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"And I beheld, and heard the voice of one eagle flying through the midst of heaven,
saying with a loud voice: Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth....
[Apocalypse (Revelation) 8:13]

Monday, February 22, 2016

A Very Misleading "Guide" for Catholic Voters...

A Very Misleading "Guide" for Catholic Voters...
A Clear-Cut Case of
The Blind Leading the Blind
 Hugh Akins

It’s recently been brought to my attention that a small booklet entitled “Voter’s Guide For Serious Catholics” has been circulating among traditional Catholics.  I have been asked by a number of good people to express my views on this, and will take the opportunity to do so now.
Aside from the point that this booklet does not contain anything explicitly contradicting Church teaching, it is nevertheless filled to overflowing, so to speak, with serious omissions, false claims and misleading statements that can only 1) further confuse traditional Catholics who are already immensely confused, not to mention deeply troubled, over whom they should vote for in the coming elections; 2) further divide them on so many moral  issues that we all should be in full agreement on since the Magisterium has made its position well known (as Saint Ignatius Loyola said, on all things we should be one mind with the Church); and 3) further distance them from Thomistic and Magisterial teaching for good government and for selecting the most Christian candidate available to us; or if we can’t do any better, the one who will do the least damage to the people and nation.

All things considered, it seems to me that this “Guide” is very much in the spirit of Vatican II and therefore can do little good in advising traditional Catholics heading for the voting booth.  Granted, liberal Catholics who might be inclined to support a pro-abortion Democratic candidate may benefit from it, but certainly not traditional Catholics, especially not those poorly informed traditionalists who are all too eager to support a pro-abortion Republican candidate who pretends to be pro-life but whose public record clearly proves this to be a bold-faced lie.  Yes, you got it right: I am speaking here of none other than Senator John McCain (see my earlier commentary, “Senator John McCain is NOT Pro-Life!”).  Besides, as I have stated many times before, there is much more to the Church’s moral teaching than the five “non-negotiables” listed in the Guide.   Here’s a case in point: 
Saint Thomas Aquinas tells us that human law is meant to forbid vices that hurt others.  The Voter’s Guide, which was published in 2006 by a group from California calling itself Catholic Answers Action, limits the list of such vices to five: abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning and gay “marriages.”  My initial reaction was to ask why only these five?  Important as they obviously are, the Magisterium clearly insists that we must include, as well, such additional moral evils as 1) unjust wars (of which the War on Iraq and coming war on Iran  are crystal-clear examples);  2) membership in or any assistance given  to the Secret Societies (which unquestionably control both leading candidates from the shadows);   3) cruel and crushing usury, inflation and taxation;  4) financial domination by a few greedy and grasping predator money men;   5) policies that defraud workers of the largest portion of the fruits of their labors;  6) economic-political policies that violate the law of subsidiarity, made imperative to the common good by the Popes;   7) policies that militate against distributive ownership, that exploit the working class and enslave them to the chains of impossible debt, that exploit the poor and enslave them to the chains of government dependency, that undermine the currency and economy, that cause the greatest social upheavals and unbearable hardships to families struggling to survive, thrusting many into bankruptcy not to mention divorce and despair;   8) the extreme concentration of political power in the hands of a criminal elite (state socialism, corporate fascism, monopoly capitalism, police state totalitarianism – all of which are present-day realities in the USA) – all things engendered by our Masonic, Zionist, Plutocratic and Globalist political establishment that wages perpetual war against the moral law, the Christian order, social justice, the rights of God in society and the reign of Christ over the whole temporal order.



These are no minor transgressions against the Law of Christ, as the Supreme Pontiffs have asserted again and again.  Of the four sins that cry to Heaven for vengeance, three are found in the above-mentioned evils.  And yet, the Voter’s Guide has nothing to say about such evils, even though they are totally relevant to next month’s elections.
Permit me to expand on just one of these aforementioned evils, chosen because of the strong emphasis the Church places upon it and also because we as a nation are up to our throats in it, but which is strangely excluded from the list of non-negotiable evils in the Voter’s Guide under discussion.  I refer to war.  Being a combat veteran myself, I can personally attest to the overpowering moral ramifications, emotional impact and social repercussions of war.  At first glance, what the booklet says on war is not necessarily false.  However, it is certainly misleading inasmuch as it is a gross misrepresentation of Church teaching decisively applicable to the current situation.  Because the moral issue before us today is not merely a question of war per se’ – which admittedly may be moral or evil depending on several key factors explicated by Holy Mother Church – but rather, precisely, UNJUST war, which, like abortion and embryonic stem cell research and homosexual “marriages,” is ALWAYS an intrinsic, non-negotiable, wholly disqualifying moral evil! 
This is not my opinion; it is what the Vicars of Christ have taught us, what Catholic Theology teaches us, which teaching has been expounded by St Thomas Aquinas, the Council of Trent, and by twenty centuries of Catholic Tradition.



The venerable Council of Trent, for example, rightly insisting on the (conditional) guiltlessness of soldiers forced to take the lives of enemy soldiers during war (enemy soldiers, mind you; not unarmed and helpless civilians as our military in the Middle East have been doing!), specifically mentions JUST war, which can only be taken as a vivid assertion, even if merely implied, that no such sanction may be applied to an UNJUST war.  As to what actually constitutes a just or unjust war, without taking the time to reiterate it here, suffice it to say that a strict application of the Church’s Just War Doctrine, made known to us by St. Thomas Aquinas and repeated by Pope Pius XII amidst the carnage of WWII, clearly condemns as a grave moral evil the unprovoked, unconstitutional, immoral and unwinable wars of aggression being waged by our government and military today.  Both leading candidates of both political parties are equally favorable to these unjust wars, and therefore equally to blame for all the death, destruction, human suffering and crimes against humanity these utterly unnecessary wars have wrought.  This atrocious warmongering and these mass-atrocities and war crimes, which not only spread death and pain and ruin but an all-consuming hatred as well, constituted a bi-partisan effort from the beginning. 
This leads us to the Million-Dollar Question: How are these inconvenient though irrefutable facts not wholly relevant to how Catholics vote?
Do you get my point?  Let me make it even clearer:  MASS-MURDER IS MASS-MURDER WHETHER INSIDE OR OUTSIDE THE MOTHER’S WOMB.  How can the authors of the Voter’s Guide not see the truth which stares them in the eye?  How can all those Catholics supporting Senator McCain for president not see it?
The entire Voter’s Guide is riddled with such serious omissions and misleading claims, assertions, statements or innuendos – a clear-cut case of the blind leading the blind.  And you know how that goes: both fall into the pit !!!  



At best it is ambiguous, which is why I say that it’s more in the spirit of the Modernists than the Magisterium, which is always clear, precise, exact, explicit, unambiguous, balanced and authoritative in its pronouncements.   And which is the main reason why I’ve long promoted the reading and studying of the papal encyclicals among fellow Catholics, as well as among sincere truth-seeking Christians.
Catholics in particular are in dire need of the clear voice of the Church in such confusing times, to guide rather than further blind and divide us.  “They shall grope as in the dark, and not in the light, and He shall make them stagger like men that are drunk” (Job 12:25).   Such blindness is not only rendering Catholics virtually impotent in combating the evils of the day, but it is assisting Satan in his war against God by manipulating the Catholic vote to actually endorse, support and lend assistance to the worst enemies the Church has ever confronted.  Again, this is not my opinion which counts for nothing, but the mind of the Magisterium which counts for everything.  Saint Pius X went so far as to blame Catholics for the rampant evils in the modern world due to their offering but the weakest resistance to them.  He said that this deplorable failure on the part of Catholics was the enemy’s greatest strength. 
He was so right.
And no doubt this was why he was insistent upon all good Catholics – bishops, clergy and laity alike – rallying to the Church’s own counter-offensive, which she is pleased to call Catholic Action
            So what are you waiting for?
May the Lord God guide and protect us in these tumultuous times.

In Jesus our King and Mary our Queen,
Hugh Akins