Will Catholic "Progressives" Support This Anti Death Penalty Republican?

Pro Ecclesia has a interesting post on the Attorney General' race in Virgina. See Seeking Justice: "Capital Punishment Divides Republican AG Candidates in Virginia"

I agree with Por Ecclesia comments and like him my more and more distaste for the Death Penalty are for the reason he gives.

Let me highlight what I think is the interesting issues here. As Pro Ecclesia states:

Let's see if all those self-proclaimed "consistent ethic of life"/"seamless garment" Catholics who seem to be able to come up with a myriad of reasons to support pro-abort Democrats can put aside their tribal loyalties and bring themselves to support an anti-abortion and anti-capital-punishment Catholic Republican. [Sound of crickets chirping].

I can recall the days that the Death Penalty used to be a big deal for the more democrat leaning Catholics. I can recall in a thousand places that Catholics said well I am voting for the pro abortion Dukakis over Bush because the good Governor is anti state execution. The fact that the Church said the issues did not have the same gravity and in fact that Catholics of good faith have more leeway on the issue of state execution than abortion of course was ignored.

A interesting thing happened though not four years later. Governor Bill Clinton in a heated Democrat nomination race ran back to Arkansas to make sure a guy that was retarded got executed . Since then this issue seems to have gone down in importance and we don't hear how this trumps abortion anymore. Funny how that happened.

I have blogged that the most sad thing about this election cycle is that I see what a farce most progressive Catholics are in the political square. I DON"T BELIEVE MANY OF THEM ANYMORE. In all the talk about McCain his leadership on issues such as immigration reform (the biggest Catholic Social Justice Issue outside abortion this decade) was pretty much ignored and not counted into the "who shall we vote for equation". There were of course other issues this happened on.

As Pro-Ecclesia talks about many of conservative pro-life Catholics are lectured non stop about being "authentic" Catholics in the public square and not being partisan. That we should not put all our pro-life eggs in one political basket as it were and we must do political gymnastics to vote for any Democrat that has a hint of being pro-life.

I notice so many times that this seems to be all one sided. We shall see if Catholic progressives highlight this race and make it a priority. God knows they haven't given a damn when Republicans that took a principle stand ( that seemed to be taking the Bishops concerns and the Vaticans and the Catechism) on immigration reform have been attacked or gone down in flames. Pretty much have been AWOL on that.

I hope I am wrong and that this race is dicussed.