The intensely pro-life GOP

A reader writes:

Thought you’d be interested in an example of the brave Republicans we have running for office here in Connecticut. I emailed a local state senate candidate to ask his views on four issues: abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and gay marriage. Here’s his response verbatim:

I consider our economy and jobs to be the focus of the election and government for the next several years.

While I have personal opinions about these issues; they are not things that need or should take legislative time over the next number of years.

Wow. So because he doesn’t think these issues are important, I can’t know his positions on these issues, as if they will never come before the legislature because he doesn’t want them to. Never mind that some of these issues HAVE been directly addressed by our legislature in recent years – our legislature recently voted to create gay “marriage” (after being ordered to do so by the state supreme court) and fund ESCR.

Guess I’m staying home on election day.

Only last week I was being told, “Mark is being used by the devil to prevent people from voting republican.” People were urging me to stop writing for the Register and go to my true home, the National Catholic Reporter. Why? Because I was saying we should be *completely* faithful to the Magisterium. If memory serves, the Reporter doesn’t urge us to do that. Instead, it dissents from different parts of Magisterial teaching than the Right dissents from. My point is that we should not dissent, but be docile to the whole of Catholic teaching and not dismiss it (even the prudential judgement stuff) unless we have bloody good reason to. For this, I am arraigned as a heretic by people who cannot grasp the idea that conservative human tradition is not Sacred Tradition, not is it identical to and co-terminous with the Kingdom of God. Similarly, I am astonished at the number of conservatives who seem to sincerely believe that opposition to abortion taketh away the sins of the world and that anything the right wants to do is morally acceptable or at least excusable so long as a politician says he opposes abortion.

I’ve never felt so politically homeless.