Joe Biden & the Faith Factor

An Irish Catholic and a Black organizer from the South Side, What a team! Renews my faith in America!

Yeah, they both support limited Abortion and the right to choice, but that is the only fault I can find in this team. They represent the working American spirit and the right to have a meaningful life, AND they both come from simple, everyday lives.

Sure, Obama is from Hawaii and has lived out of the country and his father was a polygamist from Kenya, but that only adds to his sense of diversity. Joe Biden has the roots of the other side of diversity, Irish immigrant descent. And if anybody looked into the history of the plight of the Irish entry in America, they can see that they were treated not much better that dirt.

As an Irish-American Catholic (second generation) of working class origins, it sickens me that he holds himself out as a Catholic. Two things: first, one doesn't go to Catholic church for "time alone;" church is a community moment, especially for Irish Catholics, to whom the Church was the only institution through which they could express their national bond during centuries of oppression. If you want religious meditative time alone, take up yoga. Second, and you know this is coming, a true Catholic cannot condone abortion, let alone take affirmative steps to enable it. Don't bother bringing up war or the death penalty: they're not on the same level. I don't get to define myself as a committed vegan, if I believe it's OK to eat meat and work in a stockyard, however neat or comfortable or convenient I think it might be to be a vegan. 'Catholic' is not a label, it's a belief system, like all religions. You can agree with its, or (as is likely) not, but it is what it is.

The Catholic Chuch in America needs to move on regarding the abortion issue. We Catholics all know that abortion is the wrong thing to do. Conversely, we also know that the sexual molestation of children by some Catholic priests and bishops is the wrong thing to do. Certainly the Church has made every effort to move on regarding this horrible crime. People have a free conscience and should be able to decide for themselves, rather than having a cleric instruct us on the salient issues of life and death. Certainly, I decide for myself on issues of conscience. That is why Iam in the great tradition of the United States of America, and not the mandates of an antiquated European establisment that is too busy peering into the bedrooms of Catholics and not big enough to peer into their own bedrooms lest they realize that all men and women are human, with no person better or worse than the other person