Isn’t a US church that tells its flock how to vote in danger of losing its tax exemption?
What about a church that tells its members how not to vote, or that, in effect, tells its members not to vote at all?
Actually, what with the recent rise in heating oil prices, economy measures have made hell a quite comfortable 75°.
Actually I’d hold on to those thermal undies because Hell will freeze over before any of that bulls**t comes true.
Everyone bring ice skates, I’ve got a thermos of cocoa waiting.
Ah well, as Blackadder says:
*Edmund has been made the Archbishop of Canterbury, but if the nobles give their land to the chuch, his fathe the king is likely to have him killed, ahhh, just watch Blackadder, tis good 
Trosch is a priest from Alabama who had his parish stripped from him by his bishop, for among other things, a belief in justifiable homicide against doctors who perform abortions.
He’s “Catholic” in the sense that “Jews for Jesus” are “Jewish”.
So…um…let’s see here, it’s not fornication if you have sex upon more than one occasion with a person of the same sex?
I’m going to Hell?
Good deal, I hear it’s a dry heat.
Of interest (and I deleted the news story from my cache last week) is the Roman Catholic Bishop of Colorado Springs’ excommunication of all persons who knowingly vote for “a candidate who endorses abortion” – i.e., targeting John Kerry.
(Debate by Catholics on another board pointed out that Mr. Bush endorses abortion in limited circumstances, which means that effectively, no Catholic in that diocese may vote for either major party in November without incurring automatic excommunication.)
I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints
the sinners are much more fun…
Actually, what’s interesting is what the local independent paper pointed out. The Catholic Church is also officially opposed to the war in Iraq, yet no one has talked about denying communion to politicians who support it. It made several other points, but I’m afraid I can’t link directly to the column. Christ gave instructions about looking after the poor, yet that seems to have been neatly overlooked. In fact, supporting one way of supporting the poor, a welfare state, gets you sent to hell.
Oh well. If I’m going to hell, which may happen – there are things on that list I’ve done which I don’t have any intention of repenting of – then so be it. I figure I’ll have friends there I probably won’t notice, and being stuck with the kind of people who’d go to that kind of heaven for all eternity might be a form of punishment in and of itself! ;D
CJ
Here’s a much more moderate example of religious types meddling in the electoral process:
The response of the British Nationalist "We’re not racists, honest " Party on Radio 4 the other day was priceless. Paraphrasing from memory, it was something like: “Well, God made all the different races and placed them in different parts of the world, so actually advocating a multi-racial society is spitting in the face of God.”
:wally
Of further interest is that the U.S. Catholic bishops (and the pontiff) have taken a firm stand against the death penalty .
The bishops have also taken a stand against the war in Iraq…saying that it does not qualify for the “Just War” teaching.
So…by the bishop’s reasoning…Bush & Co. should be off limits as well.
Of course…the Colorado Springs bishop is one of those “cafeteria bishops” that can pick which teachings are worth excommunicating for. 