@edgarblythe,
I must say the South Carolina priest-I never even knew they had enough Catholics in South Carolina to make up a single congregation-is politically astute. As has been illustrated in this thread.
He says that Catholics cannot receive Communion if they vote for a pro-choice candidate. Then a lot of people on message boards not only come out against that, but says the whole notion of God is ridiculous. Since the overwhelming majority of Americans do believe in God, that situates the Catholic Church as being God's defender in this debate.
A pretty nice position to find oneself in, considering this Church has spent most of the last twenty years apologizing and minimizing the enormous amount of priests who have been molesting the children of the parishoners.
Over the course of the last few decades, the influence of the Catholic Church has declined from the point where it once was able to prevent divorce and birth control from being legalized down to the point today where a greater percentage of the Catholic population voted for the pro-choice candidate than the non-Catholic population. This edict and others similar to it by the South Carolina priest is designed to regain prestige for the Catholic Church by positioning them as the main defenders against the enemies of Christianity in the public mind.
So far it hasn't worked, but if people keep saying the issue is whether God exists instead of whether this constitutes an intrusion of a Church into the political arena where it does not belong, it just might.
