Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: Voting Catholic in 2012 U.S. Elections

I'll be voting my Catholic faith today along with a blogger named Peggy, who recently wrote this in response to Anthea Butler's latest article at Religion Dispatches about Bishop Jenky's (Peoria, Illinois) atrocious gospel-obliterating partisanship in this election cycle: 

I'll certainly be voting Catholic on Tuesday. I'll be pulling the lever for the poor, the elderly, the chronically sick, the uninsured, my LGBT brothers and sisters and the overburdened, hardworking people who put their envelopes in his baskets every week, all of whom he forgot.

Thank God for voices like this.  They're the only thing that keeps me from walking forever and decisively out of the door of the Catholic church, as one bishop after another tries to bully me into voting for a party whose economic policies destroy life, while claiming I have a responsibility to cast my vote for life.  And as all the bishops who supposedly recognize the immorality of the raw partisanship displayed by Jenky (and Dolan and George and many other bishops during this election cycle) sit on their hands and keep their mouths shut.  And as highly placed cheerleaders for the hierarchy like Michael Sean Winters at National Catholic Reporter do everything in their power to demonize a political party responsible for a healthcare plan (and economic policies) that stand to diminish abortions, while claiming they can't vote Democratic because the Democratic party is antithetical to the values of life.

I plan to vote Catholic today along with Peggy and the many other "non-leaders" of the Catholic church in the U.S. who are neither bishops nor "prominent lay commentators" but  for whom voting pro-life means voting pro-life--for the poor, the elderly, the chronically sick and uninsured, and LGBT citizens from whom the bishops and their cheerleaders would gladly withhold basic human rights.