Catholic awakening

Little Barry and his lapsed Catholic HHS Sec may have stepped deeper into the excrement than they thought. Sunday here in Ft. Wayne was the usual get out and vote “your conscience” pitch from the pulpit. “Usual” in the sense everyone knows it is coming.


What was totally unusual about the pitch was how remarkably forceful and clear it was that Catholics shouldn’t be supporting Little Barry. These “serious moral” questions from introductory remarks to Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship a voting guide of sorts for Catholics, were read from the pulpit:

1. “Continuing destruction of unborn children through abortion and other threats to the lives and dignity of others who are vulnerable, sick, or unwanted;

2. Renewed efforts to force Catholic ministries — in health care, education, and social services — to violate their consciences or stop serving those in need;

3. Intensifying efforts to redefine marriage and enact measures which undermine marriage as the permanent, faithful, and fruitful union of one man and one woman and a fundamental moral and social institution essential to the common good;

4. An economic crisis which has devastated lives and livelihoods, increasing national and global unemployment, poverty, and hunger; increasing deficits and debt and the duty to respond in ways which protect those who are poor and vulnerable as well as future generations;

5. The failure to repair a broken immigration system with comprehensive measures that promote true respect for law, protect the human rights and dignity of immigrants and refugees, recognize their contributions to our nation, keep families together, and advance the common good;

6. Wars, terror, and violence which raise serious moral questions on the use of force and its human and moral costs in a dangerous world, particularly the absence of justice, security, and peace in the Holy Land and throughout the Middle East.”

In a letter to Catholics in his Diocese, Bishop Kevin Rhoades put these moral questions into a context everyone can understand when he quoted Pope John Paul II:

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 for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination (Christifideles Laici, #38).

While Little Barry nor Romney’s name were ever mentioned during the pitch, at the end, a child of 4 knew that no Catholic could in good conscience support Little Barry. This is in marked contrast 2008 when there was a tortured appeal from the pulpit that asked Catholics to ignore certain things, then make their decision. Also, at St. Vincent’s Monsignor John made the appeal in person. In 2008 the pitch was made by whichever associate pastor happened to be saying the mass. Last, gone from the parking lot of St V’s are the oxy moronic bumper stickers Catholics for Little Barry.

As noted before on this page, the bishops are 40 years late to the party and it took their own ox being gored to awaken them but as they say, better late than never.