Saturday, March 04, 2006
EMAIL FROM LEE PENN
FYI.
This article is in the February issue of "Inside the Vatican" magazine. There's lots of the usual stuff therein.
State of the US Catholic Church at the Beginning of 2006
http://www.catholicity.com/mccloskey/articles/state_of_the_church_2006.html
These items, at the end of the story, got my attention. (Bold added by me):
"Of interest from a cultural viewpoint are the changing voting patterns of American Catholics over the last 40 years. Since the 1960s, there has been a clear shift towards the Republican party and away from the Democratic party by Catholic voters. When the polls differentiate between church-going and non-church-going Catholics, Republicans dominate by a wider margin among the church-going, and Democrats among the non-church-going. I would extrapolate that the more orthodox in belief and regular in church attendance the Catholic American, the more likely he is to vote for Republicans, whose national platform, particularly on non-negotiable matters such as abortion, homosexual marriage, and embryonic experimentation, is more in sync with the Church's teachings."
and
"Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, Catholics tend to contracept at the same rate as the rest of the world. Hence the number of children per Catholic family is not significantly different from that of non-Catholics. Catholics tend to have fewer abortions than the rest of the population, but not by a large percentage. The key in interpreting all such statistics is how to define "Catholic." On these moral issues, there is a huge difference between the Catholic who worships weekly and the one who attends a few times a year. I would suggest that one of the major issues for the Church in the decades ahead will be clarity as to who is considered a practicing Catholic and who is not. This may result in a smaller but much more fervent and evangelizing Church, ready to carry out the New Evangelization in the United States that can bear so much fruit in the 25 years ahead, both at home and throughout the globe."
He thinks, apparently, that the Republicans are "God's Own Party." Hey, what's a little torture, destruction of civil rights, exploitation of the poor, graft, pre-emptive war, and nuclear war among friends?
And that stuff about Jesus going to seek the one lost sheep? Forget it; some liberal must have sneaked that into the Bible. What Jesus REALLY meant, if these "righteous ones" are correct, is that the flock needs to be culled, so that only the worthy ones remain.
Lee
