I have kind of wondered about that. Did the Catholic Church have an issue with him being twice divorced? Or did they just not recognize those previous marriages since they presumably took place in Protestant churches?
But you did Blanche, you did.
This illustrates what you are missing. The problem is that Romney is a Mormon and as far as they are concerned that means he isn’t a true Christian. A Catholic wouldn’t be their first choice but they will gladly take one over a Mormon.
I think that their stance is venomous but let’s call that just my opinion. I think the rhetoric that is embraced by conservatives on immigration is laced with at least mild racism.
The arguments about wanting to enforce immigration laws is just one in a long list of conservative stalking horses.
The Church considers a marriage between a baptized man and a baptized woman to be valid if it was entered into in accordance with civil law even if the parties are not Catholic and even if the marriage was not performed in a Catholic Church. The marriage is considered valid until either one of the spouses dies or the Church issues a Decree of Nullity (annulment).
Newt filed for a Catholic Decree of Nullity on his second marriage in 2002. The grounds were that his wife had been previously married and divorced and, hence, that marriage was never valid.
I can find no clear evidence of an annulment of the first marriage, but it is believed that he had to have had one in order to enter the Church. If he hadn’t received an annulment, his relationship with his third wife would be considered adultery and he would be ineligible to receive the sacraments.
You may want to read this: Communion of Divorced and Remarried. Particularly, note the last paragraph.
I know what you mean! It’s just like when liberals say they want to help the downtrodden, when really they just want to control people’s lives. Don’t you hate it when people do that?
I know you want to believe that your fellow travelers are simply misunderstood but are you seriously saying that there is no tinge of racism coming from the right on the immigration debate?
If you don’t want to be associated with racism, then perhaps you should reconsider who you associate yourself with.
The fact of the matter is that the conservative wing of the Republican party is a coalition of social conservatives (pro-life, anti-gay, slightly racist) and fiscal conservatives (cut taxes, rewrite two centuries of legal interpretation of the constitution, and if we can get small government and less spending out of it, then they’ll take that too) who have been drinking each others cool aid for the last 30 years.
They’re not my fellow travelers, and I’m sure some of them are racists. I just find no value in casting a pall of racism over an amorphous group in a debate like this. It is neither provable nor unprovable.
Of course they’re not your fellow travelers, you just happen to agree on a whole slate of issues and you rush to their defense when someone calls them slightly racist.
“slightly racist” was one of a dozen descriptors I used to describe modern conservatives. It informs their position on all sorts of policy issues.
You remove a few of those descriptors and they stop being the modern day conservatives and start becoming a subset of the modern day conservatives.
For what its worth, I don’t think you fit into the definition I provided. I don’t think you are probably less racist than I am (I try not to be racist but sometimes I have to make a conscious effort), I don’t think you are particularly religious (I am probably more religious than you are), I don’t think you think that fiscal discipline begins and ends with low taxes BUT a general description of the conservatives fairly includes social conservatism which you seem to describe as evangelical.
No he did not say ‘all conservatives are evangelicals’.
Logically and quite obviously the statement that ‘all evangelicals are conservatives’ is NOT the same as ‘all conservatives are evangelicals’.
C’mon, Jesus, make up your mind! Both feet, one big nail, two smaller nails, one for each foot. Gimmee a break, its Friday, I want to get out of here…
I see your point. However, I would consider either statement to be inaccurate. Being an evangelical is not the same as being a political conservative.
I will repeat. When we talk about evangelicals in the political sense we are talking about conservatives.
As Oakminster pointed out, there are black evangelical churches out there but in a political discussion, they are not who we are referring to when we say “evangelicals”
When you talk about evangelicals in the political sense you are talking about conservatives.
You still have it wrong. Neither Jimmy Carter or Tony Campolo are conservatives but they would self-identify as evangelicals. They both have been politically active. Just because the common perception is that being an evangelical automatically makes you a conservative doesn’t make it accurate.
Wiki article on the Evangelical Left.
And an article on Liberal Evangelicalism.
Finally! A coherent thread that stays on point. I’ve been waiting ten years to see this!
I find it unusual too but if things go like it looks like they may in South Carolina the Christian Right voters are ignoring the conclave in Texas and going to give a win to Gingrich, the former Protestant turned Catholic.
It looks more and more like the anointing of Santorum didn’t really do much good.
Well, that’s a horrible mental image.
So when people talk about candidates going after the evangelical vote, they are talking about Jimmy Carter’s voter base?
It doesn’t matter that Jimmy Carter was a self identified evangelical in 1976, he would not be competitive for the evangelical vote today. There has been such a merger if conservative ideas into the evangelical ideology that evangelical=conservative. I don’t see how anyone could argue otherwise.
Waits for the evangelicals to convene a convention to determine who to support in the Democratic primary…