But the nature of partisanship in America has changed in recent years. The parties have become fundamentalist religions. The Democratic party hierarchy has made extreme abortion policy a primary doctrine and has demonstrated that a price will be paid for apostasy. For Democratic politicians, the penalty is a full-on effort to end one’s political career. It is enforced by abortion groups that provide plenty of campaign workers and form super PACs with huge amounts of money. These groups spent over $6 million to campaign against me [Daniel Lipinski] in the 2018 and 2020 Democratic primaries. The party hierarchy enforces the doctrine both publicly and surreptitiously. In the 2020 primary, five presidential candidates endorsed my main primary opponent to signal to activists that they rejected pro-life Democrats. Behind the scenes, local party officials worked against me and Democratic campaign vendors refused to work for me.
I assume that most Catholic politicians sincerely desire eternal life and that if they had to choose between heaven and political power, they would choose the former. But politicians, like most people, don’t like to have to make tradeoffs. We try to have it all, which leads us to look for loopholes and muddy the truth. When I was in office, I saw clearly the conflict between the party’s extreme abortion doctrine and the Church’s doctrine on life. I knew that I had to make a stark choice that would endanger my political career. But many people want to confuse Catholic politicians about abortion and Catholic doctrine in general (including individuals and institutions within the Catholic Church herself). Unfortunately, this is often easy to do, because most Catholics have been poorly catechized. The “Statement of Principles” demonstrates the reigning confusion.
Random stuff I find interesting and you may not.
