At times like these, I especially wish my mother was still alive.
A woman who kept the laws of the Catholic Church as stringently as anyone I have ever known, she likely would be covering herself with Kerry/Edwards buttons before heading off to church these days.
My dad's early experience taught him to keep his political ideas to himself, but my mother was a bit of a firebrand. She would be beside herself if she had lived to see Catholic bishops pressuring their flocks to vote for candidates who are more likely to support the church's position on abortion, stem-cell research and gay marriage (many of whom these days are Republicans). If she knew that two of the leading figures in this effort were Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver and Bishop Michael Sheridan of Colorado Springs, she would positively get the vapors.
My parents were both born in my hometown of Denver before World War I, so they were young when, in the 1920s, the newly resuscitated Ku Klux Klan infested the Republican Party in Colorado. Many Midwesterners know that Indiana was a Klan stronghold in the '20s, but the Klan also wielded enormous political power in some Rocky Mountain states and elsewhere during that era.
A Klansman occupied the Colorado governor's mansion. A U.S. senator from Colorado was a Klansman. Many Republicans in the state legislature were elected with Klan support, as was the Republican mayor of Denver, Benjamin Stapleton.
While the Klan was happy to menace black people and Jews, there weren't many of them in Colorado at the time, and Western bigots' hatred traditionally burned hottest for Catholics and immigrants like my grandparents.
During the early '20s, Colorado's Klan/Republican-controlled legislature proposed a law that would have ended the exemption for sacramental wine from the Prohibition of alcohol, making the celebration of the Catholic mass illegal.
Catholics were the target of kidnappings, arson, boycotts and death and castration threats. Klan members burned crosses on the lawns of Catholic institutions and swaggered around downtown Denver smoking a newly distributed cigar called CYANA, which they said stood for "Catholics, You Are Not Americans."
As the decade wore on, scandal and infighting weakened the Klan enough that non-bigots took back control of the Republican Party. Stapleton renounced the Klan in 1925.
As for my Catholic parents, they became the proverbial "yellow-dog Democrats": They would have voted for a yellow dog if it was a Democrat. Till the day they died, my guess is they would have eaten a yellow dog before they pulled a lever in a voting booth for a Republican.
They weren't being vengeful. Rather, they had taken a clear lesson on who their friends were. The ensuing years didn't change their minds. Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson sponsored social policies my parents considered to be important for the America they wanted to live in.
Plenty of American Catholics feel at home in today's Republican Party. My point is that every American who walks into a voting booth has her own heart, her own history and her own hopes for the future. How and where a person addresses his God -- or doesn't -- can't help but inform his vote. My parents would have told you that.
But in America, voting is a civil activity, not a religious one -- that's the whole idea. The role an individual's beliefs or lack thereof play in shaping her participation in the political process is nobody's business but her own.
When the American bishops held a big meeting in a Denver suburb last June, I thought about sending a box of CYANA cigars to their hotel, but they aren't sold anymore.
Catholics, You Are Not Americans: It seems to me that's what some of the bishops are saying.
There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." —George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002
---------------------------------- "Give it up for George W. Bush, the best friend international jihad ever had."
posted on October 21, 2004 12:26:49 PM new
Kraft, I did find the article interesting as well especially how your political vote should not be based on your religious views.
The article was not about my family, but based on the writer's family.
There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." —George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002
---------------------------------- "Give it up for George W. Bush, the best friend international jihad ever had."
posted on October 21, 2004 12:28:23 PM new
Those are the reporter's parents, not Logansdad's. Although I'm sure his parents were just as wonderful.
____________________
"Bad temper is its own scourge. Few things are more bitter than to feel bitter. A man's venom poisons himself more than his victim." --Charles Buxton
posted on October 22, 2004 09:34:15 AM new
During the Illinois Senate candidate debate last night there was an exchange about religion in politics that sums up my feelings and beliefs:
If you didn't see it, the following transcript of the lead-in doesn't really do justice to the Church-lady certitude in Keyes' voice. But here it is:
When I look at where Christ stands and I look at where Sen. Obama stands based upon that record of Christ's understanding which we acknowledge as Christians to be the true record, I say well, Christ is over here, Sen. Obama is over there.
The two don't look the same. And that means that I'm not thinking about Alan Keyes. I am thinking about the Lord.
And to say I don't have the right to do that (note: no one did) means that you're trying to suggest that my faith-shaped conscience has no place in our politics.
And yet if I go into the voting booth or into public life without my faith-shaped conscience, then I have no conscience, for the Lord said I must love him with my whole heart soul mind and strength. There is nothing left over.
Without faith there is just a faith-shaped void where the conscience ought to be.
And I challenge all the voters of this state who profess to believe in Christ: How can you vote from such a faith-shaped void?
Without the Lord, your vote will not be based upon that faith which ought to shape your life.
And for anyone to suggest that you leave it behind at the door of the voting booth or public service suggests something utterly incompatible with what the Lord ourself -- himself rather-- told us about the meaning of our faith.
This amounted to Keyes throwing himself on the ropes and dropping his gloves: The weird self-righteousness of it all, the oppressiveness of his expressions of faith, the vicious insult to those who don't share his beliefs and, finally, the phony self-pity that he sprinkles over nearly every utterance.
"The Lord ourself" indeed. Calling Dr. Freud.
To begin his response, Obama delivered a few sharp jabs:
I don't need Mr. Keyes lecturing me about Christianity. That's why I have a pastor. That's why I have my Bible. That's why I have my own prayer.
And I don't think any of you are particularly interested in having Mr. Keyes lecture you about your faith.
What you're interested in is in solving problems like jobs and health care and education.
Then came the roundhouse left -- the haymaker that effectively ended the debate in a race that has been over since before it began:
I'm not running to be the minister of Illinois, I'm running to be its United States Senator.
There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." —George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002
---------------------------------- "Give it up for George W. Bush, the best friend international jihad ever had."
posted on October 22, 2004 09:46:55 AM new
THANK YOU again, logansdad! and it's worth repeating,
" don't need Mr. Keyes lecturing me about Christianity. That's why I have a pastor. That's why I have my Bible. That's why I have my own prayer.
And I don't think any of you are particularly interested in having Mr. Keyes lecture you about your faith.
What you're interested in is in solving problems like jobs and health care and education.
Then came the roundhouse left -- the haymaker that effectively ended the debate in a race that has been over since before it began:
I'm not running to be the minister of Illinois, I'm running to be its United States Senator. ""
posted on October 22, 2004 10:38:52 AM new
Crow, exactly my thoughts. Politicians should be worried about problems effecting every American and not forcing their religious beliefs onto people.
I loved the line from Obama:
I don't need Mr. Keyes lecturing me about Christianity. That's why I have a pastor. That's why I have my Bible. That's why I have my own prayer.
If I feel the need to talk to someone about religion, I will visit my priest not go visit a politician.
There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." —George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002
---------------------------------- "Give it up for George W. Bush, the best friend international jihad ever had."
