Catholic News 2
DECATUR, Ga. (AP) -- For an hour they stood shoulder to shoulder, those who supported Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, praying together in a service of postelection healing. Noting the painful labels and divisions of the just-finished campaign, the Rev. Jenna Faith Strizak said, "We've got to figure out how to live together. And not just live together, but be one."...
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A day after Donald Trump's election to the presidency, campaign divisions appeared to widen as many thousands of demonstrators - some with signs with messages declaring "NOT MY PRESIDENT" - flooded streets across the country to protest his surprise triumph....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- He warned that Donald Trump was dangerous, a nuclear hair-trigger, proud to get away with sexual assault. And now it falls to President Barack Obama to reassure America that it can survive four years of President Trump....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is set to welcome his successor, Donald Trump, to the White House, extending an olive branch to a man he has blasted as unfit to serve as commander in chief and who led the charge to challenge the legitimacy of his own presidency....
Maggie Passmore of St. Paul, Minnesota, had been watching election returns at a party but reverted to watching at home "when things got scary." She fell asleep, then awoke to learn that Donald Trump was defeating Hillary Clinton....
LONDON (AP) -- The latest on world reaction to the U.S. presidential election (all times local):...
CHICAGO (AP) -- The raw divisions exposed by the presidential race were on full display across America on Wednesday, as protesters flooded city streets to condemn Donald Trump's election in demonstrations that police said were mostly peaceful....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Latest on the U.S. election. (All times EST):...
Denver, Colo., Nov 9, 2016 / 02:53 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In a lopsided Election Day vote, Colorado voters decided to legalize assisted suicide. Foes of the ballot measure warned that it will have grave consequences for the vulnerable.“The mission we have as citizens of Colorado should be to help people live with dignity – not to offer them more options to kill themselves,” the Colorado Catholic Conference said Nov. 9.Colorado voters approved assisted suicide by a vote of 65 percent to 35 percent.The conference said the passage of the assisted suicide measure was “a great travesty of compassion and choice for the sick, the poor, the elderly and our most vulnerable residents.”The ballot measure, modeled on a 22-year-old Oregon law, is called the Colorado End-of-Life Options Act. It uses the language of “medical aid in dying.”It will allow an adult with a terminal illness to request a lethal prescription from their physician. The person must be ...
Denver, Colo., Nov 9, 2016 / 02:53 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In a lopsided Election Day vote, Colorado voters decided to legalize assisted suicide. Foes of the ballot measure warned that it will have grave consequences for the vulnerable.
“The mission we have as citizens of Colorado should be to help people live with dignity – not to offer them more options to kill themselves,” the Colorado Catholic Conference said Nov. 9.
Colorado voters approved assisted suicide by a vote of 65 percent to 35 percent.
The conference said the passage of the assisted suicide measure was “a great travesty of compassion and choice for the sick, the poor, the elderly and our most vulnerable residents.”
The ballot measure, modeled on a 22-year-old Oregon law, is called the Colorado End-of-Life Options Act. It uses the language of “medical aid in dying.”
It will allow an adult with a terminal illness to request a lethal prescription from their physician. The person must be deemed mentally competent and two physicians must diagnosis the person as having six months or fewer to live. The measure requires self-administration of the drug, called secobarbital, which is also used for lethal injections in some states.
The ballot measure requires the official cause of death to be listed as a patient’s underlying condition, not as an assisted suicide.
Barbara Coombs, president of legal assisted suicide advocacy group Compassion and Choices, said the vote was “an especially tremendous victory for terminally ill adults who worry about horrific suffering in their final days,” the Associated Press reports.
The state's Catholic conference rejected depictions of assisted suicide as a private choice: “killing, no matter what its motives, is never a private matter; it always impacts other people and has much wider implications.”
The measure will deepen divisions of race, ethnicity, and income, the conference charged.
“As Pope Francis has noted it only furthers a ‘throwaway’ culture,” it said. “Proposition 106 has legalized the ability of a doctor to write prescriptions for the sole purpose of killing another human being and the ability of insurance companies to refuse treatment of patients they consider terminal.”
Divine Mercy Supportive Care, a Colorado-based nonprofit hospice and palliative health care provider, declared itself a “no-kill provider” in the wake of the vote. The Catholic organization’s policies follow the U.S. bishops’ ethical and religious directives for Catholic health care.
The organization presented itself as “the antidote to assisted suicide.” It said advances in pain and symptom management have helped alleviate the suffering of advanced illness.
At the same time, it said several other Colorado hospice agencies have said they are willing to accommodate assisted suicide.
Proponents of legal assisted suicide failed to pass bills in the Colorado legislature in 2015 and 2016, before placing the proposal on the ballot.
The ballot measure’s supporters raised $4.8 million from groups like the Compassion & Choices Action Network, the Denver Post reports. It presented the story of Brittany Maynard, who killed herself in Oregon in 2014 while suffering an aggressive brain tumor.
Catholic, Mormon, and Evangelical leaders played a role in the opposition to the ballot measure. Opponents raised $2.3 million, including contributions from the Dioceses of Denver, St. Louis, and Arlington.
Five other states have similar laws or court action permitting assisted suicide: Oregon, Washington, California, Montana, and Vermont.
Washington D.C., Nov 9, 2016 / 04:34 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholics voted once again for the winning presidential candidate in Tuesday’s election, as they have done in recent elections.“Catholics continue to be the only major religious voting block that can shift from one election to the next,” Dr. Mark Gray of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University stated on Wednesday.“This is what makes the Catholic vote such an important swing vote. Presidential candidates who win the Catholic vote almost always win the presidency,” he added.The few election polls that did list respondents by religion showed results for Catholics that varied widely depending on the day. Polling experts who warned of “volatility in the polls” insisted that the Catholic vote would be almost impossible to predict before the election.For instance, one Investor’s Business Daily tracking poll showed Trump winning Catholics by 16 ...
Washington D.C., Nov 9, 2016 / 04:34 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholics voted once again for the winning presidential candidate in Tuesday’s election, as they have done in recent elections.
“Catholics continue to be the only major religious voting block that can shift from one election to the next,” Dr. Mark Gray of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University stated on Wednesday.
“This is what makes the Catholic vote such an important swing vote. Presidential candidates who win the Catholic vote almost always win the presidency,” he added.
The few election polls that did list respondents by religion showed results for Catholics that varied widely depending on the day. Polling experts who warned of “volatility in the polls” insisted that the Catholic vote would be almost impossible to predict before the election.
For instance, one Investor’s Business Daily tracking poll showed Trump winning Catholics by 16 points on Nov. 4, only to have Clinton winning Catholic voters by three points on Nov. 7.
After President Obama narrowly carried the Catholic vote by two points in his 2012 re-election bid, Trump won the Catholic vote by seven points on Tuesday, according to exit polls. The Pew Research Center reported on the religious voter data. This marks the fourth straight election that Catholics have voted for the winning president.
In 2000, Catholics also voted for the winner of the popular vote Al Gore, who narrowly lost the Electoral College. Trump lost the popular vote, thus breaking the trend of Catholics voting with the popular vote in presidential elections.
Trump’s margin of victory among White Catholics on Tuesday was striking. While that bloc normally votes Republican – Mitt Romney won it by 19 points in 2012 – Trump went even further and won it by 23 points according to exit polls, the highest margin of victory in that bloc since before the 2000 election.
As expected, Trump lost the Hispanic Catholic vote decidedly – 67 to 26 percent – but still at the lowest margin of defeat for a Republican presidential ticket for that bloc since the 2004 election. And, the group CatholicVote.org noted in its post-election statement, “among non-Spanish speaking Latino Catholics the margin was likely significantly closer.”
Dr. Gray cautioned that, although Catholics clearly supported Trump in the exit polls, more data may be needed for the full context. “What we don't know yet is why Catholics voted as a majority for Donald Trump,” he told CNA.
Historically, Catholics vary in their ultimate party preference – usually voting for the winning party in an election. “No other major religious group does this,” Dr. Gray emphasized. “Other Christians reliably vote majority Republican. Those of non-Christian affiliations or no religious affiliation vote consistently Democrat.”
There was a divide in support among weekly churchgoing Christians and those who do not attend church as frequently. Exit polls showed Trump winning among weekly churchgoers 56 to 40 percent, while among those attending a “few times a year” there was basically an even split.
Clinton enjoyed a large victory (31 points) among those who do not attend religious services.
