Democratic Platform

Pertinent to “Meet the Democrat Candidates for 2020” (page three, May 12 issue):

The article depicts two key issues each presidential candidate supports and why every Catholic should be concerned.

The analysis states that there is “absolutely no daylight” separating the Democratic candidates on the issue of abortion. Every candidate is pro-abortion. Several of them, the article states, “were once pro-life but subsequently changed” because the Democratic Party “must be for abortion with no limits or restrictions.”

For all of these candidates, abortion, which they label “a reproductive right,” is an inscribed constitutional right.

Every candidate also embraces same-sex “marriage.” The article states, “the next Democratic nominee will embrace the use of federal government to impose gender ideology.” This would most certainly conflict with our guaranteed right to religious liberty. It already has.

I believe most Catholics would agree that the Democratic Party has become radicalized. New York Democrats were ecstatic about their new unrestricted abortion law, allowing for abortion up to the time the baby is in the birth canal, just minutes away from being born! All of these candidates, many who are Catholic, have had to embrace their party’s inflexible requirements in order to make a serious presidential run. They had to choose between God’s gift of life and death, between God’s truth and party loyalty.

Can we as Catholics promote and support someone who holds views opposed to our Catholic doctrine and our most basic human right, the right to life? Bear in mind, if one of these candidates becomes president, he or she will endorse and embrace laws contrary to Catholic beliefs. They will enact laws against God’s laws.

Have you ever heard the reasoning, “I’m personally against abortion but don’t want to impose my beliefs onto others”? I believe if any one of these Democratic candidates becomes president, he or she will impose their radical, non-Catholic beliefs on us.

Ken Sims

Moorhead, Minnesota

 

Tangible Evil

Gabriel Szabados writes (“Following Peter,” Letters, May 26 issue) that Church leaders shouldn’t be “fixated on the secondary causes, whether homosexuality, clericalism, or whatever” in the Church’s response to the most recent abuse crisis.

He also takes Archbishop Charles Chaput somewhat to task, saying he “missed” what Pope Francis said at the Vatican Summit on Child Protection. Most of us “missed” what Pope Francis said because he didn’t say what needed to be said, plainly the truth, that big elephant in the room.

As human beings — member of families, organizations, churches, workplaces — in life, when problems arise and they are not dealt with or spoken of in truth, then most generally the problem does not go away, and morality begins to sink.

To quote Father Roger Landry, who wrote in these pages a couple of months ago, “If 81% of the cancer were found in one organ, serious oncologists would obviously give that malignant tumor special focus. How can the same-sex dimension of the abuse crisis be ignored?” He wrote of the “obstinate refusal by the organizers to mention the homosexual dimension of the vast majority of the sexual-abuse crisis ... and can anyone truly believe that clericalism, rather than lust, is a sounder explanation for the abuse of minors?”

Father Landry calls on all of us to courageously confront the data that “four of five victims are teenage males and follow where it leads.”

Pope Francis, in his address on youth, talked of the “mystery of evil” and called on the Church to “combat this evil.” This is hard, if not impossible, if evil is not named, whether it is a symptom of the problem or the problem. Pope Francis and his closest advisers have never mentioned homosexuality as an evil, though this is what the data reveals.

Clericalism may be an issue, but it is clear that the men in charge, for reasons that are becoming clearer each day, don’t/won’t/can’t address the elephant that is predatory homosexuality, the most tangible evil in our Church today, kept alive by leaders that are called to lead us to salvation.

Mike Acheson

Port Angeles, Washington