.
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”
Once upon a time ---actually only 7 weeks or so ago, we had a great deal of respect for Sen. McCain and were pleasantly surprised by his choice of running mate, Sarah Palin, because of our deep respect for Nat Hentoff, one of the strongest voices for life among liberal and social justice journalists, and a friend who had helped us “make the injustice visible” on disability rights concerns in the “lives-worth-living”/euthanasia debate, who believed her choice to birth, keep and raise her child with Down Syndrome was one of principle rather than convenient and cynical politics.
My husband, a Life-Long Disability Advocate with extensive legal advocacy and legislative experience since the 70s, deeply fears the type of retaliation and discrimination he, and anyone else choosing to exercise their First Amendment Rights to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, will suffer under a McCain-Palin regime. We and our special needs children already have enough obstacles to overcome, thank you, without fearing that even our disability and special needs adoption advocacy and community participation as citizens will not go unpunished.
as Executive Director of Access International, Inc. since 1990 (a disability advocacy fellowship of youth and adults with and without disabilities working together to help each other and others) have received actual written Death Threats from “Right to Lifers” (ie: National Right to Life Association members and donors) whose agenda is anti-abortion EXCEPT for babies with special needs, and anti-life itself for all those “cripples” whose lives are worthless and “unproductive”.
We live in VERY DANGEROUS TIMES!!! By the grace of God, we have a Last Chance to redeem our nation from the brink of further international wars and catastrophic economic collapse by choosing a candidate committed to Leadership instead of authoritarian and partisan domination; offering Hope for peace and prosperity instead of hate, division and abandonment of the poor for the enrichment of the wealthy; Celebrating the incredible Diversity of the American dream instead of merely tolerating, or even more often condemning, anyone who is different in color, race, ethnic background, faith, lifestyle or intellectual or physical ability.
Even though the is not one word in his recorded remarks on abortion, and the old Mosaic law didn't regard a fetus as human, the Catholic Church opposes it, in any case. Fine, they can counsel their members not to have them.
But they go farther -- they are starting to condemn and excommunicate Catholic politicians who don't believe in imposing Church law on the rest of the population. Not only is that borderline political interference, it' rank hypocrisy.
As for as I know, Catholic politicians who vote for unjust wars that kill already born adults and children by the hundreds of thousands, are still receiving communion. Mind you, they aren't letting other people choose war, they are choosing and enabling.
Where are the condemnations and excommunications? For murdering people EVERYONE agrees are full human beings?
I really wish the Catholic leadership would be more effective. They are so weak on society's morality-based issues -- I'm going to have to take my 5 Catholic kids and my Irish Catholic heritage and just convert to some solid evangelical church. The Catholic church is so secular and liberal, I don't know why anyone makes such an effort to publicly combat them when most Catholics completely ignore the official teaching of the Chruch. It seems so silly to me. Just vote Obama if you want -- you want the Pope to tell you it's morally acceptable? He's not going to, but you can easily find a priest who will, so go for it. I will tell you -- a vote for Obama is NOT morally acceptable -- but you dont' need my approval, do you?
The so-called “right to life” advocates oppose comprehensive Health Care as a Right for all, and until our nation can provide for the medical and rehabilitative needs of all its citizens equitably, the blood of every person who has died or suffered by being turned away or denied benefits will be on their hands ---let alone the blood of every child aborted by birthparents because they could not, in their minds, afford to carry a special needs baby to term or afford the costs of additional health care, even for a typical child, if they added to their family.
most powerful and wealthiest country in the history of the world today ranks 29th among all nations. 29th! In 2000, we ranked 27th. In 1960, 12th.” Even more glaring, according to the CDC, African–American infant mortality in the US is more than twice these national averages!
And then we have another 4,000 plus American lives (not to mention our allies’ losses, Iraqi losses and innocent civilians) lost in Iraq alone because of Lies by Bush-Cheney, with no likelihood of significantly different national defense strategies anytime soon under the 90% Bush-voting Sen. McCain; and another 40-50,000+ US veterans returning with serious disabilities, whose medical and rehabilitation needs are often barely being met, if at all, and for whom independent living and community options are few and far between due to 5-10 year long waiting lists for help.
Caring for others throughout their lives is also often tragically overlooked by a “pro-life” movement that demands protection for the unborn, yet often ignores the needs of our 500,000 foster children, roughly 150,000 adoptable special needs children, warehoused in various degrees of state-supervised limbo instead of being nurtured and loved in permanent families; not to mention the growing numbers of homeless men, women and children in our “great nation” which prides itself on tax-credits for the rich.
The time has come for Americans to join in making their decisions of conscience, just as others who have gone before:
We want to personally echo Justin’s words as we endorse the Obama-Biden candidacy for the Presidency of the United States:
“Our lives, our children's lives, the quality of the lives of billions in future generations hangs in the balance.”
And
"get into politics as if your life depended on it. It does."
Thank you for listening! Please will other “small donors” for Obama step forward here to state their cases as well! Perhaps that way the GOP Hitlist will end up so long they won’t be able to target everyone.
http://www.nsnewstv.com/news/ns_news/index.php?article_id=244