There is probably no real surprise as to our political leanings here at The Cranky Catholic, though we do try to keep partisanship out of these pages. One of my enduring annoyances is to have my religious beliefs pigeonholed because of my political affiliation. In my world, there are many pro-life, socially conservative Democrats, and many Republicans who don’t much like capital punishment or despoiling the environment.
So I was curious about a pamphlet I was given while waiting for the first speaker at the Men’s Boston Catholic Men’s Conference: Catholic Citizenship: A Call to Civic Responsibility.
Ooo!! I thought. This could go in so many different directions!
But, predictably, it didn’t.
The pamphlet was a veiled attack on liberals and progressives, all supposedly in the name of the Church. The pamphlet asked, “Our Catholic Values Under Attack?” I’ll list the questions, and you decide which party or social force – Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative – is being targeted:
Bothered that every 24 seconds a baby is aborted with your tax dollars?
Outraged that teachers are handing out condoms to elementary school children and perversity is being taught as “diversity”?
Disturbed that atheists are using our courts to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance and remove the Ten Commandments from public view?
Concerned that the sacred institution of marriage is being attacked and redefined?
Angered that there are American families without adequate shelter or proper health care?
Prepared for the ‘brave new world’ of human closing where human beings are created and destroyed in laboratories?
Worried that elderly, disabled and terminally ill are increasingly being deemed disposable and their lives ‘not worth living’?
Wow! What a list!!! And there’s certainly an item or two that even I could give an unqualified ‘yes’ to! But aren’t all of these items (with the exception of the health care question) aimed more to, say…the liberal side than the conservative? Does our howitzer of Catholic outrage pull naturally to the left?
I thought so. But I would have been less offended if there were a few other questions, like:
Does it tick you off that the tax burden is being lifted off the rich and onto the poor?
Does it stick in your craw when countries launch pre-emptive strikes in violation of Church teaching and papal pleas?
Is it hard to swallow that our leaders use phony science to ignore threats to our environment?
Does it get your goat when government officials use terminally ill patients for political gain?
Does it boil your bottom when some politicians -- who support capitol punishment for the retarded, support dictators and tyrants and undertake the death of thousands of innocents -- then claim the mantle of Christ as a cover for their actions?
Hey! What’s fair is fair! Church teaching, love it or hate it, ought to fall hard on people across the political spectrum.
Stop using the Church as a political tool!
_____________________________________________
Photo from http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=111&sid=5736420&cKey=1115885433000
No comments:
Post a Comment