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Christ is in our midst!!

Andy:

I am one of the Moderators for this section, so don't worry about having your post screened out. In fact, I had to approve it so it would see the light of day.

My point is that people of faith have been told--without equivocation--that they are not welcome in one of our political parties. So before we look at policies or anything else, the question is whether we participate in the civic realm or abandon it. Do we walk away and hope prayer works without our active input. Voices matter; input matters. Without our active participation, our values will not come to the discussion and we will have hidden our faith under a basket.

I am not arguing in favor of one party or another over policy. Neither one fully--or even partially--reflects who or what we stand for. OTOH, I am not so foolish as to stick around when I am told point blank that I am not welcome and my views are not welcome in the discussion. It's akin to knocking on a door, asking to talk, and having the door slammed in one's face. I may be dense, but I get that message without much deep thought. In fact, I have experienced that unwelcome attitude growing up in a small town where Protestants and Catholics were just slightly less than at war with each other. I was in a mixed marriage and we were like the Untouchables in India--not welcome anywhere.

One more thing. When the argument is made that "the rich" don't pay their "fair share," no one mentions that the wealthiest group--the top very small percentage--pays the largest share of federal income taxes in the nation while the bottom 50% pays nothing. That's public record.

Bob

I will just restate what I said in a previous post: "Thank God we now have the freedom to chose what we firmly believe is truthful and just. In my mind, the burden is on us to protect the unborn by instilling in women and men the values that the US Constitution cannot. Trump (and his ilk) is "pro-anything" his instincts tell him will appeal to his base and get him elected!" I've been around probably longer than I should be, but in all my years, no political party has told me, point blank or otherwise, that I or my quirky views were not welcome!

Can you answer why is the Eucharist denied to joe biden?

SLAVA ISUSU CHRISTU!

I know of only one incident when former Vice President Biden was denied the Eucharist. I believe the priest involved felt, like you, that Mr. Biden was an accomplice in abortion. He is not, and as far as I know, he has a confessor, and is in good standing within his parish and his diocese. Perhaps he, his confessor, his pastor and bishop should be under interdict.

Christ is in our midst!!

Utroque:

Have you ever heard of Tom Perez, the Chair of the DNC? He is on record as saying that anyone who is anti-abortion, anti "gay marriage," anti transgender is not welcome in the DNC. There are a few former politicians who have ben forced out, forced to recant their positions, or have simply changed parties.

I do not want to be a member of the DNC. I just want to vote for the candidate who I think can best serve the country.

"believe the priest involved felt, like you, that Mr. Biden was an accomplice in abortion.'

Really? Do you "FEEL" that someone who continues to vote for abortion t0 continue is an accomplice in abortion?

" Trump (and his ilk) is "pro-anything" his instincts tell him will appeal to his base and get him elected!""

Are you kidding me?

Every politician DOES THE SAME THING!

"Put not your trust in princes, nor the sons of men in whom there is no salvation." END OF STORY.

This is a very-well-stated guide for the ultimate moral abdication. Who is put to death today for " adultery, fornication, sodomy and other activities we feel are intrinsically evil"? If the "US Constitution makes no provision for the unborn" then the conclusion is that there is a deficiency in the Constitution. The moral abdication that "the law of the land upholds a woman's right to chose" is the result of a Supreme Court decision wherein Justice Blackmun writing for the majority stated "that the word 'person,' as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn." And thus it became the law of our land that now enshrines in our Constitution a concept of person that is morally and theologically reprehensible.

Fr. Deacon Lance has done us a great service to bring this to our attention. It should be required reading for everyone especially Catholics. Though well written, the Adversary and his ilk can manipulate, falsely prioritize, redact and infer until the lie is presented as reasonable and true. Equating capital punishment, and abortion as presently held as lawful, is a false premise from which false conclusions readily follow. Consider: Does the same Catholic Church and Pope Francis also characterize abortion, “the death penalty" for the unborn sanctioned by the state as "inadmissible"?

When the sense of proportion is lost and it is argued that, in comparing two kinds of acts (death penalty and abortion) "is inadmissible" = "is gravely contrary to the moral law" & "are abominable crimes" then a proportional distortion of the truth results. This kind of equating is the deficient logic of our civic culture and a society becoming increasingly incapable of critical thinking.

Thus, I hope, these are facts presented for consideration but on a personal note, I am thoroughly disgusted by the mantra " woman's right to chose."

Stereotypes die hard: Joe Biden, DNC raise more money than Donald Trump, RNC for 2nd straight month [abcnews.go.com]

That is not a moral abdication. Roe v Wade neither encourages nor discourages abortion. It simply allows a woman to decide for herself up to the point within the first two trimesters. It is not a coercive measure. If the Constitution is shown to be deficient with regard to personhood, then it needs to be amended, as was the case on the issue of slavery. It took a civil war to settle that one. The mantra "woman's right to chose" may thoroughly disgust you, but are you ready to pick your poison?

I will address the tax issue because you bring it up. You are only talking about the federal income tax. Now, FICA and Medicare is another story. Employees at the bottom are paying a straight 7.53% for that. If they are in the gig economy, they pay both sides of FICA in the Self-Employment tax, which would be 15.3%. They pay state and local taxes. When you add it up, the people at the bottom are being regressively taxes. So no, the wealthy are not paying their fair share.

Christ is in our midst!!

Andy:

How much more should the top five percent pay to be their "fair share"? If I am not mistaken, the last time I saw the breakdown of who paid what in federal taxes, their percentage was in the neighborhood of 40%. Asking more than that is confiscatory and nothing more than jealous theft.

I am very familiar with the self-employed FICA percentages because I have been self-employed since I became 50% disabled in 1993. I am also aware that since I am able to make a living but that it is not at the level I made before disability, my SS benefit was cut in half once I had had a number of years at the lower level. But I don't make the tax laws. The five percent do.

Theophan. Let me put it this way. We have followed the "low tax the rich policy" for the last 40 years. I am old enough to personally remember the days of a 70% top tax bracket. In those days, the wealthy paid about 53% net effective tax. Its much lower now. You know what? I know how the wealthy lived back in the 70's, and it was pretty darn good. In the span of the last 40 years, fully 10% of wealth has gone from the bottom 90% to the top 10%. Of that, the overwhelming beneficiaries have been in the top1%. That is the effect. And, you will note, this is being attended by increasing political instability. Historically, that is what happens when wealth aggregates at the top.

There is really no model for having concentrations of wealth in a stable, generally democratic society. The reason is that the wealthy become an aristocracy (or whatever name you want to put on it) and that aristocracy believes that everything the society produces belongs to them. This creates a politically unstable result. That instability, if allowed to metastasize, results in rebellion. The result of the rebellion will depend on which direction the police and soldiers point their guns. Either way you can expect an authoritarian regime of either the right or left. The right wing authoritarians will continue repressing the society and directing money to the top. The left wings ones will also be authoritarians and devolve into corruption. How the Church fares is usually better in the right wing regimes if, and only if, the Church supports it. But if the Church objects to the moral and social policies, it will be repressed also. (see generally Cardinal Romero). The Church has historically done worse under left-wing regimes. But, it is at least theoretically possible to do well. I would submit that in either scenario, the permutations of what happens to the Church and religious is more likely to be bad than good.

Now, there are two, and only two models for breaking up aristocracies. The French/Russian method and the English method. The French/Russian method was killing the aristocracy. The English saw the problem, heard the rattle of the guillotine, and decided to tax their aristocracy. Sure, it hurt the aristocrats. They didn't like it. But they survived and did pretty good in the end. Personally, speaking as a guy who has accumulated about enough wealth to be in the outer edge of the 10%, I'm thinking that that taxation thing isn't looking too bad.

I think that a modern, stable, balanced, economy and government needs to ensure that the overall distribution of wealth does not get out of whack. We are unbalanced and increasingly getting worse. I do not believe that universal healthcare, provision for education and robust social safety nets makes you a socialist society. Canada and Europe does better on all fronts. They would be very surprised to find out they were anything but capitalists. In truth, both "capitalism" and "socialism" are just theories. I focus on how the tools get used to maximize societal harmony. That is as good as it gets. And I think that was what Pope Leo XIII was driving at in in a worldly application of Rerum Novarum.

Now, as to social issue, I don't pay much attention to either party. The reason is that the population is going to behave any way they really want to. That is why the war on drugs was and is such an abject failure. It just doesn't stop the underlying behavior. At best, it moves it around a bit. The best government can do is minimize the chaos and try to educate people to behave better. If people are not going to voluntarily turn away from sexual immorality, then they won't. You can legislate and get any sort of SCOTUS opinions you want. If you want people to stay away from whatever behavior you are trying to influence, you have do it the hard way. Evangelize. What I have seen the Religious Right try to do for the last 40 years or so amounts to outsourcing to an entity that is completely incapable of addressing the problem.