Yes, but...

I'd like to respond to Rick's quibble re my post with a classic Catholic response: "yes, but..." (And this will be my last post on Kerry and the election as well!) Rick is absolutely right on the Democrats' record on school choice and now on their attitude toward Catholic health care. Their positions on those issues are of a piece on their position with abortion, and can be added to the reasons why I can't be comfortable with or, more important, welcome in the party. The Republicans obviously are better on school choice as well as abortion. There's my "yes" in response to Rick. But I believe that Republican enthusiasm for religion extends only to the religious right. And "religion" does not equal the "religious right." The religious spectrum (including the Catholic spectrum) is much broader than that, and I am not sure that the kind of Catholic values that Vince is talking about would be welcome under the Republican tent. I suppose the Democrats are somewhat more "statist" than the Republicans (although the Republicans are always delighted to use the state to favor their pet special interests), and they are clearly more inclined to favor a strict seperation of Church and State, but when one evaluates the substance of their policies on whole host of issues that resonate in Catholic Social Thought - race, poverty, war and peace, capital punishment, the dignity of labor, the value of community - they tend to be more consistent with what I and Vince would regard as core Catholic values, even if they derive those policies from entirely secular principles. That being said, I remain as unhappy with each party as I was before -- although Rick has usefully reminded me of some other reasons why I should be unhappy with the Dems.

-- Mark