If Karl Keating’s figures are correct, it’s obvious that the Catholic Church in America isn’t doing its job. Here are some of his figures in a recent letter we received from him as director of Catholic Answers:
- Catholics make up 26% of the electorate and more Catholics than Protestants vote, but Catholics are more likely to vote for “pro-abortion,” candidates than Protestants are.
- In 1992, 44% of Catholics voted for pro-abortion Bill Clinton to 34% of Protestants.
- In 1996, 53% of Catholics voted for Clinton to 35% of Protestants.
- In 2000, 50% of Catholics voted for extreme pro-abort Al Gore.
“Non-Negotiables” for Catholic Voters
If all that weren’t bad enough, 66% of Catholics, according to Keating’s letter, want to keep abortion legal, and 56% of Catholics support euthanasia or assisted suicide. Thirty-four percent of Catholics support fetal stem cell research, using living human beings for experiments. And get this, 47% of Catholics who are supposed to know right from wrong, support homosexual “marriage.”
Are these statistics surprising when you consider that only 45% of Catholics attend Mass regularly, while other statistics show that two out of three Catholics don’t believe in the Real Presence. Keating says his figures are from the Gallup Organization, and we suspect they’re accurate. Keating is trying to change all that with his “Voters Guide for Serious Catholics,” hitting the issues of Abortion, Euthanasia, Fetal Stem Cell Research, Human Cloning and Homosexual “Marriage.”
These are five non-negotiable issues all Catholics need to understand and vote against if they are to keep America from total collapse,” Keating says. He also says in the guide, that these five issues are non-negotiable because they concern actions that are always morally wrong and must never be promoted by the law. “It is a serious sin to endorse or promote any of these actions, and no candidate who really wants to advance the common good will support any of the five non-negotiables.”
Keating sent us a copy of his “Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics,” and it’s a powerful tool. He wants to distribute millions of them and we hope he does. Any donation will get you five copies to start out with. Write him at Catholic Answers, 2020 Gillespie Way, El Cajon, CA 92020.
Novak Faults Cardinal McCarrick
A column by Robert Novak appearing in Monday’s Chicago Sun-Times echoes Keating’s letter on the abortion issue but puts more blame on the Bishops for not taking a leadership role in this campaign to inform Catholics, singling out especially Washington’s Cardinal Theodore McCarrick for not taking a more courageous stand following his April 15 meeting with Sen. John Kerry. Novak says the Cardinal fortified his decision that pro-abortion Catholics should not be denied Holy Communion by associating abortion with lesser evils.
Novak insists that when Vatican II declared abortion an unspeakable crime, and when Pope John Paul’s Gospel of Life asserted that responsibility for this crime falls on the legislators who have promoted and approved abortion laws, it puts it in a singular category. Novak says it appears that pro-abortion politicians like Kerry have won the first round, but that the war is far from over and he believes more American bishops, influenced by John Paul II, will begin to use this discipline.
A priest friend of Novak’s says the time may be coming when “Pro-abortion politicians will stop calling themselves Catholic, or will repent of their sins.” Novak doesn’t think this will happen before the November elections.
Meanwhile on the Front Lines
Meanwhile, Monica Miller continues the good fight up in Michigan trying to get Bishop Mengeling to deny Communion to pro-abortion Catholic Gov. Jennifer Granholm. And so the battle rages.
