The Democrats aren’t even pretending anymore:
DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE:
Resolution Regarding the Religiously Unaffiliated Demographic
WHEREAS, the religiously unaffiliated demographic has tripled in the last two decades, now representing 25% of the overall American population and 35% of those under the age of 30; and
WHEREAS, religiously unaffiliated Americans overwhelmingly share the Democratic Party’s values, with 70% voting for Democrats in 2018, 80% supporting same-sex marriage, and 61% saying immigrants make American society stronger; and
WHEREAS, the religiously unaffiliated demographic represents the largest religious group within the Democratic Party, growing from 19% in 2007 to one in three today; and
WHEREAS, the nonreligious have often been subjected to unfair bias and exclusion in American society, particularly in the areas of politics and policymaking where assumptions of religiosity have long predominated; and
WHEREAS, those most loudly claiming that morals, values, and patriotism must be defined by their particular religious views have used those religious views, with misplaced claims of “religious liberty,” to justify public policy that has threatened the civil rights and liberties of many Americans, including but not limited to the LGBT community, women, and ethnic and religious/nonreligious minorities; and
WHEREAS, the Democratic Party is an inclusive organization that recognizes that morals, values, and patriotism are not unique to anyparticular religion, and are not necessarily reliant on having a religious worldview at all; and
WHEREAS, nonreligious Americans made up 17% of the electorate in 2018 and have the potential to deliver millions more votes for Democrats in 2020 with targeted outreach to further increase turnout of nonreligious voters; and
WHEREAS, a record number of openly nonreligious candidates are running for public office;
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE recognizes:
1. The value, ethical soundness, and importance of the religiously unaffiliated demographic, a group of Americans who contribute in innumerable ways to the arts, sciences, medicine, business, law, the military, their communities, the success of the Party and prosperity of the Nation; and
2. That religiously unaffiliated Americans are a group that, as much as any other, advocates for rational public policy based on sound science and universal humanistic values and should be represented, included, and heard by the Party.
Christians voting for Democrats is akin to Jews voting for Hitler.
What do you think the percent of Catholic Bishops voting for Democrats will be the next national election?
Less, the more we make this an issue.
“That religiously unaffiliated Americans are a group that, as much as any other, advocates for rational public policy based on sound science and universal humanistic values and should be represented, included, and heard by the Party.”
In other words … what? I am to assume they accept the pop culture notion that atheist means smart and good, unlike religion, which means dumb and bad? Probably not so starkly, but in an age where any love of one’s Western heritage is Nazi, perhaps we can draw the same simplistic lines in this case.
Democrats hate God and kill babies. Just what America needs now. Most of this is the result of Vatican II whereby most Catholics became the cafeteria variety and went along with the zeitgeist, i.e., contraception, abortion, non belief in the Real Presence, rare Confession, and spotty Mass attendance. The collapse of our culture would never had happened had the Catholic Church been a strong presence. Most Catholics are now Protestants standing for nothing more than what’s happening now. Making saints out of the Vatican II Popes is a travesty. Pope Francis is devil dressed like the Pope. But rest assured the future will be better. God will see to that.
“for rational public policy based on sound science”
Yep, like the sound science that says that people can choose the sex they wish to be, that biological males have a right to use female restrooms, that abortion does not kill a living human being, etc.
The sign should read, “Keep Your Theocracy Off My Hypocrisy.”
Just saw on Instapundit the best short answers to liberals’ garbage propaganda. “Yes, and?” . . . “So What?” . . . “Who didn’t?”
Most Catholics were going along with the Zeitgeist long before Vatican II, and will still be doing so long after Vatican III, whenever that may be, for as long as it pleases God to allow the world to spin on.
But by all means, keep riding that hobby horse of yours into the ground.
Zeitgeists can change with the speed of summer lightning Ernst, as our Leftist adversaries keep demonstrating. Also, most great successful movements in this world usually start out as being opposed by the Zeitgeist of the day.
Wait, Ernst, you believe that most Catholics are doing a bad, ignorant things, and you’re upset someone keeps talking about it?
That’s part of our JOB! Inform the ignorant, admonish the sinner.
I’m just fed up with Vatican II being blamed for everything that aims us; from too much starch in Captain Morton’s pajamas, to Captain Queeg’s missing strawberries.
It’s magical thinking.
True Ernst, but I think it can be safely said that when the storms of the Sixties were arising in the secular world, that was the same time, in Pope John’s phrase, that the Church was opening the windows to the World. That this was a tragic error, I think time has established. Would we have had lots of problems without Vatican II? Certainly. Did Vatican II help in regard to the challenges confronting the Church? Certainly not. The Church had before been a rock for Catholics, and now it suddenly transmuted into Jello.
Ails us. Thank you for nothing, auto correct, you useless reptile.
Two thoughts Don:
1) we have no way of knowing if, but for Vatican II, we’d be better off –or worse off.
2) If the rock turned to Jello, it wasn’t really much of a rock to begin with.
I think it is a very safe assumption Ernst that Vatican II set the Church up to be well and truly walloped by the secular demons set free in the Sixties. Your second statement is amply refuted by the history of the Church up to 1965. The Church has always had peaks and valleys but the core teachings of the Church have always been safeguarded by the popes, with minor exceptions, Pope Honorius hang your head in shame, until now.
Remind me again: what core teachings are no longer safe guarded because of Vatican II?
Our problem isn’t in teaching. Our problem is in practicing what’s taught.
And I think that goes to both of our points about Catholics (like just about everyone else for that matter) going with the flow of the changing zeitgeist.
Let me try to explain where I’m coming from with a football analogy of sorts. I’m a Minnesota Vikings fan. If I was the GM of the Vikings, and I had a group of people on my team (coaches, trainers, players, doesn’t matter) whose frame of reference for the coming season was the 2009 NFC championship game (the one where the Saints beat the crap out of Brett Favre and the officials let them), I’d want those people gone. Because dwelling on the past and what might have been were things not as they in fact are, doesn’t help us move forward in the here and now.
Sure, you have to know your past so you know where you’ve been and where you’re going, but the fork in the road around the next bend to the left isn’t the same one as the last one after a bend to the left. Knowing which fork you took last time doesn’t tell you which one to take this time.
“Remind me again: what core teachings are no longer safe guarded because of Vatican II?”
Do you think that Pope Francis sprang full grown from the head of Zeus like Athena? Can you imagine Pope Francis as Pope but for Vatican II?
“Our problem isn’t in teaching. Our problem is in practicing what’s taught.”
It’s both, but in this papacy the teaching has become quite corrupted in several areas. Pope Francis is a symptom, not the cause of the rot.
Vatican II has been used by forces within the Church to dumb it down. Vatican II put out a bunch of vague pastoral documents used by those forces. Vatican II led to the de facto suppression of the Latin Mass, ugly church buildings in the West, and awful music. The older I get, and I am almost 56, the more I agree with the SSPX.
As for the atheists…I am Catholic. My ancestors came from a nation formed by the Catholic Church and that nation turned enemies more powerful than you into a big red spot on the ground.
God
Honor
Country
I agree with Penguins Fan. I cannot add to what he states (except that I am older than him by 6 years).
“Can you imagine Pope Francis as Pope but for Vatican II?”
I think you’re making a post hoc error there.
“Pope Francis is a symptom, not the cause of the rot.”
And the rot was already there, rotting away, long before the “forces” Penguins Fans is talking about went to town on liturgy, art, and architecture.
And as for vagueness: I don’t think the documents of Vatican II are any more (or any less) vague than the documents of any other Church Council. After all, it took an additional four(?) Councils to clarify what had been decided at Nicaea.
“Can you imagine Pope Francis as Pope but for Vatican II?”
Nope. It was the demystifying of the Liturgy to the point that Communion in the hand, less emphasis on confession, our priest facing us and not to God during worship put God on the second burner with the priest taking his place, the destruction of the beauty of our churches, no kneeling to receive our Lord etc…..the respect and adoration afforded Christ was no longer there and replaced by Kumbaya Masses. All this plus much more paved the way where a pope like Francis would be accepted as a ‘one of us’ pope and not the Vicar of Christ. Don’t forget. China has a state run church and an underground church. We also have 2 churches and right now our own ‘China’ church headed by libs and PF are running the show. We just need to hang in there.
“I think you’re making a post hoc error there.”
Not at all. Vatican II brought a great deal of psychobabble and baloney into the Church, and without that a Cardinal of the minimal accomplishments and intellectual firepower of Pope Francis would have been lucky to receive a handful of votes in a Conclave.
“And the rot was already there”
Not to the extent as after Vatican II. Paul VI, one of the more clueless Popes in the history of the Church, even he saw it with his smoke of Satan comment. Saint Pope Pius X saw all this coming with his crusade against Modernism at the beginning of the last century. He bought the Church time, and the time was squandered until modernism was embraced at Vatican II. The council looks worse with each passing year.
A good resource in reference to the damage that Vatican II did to the Church is Iota Unum which is now online:
http://www.sspxasia.com/Documents/books/Iota_Unum/index.htm
I’m inclined to think that going to the SSPX for what’s wrong with Vatican II is like going to Dr. James Martin SJ for what’s wrong with Church teaching on homosexuality.
I don’t think the documents of Vatican II are any more (or any less) vague than the documents of any other Church Council.
See Christopher Ferrera on the documents pertaining to the Liturgy. “It helps to read them like a lawyer would, which is to say with an eye to what it allows the other guy to do to your client:.
Francis and his conventicle will contribute to the ruin as much as they can.
No clue about the rest of the world, but I found Andrew Greeley’s 1986 memoir unintentionally revealing. He was terribly dispirited by his time in major seminary, but never explains why (while having been by his account quite satisfied with minor seminary). His account of his years as a curate at the parish of Christ the King on the South Side of Chicago is taken up with petty complaints about his pastor, Msgr. Patrick Gleeson (included among them his account of what Msgr. Gleeson’s ‘bridge cronies’ were telling him to do about Greeley; Greeley never explains to the reader how he would know what Msgr. Gleeson’s friends in the priesthood were advising him about personnel matters while playing cards, unless the housekeeper or curates in other rectories were grassing the old guys up). He was relieved of ordinary parish responsibilities in 1965. He keeps claiming in his memoir that he very much wanted to return to ministry but could not because Cdl. Cody was planning to debar him from teaching or writing sociology (something Cody never did; Greeley maintains, absurdly, that what stopped Cody was that Cody was unable to get him on the phone and was unwilling to write out a written order) and because Cdl. Bernardin had insisted he would have no assignments unless he stopped writing pulp fiction.
Greeley (ordained in 1954) was a man with an exceptionally agile mind, so perhaps highly representative. I’m just wondering how many people passed through the seminary system to ordination in such condition that they were in a continual state of irritation at the world around them. Greeley’s careful to not make critical remarks about the three other curate’s who served with him, but just about every other priest he encounters he seems to despise. I haven’t come across that in meatspace, but I have come across priests of Greeley’s vintage who cop to having been miserable in seminary or having despised consequential parts of their daily labor as young priest (e.g. hearing confessions).
“highly unrepresentative”
They posted it: they didn’t write it. Go the link below to read about the author:
http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/45538bdc4.html?eng=y
Below is a link to a post I wrote in 2010 about Iota Unum:
https://the-american-catholic.com/2010/02/23/iota-unum/
Thanks for the links Don. I’ll check them out.
It isn’t the be all and end all on Vatican II Ernst, but I was shocked by how much I learned when I read it.
I’m a big believer in the hermeneutic of continuity and in Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI as the authentic interpreter of Vatican II.
The book on Vatican II I’m interested in reading is Conciliar Octet (reviewed here.
Assuming I get around to it. I really don’t see how rehashing old debates about Vatican II helps us prepare our kids for martyrdom.
Which, if we in the laity are serious about our faith, is what we need to be doing.
I really don’t see how rehashing old debates about Vatican II helps us prepare our kids for martyrdom.
I am preparing my kids to martyr violent adversaries if necessary to defend themselves and others. The long defeat nonsense of Tolkien is rubbish and I want no part of it. Catholicism is a fighting faith and it is past time to remember that.
I’m just fed up with Vatican II being blamed for everything that aims us; from too much starch in Captain Morton’s pajamas, to Captain Queeg’s missing strawberries.
It’s magical thinking.
Well, my mom was “fired” from teaching CCD for telling teen boys that Fking was still not ok, even if you “really loved” the target you were fking.
She didn’t leave the church. Thank God,
But she also didn’t teach any of her kids the faith.
Because she wasn’t able to do so; she had been informed in the spirit of Vatican II that she was not a legitimate authority.
So the only one of her children who is married in the faith did so after a very around a bout method. And she is largely separated from the faith.
sigh there were three askerlisks at the end of each word in the bolded area.
The “religiously unaffiliated” are flotsom and jetsom in the public square. By not acknowledging “their Creator”, the unaffiliated deny their own sovereignty as persons and their unalienable human rights endowed by “their Creator” as only an infinite God can endow unalienable human rights. The “nones” are terrified of acknowledging God and their own unalienable human rights because our culture has become so toxic that courage and truth have no place in the public square owned in joint and common tenancy by each and every sovereign person.
By claiming so, “nones” forfeit their sovereignty, their patrimony and their heritage; our common freedom to live free… and they die.
Let me say too, that atheism is not a religion so much as a rebellion against religion, yours and mine. No one has a right to proscribe anyone else’s religion but his own. not a citizen, not a government. Religion is a personal and intimate relationship with “the Supreme Sovereign Being, “their Creator”, in thought, word, deed, and peaceable assembly. Deny God forfeit freedom and personal sovereignty.
Atheism leads to war. Atheism violates our First Amendment in every way possible.. Atheism has no truth, no integrity and no good will for the common good. The embrace of atheism leads to the forfeiture of sovereignty and citizenship.
Foxfier, I’m sorry that happened to your mother. I’m sorry we’re all going through the great sifting of the wheat from the chaff (so it seems to me).
And for whatever it’s worth, that’s the kind of martyrdom I’m talking about, mores than the violent kind Don suggests, though I don’t discount the possibility of anti-Catholic or generally anti-christian violence Don is fprepared to forcibly resist.
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