1. White evangelicals, Catholics and Mormons carried Trump, By Lauren Markoe, Crux, November 10, 2016.
Preliminary exit polls indicate that white evangelicals, white Catholics and Mormons voted for Trump by wide margins – and, in the case of white evangelicals, wider than they had given to GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012.
Christians who described themselves as evangelical and born-again gave Trump 81 percent of their votes, up 3 percentage points from their support for Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee.
White Catholics also favored Trump, casting 60 percent of their ballots for him, compared to 37 percent for Clinton.
But it was the reverse for Latino Catholics: 67 percent went for Clinton and 26 for Trump.
Catholics overall voted for Trump over Clinton 52 percent to 45 percent. That’s despite Pope Francis and other prominent Catholics’ rebuke of the candidate for railing against minority groups.
Though white Catholics in both 2012 and 2016 went for the GOP candidate, their support for Trump this year was not as strong as the 59 percent they gave to Romney. And while Latino Catholics in both elections threw their support behind the Democrat, their support for Clinton trailed the 75 percent they gave to Obama four years ago.
Mormons nationally, according to exit polls, preferred Trump to Clinton by 61 to 25 percent.
The Mormon vote, the most important in overwhelmingly Republican Utah – where more than 60 percent of people belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – gave Trump an easy win in the state.
Trump won 46 percent of Utah votes, compared with Clinton’s 27 percent. Independent Evan McMullin won 21 percent.
https://cruxnow.com/rns/2016/11/10/white-evangelicals-catholics-mormons-carried-trump/
2. For assisted suicide foes in Colorado, a loss at the ballot box, CNA/EWTN News, November 9, 2016, 02:53 PM.
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 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.
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Five other states have similar laws or court action permitting assisted suicide: Oregon, Washington, California, Montana, and Vermont.
3. Three states keep death penalty in high-stakes election, CNA/EWTN News, November 9, 2016, 11:52 AM.
The death penalty was up for a vote in California, Nebraska and Oklahoma on Tuesday, but stands against capital punishment proved unpopular with voters in all three states.
In California, Proposition 62 promised to end the death penalty and reduce death sentences to life in prison without parole.
A contrary proposal, California ballot measure Prop. 66 limited the appeal process for death row inmates and shortened the time from sentencing to execution.
In voting results, Prop. 62 went down to defeat, taking only 46 percent of the vote. Prop. 66 won 50.9 percent of the vote.
Another death penalty fight took place in Nebraska, whose unicameral legislature had repealed the death penalty earlier this year.
The Nebraska vote on the death penalty required anti-death penalty voters to vote “retain” to secure the legislature’s anti-death penalty veto. A “repeal” vote would have overridden the legislature.
But the ballot measure to repeal the Senate’s anti-death penalty stand succeeded by a vote of about 61 percent, with nearly 800,000 people voting.
In Oklahoma, a state with the highest execution rate per capita, voters decided on State Question 776. The measure affirmed the death penalty’s use and declared it not to constitute “the infliction of cruel or unusual punishment.”
The state had faced controversy given the botched execution of Clayton Lockett, who took 45 minutes to die. The Oklahoma death penalty protocol had survived a Supreme Court challenge from inmates who charged it constituted was cruel and unusual punishment.
The Oklahoma measure passed by a vote of 66 percent.
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/three-states-keep-death-penalty-in-high-stakes-election-60361/
4. Christians called to restore dignity to sick, imprisoned, pope says, By Junno Arocho Esteves, Crux, November 10, 2016.
Visiting the sick and the imprisoned are works of mercy that not only benefit the suffering and the abandoned, but benefit the visitors who are enriched by being with those who suffer like Christ, Pope Francis said.
While the works of mercy are ancient, they still are relevant today for those who are deprived of freedom and “suffer one of the greatest hardships of human beings,” the pope said Nov. 9 at his weekly general audience.
When the living conditions “often devoid of humanity” in which many prisoners are housed are added to the equation, “then it is indeed the case that a Christian should feel the need to do everything to restore their dignity,” he said.
Turning his focus to the imprisoned, the pope said that visiting those who are incarcerated is “above all, an invitation to not be anyone’s judge” and a reminder that while prisoners are paying the price for their crimes, they “will always remain loved by God.”
https://cruxnow.com/cns/2016/11/10/christians-called-restore-dignity-sick-imprisoned-pope-says/
