www.byzcath.org

Aye, I second those words. I have heard it said, "politics is the art of the possible." I don't think that there is any certain approach to how we should vote or if we should vote at all. In reality, politics is a balance of ideology and pragmatism. I try to vote according to the moral principles I hold dear but I recognize that sometimes one must compromise as well. American politics is all about compromise. I am 100% prolife. I am firmly against abortion and euthanasia and I believe that both should be illegal. Roe v. Wade ought to be overturned and the states ought to have the right to determine the issues. But, I doubt that will ever happen. In fact, I doubt it would happen even if we had Republican presidents for the next 20 years. I can't help but wonder that if President Bush were to make a supreme court nomination right now, he might pick someone like Justice David Souter or Justice Kennedy. If we look at the track record of Presidents Reagan and Bush sr., then we shouldn't be too confident.

I realize this is getting somewhat off track, but I just read an article about how President Bush has provided millions of dollars in federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Also, the president has managed to be absent from every national right to life day protesting on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. If you look at the current Republican candidates, all of the frontrunners are either pro-choice explicitly or they are lukewarm on being pro-life. When the ones who are supposed to be the most pro-life, former Senator Rick Santorum, President Bush, etc. support pro-abortion republicans like Senator Spector over prolife opposition, then we really do have to wonder how committed they are to the issue. My personal view is that the elite of the Republican party is just using Catholics and evangelicals to get their vote. Just say your prolife, throw the social conservatives a bone or two, and then get back to the agenda they really care about; which is, the maintenance and expansion of the military industrial complex. Just my thoughts. God bless.

Joe

fine, then find me a candidate who is pro-life ALL the way, life not only begins at conception, but out of the womb as well. all too often, pro-life politicians toe the line of interests who couldn't care less about the environment,outsourcing of jobs, about a decent wage for working people,about the mounting cost of healthcare for working and middle class families, about the sick joke that passes for public education, about homeless families, and so on and so on. the "hooray for me and the hell with you" suburban culture oriented wing of the Republican party is as opposed to my understanding of Christianity as it could possibly be. yes, I am truly sorry that Catholics as Kerry and Giuliani who should know better when it comes to abortion don't change their positions,but I see no other choices.
what is a pro life libertarian? it is one who holds that the life of the individual is sacred, from conception to the moment of death, that the state has no business in getting involved in the personal life of that individual, as long as the rights of other individuals are respected, that includes the human rights of property (to be protected from the lies of those who would like to condemn a man's home for the interest of bigger private development), the right to choose the best education available for his children, the right to decide on what ever lifestyle between consenting adults without fear of violence or discrimination,and the right to religious liberty, just to mention a few.so, I am a prolife liberatrian on personal issues, but I also see that we are responsible for one another as Christians.the closest that I have ever seen as far as politicos even approaching what I hold to were Barry Goldwater and a distant realtive of my late Grandfather: Teddy Roosevelt. Interesting to note that when the issue of Gays in the military came up in the eighties, Goldwater, a combat veteran, was to have said that he didn't care if a soldier was straight, just as long as he could shoot straight, works for me, folks.
as far as what the Catholic bishops may be saying, most of them have little contact from the everyday reality of everyday life that is faced by the faithful in the pews. even if what they say is true, they seem to follow sentiment more than reason. as far as their credibility is concerned, I do not fault the Conference per se, but I still hold bishops accountable for the many many years of sexual abuse of children by priests who were all too often protected by hierarchs.
to vote in a Christian manner to me is more than about issues involving sex (abortion, homosexuality). it is about quality of life. to be concerned about things going on is more than about seeing a Superbowl halftime show a few years ago where a woman's breast was accidently exposed for a moment, but more about a woman who is homeless with her children who are hungry.get indignant about that, people.
on the politicos I mentioned in my previous post, the recent scandal concerning pages was perpetrated by a member of Congress who railed against homosexuality, and he is not the first. in recent years, it was the same thing by politicians who ranted against Gays, and who were no different than the disgraced "gentleman" from Florida. so whether it is politician or clergyman,I must hold forth against hypocrisy.
I guess in the final analysis, as far as political and religious leadership goes, I will have to await the Second Coming of our LORD Jesus Christ.
Much Love,
Jonn

Well put, Charles!

Porter...living and learning.

I couldn't PM you, so I will say it's good to hear from you again. I hope you are well.

Charles

Jonn,

I agree with you that to be consistently pro-life means that we care for all human beings at whatever stage of their life - from conception to natural death. We definitely agree here, although I disagree vehemently with your characterization of the "to hell with thee" culture as peculiar to Republican suburbanites. (Most Republican suburbanites are just hard working, church-going family types.) And excuse me, but wanting the government to distribute forced "charity" through mandates and high taxation hardly makes liberals virtuous. So, with all due respect, spare me your sanctimony.



The moral reasoning here is, well, tangential. You believe that the protection of innocent human life is the moral equivalent of property rights, the right to a good education and the right to engage in homosexual behavior? I will only point out that the principle is that ontology precedes volition - one must FIRST exist in order to will, to act, to learn or to own anything. And it is the proper domain of government to protect innocent life. Pure libertarianism makes us all libertines, which ultimately drags society into the dregs and leads to those who want to kill their unborn inconvenience so that they can live and do as they please. For my part, I certainly do not say that it is a matter for the federal government to decide whether or not homosexuals and lesbians can live together. I work with several people who are gay, and consider them friends and colleagues, despite our differences on the morality of their "lifestyle". But there is a difference between true tolerance, and pushing for the redefinition of marriage. The law you voted against in TN was meant to protect families and society against the efforts of radicals to redefine traditional marriage and family life by mandating it through the courts. Again, hardly a consistent libertarian position to take on your part. You've helped to clear the way for a mandate from the oligarchy of the courts.



Sorry - not sure of your points here. You want gay soldiers to shoot straight but the bishops haven't been? Not seeing the connection. So are you only a libertarian when it comes to society at large and not the communion of the Church? You drive a wedge between the Church and the world and the role of authority that is, again, inconsistent.



Again - the point? I think you are a hypocrisy conspiracy theorist. You seem to see it lurking everywhere..."How can you be concerned about ________ when, after all there are starving children in China?!?" Is your answer that the government's role is to feed the hungry? I thought that was the role of the Church and of Christians. Thank God for people like Dorothy Day and Catherine Dougherty. Not one of them held a government job feeding and caring for the poor.

And to rely on the government to feed the poor is hardly a libertarian position...



True enough. No politician is perfect. (I believe I stated that I shared SOME of your skepticism regarding politicians.)

Gordo

Dear Joe,

When George Bush was running for president, he said that he would fund research on already existing embryonic stem cells, but not experiment on any new ones. He felt that the one's in use under the Clinton administration were sufficient for all the experiments. The question therefore would be, has he used government money for the original embryo's, that were already in use during the Clinton administration and therefore would not be on his conscience, or have the funds gone to experiment on new embryo's? I think that article might have been deliberately disceptive.

The Republican party is the party of social and religious conservatives. The Democrats are not. The problem is reality. In order to assure that the conservative issues will be accepted and addressed by the Democrats, there has to be certain compromises.

As for the expansion of the military complex, one has to wonder for what? Are the Republicans...(and the Democrats of course), doing it just to play games and throw around tax money, or is it an actual concern for the security of our nation? What would happen if we didn't have that military might? Would the Chavez's of the world swallow us up because of weakness? Would we fall into a depression because of oil prices? How long would our nation survive? And so on and so on.

As an example of some of the issues facing us, I recently heard that New York City is not the financial capital of the world any more. One of the reasons that companies are moving to Dubai, Hong Kong and Tokyo, is because of our litigation. Hillary Clinton is a lawyer, and certainly supports that litigation, and Edwards lawsuit is the reason the doctors are fearful of natural childbirth, and prefer to give caesarean birth. He's one of the reasons that our medical insurance rates are so high, and why doctors are forced to charge the rates they do. Doctors in this area pay up to 500,000 a year for insurance.

Then we have the teachers union, which is liberal and not only influences teachers, but chooses what subjects and books should be used. They too have always been supported by the Democrats. Big business is also supported by the Democrats...but I must mention that the Republicans are guilty of that too. The difference though is that the Republicans support small business'. The Democrats do not.

Large corporations outsource. The workers are cheaper in other nations, and that makes the prices of our products cheaper and gives us a high standard of living. But in order to create jobs for the people in this country, the government must do everything in it's power to help small business' become established. They are the one's that hire people in this country. Now the Republicans have passed laws to that effect, and that is why we have so little unemployment and are in such desperate need of immigrants. Our economy is booming, thanks to Bush.

I think these are a few things we should consider before we go to that voting booth. Everything is not black and white, and we certainly need to give the issues serious study.

Zenovia

Dear Friends,

I have a couple of thoughts reading the posts by John, Gordon and Zenovia.

Whether or not we believe that government should be involved with helping the poor and to what extent, we still all have an obligation to private Charity as the Lord taught us.

I recently heard Fr. Mitch Pacwa give an excellent talk here in Minneapolis on Scripture and during his discourse, he mentioned a statistic that although Catholics are the second wealthiest group of religious believers next to Jewish people, we are the worst of all the believers at giving, both in church and in charitable work.

We need to do better. Jesus teaches us that giving actually has to do with our inner life, he taught us to give alms for things that are within, and behold, all will be clean to you. As Byzantine Christians, giving is part of our spiritual practice, our asceticism and process of deification.

I tend to vote liberal most of the time, and believe that government should be responsible for some social support. But this cannot replace what we as believers are enjoined to do by our Lord. It is by our giving that we become Christ like.

I know Christians who are very generous in their personal lives. I personally have seen Christian friends help others. These friends vote on both ends of the political spectrum.

We can continue to have honest disagreements about how to vote, or about the role of government; but we must always do our part indvidually and privately.

Lance,

As always, excellent post. You are correct - the extent to which government should be involved in the "social safety net" is a matter of disagreement, even among very principled Christians. I personally favor charity in the hands of individuals and private institutions, such as churches and non-profits, since I find them usually to be more for efficient and personal when meeting the needs of people. My philosophy is to reduce the size of government (especially at the federal level), let me retain more of my money instead of taxing me heavily so that I can donate more to the Dorothy Day center or the local Franciscans. Heavy taxation can make it more difficult to give charitably and, when coupled with womb to tomb social safety nets, creates general apathy within the population as far as giving is concerned. Why should I give to Dorothy Day - the government uses my tax dollars for that purpose? (This is not my opinion, BTW...) Again, there can be legitimate differences (and I am not at all COMPLETELY opposed to the social safety net. I do think that the government agencies holding the nets are extremely bloated and costly.

To paraphrase Belloc, we can just as easily be subject to the tyranny of the marketplace as to the tyranny of the state. Pure and unbridled capitalism and consumerism is certainly not the answer, nor is socialism. There has to be a solution that respects the human person and the family, but I am not always sure of what it is.

Meanwhile, the destruction of human life is not part of any social safety net -it is merely profiteering on people in crisis by Big Abortion. (Yes - it is a multi-billion dollar industry). Politicians who espouse "choice" reap the benefit of the dollars of this bloody harvest of humanity in their political coffers. I could no sooner vote for one of them than a Nazi, however much his social program might help the poor.

Gordo

Gordon, one thing extreme versions of both capiltalism and socialism have in common is that they are a materialistic philosophy.

On the other hand, the Christian, regardless of his or her politics, should have a personalistic ethic, and see the Christ in others.

I have saintly exampels in my life of both liberals and conservatives who live out a Personalistic Christian ethic.

Thanks Gordon, for your mention of Dorothy Day. She is a favorite saint of mine, although not canonized yet. People may be interested to know that although Roman Catholic, she had a strong affinity for the Byzantine Rite, and frequented the Russian Orthodox Church in New York often.

Zenovia,

I disagree with the fact that litigation is the main factor driving up our insurance premiums.

The fact is that those $%@#^% are just greedy!

The average CEO makes in ONE DAY what the average factory worker makes in one year!!!

Litigation is just a red herring.

Socialized medicine is not a good idea either, once that happens, you'll see every state legalize euthanasia.

Charity before welfare.

When the state controls who is worthy of help, no one gets the help he needs. When we control who is worthy of help then everyone gets the help he needs... because we all love somebody, the state loves no one!

Dr. Eric:
I agree with you completely. Greed on the part of the pharmaceutical industry and health insurers are the biggest pieces in the puzzle, in my opinion. I would also add (and please don't take offense-I believe that there are some really wonderful physicians out there) that while there are certainly some frivolous malpractice lawsuits, there are also many cases where malpractice has occurred and no lawsuit is ever filed (I can think of several such cases just within my own family). When the pharmaceutical companies and health insurers become more responsible and are satisfied with more modest profits, health care costs will be more reasonable.
Ryan

Don't hold your breath, Ryan.