Pope Benedict XVI (then, Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), “with guidance to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, stated succinctly, emphatically and unambiguously” as follows:

June, 2004 “Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.” http://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=1125
Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick: More Concerned with ‘Comfort’ than Christ?, Catholic Online, 7/11/2004

What Ardent Practicing Catholics Do (1)
By Fr. John De Celles, 9/1/2008

“Abortion and euthanasia are thus crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize. There is … a grave and clear obligation to oppose them … [I]t is therefore never licit to … “take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it.”

In other words: it is always a grave or mortal sin for a politician to support abortion.

On Sunday, before the whole nation, (Rep. Nancy Pelosi) claimed to be an “ardent, practicing Catholic.” Imagine if someone came in here and said “I’m a mafia hit man and I’m proud of it.” Or “I deal drugs to little children.” Or “I think black people are animals and it’s okay to make them slaves, or at least keep them out of my children’s school.”

Are these “ardent practicing Catholics”? No, they are not.”

And neither is a person who ardently supports and votes to fund killing 1 to 1.5 million unborn babies every single year. Especially if that person is in a position of great power trying to get others to follow her. Someone, for example, like a Catholic Speaker of the House, or a Catholic candidate for Vice President of the United States, or a Catholic senior Senator who is stands as the leading icon his political party. Like the proud and unrepentant murderer or drug dealer, they are not ardent Catholics. They are, in very plain terms, very bad Catholics.”

But the reason I say all this is not because I want to embarrass them or even correct them — they’re not even here. It’s because of you. Because back in the 1850’s when Catholic bishops, priests, and politicians were either silent or on the wrong side of the slavery debate, they risked not only their souls, but the souls of every other Catholic they influenced. I cannot do that, and I won’t do that.

Some would say, well Father, what about those people who support the war in Iraq, or the death penalty, or oppose undocumented aliens? Aren’t those just as important, and aren’t Catholic politicians who support those “bad Catholics” too?

Simple answer: no. Not one of those issues, or any other similar issues, except for the attack on traditional marriage is a matter of absolute intrinsic evil in itself. Not all wars are unjust — and good Catholics can disagree on facts and judgments. Same thing with the other issues: facts are debatable, as are solutions to problems.”

“What Ardent Practicing Catholics Do: Correcting Pelosi”, National Review Online, 9/1/2008 6:00AM
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTY1MzAwOTc5MmViMzUyYzM5YmY3OWFkYzdkMzY0YzM=

People like Buchanan would argue that since they were found innocent the system worked. The problem is that it was people outside the system that fixed a horrible injustice and people like Buchanan fought them the whole time.

No Mr. Buchanan, not everyone on death row is guilty. But you would put them to death anyway and so did Bush.

As for Byron and his ilk, I don’t think Notre Dame has ever been much concerned with what anti-religion “freethinkers” have thought of them. If someone were truly concerned with free thinking and open-mindedness, wouldn’t they allow Notre Dame and conservative Christians to have their views, even if they differed from their own?

“1. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., $103,100
2. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., $101,332 ”

“Also – can the Free NY crowd explain the fundamental contradiction between its apparent disgust for the influence of money in politics and its usual “anything goes” free marketism”

There is no free market. If government didn’t interfere in the marketplace there would be no need to buy influence.

On Hitchens, here’s WIKI:

While he was once identified with the British and American radical political left, he has more recently embraced some arguably centre right causes, notably the Iraq War; the war has had the support of some liberal commentators of Hitchens’ acquaintance in the UK and Canada. Formerly a Trotskyist and a fixture in the left-wing publications of both the United Kingdom and United States, Hitchens departed from the grassroots of the political left in 1989 after what he called the “tepid reaction” of the European left following Ayatollah Khomeini’s issue of a fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie. The September 11, 2001 attacks strengthened his embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he calls “fascism with an Islamic face.”

His employment of the term “Islamofascist” and his support for the Iraq War have caused Hitchens’s critics to label him a “neoconservative”. Hitchens, however, refuses to embrace this designation,[41] insisting that “I am not a conservative of any kind”. In 2004, Hitchens stated that neoconservative support for US intervention in Iraq convinced him that he was “on the same side as the neo-conservatives” when it came to contemporary foreign policy issues.[95] He has also been known to refer to his association with “temporary neocon allies”.[96]

ME AGAIN:

So, the guy has commie roots which remain in its his militant atheism–the absured notion that religion is the main evil on earth and all would be well without it. Then, he turned neocon. Well, there’s a huge literature on the Trotkyite roots of the neocons.

“Commies didn’t murder anyone, corrupt regimes calling themselves communists did.”

That made for a good laugh. Not sure how to respond to such an incredible assertion.

See the works of RJ Rummel and the Black Book off Communism. Please do some research before you post. I’m not getting paid for this seminar.

If you want to see the contribution of the free market on human welfare, just look at a chart of life expectancy in the US from 1900 through the present, keeping in mind that we had relative laissez-faire from 1900 through the thirties and no Med–Med until 1967. BTW, you can’t find the start of Medicare-Medicaid on the chart by sight!

Still waiting for the instructions of Jesus to murder anyone. Jesus was not a politician or political philosopher and had no positive political prrogram that anyone has ever been able to explain to me.

Communism is a political philosophy and it implicitly and explicitly authorizes its adherents to use force to install and maintain it. And did they ever use force!

Your move.

Of course conservative Christians love to pick and choose which Biblical passages to follow. Leviticus 18:22 is the Word of God therefore homosexuality is evil, but other passages, not so much.

In this instance, it’s not so. O’Donnell made a phenomenal point regarding what Catholic teaching is on the taking of life, whether it be abortion or death penalty. If Notre Dame shan’t invite Obama for his support of abortion rights, then it follows that Notre Dame shouldn’t have invited Bush for his support of the death penalty.

O’Donnell also makes the point that while Obama’s never performed an abortion, Bush has killed people on death row as governor of a state and president of the union.

While Buchanan tries to deflect by arguing that the people on death row were all guilty of murder, the Catholic church specifically condemns the death penalty, so the fact of guilt is implied and doesn’t change anything.

I found it refreshing for Buchanan to be left a stammering fool with no point.

It’s almost as if the liberals refuse to be bullied and screamed down by conservative shit-talkers anymore.

O’Donnell owns Buchanan in this clip. Anyone who isn’t full of shit can see that.