Denver, Colo., Oct 10, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).-
Pro-life third-party candidate Brian Carroll squared-off with other third-party presidential candidates in a debate Thursday evening in Denver, with much of the discourse focusing around the difficulties that third-parties often face in gaining traction in U.S. presidential races, as well as issues surrounding education, surveillance, and drug policy.
Carroll is the presidential nominee of the American Solidarity Party, a third-party founded in 2011 and based largely on Catholic social teaching.
Carroll, an evangelical Christian and a retired history teacher from California, told CNA ahead of the debate that in his view, many Christians prioritize politics over faith, looking for a political messiah in the major parties instead of looking to Christ as savior.
“We also have to keep in mind that the political outlet is not the ultimate outlet. The goal is not to elect a president, the goal is not even to eliminate specific ills in our society. The goal is to give testimony to the part that Jesus plays in our life on a daily basis,” he told CNA.
The American Solidarity Party has attracted attention among some Catholics since a 2016 essay in First Things by philosopher David McPherson. During the 2020 election season, moral theologian Charlie Camosy, who was once a board member of Democrats for Life but quit the Democratic Party because of its abortion extremism, has been a proponent of the party.
The Free and Equal Elections Foundation, which hosted the Oct. 8 debate, is a non-profit non-partisan organization founded in 2008. Thursday’s debate is the second that the group has hosted for third-party candidates this year.
In the debate, Carroll advocated protection for investigative journalists against large corporations, mentioning the case of David Daleiden, a pro-life investigative journalist who last year was ordered to pay Planned Parenthood $870,000 in punitive damages for secretly recording meetings with abortion doctors and staff to expose their business practices.
Several of the candidates, including Carroll, decried the death penalty and called for its repeal. One candidate mentioned the recent case of Lezmond Mitchell, a Navajo man who was federally executed in August despite the objections of his tribe.
In responding to a question about mandatory vaccinations, Carroll said he supports vaccines, but not vaccine mandates. He also noted that some vaccine research does involve aborted fetal tissue, sometimes curated and sold by abortion providers, which is an issue that pro-life people ought to speak about.
“Once you’re killing one human being for the health and safety of another human being, you’ve got enormous ethical problems,” he said during the debate.
The American Solidarity Party began in 2011 as the Christian Democracy Party USA. Mike Maturen, a Catholic, ran for president on the party ticket in the 2016 election.
Though the American Solidarity Party is not explicitly religious, its platform rests on several principles which the Church has developed as part of Catholic social teaching. Subsidiarity— the Catholic idea that emphasizes the importance of local authorities in decision-making— is a tenet of the ASP’s platform. Carroll told CNA in June that he believes smaller scale, local approaches to handling the pandemic are best, rather than one-size-fits-all pandemic restrictions.
Carroll said the pandemic has exacerbated the divide between large corporations, such as Amazon, which have profited greatly since the start of the crisis, and small businesses which have struggled to stay afloat or have already had to close.
“If we had a Congress that was more sympathetic to distributism, the [relief] bills that they put together would have favored the little guy,” he said.
Abortion is a key issue for members of the ASP. The party platform calls for an end to legal protection for abortion, and it supports social services for mothers in need.
The party says pro-life convictions must also include opposition to euthanasia, assisted suicide, embryonic stem cell research and the death penalty. Carroll said if he is elected, he would push for a constitutional amendment to define “personhood” as beginning at conception.
In addition, Carroll and the ASP consider steps to address climate change and pollution, as well as racial justice and reconciliation, to be a part of their pro-life convictions.
Distributism, the favored economic theory of the party platform, is a model championed by notable Catholics such as G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc.
The model calls for a broader system of ownership to create a more “local, responsible, and sustainable” economy. The ASP favors a rewrite of regulations and tax incentives to favor small businesses and family farms, rather than major corporations.
The party describes distributism as “an economic system which focuses on creating a society of wide-spread ownership…rather than having the effect of degrading the human person as a cog in the machine.”
Carroll says he had never heard the word “distributism” until he joined the ASP, but as soon as he read the description, it clicked for him.
He said he encounters many people, particularly non-Catholics, who like him were not familiar with the vocabulary of the ASP, but who appreciate the platform once they understand the principles behind it.
“All those things are things people everywhere want to see. They may not understand our vocabulary, they may not understand our immediate logic, but everybody, I think, is going to be in favor of the general goals.”
Like most political candidates, Carroll’s in-person campaigning efforts have been severely curtailed by the coronavirus pandemic. But he says he has engaged with potential voters and those interested in the party via social media.
As a historian, Carroll said he appreciates that the ASP platform is rooted not just in history, but also in political theory, theology, economics, and ecology.
“There’s an amazing amount of intellectual talent in the party, and all of it goes into the platform,” he commented.
Carroll admits that his chances of actually winning the presidency are remote. The ASP will be on the November ballot in eight states, and a certified write-in option in two dozen others.
He says he is excited by the party’s growth, and says party members are already eying local races for 2022, particularly in Texas.
Like any U.S. third party, Carroll said the ASP hopes to draw converts who typically vote Democrat, Republican, or neither.
“We hope to take an equal number from each party, and then even more so we hope to bring in a lot of people that have simply given up and stopped voting,” Carroll told CNA ahead of the debate.
Carroll said he frequently hears the criticism that a third-party vote in a U.S. presidential election is essentially wasted, or a vote “against” a pro-life candidate with a reasonable chance of winning.
But Carroll said he hopes to provide an opportunity for serious Christians to vote their consciences, rather than choosing between “the lesser of two evils.”
“If you vote for something that you don’t want and you win, have you really won? I don’t think so…Democracy works best when people identify what they want, and then vote for it,” he said.
Carroll said one accusation he hears frequently against the ASP is that it is a “debating society”— that it is made up of mostly well-educated people discussing impractical theory. But Carroll said many of the ASP’s positions have been tried in various places, including in Europe and in certain local areas of the United States.
Carroll said he suspects that the more people learn about the American Solidarity Party and its positions, a wide range of voters— Christian and otherwise— are likely to find it attractive.
“In the privacy of the voting booths, there will be some pro-life atheists and humanists that will vote for us, even if they won’t publicly endorse us,” he predicted.
“My personal goal is for everyone, whether they love us, they hate us, or are completely indifferent and think we’re a joke, at least will have heard of us by November 3, and that the people who want to vote their conscience have at least that opportunity,” Party chairman and vice presidential candidate Amar Patel told CNA in March.
He said he suspects that many Christians and Catholics often end up voting for a candidate who they believe will defend one specific aspect of Christian morality, rather than looking for “ideal candidates who will actually defend the Christian message in total.”
Patel, like Carroll, said he hears a lot about “wasted votes” when it comes to third parties. But in states where a Republican or Democratic victory is all but assured, such as California, even if millions of voters switched to a third party, it would be unlikely to change the outcome, he said.
If that happened, however, the “entire face of American politics would have changed,” because people would be talking about the third-party candidate who garnered millions of votes.
For his part, Carroll said that as a Christian he hopes to encourage people not only to vote their conscience, but to make their politics an outflow of their religious beliefs, rather than the other way around.
“We do have to be paying attention to national politics, but we also need to be protecting our own hearts. We have to be looking at advancing Christ’s Kingdom, not as a theocracy, but as in everybody looking out for their neighbor, and keeping our eyes up, because we don’t know when Jesus is coming back,” he said.
“We have to keep Christ front and center in our lives, or we’re lost.”
[…]
I have been keeping him in my prayers. I have attended Holy Mass at a chapel that he blessed many years ago. There are many of his sermons and appearances online and I highly recommend them. We need his presence more than ever.
Cardinal Burke is the only Vatican Cardinal to reply back to a letter I wrote. I am wearing out my beads for him.
The Cardinal is a prominent vaccine sceptic. I pray not only for the Cardinal for his quick recovery from COVID but also and above all for the rightist conservative media propagandists that they turn away from and repent of their death dealing (ironically promoting “my body, my choice” pro-choice and anti-life ideology) work in the disinformation and misinformation about the vaccine they have infected upon people like the Cardinal and a lot of Catholics as well.
Can’t we just pray for his healing and leave the divisions aside?
We don’t have all the answers about this epidemic and probably won’t for many years. At this point in time I’m not sure we even have all the questions.
May God bless Cardinal Burke and restore him to good health and send this affliction away. Amen.
That cells derived from aborted babies were used in the designing/testing phase of all three vaccines available in the US and in the production phase of one of them is neither disinformation nor misinformation.
Leila,
You wrote: “Rightist conservative media propagandists”
Do you think this phrase may have been overdone? 🙂
Let’s pray that when he recovers, if he recovers, he will stop with the anti vaccine, anti science propaganda and encourage his listeners to get vaccinated. I worry about every one he infected while contagious and they many who died because they couldn’t get a ventilator. He’s lucky he was able to get one,
Let us pray that when he recovers he will have the great joy of knowing he was not complicit in the evil of harvesting tissue from babies murdered by abortion.
Thank you Leslie
Thank you, Lynda. God bless you!
According to Charlotte Lozier Institute both Pfizer and Moderna used abortion resources in producing their vaccines. On WORLD OVER August 12 2021, Arroyo said enough explicit words that would exculpate these vaccines of abortion taint: the two did not use “abortion-derived cells in production”. It was in the very first part of the program, the segment with Sirico and Lawler. I think that this should be corrected and that Arroyo should use his upcoming program to clarify the position.
I join in prayers for Cardinal Burke and have asked others to pray as well. I also pray for anyone ill with COVID-19 or who will be ill. I think Cardinal Burke has faced many challenges conscientiously and bravely and is an inspiration. Listening to him is a joy.
Found via BIG PULPIT, Dr. Fauci told VIROLOGY JOURNAL August 22 2005, that HCQ is a wonder treatment for SARS/coronaviruses.
Now it could be that his contrary stance for COVID-19 arises from the fact that technically, COVID-19 is not a corona virus.
I am not a scientist as such but I maintain COVID-19 is not a corona virus as previously that term was applied.
It would seem that either way Dr. Fauci has some explaining to do!
http://apriestlife.blogspot.com/2021/08/fraud-dr-fauci-said-hydroxychloroquin.html
It could be that over the past 16+ years much more has been learned about the treatment of many types of virus and that the efficacy of certain treatments that initially looked very promising have been shown to be ineffective.
On the other hand doctors of repute use the HCQ in the present and have made a positive record by far in results; yet it is not being upheld – not even “officially” pursued. Dr. Flavia Grosan of Romania insists that the ventilator is meant to be used intermittently after treatment with medicines and with the treatments continuing. One of the things she has boasted about is that she has kept almost all her patients out of hospital, who also had recovered.
Where I live the emphasis in the private practice of a handful of doctors is on regular style oxygen; also I heard of a doctor who uses oxygen tent in order to be as gentle as possible.
I am not a doctor. I suspect HCQ aids osmosis so that the immune system gets at the disease. On the other hand (I think), hydrocortisone penetrates cells and would help blunt the disease within there, which gives the immune reaction an advantage.
If as I contend COVID-19 is not a corona virus, it would appear the HCQ helps treat it anyway, quite fortuitously.
Sister Wanda Boniszewska, please intercede for dear Card. Raymond Burke.
Cooperation, appropriation, and vaccines relying on fetal cell line research, by Stephan Kampowski, for The Catholic World Report
January 24, 2021
Praying for him! Also praying for all those w/those “ far right” illogical ideas!! God gave us brains to avoid all of this needless suffering & death!! Yes , Your body , your choice— well you now have caused the needless suffering & death of so many !Young & old !! I think Our lord is shaking his head, saying what is wrong w/my people???
“God gave us brains to avoid all of this needless suffering & death!!”
All? That goes contra all of human history, logic, and experience.
Hi Carl, Focusing on this interpretation of Gail’s use of the word ALL is being a bit literalist, don’t you think? In the context of Gails comment it would be reasonable to interpret the suffering she is referring to all that is caused by an adherence to illogical ideas, ie needless suffering from Covid caused by the lack of co operation with mitigating strategies for decreasing the spread of the virus, the lack of co operation being motivated my Ideology rather than common-sense, or the practical application of scientific knowledge specific to the spread of the virus.
In this light Gail’s comment is entirely reasonable.
I cannot understand the reasoning behind your comment.
While I’m at it I would like to take the opportunity to thank you for your diligence in doing the job you do here. No doubt it is a very demanding vocation and I greatly appreciate the great job you do of the many difficult tasks involved. Ditto for all the other moderators, editors and staff.
No, I think my comment was fair and on point, especially considering that even if one interpreted Gail’s comment as you do, it would still be contra all of human history, logic, and experience–even if that history only dated back to March 2020. Apparently, both you and Gail (using my reading skills, which date back to when I was three years old) think that all of the illness, suffering, and deaths from COVID has been due to people not wearing masks (which are essentially useless, as the data and evidence show) or getting a shot that leads to another shot, which leads to a booster shot, which may help, unless of course you still get sick, etc., etc. No matter how you slice it, Gail’s comment is not rational; in fact, it seems mostly ideological.
“I cannot understand the reasoning behind your comment.”
Clearly.
In your explanation you have failed to establish on what grounds Gayle’s original post is contra to all of human history, logic, and experience.
Firstly you narrowed the implications of her comment to two issues that of the wearing masks and that of vaccines. You have failed to take into account effective strategies for slowing the spread of the virus to lower the curve so a resulting overwhelming of hospital resources and staff is avoided. I do not see where Gayle nor I even mentioned in specifics masks and vaccines.
Furthermore is seems a bit ridiculous to assert that Gayle and I think that all of the illness, suffering, and deaths from COVID has been due to people not wearing masks and avoiding the vaccine. This is not my view. I do believe that, being spread by air borne particles, in confined spaces, the wearing of masks slows the spread and are of assistance in preventing contamination. Also of assistance is the regular washing of hands and other strategies known and advised by epidemiologists and virologists. Ideology is not a determining consideration with how I come to my point of view. So far in the state of Victoria where I live we have managed to prevent hospitals and other services from being overwhelmed. We have followed the advise of competent epidemiologists not because of Ideology but as a reasoned response to the nature and presence of this virus. A comprehensive understanding of the nature of this virus is an ongoing process and given how it mutates it is a shifting ground.
An expression of this type should be an acceptable contribution to this debate and by any means does not merit an accusation of being contra to all of human history, logic, and experience. Cardinal Bourke, being a leader has a duty of care in the leadership he provides and is not above accountability or critique in this regard and accountability is not nor should ever be a partisan endeavour.
With your ability to move goalposts, you really should work for the CDC or the WHO…
The origin and cause of suffering, pain, and death (and even likely stupidity) is revealed in the first chapter of Scripture. The superior endowment of intellect in Eve and Adam’s prelapsarian state part has been taught and accepted since the Early Church Fathers first contemplated it.
Let those with eyes to see and brains to reason use them as God would have us do. Sans a passive-aggressive stance, I thank you for your work with us fallen creatures, Carl.
You would Probably have been right there in the early years of the Church saying “oh, go on, pinch a little incense to the gods, God gave us brains to avoid all this suffering and death.”
Leslie, another seemingly needless spiteful comment, in this instance aimed at Gayle, showing some consistency in this regard with your responses to those who legitimately express a different perspective than yours.
My own mother found this character trait the source of much distress in her early marriage in her relationship with the female parishioners of the Portland parish in the 1950’s.
Carl, without an explanation of what you are referring to in the overall gist of my reply I am led to believe I may have actually scored a goal.
Oh! Let me get your thinking straight!
You say, “Yes , Your body , your choice— well you now have caused the needless suffering & death of so many”
So, you seem to say that those who have refused a vaccine are the reason, the cause of those who have suffered and died from coronavirus. Is that your position?? Your statements surely seem to suggest that.
What’s the name of the game are you playing?
Your mother has my deepest sympathy.
It was not needless, nor even seemingly so; and it wasn’t spiteful. It was accurately pointing out her un-Christian attitude, since her argument seems to be that physical suffering and death are the absolutely worst possible things that could happen to anybody. Don’t like the analogy I made? Here’s another. Her attitude is the same as someone who would have told the early Christian martyrs, “God gave us brains to avoid suffering and death, by clinging so stubbornly to your conscience you’re endangering your relatives and other Christians who might also be arrested and killed.”
Informed conscience:
https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P60.HTM
II. The Formation of Conscience
1783 Conscience must be informed and moral judgment enlightened. A well-formed conscience is upright and truthful. It formulates its judgments according to reason, in conformity with the true good willed by the wisdom of the Creator. the education of conscience is indispensable for human beings who are subjected to negative influences and tempted by sin to prefer their own judgment and to reject authoritative teachings.
1784 The education of the conscience is a lifelong task. From the earliest years, it awakens the child to the knowledge and practice of the interior law recognized by conscience. Prudent education teaches virtue; it prevents or cures fear, selfishness and pride, resentment arising from guilt, and feelings of complacency, born of human weakness and faults. the education of the conscience guarantees freedom and engenders peace of heart.
1785 In the formation of conscience the Word of God is the light for our path,54 we must assimilate it in faith and prayer and put it into practice. We must also examine our conscience before the Lord’s Cross. We are assisted by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, aided by the witness or advice of others and guided by the authoritative teaching of the Church.55
What I find really disturbing is how the sociopathic leftcaths are crowing over Cardinal Burke’s illness and implying that he somehow deserved to contract Covid for being a “vaccine critic”. It’s just plain disgusting.
Yes, Johann it’s deeply sad but not unexpected.
Johann, I am not sociopathic! In no way am I implying Cardinal Bourke somehow deserved to contract Covid for being a “vaccine critic”. Nor have I read any other comment implying so. I do not neatly fit into the box you seem to want to squash me ( and all others you label as ‘left’ into. This is the example of an unfortunate pattern of thinking and communicating that is frequently displayed in comments here. How is it that you think this way? You make a tiny little mean minded box made up of your mostly false assumptions, and judgements of someone you perceive as the other (us and them) and you put a whole person into it then proceed to call them disgusting etc etc! Is this behaviour in pursuit of honouring your faith? Perhaps because you fail to see the distinction between discussion from differing positions and attack of the person? There is always hope. What do we have at our disposal? All of us? Faith Truth and Reason pursued in the spirit and mindset of love. Is your action in pursuit of any of these? Leftcaths??? No wonder the Body Of Christ is wounded. Endemic toxic thinking! No though that we all in fact might need each other, our differences moderated by faith truth and reason in the spirit of love and applied reconciliation in order to be whole as the Body of Christ.
To answer your question Meiron, I’m not playing a game and i accuse no one else of playing a game. My reference to kicking a goal was in response to Carl’s comment of shifting the goal. I don’t believe i shifted the goalposts of the subject, rather my comment pursued the subject further. Last night I chose not to comment further on this thread because of the focal point of the article was Cardinal Bourke’s grave illness not the wider debate. This morning I read Johans comment and felt the need to address it’s tone and effect and to explain myself so this thread does not finish in a message of brokenness but rather in the hope of at least some common ground while acknowledging differing points of view.
The original Pelagian heresy is precisely the subjugation of the Commandments. How then are they going to resolve what they have tried to do with “neo-Pelagianism”?
Pelagian heresy primarily revolves around original sin denialism. One can do whatever then – obey (this or that) commandments, build socialism, save planet, practise cannibalism.
And precisely this heresy, among others (most notably gnosis), is being taught at contemporary universities and churches.
The Pelagians’ approach to the Commandments can be found in their various discussions with St. Jerome. Some very poignant quotations used to be in the WIKIPEDIA article on Pelagianism but I noticed the article got changed around some time before Placuit Deo and these are no longer collected in one place on the internet I can identify.
A question for consideration for those who consider the CovidVax complicity in abortion. Should persons who are required to take heart medication, which virtually all are developed in some form in conjunction with embryonic stem cells cease taking their meds? Also, there is the real prospect of developing all meds without the use of Embryonic stems cells, “Adult cells altered to have properties of embryonic stem cells [induced pluripotent stem cells]. Scientists have successfully transformed regular adult cells into stem cells using genetic reprogramming. By altering the genes in the adult cells, researchers can reprogram the cells to act similarly to embryonic stem cells” (Mayo Clinic).
And if that person suffering from a heart condition declines to cease taking his meds, is he therefore complicit in the abortions from which the embryonic stem cells were taken?
Also, if a person with a heart condition knowingly continues with meds tainted by embryonic stem cell research, is he as complicit with the abortions also guilty of serious sin? Or is there no sin? What of someone physically compromised is considered heroic by refusing the CovidVax, is that heroism due to avoiding serious sin, or any sin? But if there is no sin for remote complicity what accounts for the heroism? I ask these questions because as a priest I must counsel parishioners who are led to believe by a large segment of Catholics that somehow the CovidVax is evil, and to refuse it is virtuous. Personally I have deep respect and affection for Cardinal Burke and respect his decision, although I don’t believe it sets a standard for heroic virtue.
You have to distinguish between life threatening heart condition and covid jab taken by healthy man because of traveling, restaurants, and so on. The latter is morally defective even if no murders involved since the jab itself is always hazardous not to mention that it not properly tested yet.
I think the “yes or no known in advance” for every single situation is not the way; and I think Cardinal Burke has not professed such a thing. It depends on circumstances and ultimately personal knowledge and understanding obviously.
Some situations will require a definite no. The fact is we have to be ready. We have to be growing into the maturity of faith.
Meantime, it is not simply about drugs that are tainted with abortion; it is also about industries at work in a conjunction with abortion becoming more and more integrated with it (and with other evils). This requires various other reactions not merely identifying the products in order to refuse to use them.
In some instances alternative products and producers are available but it means we have to find out about it in order to act responsibly.
If, hypothetically, a layperson has charted a true course but the priest has started arguing with him not to do it, wouldn’t be fair to point out that that part of the Church is at risk of becoming incurvatus in se?
So in some cases the act will not be immediately the priest’s but then: is that priest ready to be heroic too?
Leila M. Lawler put her very incisive comments here.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2021/01/24/cooperation-appropriation-and-vaccines-relying-on-fetal-stem-cell-research/