We've already considered this, this, this, and all of this, which should be enough to make practicing Catholics fly away from Hillary and the Democrats or, better yet, fight their ascent with all we can muster.
But today we see a leaked email from John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary's current campaign for president, discussing how he set up groups to stir up "revolution" against Catholicism:
You should not be shocked, as this has been going on for a very long time. Really think about that last paragraph.
His bio from Wikipedia: "Podesta previously served as Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton and Counselor to President Barack Obama. He is the former president and now Chair and Counselor of the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C., and is also a Visiting Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center." <---------- Catholic institution, as you know.
Wikipedia
I'm sure there is and will be a lot more to come (the Democrats have been doing this for a long time), but here's another email leaked yesterday, from a Democratic operative to John Podesta, regarding Catholics:
We should take that second-to-last paragraph as a badge of honor, by the way. (And I believe "SC" means "Supreme Court.")
For those Catholics who still feel inclined to vote for Hillary, you might want to rethink your support for a candidate, a campaign, and an entire political party that directly, gleefully targets your own Mother.
Well here it is. The post that many people have asked me for. I'm sure I'll take a beating from some, but the stakes are too high for me to care much about that.
The necessary caveats to begin this post:
-- Trump is not a stellar man. He is not a man of virtue. He is a blowhard and a jerk. I am not defending Trump as some sort of saint or model of goodness.
-- I voted for Marco Rubio in the primaries. I would have been fine with most of the other candidates as well, and would have voted for them over Trump. The primaries are where we must fight hard for the purest, best candidates. But now the primaries are over, and we are discussing the general election, where it is a truth that either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be our next president (believe me, I understand the consternation).
-- I personally do not ever vote for non-viable third party candidates in the general election. I work with what we have on hand. If I wanted to vote for someone who cannot win, I would vote for my husband. Or my mom. Or my friend Danya. I would vote for myself, even, since I agree with everything I believe in, ha ha. As it stands, I want to do more than simply make a statement, so I look at the viable candidates in any election and vote for one of them -- the one who will do the least damage to my Church and my family and my country -- because we are going to get stuck with one of them, for sure.
-- You, dear reader, are not obligated to vote for Trump. <--------- Did you see that?Because if I get comments saying, "But, Leila, Catholics are not obligated to vote for Trump!" I am going to refer you back to this bullet point. Please respect the fact that I have made this very clear, with a little red highlight and all. There is no mandate that you vote for Donald Trump. Do whatever your well-formed conscience tells you with regard to voting.
-- Having agreed that you are not morally bound to vote for Trump, I don't see any possible moral way that a Catholic can give one's vote to Hillary Clinton. None. Maybe some of you can see a way. I cannot. However, going along with my third bullet point, I will say that if it were Hillary running against someone like Hitler, I would vote for Hillary in that case. But we don't have a situation like that. (And if you believe Trump is a Hitler-figure, then we have nothing more to talk about.)
Now that I am done with the caveats, here is why Donald Trump will get my vote:
For me it's very simple. I vote policy. This is politics. Hillary's policy positions are diametrically opposed to all I hold dear and believe. Trump's are much more in line with my own. Read his policy position statements, read the Republican Party Platform and compare it to the Democrat Party Platform, listen to Mike Pence, his vice presidential pick.
Whether or not Trump is personally pro-life, he is at least not anywhere near the slobbering, slavish love of abortion that characterizes Hillary and her party. Not even close. And while politicians greatly tend to flip-flop and gravitate toward whatever position is politically expedient, I'd rather vote for the guy who is flip-flopping and gravitating in the right direction!
Trump is not determined to take away religious freedom and conscience rights of Catholics. Note well the brand new parts of the Democratic Platform, and see the rapid progression of Hillary's party in actively working to erode religious liberties and conscience rights. All her people will stand firmly for this inverted, perverted view of "religious freedom" that means Catholic teaching is bigoted discrimination that will not be tolerated. Trump's people do not and will not uniformly and aggressively stand for those things.
A huge question for me is, "How can I preserve my religious liberties just a little bit longer?" <------Please re-read that question. This is vitally important to me, and it should be to every Catholic. Even Pope Benedict warned the US bishops of the "grave threats" to religious liberty in America*, and the same US bishops went so far as to establish an annual Fortnight For Freedom to address the ongoing and growing crisis. This threat to Catholics began and continues under Democratic rule. When it comes to retaining our liberties, Christians have more of a shot with Trump than with Hillary. Never in my lifetime could I have imagined a sitting president going to court against the Little Sisters of the Poor, for example. These are the Democrats, the "progressives," Obama and Hillary's people who did this, not Trump's party.
Of course there is the issue of the judges the next president will appoint -- including, we tend to forget, all federal judges, hundreds of them, not just those on the Supreme Court. These judges will be ruling our lives, promoting abortion and LGBTQ "rights," and limiting our religious liberties for decades to come, long after Hillary is out.
I often think of the Cabinet, which includes the the Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs, and the Attorney General. Think about the power of these Cabinet heads! And every last one of them will be of Hillary's mind -- pro-abortion, pro-gay "rights," and against conscience rights of Catholics. Trump's Cabinet heads would not be 100% left-wing "progressives," not even close. The Vice President is a member of the Cabinet, and under Trump, that would be pro-life, pro-marriage, pro-family, pro-faith Mike Pence. To think that the rest would be secular "progressives" is just irrational.
And goodness, the military! Under Obama it is being slowly wrecked, being turned into an LGBTQ social experiment now, and getting so much worse with every new "progressive" directive, which are coming faster these days.
Trump wants smaller central government (unlike Hillary), which means less government interference in the lives of regular Americans. In other words, Trump and his people are more in line with the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, which is a subject Catholics don't tend to know about, but should.
Also, unlike fiscally irresponsible Democrats who promise "free" stuff to everyone and higher taxes, I personally believe in lowering taxes across the board, which Trump has promised. A tax cut will specifically help Middle America, which has been so damaged by, among other things, the Obamacare nightmare.
So for me, this vote is a no-brainer. I'm not the least bit troubled about my vote for Trump considering that the alternative is Hillary, the Democrats, and all her people. Personally, my conscience would haunt me if I did not do everything to defeat Hillary. The secular "progressives" are systematic and they are determined. If we let them in to rule us for four or eight more years, they will become even more emboldened, and nothing will stop them.
Some people, even people of goodwill, think that Trump is just as bad as Hillary. I cannot fathom it, how anyone could think that a Trump administration and the people he would put in place could promulgate even half as much evil as Hillary and her people would. The damage to this country and to Catholics would be unprecedented. So for me personally, it is my moral obligation of conscience to vote for her opponent, so as to mitigate the evil she and her appointees and staff will accomplish.
There is much talk about Trump being an ass, a jerk, a horrible man. He is a blustering blowhard, as I've mentioned many times. So were many of our presidents. So are many of our relatives (if you are Mediterranean like me!), and that doesn't reflexively mean they are politically wrong or evil. Some of the blowhards in my life are near and dear to me, and they would never "blow up the world" because of that temperament. I'd vote for a blusterer long before I would vote for a (publicly) calm but sinister person.
I have actually never seen a Catholic voter guide discussing whether or not a candidate is a jerk. Instead, Catholic voter guides talk about policy. The most important policies concern intrinsic evils like abortion, euthanasia, the rights of parents to be the primary educators of their children, conscience rights, and protecting natural marriage, i.e., all the things that Democrats are on the wrong side of. Apart from the intrinsic evils (the "non-negotiables"), the rest of the policy issues (immigration, education, welfare programs, healthcare, etc.) are issues of prudential judgment, meaning, Catholics are free to disagree with how best they should be handled. See the video below for more information on that.
Honestly, if using a slur or a bad word is enough to disqualify a presidential candidate, then Catholics pretty much can't vote for anyone, ever. I believe a lot of this anti-Trump over-the-top rhetoric is a way to keep Catholics out of the public square. After all, this is politics, where corruption and sleaze is the norm. If we may only vote for near-saints, then we lose our place at the table, our way to shape policy that affects us. It's the attitude that kept a decent man like Romney out of the presidency -- good Catholics wouldn't vote for him! -- and kept Obama and his terrible, anti-Catholic policies in. This is politics and not theology, friends, and we are not canonizing a saint here.
Some assume that I have angst having to vote for a deeply flawed candidate. Nope, none at all. The different between Trump and Hillary is just that stark. For those who do have angst in casting a vote for Trump, I remember well the words of a holy Opus Dei priest who told me years ago that once you make a decision (that is within the moral law), stop worrying about it. So in this case, I would advise people to make the decision, vote and move on.
One last thought: If I can't convince you to vote for Trump in order to mitigate the evil that Hillary and the Democrats will surely bring to us, perhaps Fr. John Lankeit from the Diocese of Phoenix can at the very least show you why you may never, ever vote for Hillary Clinton and put the Democratic Party in charge. It's a spiritual warning that we would all do well to heed, including those Catholics who are actually encouraging votes for Hillary as a better alternative to Trump:
That needs to go viral, don't you think?
Okay, I'm happy to discuss in the comments, as usual. Please just have patience and mercy, as my son and his wife are visiting from out of town, and I am soaking up every minute I can with them.
Above all, please pray for our nation, because we are in dire straits. As Catholics, we'll take whatever suffering comes, of course, but let us not enable and assist those who actively oppose us. We are an Easter people, not a suicide people, after all!
_____
*The words of Pope Benedict to the American bishops, four years ago this month:
It is imperative that the entire Catholic community in the United States come to realize the grave threats to the Church’s public moral witness presented by a radical secularism which finds increasing expression in the political and cultural spheres. The seriousness of these threats needs to be clearly appreciated at every level of ecclesial life. Of particular concern are certain attempts being made to limit that most cherished of American freedoms, the freedom of religion. Many of you have pointed out that concerted efforts have been made to deny the right of conscientious objection on the part of Catholic individuals and institutions with regard to cooperation in intrinsically evil practices. Others have spoken to me of a worrying tendency to reduce religious freedom to mere freedom of worship without guarantees of respect for freedom of conscience.[Again, this was all about Obama and the Democrats. No one else is doing this. Hillary is quite set to double-down on the "progress."]
A predictable pick by Hillary Clinton. Pandering to the Catholic vote, and in light of the fact that the majority of Catholics in America are poorly catechized and barely practicing, she tags Virginia Senator Tim Kaine for her running mate, a man who is a "Catholic but":
Those who cry out for "integrity" in this election should note well that Kaine is the opposite of integrated. He claims a faith, then rejects it when it actually matters. I'm fairly certain that God is not interested in Kaine's sacrifice of the innocent for political expediency, the esteem of men, and ascendency of power.
As my own wonderful Bishop Thomas Olmsted has said: "The 'Catholic but. . .' syndrome stands in direct contradiction to Jesus' clear and unequivocal demand (Mk 8:34-36), 'Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the Gospel will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?'"
Mr. Kaine has a 100% rating and endorsement from rabid pro-abortion groups NARAL and Planned Parenthood, and 100% from Human Rights Campaign [LGBT advocacy] for his "position on marriage" -- namely, his full support of gay "marriage", i.e., his complete rejection of natural law and the teaching of his professed Catholic faith.
So while I am not at all surprised that Hillary picked such a man, each and every time I hear of yet another "Catholic but" (Biden, Pelosi, Sebelius, Cuomo, pick-a-Kennedy, etc.), I immediately think ...
It happened again yesterday when I was debating atheists on StrangeNotions.com: a man threw out the ubiquitous accusation that the Catholic Church is trying to "impose" her view of marriage on society.
The charge is so common now, used so reflexively by gay "marriage" supporters, that I think most Catholics just ignore it altogether. But I've decided to stop letting it slide, and I've started giving the accusers a short lesson on the meaning of the word "impose".
When I googled the word "impose", this was the first definition that popped up, so let's use it for our discussion:
im·pose /imˈpōz/ Verb [To] Force (something unwelcome or unfamiliar) to be accepted or put in place.
Now, if you've been following the issue of gay "marriage" and the massive, pull-out-all-the-stops push for its acceptance in America, something should immediately jump out at you when you evaluate that definition. Do you see it?
Just in case it's too obvious to see, let's break it down....
Marriage as union between male and female has been a reality (a non-controversy, a given) not only for the entire history of America, but essentially for the history of mankind. Since I cannot stop repeating the brilliant words of Hillary Clinton on the subject (shortly before her historical knowledge "evolved" along with the political winds), here are they are again:
"[Marriage is] the fundamental bedrock principle that it exists between a man and a woman going back into the mists of history, as one of the founding foundational institutions of history and humanity and civilization, and that its primary, principle role during those millennia has been the raising and socializing of children for the society in which they are to become adults.”
Bam!
And this basic understanding of the inherent heterosexuality of the conjugal union is what we would call the status quo.
A bride and a groom are needed for a marriage = status quo.
Traditional view of marriage (woman + man) = status quo.
Enter the gay "marriage" movement, with its advocates working very, very hard to change the basic understanding of marriage. In other words, the gay "marriage" movement is trying with all its might to change the status quo.
When a movement or group comes in and labors to replace what exists with something new that it demands, that is called imposition. It's imposing. The gay rights movement (and not the Church!) has actually been imposing its view of marriage upon society.
To refer back to the definition above, let's just add the words to test it: The gay "marriage" movement has "forced (something unwelcome or unfamiliar) to be accepted or put in place".
See, that fits.
And the force for acceptance has been powerful, as it's been imposed from the top down. Meaning, the clamor and cry for the redefining of marriage did not grow upward from the people (as the 1960s-era civil rights movement did), but was instigated by the elites, led by lawyers and judges and professors. The whole point of forced acceptance was to displace society's status quo understanding of marriage, which had been comfortable and quite acceptable to the people.
But now let's go back to left's narrative, this accusation that "the Catholic Church is imposing its beliefs on society!" What would society have to look like for that claim to have any truth in it?
Picture this: An American society exists in which gay couples are marrying just as they have since "the mists of history". The sight of two grooms on their wedding day is as familiar and pleasing to the average American as baseball and apple pie. Lesbians shopping for their wedding gowns (with the brides later being escorted down the aisle by their two sets of married dads) would simply be part of the cultural landscape, unremarkable in any way. Children would know from a young age that when they grow up, they can marry either boys or girls; it's simply understood. The concept of traditional marriage is unheard of and unwanted.
Enter the Catholic Church into this America, heavy-handedly "imposing" her beliefs, using her police force, her courts, her unlimited power to fine and imprison and ruin… wait, never mind, she doesn't have anything like that; that's the state telling citizens that they must no longer accept the status quo but instead must change their minds and values and accept the Catholic Church's understanding of marriage as heterosexual in nature right now! Or, or…or else!
Hmmmm.
It'd be a pretty weak imposition by the Church without the power to fine and jail and all, but of course, the entire scenario is completely false, and so the claims that the Catholic Church is imposing her beliefs on society is ludicrous.
Okay, back to reality. The truth is that all the movement, all the force, all the pressure, all the demands "to accept or put in place something unwelcome or unfamiliar" is coming from one side. And it's not the Catholic side.
So the next time someone tells you that the Catholic Church is "imposing" her beliefs on society, you might want to say:
Ever since I became active in the Church sixteen years ago, I've read countless disturbing stories of the Western world (us!) imposing unethical and even brutal "reproductive health" policies on the world's poor. What upsets me most is how pro-abortion agencies with money and power -- including the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), and America under the Obama administration -- put out the lie (happily supported by a pro-abortion media) that these poor brown folk "need" birth control and abortion to escape their bleak conditions. We've even had commenters on this site echo that leftist line, one of whom said of a (hypothetical) starving girl in Africa:
"Oh, I know, religious nonprofits will bring her rice, but they won't give her birth control! Because it would be monstrous to prevent her from bringing 8 children she can't support into the same environment, right?"
In fact, what is monstrous is what actually happens on the ground. Let's hear from someone who has been there…
Wonderful blogger Sarah has a friend, Maria, who recently came back from the missions in Central America. Maria has firsthand knowledge of the exploitation of poor women and girls at the hands of the "family planners", and despite the fact that she is a busy (and tired!) new mom, Maria was gracious enough to email me some of her background and what she witnessed:
Hey, Leila!
My husband and I have been to Central America twice, both times with the Missioners of Christ. In the summer of 2009, we were there for 10 weeks, and in the fall/winter of 2010, we were there for 3.5 months. (The second time, we were planning on being there for over a year, but we found out we were pregnant, and the Missioners aren't really set up to handle families with babies...)
The Missioners of Christ have a permanent mission set up in Comayagua, Honduras, so we spent a majority of our time there. We ventured to Guatemala for language school on both trips -- we were centered there out of a city called Antigua, Guatemala. I can speak more specifically about Honduras, but both countries (like all of Central America) are pretty similar. We spent a lot of time in our neighborhood with the people, who are very poor, as well as time in remote mountain villages. My husband is a carpenter and I am a nurse.
I really hate it when people in the First World try to simplify poverty in the Third World as merely an overpopulation issue. Poverty is a complex issue! It usually involves corrupt governments, food shortages, wars, etc.* But, secular media and Planned Parenthood have succeeded in fooling us into believing that "if they would merely control themselves and stop procreating, they wouldn't be so poor." Wow... doesn't that shut off our compassion for the suffering poor in the world? It suddenly becomes, in a sense, their FAULT that they are poor. And, in a condescending sort of way, we offer them contraception and abortion as a solution to their poverty.
And -- has it worked? Hahahahahahahaha! (That was supposed to be an evil laugh.)
Of course, I can only speak from my experiences in Honduras and Guatemala -- but I can tell you, there was no shortage of clinics offering contraception to anyone who walked in the door. They were called "Clinicas de Planification Familiar" (Family Planning Clinics) -- wow, sounds shocking similar to "Planned Parenthood", no? Anyway, these clinics are mysteriously WELL funded, when other, general clinics are not.
So, basically, if a woman wanted contraception, or an abortion, or to be sterilized, she would be able to find a clinic with relative ease, be immediately ushered in to a clean and beautiful facility, and pay almost nothing for the service.
However, if this same woman had a sick child needing antibiotics, she could spend the day waiting in line outside a dirty, underfunded public clinic, and maybe not even get seen that day. If she did get seen, she would have to pay a fee for the doctor visit... perhaps have to walk across town to the lab for testing (in Honduras the labs and the clinics are frequently not connected) and pay for that service, then return to the clinic, wait in line again to receive some sort of diagnosis and/or treatment, then, perhaps, walk again to a pharmacy for medication, and, of course, pay for that as well. Messed up.
Some missionaries in our group have heard women tell stories about being involuntarily sterilized by "Medical Missions" that we suspect were tied to Planned Parenthood. In one rural village, a woman told a story that she, being pregnant at the time, received an injection from a nurse with one of these "Medical Missions." She was told it was for her unborn baby. Several other women in the same circumstance also received the injection. Within several weeks, all of the women miscarried. In the years that followed, none of them were able to get pregnant again. In rural Honduras, the people are all farmers. They rely on having large families to divide the work… so, when we push our Culture of Death on them, we are destroying THEIR culture. It's such an evil agenda. Horrible.
In town, the public hospitals only receive money from the government if something like 70% of the women who are discharged after having a baby are either on contraception or sterilized. (Makes me wonder where the Honduran government gets those funds…? Hillary Clinton**?) So many women are uneducated in Honduras, and therefore, don't understand what was happening to them at the hospital... or perhaps they aren't even told. Several women have shown up at the "San Benito" Clinic (near our mission, a Catholic facility operated by the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal), wondering why they couldn't get pregnant again after having a child at the public hospital. The doctor performed an ultrasound, and found IUDs placed in their uteruses. Each of the women reported not knowing that it had been placed.
Can you imagine if such things occurred in the U.S.? Talk about a multi-million dollar lawsuit. But sadly, in Honduras, the general public very much have a sense of "shame" about them. They often will humbly and blindly accept whatever an authority figure does without question. While their humility is SO admirable, and often Christ-like, it is SO abused, as you can see.
I could probably go on... but I'm on baby-duty today :-)
God Bless!
Maria
After I read Maria's words, I went downstairs to fix breakfast. As I stewed over the injustice done to the world's poor in the name of "helping" them (and often with my tax money!), I providentially picked up a random magazine in my kitchen and started flipping through it. It was a Knights of Columbus magazine, Columbia, and inside there was an article by Steven Mosher, which you can read in its entirety here. For over three decades, Mosher has chronicled the unspeakable human rights violations wrought by "population control" advocates around the globe. His article amply confirmed Maria's experiences and included this quote from Dr. Stephan Karanja, the former secretary-general of the Kenyan Medical Association:
Our health sector is collapsed. Thousands of the Kenyan people will die of malaria, the treatment for which costs a few cents, in health facilities whose shelves are stocked to the ceiling with millions of dollars with of pills, IUDs, Norplant, Depo-Provera, and so on, most of which are supplied with American money.
As an American, that makes me sick.
The article goes on to say that when "reproductive health" money pours into the Third World through the UNFPA and IPPF, the doctors in those poor countries (who have their own families to feed!) "abandon primary health care in favor of 'family planning.' Clinics are transformed into 'family planning' stations, where the only readily available medical care involves contraception, sterilization and abortion."
Shame on the wealthy West for promoting and financing this evil! But then again, how would the average American know that the poorest of the poor are being manipulated, exploited, deceived and violated? Unless we are plugged into pro-life sources, how would we ever hear? Most of us only know what we learn through the lens of the left, usually in the news or in the classroom where we are taught that "reproductive health" (widespread contraception, sterilization and abortion) is the key to ending poverty.
It's overwhelming to consider the scope of the lies that are sold and believed around the world. And it can seem ridiculous to think that one little blog post can make any difference at all. But I have to live by the words of Blessed Mother Teresa, who served the poor lovingly, unceasingly, never violating their human dignity:
"God has not called us to be successful. He has called us to be faithful."
**Secretary of State Hillary Clinton famously hinted that funds to help save mothers' lives in the Third World might be held up unless those countries signed on to the pro-abortion agenda of the Obama administration! More on that injustice here.
