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
