Black Protestants have been nearly twice as likely as other Christians to hear about the election, and nearly half have heard voting messages favouring incumbent Barack Obama.

Fewer white churchgoers have heard messages supporting a candidate. Those that did were more likely to favour challenger Mitt Romney.

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For both of them Tuesday night, their opposing positions came down to one word: Responsibility.

A member of the audience, Barry, asked the same question of both candidates. "What do you think is the biggest misrepresentation that the American people have about you as a man or a candidate?" Read more

Sources

• Sally Quinn in The Washington Post
• Image: The Guardian

Sally Quinn is a Washington Post journalist and author of several books.

Sources

• Michael Sean Winters in National Catholic Reporter
• Image: The Washington Times

Michael Sean Winters serves as a political correspondent at the National Catholic Reporter.

Britain's most prominent atheist attacked the core tenets of Mr Romney's religion, saying that the Church of Latter Day Saints' founding prophet was "a fraud" and that the presidential contender was "too stupid to see it".

"No matter how much you agree with Romney's economic policy, can you really vote for such a massively gullible fool?" asked Prof Dawkins during an outburst on Twitter that lasted several hours. Continue reading

With Mitt Romney's recent choice of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as running mate, this campaign is the first in which Catholics are on both major party tickets. Vice President Joe Biden and Ryan are lifelong Catholics who attend Mass regularly and credit the church with shaping their views.

At the same time, New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan plans a prime-time appearance next week by giving the benediction at the Republican National Convention after Romney becomes the first Mormon presidential nominee from a major political party. Read more

Sources

• Rachel Zoll in The Philadelphia Inquirer
• Image: NY Daily News

Rachel Zoll writes about religion for Associated Press.

The first was Ryan's own bishop, Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison, Wisconsin.

Clearly concerned at attacks on Ryan since he was named Republican contender Mitt Romney's running mate, Bishop Morlino vouched for Ryan's Catholic bona fides in a column on his diocesan website.

Later the bishop said: "I know him very well. He is in regular communication with his bishop . . . . Since others have, I believe, unfairly attacked his reputation, I have to look out for his good name. That is Church law. If someone disagrees with Paul, he is free to do that. But not on the basis of reputation destruction, really calumny."

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York spoke about Ryan on a Catholic radio programme. He said they met at a Lutheran college where Ryan was the commencement speaker and talked for nine minutes on St Thomas Aquinas. "So we really started up a great correspondence and got to know each other very, very well."

The cardinal said he was not trying to be an apologist for Ryan, but praised his "call for financial accountability and restraint and a balanced budget" as well as his "obvious solicitude for the poor".

"So I admire him," Cardinal Dolan said. "He's honest. He's refreshing. Do I agree with everything? No, but . . . I'm anxious to see him in action."

Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila of Denver, Colorado, also wrote a column touching on Ryan's economic policies, noting that his fiscal conservatism had been condemned as anti-Catholic, even by some bishops.

"I am not a policy expert," the archbishop said. "But claims that Paul Ryan's plan run deeply counter to Catholic social teaching are unfounded and unreasonable. Some criticisms are so insidious that one wonders whether the critics have actually read Ryan's plans."

Sources:

Catholic News Agency

National Catholic Register

National Review

Image: Etheldredasplace

In 1961, William F. Buckley published a critique of Blessed Pope John XXIII's encyclical, Mater et Magistra, Mother and Teacher. Buckley's article was entitled, "Going the rounds in conservative circles: 'Mater, si, Magistra, no.'"

The phrase came from a not-yet converted Garry Wills in a telephone conversation with Buckley. It was the first significant instance of public dissent from the magisterium of the Church by an American public intellectual.

Note the date: 1961. Before the Second Vatican Council. John XXIII's encyclical was not a fruit of the Council. It was based on a long line of Church teachings, rooted in the anthropology and ethics of St. Thomas Aquinas, and explicitly applied to modern social, economic and political circumstances beginning in 1891, with Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum.

The basic threads of Catholic Social teaching were developed further by Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XII. All before the Council, all before "dissent" became a phenomenon associated with the Catholic Left.

The teachings from which Buckley then, and Congressman Ryan now, dissent are traditional teachings, rooted deeply in an understanding of the human vocation.

Buckley, of course, would not go as far as Ryan. One has a hard time imagining Buckley heaping praise on Ayn Rand as Paul Ryan has done. Continue reading

Image: The Telegraph

His vice-presidential choice is well-known for his pro-life advocacy and his conservative economic views.

Explaining his pro-life position, Ryan has said: "I cannot believe any official or citizen can still defend the notion that an unborn human being has no rights that an older person is bound to respect."

As for his economic views, he was architect of a federal budget condemned by Catholic bishops as failing a "basic moral test" in that it slashed food assistance to the poor and radically redefined safety net programmes such as Medicare.

Ryan, 42, contended that the poor are hurt more by extreme levels of government debt than by budget reductions. He defended his fiscal positions against critics in a lecture at Jesuit-affiliated Georgetown University last April. He cited Catholic social teaching principles of subsidiarity and solidarity and charged that "government-centred" approaches to poverty have failed.

Paul Ryan has been criticised for the formative influence of the laissez-faire capitalist philosopher Ayn Rand on his economic outlook. However he has publicly renounced Ayn Rand's philosophy. He said: "It's an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview."

Introducing Ryan as his running mate, Romney declared: "Paul is in public life for all the right reasons — not to advance his personal ambitions but to advance the ideals of freedom and justice; and to increase opportunity and prosperity to people of every class and faith, every age and ethnic background. A faithful Catholic, Paul believes in the worth and dignity of every human life."

Paul Ryan has signed the National Organization of Marriage's pledge to defend marriage as a union of a man and a woman and to seek the appointment of judges who will defend marriage.

Sources:

Catholic News Agency

National Catholic Register

Image: Daily Mail

The six — Frank Shakespeare, Tom Melady, Ray Flynn, Jim Nicholson, Francis Rooney and Mary Ann Glendon — were announced as co-chairs of a nationwide Catholics for Romney campaign.

They gave their reasons for supporting Romney in a statement addressed to "Fellow Catholics".

"Whatever issues might dominate the presidential campaign from now until November," they said, "our concerns lie with fundamental rights, beginning with religious liberty."

"While the current administration has brought our first freedom under direct assault by imposing government mandates that completely disregard religious conscience, Governor Romney believes that freedom to live one's faith is essential to liberty and human fulfillment. And he has pledged himself to removing those federal mandates immediately.

"While the current administration has now put its weight on the side of those who propose to redefine the meaning of marriage itself, Governor Romney has stood firm in defending this sacred institution . . . .

"Where the current administration has shown its sympathy for the pro-abortion lobby, Mitt Romney will be a faithful defender of life in all its seasons."

Five of the six ex-ambassadors served under Republican presidents: Shakespeare under Ronald Reagan; Melady under George H. W. Bush; Nicholson, Rooney, and Glendon under George W. Bush. Flynn served under the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton.

Meanwhile, a group calling itself Catholics United has been spreading a false report that Romney profited from owning a business that processed "medical waste" from abortion clinics.

The report has been investigated by FactCheck.org, a project of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center, which found it to be incorrect.

Sources:

LifeNews

Catholics for Romney

LifeNews

Image: Salon

This is "a strange convergence of developments offering Mormons hope that the Christian nation that persecuted, banished or killed them in the 19th century will finally love them as fellow Christians, " says David V Mason.

"I want to be on record about this. I'm about as genuine a Mormon as you'll find," he says, "a templegoer with a Utah pedigree and an administrative position in a congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I am also emphatically not a Christian."

Mason says believing in the divinity of Jesus does not make Mormons Christian by default.

While Mormons and Christians do share this belief in the divinity of Jesus, there is not much in common in what they believe about the nature of that Divinity.

Read David L Mason's op-ed in the New York Times

Dr. David V. Mason is an associate professor of theater at Rhodes College, Memphis.

Image: TGC

Michael Otterson puts the Mormon position. "Polling data shows that the biggest problem for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that about half the population knows nothing about them," he says.

"Research shows that people have a far better view of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when they know a member personally. There is a point when those people who have seen Mormons caricatured in their Sunday School classes realize that the second-hand prejudices they have learned don't fit with their first-hand experiences with faithful Latter-day Saints."

Read Otterson's column in the Washington Post

Michael Otterson is the head of Public affairs, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Image: The Washington Post