At times I'm ashamed

To visit certain blogs.  By certain I mean CAEI.  I usually stop visiting blogs that bother me that much.  I still go to CAEI for reasons I've already outlined. After several days of posting the usual screeds against conservatives, conservatism, the US government, the US, police, and most other things associated with your typical hard left blogger, the usual 'stop voting and call down a pox on both houses' post has popped up.  There will be more of course.

The reason is because the Bishops (those are the ones we are supposed to listen to) have made it clear on the subject of voting.  Be informed by the Church.  You can't vote to support intrinsic evil.  If a candidate supports intrinsic, grave evil, you shouldn't vote for him or her.  If there is no choice, and the candidates each have their own evils they support, you can take the extraordinary measure of just not voting (and that includes voting for a hopeless or pointless candidate), or vote for the one least like to do the most harm or most likely to impact the greater good.

Pretty simple stuff, huh?  But you see, that's the trick in some areas of Catholicism.  Many Catholics are content doing their best.  Living as they see in light of their faith.  Trying to make sense of things.  Sometimes the Church doesn't help in that.  As Mark himself said years ago, the Catholic Church does have an incorrigible knack for obscuring beautiful - or even useful - truths with confusing terminology.  Or sometimes what I call Catholic unspeak, the never quite getting around to saying it plain and simple.

But there are those, and many seem to dwell in the world of Catholic apologetics and the blogosphere, who aren't content with doing their best.  They seem to want to hedge their approaches by destroying any other view or interpretation.  Sometimes, as in the move to abolish the death penalty, the ball is in your court if that's what you want to see happen.  Sometimes it's a battle over the way something is interpreted.  But in cases like this, where the Church is clear about the acceptability of possible approaches, then what does that proud-to-be-obedient Catholic do who really doesn't agree with the Bishops' teaching?

Well, attack, that's what.  Declare that you have to read between the lines, or guessed what the ninth inner secret circle of what the Bishops really intend to mean actually is.  Or simply say you'll probably burn in Hell, but I'm not saying so (assuming Hell actually exists).

Nonetheless, these posts aren't bad for that.  They're bad because like drawing puss from a wound, they seem to draw out those proud individuals, many Catholic, who proclaim their contempt for America (or Murka as it's known), Democracy, Voting, or anything else that those schmucks called veterans fought and died for over the years.

I try to refrain from commenting, but when the verbal urinating on the country my kids are stuck inheriting gets too bad, and when I realize it's just this sort of asinine attitude that is actually helping us to the very direction everyone complains about, I have to say something.  So I did.  Consider it said.

BTW, kudos to TMLutas, who approaches these posts with a grace and dignity that once defined the blog, but now is a rare exception.