Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
(iStock photo)(iStock photo)

In this year’s election, voters went against nearly all of the ballot initiatives backed by Catholic leaders and advocates, except referendums on minimum wage increases and gun control measures in four states. They voted in favor of legalized recreational marijuana in four states and against it in one. In Colorado, voters passed a measure to legalize assisted suicide, making the state the sixth in the nation with a so-called right-to-die law, joining Washington, Oregon, California, Vermont and Montana. Three death penalty referendums all ended in favor of capital punishment. Oklahoma voters re-approved the use of the death penalty after the state’s attorney general had suspended executions last year. Nebraska voters also reinstated the death penalty, which had been banned by state lawmakers last year. In California, voters defeated a ballot measure to repeal the death penalty and narrowly passed an initiative aiming to speed up executions of death row convictions.

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
Henry George
8 years ago
One can wonder if our society has decisively and finally passed the point of no return in its secularisation. Likewise, given the actual number of Catholics in America, the passage of these referendums makes you wonder if the Church has failed in its duty to teach Catholic/Christian morality to its members. I remain now, even more convinced, that Vatican II, as understood by liberals, choose the wrong time and wrong world view to place at its secondary stones in the construction of a "Modern Church" the secular views of the 60's.

The latest from america

Delegates hold "Mass deportation now!" signs on Day 3 of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee July 17, 2024. (OSV News photo/Brian Snyder, Reuters)
Around the affluent world, new hostility, resentment and anxiety has been directed at immigrant populations that are emerging as preferred scapegoats for all manner of political and socio-economic shortcomings.
Kevin ClarkeNovember 21, 2024
“Each day is becoming more difficult, but we do not surrender,” Father Igor Boyko, 48, the rector of the Greek Catholic seminary in Lviv, told Gerard O’Connell. “To surrender means we are finished.”
Gerard O’ConnellNovember 21, 2024
Many have questioned how so many Latinos could support a candidate like DonaldTrump, who promised restrictive immigration policies. “And the answer is that, of course, Latinos are complicated people.”
J.D. Long GarcíaNovember 21, 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris delivers her concession speech for the 2024 presidential election on Nov. 6, 2024, on the campus of Howard University in Washington. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Catholic voters were a crucial part of Donald J. Trump’s re-election as president. But did misogyny and a resistance to women in power cause Catholic voters to disregard the common good?
Kathleen BonnetteNovember 21, 2024