Gino Piroli – 10/18/04

This page was last updated on October 18, 2004.

Church not a good arena for political fight; Gino Piroli; Beaver County Times; October 18, 2004.

In summary, Mr. Piroli is telling Catholics, “don’t let your religious beliefs get in the way; vote for John Kerry anyway.”

If Mr. Kerry’s beliefs were in sync with Catholic Church teachings, you can bet Mr. Piroli’s opinion piece would have extolled the virtues of following the guidance of Church leaders.

Below is a detailed critique of the relevant portion of the subject column.

“I was also proud when the first Catholic, John F. Kennedy, was elected president without any active involvement by the church. However, with the present church hierarchy and its litmus tests on issues and attempts to coerce Catholics into beliefs, I doubt he would’ve ever gained the support of church leaders.”

[RWC] It’s been a long time since my grade and high school catechism classes, but I’m reasonably sure JFK was not the first Catholic.

Saying JFK “was elected president without any active involvement by the church” is a hoot. Does Mr. Piroli want us to believe Church involvement would have helped JFK? I was only seven at the time, but I remember that if the Church had become involved, JFK could have kissed his 119,000-vote (0.17%) victory good-bye. It seems ridiculous today, but at the time there were morons who tried to convince people that if we elected a Catholic, the Pope would become the de facto President.

I didn’t know any mainstream religion “coerced” its members into beliefs. You believe a religion’s teachings or you don’t. I’m not a religion expert, but I believe most religions don’t advocate “pick and choose” members. That is, the religion’s teachings are not a menu from which members can pick the teachings convenient to follow and ignore the rest. John Kerry wants to pick and choose and that’s a problem in the eyes of the Catholic Church.

“This isn’t a statement about supporting a side of any issue; it’s about practicing Catholics who want their church to be nonpolitical and return to the high principles that embodied the faith and bring back the respect it once had in this nation.”

[RWC] Unless I missed something, any lack of respect for the Catholic Church in recent history has nothing to do with politics.

John Kerry is pro-abortion and pro-homosexual marriage and clearly the Catholic Church doesn’t support these positions. Mr. Piroli views this as a political problem. A bigger problem for Mr. Piroli is that President Bush’s beliefs and Catholic Church teachings on these two issues are in sync.

“They want especially politics out of their houses of worship. Find some other arena to fight your fight.”

[RWC] This last paragraph is incredible coming from a Democrat. Election after election, Democrats “discover” so-called black churches so they can deliver campaign speeches during what are supposed to be religious services. In what has become a common occurrence for John Kerry, this past weekend he delivered a campaign speech at Mt. Olivet Baptist Church in Columbus, OH, during what was supposed to be a worship service. For the record, this violates the tax-exempt status of a church, but Democrats don’t seem to care. You’ll notice Mr. Piroli didn’t condemn this behavior.

When the Poles were fighting Communism, should they have kept “politics” out of the churches?