Friday, October 24, 2008
BISHOP GRACIDA
Randall Terry at Catholic Online tells us:
Bishop Rene H. Gracida releases radio ad against voting for Barack Obama; Catholics Plan anti-Obama Demonstrations and Press Conferences Coast to Coast on Thursday, October 30.
The specific quote from Bishop Gracida:
"This is Bishop Rene H. Gracida, reminding all Catholics that they must vote in this election with an informed conscience. A Catholic cannot be said to have voted in this election with a good conscience if they have voted for a pro-abortion candidate. Barack Hussein Obama is a pro-abortion candidate."
Bishop Gracida recorded the radio spot in English and Spanish; it can be heard at www.randallterry.com.
I expect he will be hearing from the ACLU.
I hope his fellow bishops stand with him.
I'm not counting on it.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for him!
Bishop Joseph Martino of Scranton is standing with him. The Dallas Morning News Religion Blog reports:
Joseph Martino, the Catholic bishop of Scranton, Pa., showed up unannounced at a church forum on the presidential election and let everyone know in no uncertain terms that his word on abortion is the final word.
Martino is a hardliner on how Catholics should regard pro-choice candidates. He had earlier written a letter to his diocese saying abortion is the issue by which Catholics must judge candidates. (He went further than the bishops of Dallas and Fort Worth did in their recent pastoral letter on the subject. Martino wrote that "public officials who are Catholic and who persist in public support for abortion and other intrinsic evils should not partake in or be admitted to the sacrament of Holy Communion. As I have said before, I will be vigilant on this subject.")
He also took issue with the USCCB statement titled "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship":
That's a nuanced document on the political responsibilities of Catholics. It says that while abortion is an "intrinsic evil," Catholic voters "should not use a candidate's opposition to an intrinsic evil to justify indifference or inattentiveness to other important moral issues involving human life and dignity."
It also says it's not a bishop's job to tell people who to vote for -- that "the responsibility to make choices in political life rests with each individual in light of a properly formed conscience..."...
"No USCCB document is relevant in this diocese," he said after crashing the forum. "The USCCB doesn't speak for me."
Fox News tells us Denver's Bishop Chaput is standing with him:
Denver's Roman Catholic Archbishop says Barack Obama is the "most committed" abortion rights major party presidential candidate in 35 years.
Father Charles Chaput says, "To suggest, as some Catholics do, that Senator Obama is this year's 'real' pro-life candidate requires a peculiar kind of self-hypnosis, or moral confusion, or worse."
Chaput adds that pro-Obama Catholics "seek to contextualize, demote and then counterbalance the evil of abortion with other important but less foundational social issues."
