Burnt Orange Report

Smart.

He gets way more political leverage from this than speaking to a bunch of mayors.

Kudos to Kerry for refusing to cross a picket line.

The "pro-Catholic" ratings were interesting also (though I suspect that if Durbin had rated the House, Kerry's ersatz rival for the Democratic nomination, Dennis Kucinich, would have blown Kerry away, since until recently, Kucinich was pro-life). But since most readers of this blog are pro-choice, I thought it'd be interesting to revise Durbin's "pro-Catholic" ratings by reversing the "pro-life" values (i.e., 4% pro-life becomes 96% pro-choice) and recalculating.

By this revised measure, it is the other Mass. Senator, Ted Kennedy, who gets the top rating (93%).

Kerry comes in with a still-decent score of 78%, with a "pro-choice" score of 89% and his high domestic score of 95%. What drags down Kerry's overall score is his international score (50%).

ProgressivePunch.org shows similar results. Still, 50% is a lot better than the 0% you'd expect were Bush a Senator - it shows Kerry's at least reachable on international issues. Let's just hope we can sway him to end the Iraq debacle once he's President.

Newman's analysis of the bishops' statement is sloppy. Here's the relevant quotation from the document (which wasn't clearly indicated in your excerpt):

It is important to note that Cardinal Ratzinger makes a clear distinction between public officials and voters, explaining that a Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil only if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion. However, when a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted if there are proportionate reasons.

I've boldened the important phrase. "Proportionate reasons" means that the good coming from the act (in the case, voting for a pro-abortion candidate) must outweigh the evil that would come from it (permitting abortion to remain legal). No faithful Catholic could reasonably conclude that the reasons are proportionate, however; abortion takes over a million lives in this country each year, and there's nothing a politician can do otherwise that can counterbalance that evil result.

The principle of proportionate reasons is a staple of moral reasoning, but with regard to the abortion issue it's a non-factor.

Like other Republicans, Republican clerics are simply using abortion as a wedge issue.

Why haven't the bishops gotten in a tizzy over issues where Democrats are on the right side from the Catholic perspective?

Kerry is conflicted because he knows it is a baby and knows he is advocating murdering that baby but is pandering to those who would also murder defenseless little babies. The graphic and article on the following webpages says it all.

http://www.geocities.com/kerryadvocatesmurder/Kerryadvocatesmurder.html

http://geocities.com/kerryadvocatesmurder/inezandglennadvocatemurder

http://geocities.com/kerryadvocatesmurder/KerryEdwardsadvocatemurder

Robert Black
achristianplace@charter.net