Catholic Voting

Last night the topic of discussion for s.l.t.'s "holy" hour was about Catholic voting. It was a very intense subject. There is a funny joke that I thought about last night from "Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin." "There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics and the Great Pumpkin.." This line kept coming to me because this topic became pretty heated last night. Everyone has their own opinions on who to vote for and why. It is tricky trying to decipher who to vote into leadership roles in this country when each of the main parties are both very flawed.

The nights discussion was to remind us where the church stands on voting. There are five non-negotiable issues which the Catholic church says should never be promoted by the law... Voting for a candidate which openly supports either one of these five things is a mortal sin. The five issues are as follows; abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, and homosexual "marriage. This definitely makes voting for us Catholics very difficult. We have to take great caution when we do cast our votes. After hearing all of this last night it almost makes me not want to vote. It also reminds me that I really have to research each candidate more thoroughly. It is easy to vote for a "pro-life" candidate for me. I would never vote for a pro-choice candidate. After last night though I realized that even if that candidate claims they are against abortion that does not mean they are also against the other four issues the Church stands on.

It is obvious that our nation needs a lot of prayer and real Catholic people in the leadership roles. I know I will be praying and gathering lots of info on the candidates before I go to vote.