the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Jun 21, 2004
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued a statement that any politician who supports a woman’s right to an abortion is "cooperating in evil," and threatened to deny Catholic politicians of participation in some church sacraments.
Some bishops have already said they would not give communion to Kerry or to other politicians such as Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm or New Jersey Governor James McGreevey. One bishop declared that anyone who VOTES for a politician who supports abortion rights, gay marriage, euthanasia or stem cell research should not receive communion.
The Conference of Bishops said that they did not want communion to be reduced to a political issue; that they were just upholding their "canonical and pastoral principles."
Not a political issue? Of course it is–and they are the ones trying to use it to ram their backward views down everyone’s throats via politicians they control.
In other words, they want to create a theocracy. They want the Church to dictate laws and policies, just as it did in the Middle Ages.
This kind of decision-making based on religious doctrine can only stand in the way of a truly rational society. Stem cell research, for example, promises to open up a whole series of treatments for all sorts of conditions, from diabetes to lupus, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, to paralysis from various causes. But the Catholic Church and other religious leaders oppose stem cell research because it uses cells that only by falsification can be called a fetus.
The Catholic Church is not alone in this stance. It is joined by a whole range of fundamentalist Protestant groups, which not only share their backward views on abortion, gay marriage or stem cell research, but also seek to force those views on the whole of society.
They are all trying to turn the clock backward 250 years to before the time when the "rationalists" who argued for a secular society helped lead bourgeois revolutions in France and in the United States–then struggled to make sure the society they helped establish would be free from religious control.