“And again, you have the right to oppose abortion and to try to persuade others not to use it-but the line has to be drawn at 1) using the legal system to force everyone in this country to live by the teachings of a religious denomination they are not part of or 2)”

Red herring — you don’t have to be religious to support banning abortion, especially at later stages of gestation. The argument that a baby, if born, would survive and thrive, and yet can still be killed because of the law, is not a religious argument. The only reason it is in dispute at all is because the “pro-choice” side has gotten extremely radical, even opposing laws criminalizing the failure to provide care to abortion survivors.

“(and again, Seamless Garment adherents are not guilty of this) those who absolutely oppose not only abortion or artificial contraception had an obligation to support the preservation of and if possible the expansion of our social welfare system,”

Seamless garment? Huh?

Catholics and other Christians are strongly in favor of providing support for people who need it. But that does not imply a need for the government to provide that support. We give lavishly to our charities, whose entire job is hleping those in need.

As for the opinions of Catholic laity in a poll, that’s hardly an argument. Christianity is not (or should not be) driven by polls. It is top down — from scripture and the Savior, not from the opinion of a tiny minority of Christians. Take your poll world-wide, and you’ll get a radically different result. There are 1.5 billion Catholics, and your poll probably represents the views of a majority of 60 million in the US.

But let’s get to a fundamental issue that you are trying to ignore: the criminalization of murder. As far as I know, that isn’t even slightly controversial. But the pro-choice crowd has successfully framed abortion in a way that conceals the murder that is happening — at least what would be considered murder by most Americans if they understood the reality that late term abortion is killing a living human being by any definition that matters and is logically consistent,

In the US, it is murder if you kill someone else to save your own life. It is a worse murder if you kill someone else because you don’t like their genetics, or because it killing them would benefit you economically or socially. Abortion is always one of thse. Always.

As for cooperatives in China… they are just one example of what happens in the real world with cooperatives. Why do you think Israeli’s abandoned the cooperative form in all but one of their kibbutzes? The answer: it didn’t work, it led to social strife, it led to free-loading, and it led to poor economic results.

Small-C communism is based on a flawed view of human nature, the same flawed view that pretty much every idea from the French Revolution held — that humans were either perfect given the right environment, or perfectable by the actions of others. The latter idea tended to become dominant in communist governments, and was a great excuse to persecute deviants.

Show me a society that is communal, without top-down governance anywhere.

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