Wednesday, February 23, 2022

My change as a Catholic Republican to a Catholic Democrat

Today I did something I thought I would never do. I officially changed my party affiliation to Democrat by voting in my first Democratic primary. I was asked, "Julie, how can you be a Catholic and do such a thing? It's for the same reason 60% of the American Catholic Church, 76% of Hispanic Catholics/Christians, and 95% of Black Catholics/Christians are Democrats and never vote Republican, because we believe (especially at this point) the current "Trumpified" GOP abuses and takes more life than an abortion rate which has declined steadily over the last 50 years. Rev. Billy Graham was a Democrat until the day he died in 2018. I am also changing my party affiliation because the right-wing of the Republican party has taken a small number of Bible verses which talk about women being quiet, sexuality, and allowing women to choose, and they have waged war on the poor and the disenfranchised who are supported and defended by 2000 Bible verses and Catholic Social Teaching. So, let's look at the moral examination of conscience I went through to come to this conclusion. And no, I did not get my information from liberal media but by watching all of this unfold over the last five years. I had these facts checked by several experts in political science.
If it's possible to end abortion without resorting to the actions of January 6th, without destroying the lives of the mothers in poverty who carry the unborn babies, without destroying lives at the border and ripping children away from their parents, without withholding healthcare for decades from vulnerable people, without withholding maternity and family medical leave, without flippantly handling COVID in a deadly way resulting in over 900,000 deaths, without spreading deadly conspiracy theories and misinformation through sources like Fox News, without destroying the environment, without increasing gun violence, without harming our education system resulting in harming children, without deliberately fighting against scientific and historical facts resulting in harm and death, without withholding a living wage, without elevating racism to dangerous levels, without increasing the death penalty, without destroying the lives of the disabled, LBGTQ people, and their families, without wreaking the witness of the Church via Trumpism, without increasing the abortion rate from 2018-2021, without destroying our democracy, without demonizing anyone who is unlike most Americans and most Christians/Catholics in the country, and without abusing people into voting for all of these evils collectively in place of fruitlessly ending abortion, then I might listen. But see, the hard-political white right married to parts of the American white Church has proven over 50 years of power that they cannot abolish abortion without destroying everything and everyone else other than themselves and their own kind. And in addition, the hard right calls the basic Common Good of society socialism and communism. This is why I'm a Democrat now and why I attend a Hispanic Catholic Church which is more Democrat than Republican.

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