Holy Warriors
Cardinal Ratzinger handed Bush the presidency by tipping the Catholic vote.
Can American democracy survive their shared medieval vision?
By Sidney Blumenthal
04/21/05 "Salon.com"

- - President Bush treated his final visit with Pope John Paul II in Vatican City on June 4, 2004, as a campaign stop. After enduring a public rebuke from the pope about the Iraq war, Bush lobbied Vatican officials to help him win the election. "Not all the American bishops are with me," he complained, according to the National Catholic Reporter. He pleaded with the Vatican to pressure the bishops to step up their activism against abortion and gay marriage in the states during the campaign season.

About a week later, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent a letter to the U.S. bishops, pronouncing that those Catholics who were pro-choice on abortion were committing a "grave sin" and must be denied Communion. He pointedly mentioned "the case of a Catholic politician consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws" -- an obvious reference to John Kerry, the Democratic candidate and a Roman Catholic. If such a Catholic politician sought Communion, Ratzinger wrote, priests must be ordered to "refuse to distribute it." Any Catholic who voted for this "Catholic politician," he continued, "would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion." During the closing weeks of the campaign, a pastoral letter was read from pulpits in Catholic churches repeating the ominous suggestion of excommunication. Voting for the Democrat was nothing less than consorting with the forces of Satan, collaboration with "evil."

In 2004 Bush increased his margin of Catholic support by 6 points from the 2000 election, rising from 46 to 52 percent. Without this shift, Kerry would have had a popular majority of a million votes. Three states -- Ohio, Iowa and New Mexico -- moved into Bush's column on the votes of the Catholic "faithful." Even with his atmospherics of terrorism and Sept. 11, Bush required the benediction of the Holy See as his saving grace. The key to his kingdom was turned by Cardinal Ratzinger.

With the College of Cardinals' election of Ratzinger to the papacy, his political alliances with conservative politicians can be expected to deepen and broaden. Under Benedict XVI, the church will assume a consistent reactionary activism it has not had for two centuries. And the new pope's crusade against modernity has already joined forces with the right-wing culture war in the United States, prefigured by his interference in the 2004 election.

Europe is far less susceptible than the United States to the religious wars that Ratzinger will incite. Attendance at church is negligible; church teachings are widely ignored; and the younger generation is least observant of all. But in the United States, the Bush administration and the right wing of the Republican Party are trying to batter down the wall of separation between church and state. Through court appointments, they wish to enshrine doctrinal views on the family, women, gays, medicine, scientific research and privacy. The Republican attempt to abolish the two-centuries-old filibuster -- the so-called nuclear option -- is only one coming wrangle in the larger Kulturkampf.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8633.htm

WHAT A BLOODY JOKE THESE TWO HYPOCRITS ARE :
THE POPE
SAVE THE FETUS KILL THE CHILD
NEVER ABORTION BUT WAR IS OKAY DONT MIND HOW MANY YOU KILL THERE
HE APPROVES AN EXECUTIONER
AND DISSAPPROVES OF A WAR HERO, WHO BOUGHT THE AMERICAN VETERANS HOME FROM VIETNAM MUCH EARLIER WITH HIS 1971 WINTER SPEECH TO THE SENATE
THE WORLD GONE MAD

MR BUSH
152 EXECUTIONS AS GOVERNOR OF TEXAS

I WONDER HOW MANY COULD HAVE BEEN INNOCENT: TO BAD TO LATE NOW

Although he said he was anguished by the decision, in an interview in Talk magazine, writer Tucker Carlson described Bush mimicking the woman's final plea for her life. "'Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, 'don't kill me.'" - Time Magazine

I think it is nothing short of unbelievable that the governor of a major state running for president thought it was acceptable to mock a woman he decided to put to death." - Republican Candidate Gary Bauer
It must be said that George W. Bush is not responsible for the increased pace of executions, nor did he create Texas' arcane clemency procedures. But it cannot be denied that Bush has steadfastly opposed changing the clemency procedures in the face of stinging criticism by the courts.
Source: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/articles/0,3266,39180,00.html

This website is run by private citizens and is not affiliated in any way with any political campaign. It is meant solely to voice opposition against capital punishment, using George W. Bush and Texas as an example.

http://www.bushkills.com/record.html

http://www.truthinjustice.org/govdeath.htm

http://www.commondreams.org/views/020900-105.htm

This is the reason the Church lost this Catholic: "HYPOCRACY"

SHEAR UNADULTERATED HYPOCRACY\

JOHN KERRY:

Flashback: A Rare Broadcast of John Kerry's 1971 Speech Against the Vietnam War Before the Senate:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/30/1510259&mode=thread&tid=25

YOU DECIDE