A Jesuit hit piece but dasting nonetheless
https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2021/01/12/capitol-riot-congress-trump-catholic-bishops-james-martin-239697
How Catholic Leaders Helped Give Rise to Violence at the U.S. Capitol -
At the end of last August, the Rev. James Altman, the pastor of St. James the Less Parish in La Crosse, Wis., uploaded a video to YouTube that has been viewed over 1.2 million times. The video’s title voiced what an increasing number of Catholic bishops and priests were saying in the run-up to the presidential election: “You Cannot be a Catholic and a Democrat.”
“Their party platform absolutely is against everything the Catholic Church teaches,” said Father Altman, as music from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 swelled in the background. “So just quit pretending that you’re Catholic and vote Democrat. Repent of your support of that party and its platform or face the fires of hell.”
(Full disclosure: Father Altman referred to me as a “hyper-confusion spreading heretic” in the same video.)
Incorrect moral reasoning -
There are traditional restrictions on Catholic clergy endorsing political candidates. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ document on voting, “Faithful Citizenship,” states that the church should refrain from endorsing parties or candidates. As Pope Francis has said, the church is called “to form consciences, not to replace them.” More bluntly, a Vatican directive from 1994 says that a priest “ought to refrain from actively engaging himself in politics.”
The response of the local bishop to Father Altman’s video, however, was mixed. Bishop William Patrick Callahan released a written statement saying that while the tone was so “angry and judgmental” that it caused scandal, he understood “the undeniable truth that motivates [Father Altman’s] message.” He added that penalties might be applied if Father Altman did not respond to the bishop’s “fraternal correction.”
"The U.S. bishops’ document on voting states that the church should refrain from endorsing parties or candidates. As Pope Francis has said, the church is called “to form consciences, not to replace them.”
In response, Father Altman simply doubled down, in a follow-up video titled “Liberal Catholics are Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing.” Later, he compared the tactics of people on the “left” to those of Nazis in one video interview and ratcheted up his comments on the LifeSite News show “Mother Miriam Live,” in an episode titled “If you vote for Biden you’re voting for the murder of babies.”
A few weeks later, the Rev. Ed Meeks, the pastor of Christ the King Church in Towson, Md., preached a homily, also uploaded to YouTube, under the title “Staring into the Abyss,” in which he declared the Democratic Party the “party of death.”
Father Meeks’s video, which has received over two million views, was warmly commended by Bishop Joseph Strickland, of Tyler, Tex., who tweeted it out to his 40,000 followers with the message “Every Catholic should listen to this wise and faithful priest.” Earlier, Bishop Strickland had endorsed Father Altman’s video as well, tweeting, “As the Bishop of Tyler I endorse Fr Altman’s statement in this video. My shame is that it has taken me so long. Thank you Fr Altman for your COURAGE. If you love Jesus & His Church & this nation…pleases [sic] HEED THIS MESSAGE.” Father Altman later appeared as a guest on the premiere episode of “The Bishop Strickland Show” on LifeSite News.
Both videos focused on abortion. If a candidate was pro-choice, the priests said, then a Catholic could never vote for him or her because abortion is an intrinsic evil. Bishop Thomas Daly of Spokane summed up this approach in one interview by asking, “If abortion is intrinsically evil…how can Catholics vote for a candidate like Biden?”
This, however, does not adequately reflect church teaching, which leaves the final choice on voting to an individual’s formed conscience, recognizing that there are many important issues that a voter might have to consider. As the U.S.C.C.B. states in “Faithful Citizenship”:
There may be times when a Catholic who rejects a candidate’s unacceptable position even on policies promoting an intrinsically evil act may reasonably decide to vote for that candidate for other morally grave reasons. One “morally grave reason” would be if the pro-life candidate were unhinged, unfit to govern or somehow posed a threat to the republic—as President Trump confirmed he was by inciting a mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol, causing a stunningly violent riot that left five people dead.
…