NO "IDEAL" US PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, CARDINAL SAYS:

[Nicholas_J]

30-August-2004 -- Catholic World News Brief

NO "IDEAL" US PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, CARDINAL MCCARRICK SAYS
Rome, Aug. 30 (CWNews.com) - Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, DC, has said that it is "impossible" to find an ideal presidential candidate in the US, but said the American bishops hope to "define moral principles clearly" in order to guide voters.

In an interview with the Italian daily Avvenire , the American cardinal said the US bishops' conference would "not take sides with one candidate or another," but would "present the faithful with the criteria that should guide them toward political choices worthy of a Catholic." Cardinal McCarrick said that the foremost issue in this year's elections should be "respect for life."t he quickly added that "questions tied to peace and social justice, as well as aid for the poor," should have equal footing.stioned about the debate among American bishops about denying the Eucharist to candidates who support legal abortion, Cardinal McCarrick said that "the Eucharist is not the appropriate place for political battles." The archbishop of the nation's capital city-- who chairs an ad hoc committee of US bishops considering appropriate responses to dissenting Catholic politicians-- said that the Eucharist should not become a political issue.

http://www.ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=49059

This was done in order to indicate that a candidate should not be voted for by Catholics on the abortion issue alone, and that the social policies of a candidate should be considered just as inportant.

THe Bush administration has been trying to pull Catholic Voters away from the Democraic party based on the abortion stance, but this statement will cause some problems for Bush, particualrly among Catholics who were having problems with the Democratic Party's Abortion stance. Voting based on Bush's social policies is now as valid a basis for Catholics.

Recently anothe Catholic Bushop made it clear that the Catholic Church did not consider it wrong to vote for a pro-Abortion candidate, as long as your reasons for voting for the other candidate were for reaqsons unrelated to abortion. This statement furtther clarifies the issue.

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. No Ideal Cardinal or priest either for that matter

[Big Al from WI]

2. Sounds like Catholic bashing to me

Maybe you don't realize that Kerry and Kucinich are both Catholic? And surely you haven't met every priest in the US.

[The_Casual_Observer]

4. These guys are trying to untangle themselves from a net they created

unnecessarily. This one seems to be engaging in some kind of half assed mental exercise in moral relativism to smooth it over. Clearly the whole bunch of them lack the kind of wisdom one might expect to find there.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

3. Well, yes that's true due to "Original Sin" among other reasons

but I get your point.

Meanwhile, Nicholas, this bold faced title was quite appropo.

[Nicholas_J]

6. I Just cut and pasted it from the article itself

I have been paying attention to the Catholic Media in the U.S. as well as Zenit and the Vatican News Service.

There are a good number of political pundits who beleive that it is the Catholic Vote that will make or break Bush, and there has been a rather massive move among conservative Catholics to get the American Catholic hierarchy to rule that voting to a Pro-Choice Candidate would be "sinful" and even perhaps excommunicable. Examples:

What About the 'Catholic' Catholics?

By Terry Mattingly
Scripps Howard News Service


This is a South Boston parish, the kind of place where Irish parishioners cherish photos of old-timers--like Flynn's dockworker dad--marching on feast days with Cardinal Richard Cushing and a young John F. Kennedy. These are hardcore, working-class, union-card Catholics.

"These people have never voted Republican in their lives," said Flynn, who also served as U.S. ambassador to the Vatican in the Clinton years. "But now they feel like homeless Democrats in their own party. They're pro-life and pro-family and pro-marriage and pro-justice and pro-poor and they have no idea who to vote for anymore. They're homeless."

Nevertheless, Flynn said, it's too easy to tie this scene to the "pew gap" that has made headlines in this election year. It's true that surveys say the safest way to predict how voters will vote is to chart their worship habits. Voters who worship more than once a week go Republican--2-1 or more. A Time poll said the "not religious" crowd backs Sen. John Kerry over President Bush, 69 percent to 22 percent.

Some strategists see this as "good Catholics" who back Bush versus "bad Catholics" who back Kerry. They want to divide America's 64 million Catholic voters into two political flocks.

"There's no way you can do that," said Flynn. "I know there are politically conservative Catholics out there and they're Republicans because that's what they believe. I also know there are liberal Catholics and they're still comfortable voting Democrat. But what about all of us who are just Catholic Catholics? "In the media, the fact that we're pro-life makes us conservative Republicans. Right?" Nevertheless, journalists are not the only insiders who think that way.

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/151/story_15182_1.html#cont

Catholic vote is coveted by faithful of both parties


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The large and strategic Catholic vote is eyed jealously by both parties, and in New York this week, it's getting lots of attention.

By RACHEL ZOLL
Associated Press
8/31/2004

NEW YORK - The drive to win over Catholics is in high gear at the Republican National Convention, with daily Masses, a private briefing from the party chairman and a special hospitality suite in the convention hall.
Catholics make up one-quarter of the electorate nationwide, and the proportion is even higher in key battleground states - about one-third in New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Iowa. No wonder both parties are courting their vote.

President Bush split the Catholic vote in 2000 with Al Gore. Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry is the first Catholic nominee since John F. Kennedy, and he is giving no ground. He offers himself as a practicing and believing Catholic who nonetheless holds positions contrary to the church's teachings on abortion rights, embryonic stem cell research and the death penalty for terrorists.

"I feel it is important that faithful Catholics play as active a role as possible in the public square," said Leonard Leo of Arlington, Va., a member of the Catholic Working Group, which is independent of the Republican campaigns. "The most important and non-negotiable issues are the culture-of-life issues."


http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20040831/1049346.asp

The Bush Campaign is actively trying to woo the Catholic Vote, which as been traditionally fairly Democratic. There has ben a rather active group of Right to Life Catholics, many of who are ex Evangelicans and ex Protestants who have converted to Catholicism and have started using the methods that these groups have used to have guide voting by groups, somthing which in the past has not been a tendency among Catholics. The Church has always encouraged voting, but rarely openly engaged in campaigns to push for one candidate or the other. Right now the polls show Catholics evenly split between Kerry and Bush. That is unusual among Catholics who in the past have voted more heavly for Democrats.

Fortunately, as in the original post, a number of Catholic officials have tried to counter the move to tacitly cupport Bush based on his stance against abortion, based on Kerry's position of leaving it to the staes to decide.

[arbusto_baboso]

5. Finally, a Cardinal with some guts, who represents his church's beliefs!