" Dan McConchie is our pro-life friend many will recall was involved in a terrible motorcycle accident 14 months ago, leaving him wheelchair bound. He's now back at work full time, praise God."

Oh how wonderful! Praise the Lord for he is good.

Good for Dan......

I assume these voter guides will be for national candidates or will they inlcude local candidates as well?

Is $500,000 enough? That's about $10,000 per state. I think you would need about $50,000,000 or about $0.50 for each registered voter?

The 6,000,000 voters guides should go to swing voters and independent candidates where they would have the most impact. The election is going to be determined by a few million voters only.

The problem is many if these voter guides end up in churches where people are already pro-life and where most swing voters are not.

With that in mind, wouldn't it be better to spend $500,000 on an internet site and then directing the 100,000,000 or so registerd voters to the site in the hopes that you'll get at least 10 to 20 million hits?

Is this $500k meant to be effective or just a justification for collecting donations or a PR move? I'm on a number of minstry boards and in no way would I support this kind of expediture for such an ineffective campaign. Just asking the question as in analyzing it with an engineer's mind, doesn't seem to make much sense in terms of overall effectivenss and efficiency.

Jill,

Why don't you post a voter guide of all major candidate including Presidential, Senatorial and Congressional candidates?

And I am sure there are organizations in each state that already do this. Why not link to them all? For example: In AZ there's www.azpolicy.org.

Why waste the money on duplicated effort?

It's just seems like the pro-life movement is so fragmented and unorganized and as a result very ineffective. It needs a real leader.

Churches with 501(c)(3) tax exemptions should probably check with the IRS before agreeing to distribute these. I was just having a conversation with other members of a pro-life organization this afternoon about what information we can and cannot legally put on the website. Basically, 501(c)(3) organizations can't be involved in election campaigns at all, and can't endorse candidates either directly or implicitly (by, for instance, publishing a list of candidates who agree with our views on our site).

If you are giving information about candidates, issues and where they stand without endorsing them I am pretty sure churches can distribute.

My church has always handed out voter guides.

From past rulings about voter guides, it all depends on the way it's presented.

For instance, if an organization's primary political concerns are issues x, y, and z, and the voter guide covers issues a-z, it's considered a neutral educational effort and is probably OK. But if the voter guide only covers issues x-z, you're considered to have picked those issues for the purpose of saying one candidate is closer to your views (and more acceptable to your organization) than another, and that's been held to be a violation in the past. It's considered an implicit endorsement.

Jen R:

Voter guides are not a problem for churches as long as they don't endorse particular candidates. Again, this is a reason why 501c3 legislation needs to be repealed as the government has made a law concerning religion and the practice thereof. It's uncontitutional and the battlw will begine September 28 witht he Allied Defense Fund. Hopefully it will become a hoit campaign issue.

Cathi Herrod at the Center for AZ Policy is an expert at this.

I suggest you give her a call.

www.azpolicy.org

"The problem is many if these voter guides end up in churches where people are already pro-life and where most swing voters are not."
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Unfortunately, not all people who go to church are pro-life.

In my parish alone, I have seen people wearing Obama shirts and cars with Obama stickers. In one parish activity...our sign with "You can't be Catholic and be pro-abortion" was stolen and our sign-up sheet was filled with hate message.

...And our Parish is just 1 mile from the Aurora PP abortuary.

That is horrible, RSD. Sick.

Very true RSD. My sister's parish in an Archdiocese has a member that had a 'HILARY for President' Sticker on her car. I can't remember if she was asked to remove the sticker, but I think this woman was even involved with the parish for Mass related liturgy (I can't remember, my brother in law told me this months ago).

There are liberal parishes around this country that NEED these voter guides. Especially for Catholics who aren't very educated in their faith (on the issues).

OBAMA is very slick.......reminds me of the serpent in the 'Garden of Eden' with Eve.

Can't wait until Catholic Churches start actually enforcing their excommunication of pro-choicer's. Empty pews, shuttered churchs and oh yeah, lots of shuttered schools. And if they include BC in that excommunicated group - the Catholic Church will be reduced to a handful of zealots.

Which is why they won't - they are too conscious of where their paychecks and cushy priests' abodes come from.

So...Good luck with that one.

"Can't wait until Catholic Churches start actually enforcing their excommunication of pro-choicer's."

I'm not sure what you mean here. Those who particiopate in abortions, not pro-choicers, are excommunicated latae sententia, which means automatically. Another condition that must be met is that those who participate in an abortion must know that there is the canonical penalty of excommunication. So those who fit the bill are excommunicated already. This means that they can not participate in the sacraments. They can however still attend mass so I"m not sure what you mean. Pro-choicers are not excommunicated, just those who participate in an abortion and know that the canonical penalty for doing so is excommunication.

Well, those 'Catholics' who openly support abortion should NOT present themselves for Communion, as they are turning their backs on Jesus in the Eucharist by doing so.

RSD:

I think you will always find a small percentage of so-called beleivers in every church who support abortion. Of course, non-believer pro-aborts would have you believe that the percentage is greater than it actually is.

I attend one of the most pro-life churches in America, Phoenix First Assembly and there are even some pro-deathers that attend there. The Bible calls people like this "wolves in sheep's clothing".

Typcailly people like this are there for other than pure motives, they don't know the Bible and they don't know the church's teaching. As God's Word so clearly teaches, "it is not those who say Lord, Lord that will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but those that do the will of my Father in heaven".

God knows who is in error and who is in rebelllion. Ultimately, He decides.

""it is not those who say Lord, Lord that will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but those that do the will of my Father in heaven".
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Amen to that, HisMan.

"Especially for Catholics who aren't very educated in their faith (on the issues)."
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I can think of one, right now, who should have a copy of this guide...

Anybody wanna take a guess? (*LOL*)

Is this the voter's guide that is put out by Catholic Answers?

HisMan:

Voter guides are not a problem for churches as long as they don't endorse particular candidates.

I agree, but there's more to endorsing (as far as the law is concerned) than just saying "Vote for Candidate Smith". Not having seen them, I don't know whether these particular voter guides constitute endorsement or not.

Again, this is a reason why 501c3 legislation needs to be repealed as the government has made a law concerning religion and the practice thereof.

The 501(c)(3) regulation isn't about religion, it's about tax-exempt status. The organization I was discussing this with yesterday isn't a church. The regulation applies equally to religious and secular groups.

Churches which want to participate in political campaigns can do so; they just need to organize under a different tax status. The same is true of secular organizations. There's no discrimination there.

I knew I had a link around here somewhere:

http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=154712,00.html

The section on voter guides is about 4/5 of the way down the page.

"Can't wait until Catholic Churches start actually enforcing their excommunication of pro-choicer's. Empty pews, shuttered churchs and oh yeah, lots of shuttered schools. And if they include BC in that excommunicated group - the Catholic Church will be reduced to a handful of zealots.

Which is why they won't - they are too conscious of where their paychecks and cushy priests' abodes come from.

So...Good luck with that one."

Nice cheap shot Phylospher. You're good at that.

Many Bishops/Priests have come out in force against supporting abortion in any way (Cardinal O'Malley in Boston let the Democrat party know on more than 1 occasion, and this is in liberal Massachusetts..).