Beliefnet, is owned by BN Media, LLC and is a wide-ranging online resource for religion and spirituality. It’s mission is to instill comfort, hope, strength and happiness for people who are exploring their own faith or teach people who are curious about other faith denominations that they do not belong to. Beliefnet explains various religious views presented in a manner that is without a defined point-of-view, meaning it is relatively unbiased to a particular religion. The acceptation to this is the comment sections of their articles, which often contain extreme bias towards certain viewpoints of the readers of the articles of the website. The primary audience of Beliefnet is people who are either trying to discern a problem they have within their faith or are curious about religious traditions. As evidence to their unbiased and holistic take on religions, they present multiple daily prayers for all major religious denominations.
In one of the personal essay found on Beliefnet, the issue of the death penalty is addressed from a Catholic perspective. The author addresses her view on what the Catholic belief is on the issue of the death penalty. She states that the church’s view on the death penalty is vague. In order to back her claim she cites that the past three Popes openly denounced capital punishment and called for its abolishment. However she also states that while the pope can publicly state that the death penalty should be removed, that doesn’t necessarily make their opinions official Church doctrine and Catholics are fully within their right to disagree with the papacy. She then cites church doctrine that states the possibility that the death penalty is in fact justifiable if it is the only way to detract aggressors from killing. She also suggests that Catholics spend time praying and reflecting to discern their opinion on the matter. I believe that she intends to help others discern their own opinions by publicly addressing her own struggle with the issue.
Can Catholics Support the Death Penalty?
The next personal essay I found on Beliefnet outlines how the author thinks a Catholic “should” vote in regards to abortion. The author starts off very early by stating her opinion that Catholics should vote Republican. However, like any good essay does she acknowledges the counterargument to hers, which is that while Republicans run on a bill of pro-life, in reality abortion is not high on the list of priorities for Republicans, war and keeping the rich wealthy and the poor underprivileged is. The author throughout the essay continuously attacks a man who holds this belief by the name of Eduardo Moisés Peñalver. I found it interesting that she would choose rather than to lay out her own stance, she would rather attack publicly to stance of another. I think that her motives in this are to bolster her own argument by tearing down the argument of her opposition, and she did so publicly to gain popular support.
These narratives reinforced nature of the website. While the first narrative was open minded and suggested that readers individually reflect and come upon their own conclusions on what the Catholic belief is, the second one commanded that readers agree with her stance on what the Catholic belief on an issue is. I chose to study this site because I have often found discrepancies between my political beliefs and my religious ones. I have learned from reading the narratives from this site that it is ok within Catholic doctrine for me to disagree with the Church and that I am encouraged to form my own opinions on things. The reason I ‘ve come to that conclusion is because while the first narrative was able to back her open-minded claims through actual doctrine, the second was unable to back her bigoted views with doctrine. Moving forward in my religious experience, I hope to be able to use the lessons I learned from this assignment into my life.