Mike Pence’s Relationship with the Catholic Church is...Complicated

[rug]

Michael O'Loughlin | Jul 15 2016 - 4:44pm

Late last year, Catholic Charities agencies in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis did something it has done thousands of times before in its 40-year history: It resettled a refugee family. Catholic Charities staff helped find housing, provided medical care, enrolled the family members in English classes and introduced them to the basics of living in a new culture.

Only this time, the resettlement took place under the glare of a national spotlight, the result of a public battle between the man just named to be Donald Trump’s running mate, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, and the archbishop of Indianapolis, Joseph Tobin.

Following terrorist attacks in Paris last November that left 130 people dead, about two dozen U.S. governors said that Syrian refugees were not welcome in their states. Catholic bishops from New Hampshire to New Mexico urged political leaders to resist giving into anti-refugee “hysteria,” as the bishop of Providence, R.I., put it, and to continue offering assistance to those who needed it.

Pence was one of those governors. He said on Nov. 16 that he felt the years-long federal screening process all refugees face when entering the United States was not working. He therefore directed state agencies to withhold aid to resettled Syrians.

http://americamagazine.org/content/dispatches/mike-pences-relationship-catholic-church-iscomplicated

[47of74]

1. Of course he and Trump just have to make the correct noises about gays and abortion

And the good Archbishop and many other Catholics will support them no matter what else they say or do.

[rug]

2. Most Catholics are polling for Hillary.

[47of74]

3. Not all Catholics will vote for Trump.

My parents aren't voting for him. Other Catholics I know have said as much too.

However there is that part of the church who will vote for anyone who makes what they think are the correct noises about abortion and gays, and generally care very little about how harmful the policies these candidates espouse are to people who have been born. All Trump and Pence have to do is to say that they'll ban all abortion and brand women who dare to support abortion and these people will vote for them.

[rug]

4. It's much less than "not all".

It's fairly split among white Catholics but Hispanic Catholics are polling 3 to 1 against trump.

If you're saying Catholics are voting based on doctrine, I disagree. I usually point out that, in the whole range of Catholic social teaching, if you follow it, you can not vote for republicans based on their platform. Abortion aside, they are really pushing an "anti-Catholic" program. And they're pushing it hard.

Personally, I don't vote for anything based on doctrine. If the time comes that God or the Church must rely on the state's monopoly on violence to enforce its will, then that day God will have been proven to be nonexistent.

We were created with free will. It's up to us to live the right way, not a legislature.