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So I got home this afternoon, making good time back from Swat. It's always weird to get back home at first, because you get so used to college life.

Right now I'm baking raisin bread and waiting for the dough to rise. We're going to my Grandma's tomorrow and my mom wanted me to do some baking for them. It's nice to think that my baking has improved from my first ever attempt to bake bread, which was a fiasco. I was using really bad flour with an insufficient gluten content, which didn't help. I think I also was trying to halve the recipe and forgot to halve the salt. So I ended up with a flat, oversalted frisbee, essentially.

And now, in the great SWIL LJ tradition, a post about religion. Perhaps this will be one of those that generate a gazillion comments.

I'm rather shocked to read in the news that a bishop in Colorado is threatening to deny communion to Catholics who vote for politicians supporting abortion (I'm Catholic). Also my local bishop took a rather strong stance in a similar vein about Governor McGreevey of New Jersey, saying something about him being a bad Catholic for his support of abortion. I'm not sure what to think. For me, in politics, abortion is not the issue that's going to make me favor one candidate over another. And traditionally, Catholics should care about other issues, ie social justice. I just hate it when people in the Catholic Church overpoliticize things.

It was interesting when I was talking to my dad about this. We wound up talking for a bit on power in the Church. (he didn't agree with the Colorado bishop's actions either). One interesting tidbit -- apparently Pope Paul VI or whoever it was that published the encyclical condemning artifical contraception did that over the objections of a lot of bishops, which was something new.

Date: 2004-05-18 11:47 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] meanfreepath.livejournal.com
No comments, and I thought this was going to be a provocative post.

Date: 2004-05-18 08:11 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] obcordate.livejournal.com
[You little moper, don't reply to your own post! Add an Edit: if you want to comment on yourself. And get used to no one posting comments. A lot of people may be interested enough to read what you write, but many people are too lazy to come up with a thoughtful response they feel comfortable with.]

Anyway, I think we discussed this in depth last night, but I don't know if I got to explain my viewpoint on the specific issue too much.

I think that the Colorado bishop is going way too far. What he's really doing is reinterpreting the idea of right and wrong, but more specifically, the idea of sin and its implications. What he's essentially saying is that if you vote for a candidate who is Pro-Choice, you are sinning.

Now, he may be exercising authority he doesn't have, but I think the main problem here is that he's being stupid. The idea of sin is not something to be toyed with so lightly. He's also has an awfully simplistic view of politics.

I guess he must be pretty angry.

But I do not see Bishop Smith's statements in the same light. Of course, he may be a little clumsy in what he says, but realize that this is what the church does all the time. The Pope is a little bit better at this: he usually says something like, "Well, this guy is doing a good job with ____, but I think he is wrong on the idea of ______".

And what you said about Catholics needing to focus more on social justice: I think there are many Pro-Life Catholics would consider the rights of the unborn to be a very big part of the social justice issue.

And the truth is that the Catholic Church, since, well... Rome has been a political as well as religious institution.

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