As a follow-up to an earlier post, the August Bishop’s Bulletin of the Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls indeed contains (on pages 2 and 3 of the print version) Bishop Carlson’s “instruction” that Catholics who vote for pro-choice candidates commit a mortal sin and are not Catholics in good standing. The material published by the conservative magazine mentioned in that post is identical to what appears in the Bishop’s Bulletin print edition, down to boldface subheadings. Any one else wonder why and how a D.C.-based national conservative magazine gets and publishes a verbatim “exclusive advance copy”?
As an aside, I saw a day or so ago that a June Time magazine poll found a significant majority of Catholics do not believe the church should be attempting to influence their vote. While that certainly won’t deter Bishop Carlson, at least he and others in the national hierarchy could ask Catholics to apply the church’s other moral priorities for protecting human life. Of course, then Catholics couldn’t vote for any candidates for national office in South Dakota without risking their soul.
