Catholics make up 25% of the American population. Everybody, everywhere in America, lives with, works with and knows Catholic Church members. I do. I am a Registered nurse. They are mostly women. Maybe you consider it a real profession or not. If it is a profession, it is a bootstrap one. Nurses don't usually come from families with money, status or influence. Lots of minorities. A lot of immigrants. A lot of people working their way up from poverty. Real people, not too sophisticated but plenty smart. People who want what they do to make a difference. I don't want to throw superlatives around but Registered nurses are pretty good people. If you want to use one word that best describes what they are, I would suggest the word focused. At any given time, they tend to be aware of their situation and the potential challenges and have a plan to deal with them. It's a good way to be, if you're a nurse and not bad, no matter who you are. I would have to say that all nurses, because of the nature of the work, give a lot of consideration to the spiritual aspects of life. How could they not. Some may be atheists, but not casual ones. Most are religious. A lot of them are Catholics. I grew up with Catholic kids. I knew a lot of Catholics before I became an RN but probably most of what I know about the nature of Catholicism comes from my interactions and friendships with Catholic nurses over the years. When you work with somebody in nursing, you get a pretty good idea of the kind of person that they are, by the way they practice and handle situations that come up. Nurses can be reserved and reticent when dealing with patients and families. That's because what they say in that role can affect people in major ways for the rest of their lives. Conversely, when communicating with each other, they are usually brutally and graphically honest, for the same reason. This spills over into conversations about friends, family, philosophy, politics, religion, sexual relationships, everything. It's not something that you turn off and on. Not all of the Catholic nurses I have known are devout but most of them go to mass and make sure their families do too. They take the sacraments. A lot of them send their kids to parochial schools. I think they are the kind of people who are the backbone of the Catholic Church in America.
The Catholic Church has now drawn a line in the sand over the issue of Abortion. Over the years they have seen their influence over the personal lives of the faithful diminish and fade away in many ways. Many traditional virtues that are core to Catholicism have been modified to fit the lifestyles of the faithful in America. Chastity has taken on some pretty elastic qualities. Divorce does not have the same definition it once had. I can honestly say that I have never met a Catholic woman, my contemporary or younger, who did not believe in and practice, some form of artificial birth control, who was not also completely celibate. I have not met one who wished their daughter to become a nun or who believed that priests should not marry. In traditional Catholicism, charity is emphasized over the acquisition of personal wealth. The Catholics I know believe that the welfare of the family is the most important concern of it's members and the acquisition of wealth is important to family welfare. You may be a Catholic but you are a Mendez or Reilly or Okuli, first. The sons or daughters of affluent parishioners who, well into adulthood, do not find constructive purpose in life or start a family of their own, will not now find censure from within the church. That is an issue for the parents to address. I could go on.
The Bishops of America have been mobilized by Rome to address their flocks directly on the subject of abortion. The Bishops have put pressure on the diocesan priests to do the same. American Catholics have been put on notice that they are to regard any politicians views, public or private, on abortion as the primary motivation to vote for or against them, overriding all others. All others.
Nurses talk about dead babies. Like soldiers talk about close combat. Like sailors talk about fire, flooding and collision at sea. It's one of those things that happens and you need to know about. Nobody likes dead babies but it happens. When the subject of dead babies comes up, so does abortion. Nurses don't much like abortion. Everybody dies. Sometimes it's a blessing. Abortion isn't like that. You'd think nurses and especially Catholic nurses would be uniformly opposed to abortion. You'd be wrong. One of the first things you learn in clinical practice is that your values, as obviously right as they may seem to you are not shared universally. People make their own life decisions. Then they live with the consequences. If you force your beliefs on others, it's you who live with the consequences.
If Catholics vote as a block against politicians on the pro choice side of the abortion issue, Barack Obama will not become President. The Democratic majority in Congress will be gone. State legislatures from coast to coast will be reconfigured. This is not conjecture or editorial comment. There are more than enough Catholics to make this happen. Seems like a pretty simple equation to me.
If we wake up on Wednesday morning and Barack Obama is elected President, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in America will have been dealt a cruel blow. It will be a rebuke by their parishioners to, once and for all, stay out of the secular life of the nation. I don't know why the Churchmen have chosen this particular place and time to make their stand but they have. Maybe they feel they have no choice. Maybe they see the end coming and want to pare the church down to the genuinely obedient. They will insist it was not their choice to make but God's will. Whichever. It's done.
The Church has bet much of what authority it has left, on this issue. Soon the American Church may be like Europe's. A place to go for baptisms, weddings, funerals and history class field trips. It's a shame. Religion has a place in the life of America and the American tradition but freedom of religion is even more important. Choosing to do God's will and being told what God's will is, are not the same thing. If the Catholic Church is to survive, the old poofter in the white mu mu and red slippers needs to learn that.
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