Vote for this guy. Go to heaven.
(I hear he's throwing virgins into the deal.)
"Authority has simply been abused too long in the Catholic church, and for many people it just becomes utterly stupid and intolerable to have to put up with the kind of jackassing around that is imposed in God's name. It is an insult to God himself and in the end it can only discredit all idea of authority and obedience. There comes a point where they simply forfeit the right to be listened to."
Thomas Merton in a letter to W. H. Ferry. Dated January 19, 1967, 23 months before Merton's death
San Diego Catholic Church flyer says voting for Democrats is a mortal sin
A Google image shows San Diego's Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, where parishioners received strongly worded anti-Democratic messages in the church's weekly newsletter.
(GOOGLE)
Flyers inserted into a San Diego Catholic church’s newsletter told its members they would go to hell if they voted for Democrats, according to a report.
The bulletin of the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church has included two warnings in the past month invoking eternal damnation and calling Hillary Clinton a Satanic instrument, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego condemned the messages, and the church in the city’s Old Town serves as a polling site on Election Day. Yet the screeds appeared in the bulletin Sunday and weeks earlier between event announcements and requests of prayer for the sick.
“It is a mortal sin to vote Democrat,” the Oct. 16 flyer said in English and Spanish.
Democratic policies toward abortion rights, same-sex marriage, assisted suicide, human cloning and embryonic stem cell research will doom the party’s supporters, according to the flyer.
It advised parishioners that “immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell.”
The more recent rant showed up in an article entitled “Voting Catholic” that listed 10 sins that have “enslaved” American society, according to the local newspaper. The so-called sins included immigration, gun control and anti-hate efforts against homophobia and Islamophobia.
“We are called by politicians such as Hillary Clinton, deplorables,” the article said. It also echoed a talking point of right wing conspiracy theorists about the hidden impact of the late community organizer Saul Alinsky on politics.
“The devil does this through tactics outlined by Saul Alinsky with the outcome as Hillary Clinton stated ‘And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed,’ to draw us away from God’s teachings regarding the sanctity of life to those of the world and its prince,” the bulletin said.
Clinton had actually made the comments while discussing global women’s rights at the annual Women in the World Summit, according to the Union-Tribune. She was describing obstacles to education and health care for women worldwide, not abortion or gun control.
A stock image shows a polling place. Immaculate Conception also serves as a polling site on Election Day.
(JUPITERIMAGES/GETTY IMAGES)
Immaculate Conception pastor Father Richard Perozich said an outside group had written the Oct. 16 flyer and inserted it into the newsletter before he reviewed it. The group "went a little beyond" the approved message of the flyer and he does teach parishioners that they will go to hell if they support Democrats, Perozich told the Daily News.
He said he had written the second article but noted that it didn't call specifically for a vote for or against Clinton. He acknowledged that some officials at the Diocese may disagree with his views on topics like immigration.
"The fact that somebody took this and then made it public took it out of context," Perozich said. "I would never tell anyone to 'vote this' or 'vote that."
Diocese spokesman Kevin Eckery provided a message Bishop Robert McElroy sent to priests and pastors in the Diocese on Thursday following the front-page story in the local newspaper.
"Let me stress again that while we have a moral role to play in explaining how Catholic teaching relates to certain public policy issues, we must not and will not endorse specific candidates, use parish media or bulletins to favor candidates or parties through veiled language about selectively chosen issues, or engage in partisan political activity of any kind," McElroy said.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton spoke at a campaign rally in Tempe, Ariz., on Wednesday. A message in the church's bulletin accused her of being an instrument of Satan.
(ROSS D. FRANKLIN/AP)
McElroy had delivered a lecture Tuesday at the University of San Diego noting the church’s nonpartisan stance. Eckery called the timing "ironic" but said McElroy had not learned of the flyer or the article prior to the speech.
The Catholic Church’s positions on issues such as abortion, poverty, the environment, assisted suicide and immigration do not translate into counseling support for one party or another, McElroy said, according to a transcript provided by the diocese.
“It is sometimes said that this tradition of neutrality in partisan elections springs from the tax status of the Church, or from a desire to avoid divisiveness within Catholic communities. But in reality its foundation is far deeper,” McElroy said.
“It is a core teaching of Catholic ecclesiology that the sanctification of the world falls primarily to lay women and men. And it is a core teaching of Catholic moral theology that it is deeply within the conscience of the individual believer that key moral decisions must be made.”
Clinton’s chances of winning the state’s 55 electoral votes stood at 99.9% on Thursday, according to the most recent forecast by FiveThirtyEight. The site projects Clinton to beat her Republican opponent Donald Trump by more than 20 percentage points in California next Tuesday.
Yet Clinton trails Trump among Catholics nationwide by 20 points, according to the latest figures from the Investor's Business Daily TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence tracking poll. The overall national poll showed Trump ahead of Clinton by a tenth of a percentage point Thursday.
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