My Church gave a sermon yesterday on voting

[Beer Snob-50]

At my Catholic Church yesterday, our priest gave a sermon on voting. When he gave the topic of his talk, I was ready to walk at the slightest provocation. Mercifully, the gist of what he said was: Listen, I know you have been told by many that a vote for a certain canidate means you should never receive communion, but I am here to tell you that God gave you free will and a brain. Use it!! Both canidates hae anti-Catholic positions but you should look at them as a whole (or an a-hole in the case of Bush...my position)and vote for the person you want.

I thanked him for his talk after Mass and he smiled and said, thanks you are one of the first to tell me that.

[TexasLady]

1. sounds like your priest

deserves many kudos..wish there were more like him out there. hopefully more will thank him as well.

[Beer Snob-50]

4. I doubt it!

I went to the last Mass of the day yesterday. It doesn't sound like many if anyone else thanked him. He is a younger priest also.

[Drifter]

2. I stopped going to my church ...

about a month ago when the pastor essentially endorsed AWOL.

He was speaking about the "issues" (Abortion and Terrorism). Then he said, "I can't tell you who to vote for (vote for bush)". The "vote for bush" part was said like subliminal guy on SNL. It was truly disgusting.

A co-worker and I contacted the local news, and got him interviewed. He (the pastor) claimed it was said in jest (which is total bullshit). If he said something like "Vote for Perot", it would have been funny.

(On Edit) BTW - this is a non-demoninational community church. I thought it was progressive, but due to the overall acceptance of the endorsment, I'm not sure what the hell they are.

Cheers
Drifter

[pagerbear]

3. Mine too.

The paster at the Congregationalist (UCC) church in Greenwich, CT, where I sing said outright he thinks it's wrong for the clergy to tell you how to vote. He urged everyone to carefully consider the issues and vote as their consciences dictate. (I wish he had gone further to suggestion people consider the sources for their information as well.) In the parking lot one sees both W and Kerry bumper stickers.

His topic was "No unimportant people". I would like for people to consider which people are unimportant and which important to *, and also which to Kerry, before voting.

[Beer Snob-50]

5. Isn't the UCC

more of a liberal church anyway? I believe they tend to be more accepting of everyone.

[pagerbear]

7. In general, yes.

This particular congregation is "open and affirming", and the CT <the UCC equivalent of diocese> just had a big to-do about same-sex marriage, basically refusing to ban them and leaving the decision up to congregations and clergy to decide on a case by case basis.

[The White Tree]

6. At my church I thought the same thing was going to happen.

Our new priest was there at the church and greeting visitors but we had another older priest I had never seen before doing the service. During the homily I waited and waited to see whether he would say anything. Thankfully, he never came out and blatantly said anything about the election. However, during the month of November we will be honoring those who have died in our parish by blessing a book inscribed with their names and when he was talking about that he said something like, "We do this to honor life in all it's aspects".

I am not sure if that was his way of interjecting what he thought subtly or if he had been instructed to say more and this is all he felt he should do or whether it was unintentional.

[koopie57]

8. my pastor asked me

if I was ever coming back to the church. I told him no, I doubted if I would be back. I tried to explain to him but he was almost making fun that I wasn't comfortable there cuz I'm a democrat. He said you not coming cuz we are republican. I said you don't understand and he said no he didn't and I said that was too bad and left it at that. How dare they think they can say all this dirty stuff on tv and in the newspapers about how we are baby killers, etc. and expect it to be forgotten on Sunday mornings. And it is not that they are republican, it is that they think like republicans.

[tanyev]

9. My pastor did a pretty good job yesterday.

Before the prayers, just talked about praying for the entire country and everyone should vote as their conscience dictated. I did get a little edgy, though, when he said something about accepting whatever the results are and supporting whoever it is. What if the initial results are illegal?

I've also been overhearing similar sentiments as I sit in polling places doing poll watching. Lots of people talking about how we just can't have a replay of what happened in 2000. Well, since Bushco is still one of the parties, I think some sort of legal fight is highly probable. Maybe they are even counting on those kind of sentiments helping them.

I don't care if it gets ugly. I support John Kerry 100% in whatever legal battles he thinks are necessary.