Earlier this week, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops urged his fellow clergy to push President-elect Obama on his support of choice, in which the following day, 300 bishops held their annual meeting to discuss Obama's position on reproductive rights and other issues concerning the new administration.
With the Pope's threats of excommunication to pro-choice politicians, you have to wonder what will come out of this meeting. But Planned Parenthood's Cecile Richards reminds the bishops in a Huffington Post piece today that not only did exit polls find that 54 percent of Catholic voters had voted for Obama-Biden, but that Catholic Americans are actually pretty damn supportive of reproductive health rights. A snippet:
Catholic voters are more likely to support comprehensive sex education in schools (78 percent) than the general public (76 percent). And 86 percent of Catholics favor launching a major effort to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies by both increasing the availability of contraception for low-income women and by providing teens with comprehensive sex education.Put simply, Catholic voters, just like the rest of America, want government to focus on solving problems for American families, such as increasing access to affordable health care and helping children stay healthy and safe and not become parents before they are ready.
Additionally, a Planned Parenthood poll found that Catholic voters' second largest concern on abortion and family planning was that "government was too quick to interfere with people's personal lives and private decisions."
Indeed. Read the whole piece here.
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I predict that there will be an American Roman Catholic split with Rome in my lifetime. This is just one of several issues that is causing major friction between the American RCC and Rome in the past decade or so.
That split exists in most of the world.
hasn't stopped them yet.
I am catholic and so is the rest of my family.
It was fascinating to hear my dad explain to my nephew (my bro and his wife are crazy prolifers) how grandpa voted for Obama and that didn't mean grandpa was going to hell.
And I think it's interesting that most catholics I know think that rules they might apply to themselves do NOT apply to others. Most catholic women I know say they would probably not personally consider abortion and yet these women are still strong pro-choice advocates because they don't believe they should make that decision for someone else.
It will be interesting to see if the church hierarchy ever understands. In the meantime, I'm so happy to hear just how many catholics voted Obama.
This is the kind of stuff I was constantly having to tell my very devout Catholic ex-bf whenever we'd get into a discussion of religion. He often flatly refused to believe me whenever I'd try to make the point that American Catholics have a tendency to be rebellious when it comes to Church teachings on a whole lot of things.
My plumber (who is also my neighbor) and his family are devout Catholics, complete with "Choose Life" bumper stickers and such. But he votes Democratic anyway, as he made abundantly clear the last time he was over to fix something. (His disgust for Bush and the Iraq war was so palpable you could practically bottle it.) It's been my experience with his family, and with a great number of other Catholics of my acquaintance, that even when abortion is a problem for them, there are other issues that are far more important.
Catholics and the Catholic church- 2 different things.
Aren't there are a variety of branches of Catholicism?
More moderate?
Not homophobic, not as misogynistic?
Or am I thinking of Unitarians and Science of Mind?
Is it possible to be a moderate Catholic? Or does going against the Pope automatically make you a bad Catholic or excommunicated or in serious need of confession?
No different branches; the Roman Catholic Church considers itself the one true Christian church, with Jesus Christ having given its first pope, Peter -- and, by apostolic succession, the Church now -- the keys to the Kingdom. That's not to say that it doesn't consider Protestants Christians, for instance, but it doesn't consider them to have the direct mandate that it has.
Maybe you're thinking of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which split with the Roman one in the eleventh century...?
Everybodyever, its the opposite.
The catholic church split from the orthodox church.
But anyway. The previous point was important to consider. A religion, and a church is not the same thing.
It's like the difference between a goverment and a country.
Just because the american goverment starts a war, it doesn't mean the people support it.
Same with religious people and their churches.
To make things more confusing, both churches consider themselves "catholic" (universal), "Roman" (deriving authority from Peter) and "orthodox" (correct).
No, you can disagree.
Pope John Paul II sent cardinal Laghi to tell Bush in person that "god is not on your side if you invade iraq" and spoke out against the invasion of iraq 57 times before Bush actually went in
but that did not stop Pro Life catholics in the house and senate from voting to allowed Bush to spread a Pro Life bombing of the iraiqs, therefore having their Pro Life bodies being blown up by Pro Life bombs.
Many of these Pro Life Senators and congressman clearly went against the Pope and God's will to support a Pro Life policy in Iraq.
The leadership of the Church in America clearly decided, for whatever reason (I suspect it had to do with the child abuse scandal raging at the time), to become an arm of the ascendant Republican Party. Thus Abortion and Gay Rights are issues the Church is politically active on and the Unjust War and the Death Penalty, Poverty and Health Care for children, etc. aren't.
American Catholics, fortunately, don't generally obey Church orders.
The Church is not a democracy by it's Laity. It's stance on contraception and prolife issues aren't going to change. This is just a case in point that over half of Catholics need to read up on their moral theology.
(Article: 38 of Christifideles Laici by Pope John Paul II) The inviolability of the person which is a reflection of the absolute inviolability of God, finds its primary and fundamental expression in the inviolability of human life. 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.
Since some contraceptions are in the camp of infanticide and it's views on the sacredness of marriage... the Church isn't going to change it's stance on this.
Exactly, I was about to write the same thing. If every lay Catholic in the Church changed their moral stance on something, that's not to say the Bishops would do the same. They see their job as being guardians of a Christian tradition that stretches back millennia. The classic Vatican maxim is "we think in centuries here." What the opinions of the day are just doesn't matter to the Church in the same way it matters to, say, a government.
That's not to say they're irrelevant, or that practical considerations don't come into play when it comes to making ecclesiastical decisions, but whether or not most American Catholics are pro-choice or not probably won't change the Church's stance all that much. Also (in response to other commenters), I don't see American Catholics Bishops splitting from Rome en masse. Some American laypeople might simply change Churches (to Episcopal or some other similar branch), but the Catholic hierarchy remains pretty strong.
This another case of practicioners embracing the idea of religion... not the specifics.
Most of the Catholics I know (especially my parents) are pro-choice, pro-equality, rarely go to church, talk about "animal heaven", and are generally unconcerned with the Vatican. The Holy See opposes all these things; Sister Mary Margaret made it abundantly clear to me that my beloved dog had no soul and would never come to heaven with me. Sometimes I wish I could write her to say that I volunteer in an abortion clinic.
As much as I wish people would confront the ridiculousness of organized religion and realize they can build communities other ways, I'll settle for Catholics for a Free Choice.
[Ironically, this post comes as the Vatican is excommunicating a priest for the 'vile, illict crime' of ordaining a woman as a priest]
What irks me about this the most is that the pope says that he would be willing to excommunicate the pro-choice politicians. If they could do it to politicians, how big of a stretch would it be for them excommunicate the average, Catholic church-goer based on this issue?
Even as a Catholic, I myself do not believe that abortion is inherently bad. I believe that there should be limits as to when you have it done since the fetus does develop its senses in the womb, but am not against abortion if it's caught early enough. For some people-and with good reason-abortion is the most moral choice.
To excommunicate a practicing Catholic based on something like abortion is very wrong since those who are pro-choice have credible reasons for being pro-choice... but I guess the church just doesn't see that.
The Catholic church has a very one sided view on quite a few issues, and I hope that some of its stances will change. I don't think the church will have a choice but to change since people are becoming (a bit) more open to accepting things like abortion and gay marriage.
It is pretty much impossible to be both an American and an observant Catholic. The American mythology is that we are independent, ornery cusses, suspicious of authority, and don't like being told what to do from on-high. Even leaving aside the issue of sex (American Catholics have sex lives remarkably like non-Catholics - premarital sex, "artificial" birth control, fellatio, cunnilingus, and anal). The Catholic Church is highly critical of capitalism, consumerism, and unthinking free-marketeerism. Looks like the American economy is anti-Catholic!
So, just to get this straight, we're talking about this, right?
www.obamamustsee.com
So, just to be sure, you're talking about this, right?
www.obamamustsee.com