The Catholic Church is sending out voter registration forms in its Church bulletins, and priests are offering parishoners dubious information (in my opinion) on how "good Catholics" should vote this year.
I posted this on Atrios last night, and was encouraged to do a diary on the topic here. I am so pissed off I hope someone will catch on and research what is, exactly, going on within the Catholic Church and its support for our woefully feckless leader, George W. Bush. (I have a lot of things going on this week, so I can't devote the time to this topic that I'd like, but I would encourage anyone who is interested to investigate this further):
I learned yesterday that several Catholic churches in the area (Grand Rapids, Michigan and towns along the lakeshore) were passing out voter registration forms in their bulletins. Talking points from the pulpit yesterday included topics such as:
-health care
-abortion
-capital punishment
-stem cell research
-in-vitro fertilization
-gay marriage
In every case, with every parishoner I talked to, the priest as much as pointed to the fact, without saying so, that the parishoners must vote for Bush if they are to maintain good standing in the Church. Even to the point of implying communion status and the like.
Isn't this dangerously close to violating separation of church and state? I think so.
This so pisses me off. I am without words (and that is seldom). I was brought up Catholic, and wanted to be a nun (tongue in cheek, that was before I discovered boys, but still...). But how the Church can go against its own man in Kerry is beyond me. How the Church can go along with the policies of a rapture-smitten Bush boggles the mind. Evangelicals notoriously diss Catholics. What's going on here?
So I guess it's okay if we went to war on a lie, and 1,030+ soldiers die and 17,000+ soldiers are wounded...real live human beings, if we save just one 7 week old fetus who would have been born to a mother who isn't ready to have a kid, or a crack addict who can't take care of the baby. I don't care ~ it's all the same, children must be loved and nurtured to thrive. I don't frickin' get it.
The short of it:
The Catholic Church is a tool. And it makes me sick.
I'm so glad I didn't give myself to Jesus in a cloak of celibacy. I would have been the saddest of whores. No pleasure. All pain. It pains me to say this, but fuck the Catholic Church!. Tool for fools.