Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. ||||| With early voting underway and Election Day approaching, the head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego Thursday reminded pastors and priests that while they are obligated to share how their faith’s teachings are relevant to public policy, they shouldn’t get entangled in partisan politics. 
 
 Bishop Robert McElroy sent the message to 100 parishes in the diocese and all the priests not affiliated with parishes after the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Old Town issued bulletins that included partisan messages, including one that that claimed Satan was working through Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. 
 
 “Let me stress again that while we have a moral role to play in explaining how Catholic teaching relates to certain public policy issues, we must not and will not endorse specific candidates, use parish media or bulletins to favor candidates or parties through veiled language about selectively chosen issues, or engage in partisan political activity of any kind,” McElroy wrote. 
 
 All political material distributed by parishes must be approved by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the California Catholic Conference or the diocese’s Office of Social Ministry, he said. 
 
 McElroy noted that his warning came after The San Diego Union-Tribune published a front-page article about the controversial content in the church newsletters. 
 
 Legal experts said the parish’s statements likely violated IRS regulations that prohibit tax-exempt organizations like churches from making political statements in support or against a candidate for public office. 
 
 On Oct. 16 a flier was inserted into the historic church’s bulletin that listed five public policy issues that are “intrinsically evil” and conflict with Catholic teachings. Democrats support all five, while Republicans back none, it said. 
 
 “Based on the above, it is a mortal sin to vote Democrat,” the flier stated. “If your bishop, priest, deacon or other parishioners tell you to do so, you must walk away from them. Your immortal soul and your salvation are at stake-and so are theirs.” 
 
 The diocese said the flier was inserted into the bulletin without the pastor’s knowledge, and that its contents do not reflect Catholic teachings. It is not a mortal sin to support Democrats, and voters should use their faith-informed conscience when picking a candidate, the diocese said. 
 
 On Oct. 30, another message appeared in an article that ran in Immaculate Conception’s actual bulletin. Using an out-of-context line from a 2015 Clinton speech, the newsletter said that the Democratic nominee was influenced by Satan via Saul Alinsky, the trailblazing community organizer. 
 
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 “The devil does this through the tactics outlined by Saul Alinsky with the outcome as Hillary Clinton has stated, ‘And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed’, to draw us away from God’s teachings regarding the sanctity of life to those of the world and its prince.” 
 
 Clinton, speaking at the Women in the World Summit in 2015, was actually talking about eliminating roadblocks that make it difficult for girls to go to school, women to attend college, prevent the enforcement of domestic violence laws, and access to reproductive and maternal healthcare. 
 
 The article also included ten “sins” that have “enslaved” American society through the support of politicians, judges and voters. Some of the threats were longstanding issues the Catholic church has opposed, like abortion, gay marriage, and embryonic stem cell research. 
 
 But the article also spoke against admitting immigrants whose religions aim to “eradicate every believe except of their own prophet and god, and to impose this on America,” adding to the public debt by assisting immigrants while “paying Americans to sit home and not work,” and for “regulating the right to bear arms for free citizens in a nation where criminals and terrorists will always have weapons and where government is now in opposition to its citizens.” 
 
 The diocese said it welcomes immigrants, and that matters of the national debt or Second Amendment aren’t issues the church gets involved in. 
 
 Joshua Stewart/Union-Tribune Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church in Old Town Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church in Old Town (Joshua Stewart/Union-Tribune) 
 
 A review of several of the diocese parish’s bulletins posted online shows that most have mentioned the upcoming election, but they emphasize the importance of taking the election seriously, thinking like a Catholic in the voting booth, and requests to pray for politicians and civility. They less frequently mention candidates and political parties by name. 
 
 On Tuesday, a week before the election and a day before news about the bulletins, McElroy delivered an address at the University of San Diego where he emphasized the importance for bishops to be passionate about their faith and the implications of public policy, but that they must not be partisan. 
 
 “I speak to you tonight as a bishop who is part of a long tradition in Catholic episcopal leadership in the United States which holds that both the Church and society are best served when bishops refrain from publicly endorsing or favoring, either directly or indirectly, specific candidates in partisan elections,” he said. 
 
 And he said that voting as a Catholic isn’t so much an evaluation of one or several policy issues, but a spiritual and moral process. 
 
 He spoke about the need for political solutions that end abortions, eliminate hunger, prevent violent conflict, stop right-to-die laws, halt global climate change and environmental destruction, eliminate the drug trade, and end partisan impasses that prevent immigration reform. 
 
 “It requires, in a very real sense, the development of ‘a Catholic political imagination’ which sees the connections between poverty and the disintegration of families; war and the global refugee crisis; the economic burdens of the aging and legalized physician-assisted suicide,” he said. 
 
 But McElroy said there is an urgent need to address the dismal state of American politics. 
 
 “The sickness in the political soul of our nation will only be healed if society undertakes a massive regeneration of the political ties which unite us as a people and begin to see these ties as more important for us as a society than the partisan divisions which rend us apart,” he said. 
 
 RELATED ||||| Between requests for prayers for the sick and a notice for an upcoming chastity luncheon, a newsletter from a Catholic church in Old Town that doubles as an election-day polling site included a flier that told parishioners they’ll go to hell if they vote for Democrats. 
 
 Two Sundays later, the message had changed: Satan was working through former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. 
 
 The Oct. 16 bulletin from the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church was stuffed with a flyer written in both English and Spanish that cited five legislative policies — support for abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, human cloning, and embryonic stem cell research — that will doom a politician and their supporters to eternal damnation. 
 
 “It is a mortal sin to vote Democrat … immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell,” the flyer said. It cited the five public policy issues from the “Voters Guide for Serious Catholics” and said that Democrats violate each of them, while Republicans cross none. 
 
 The political messages continued as early voting began and the election drew closer. An article in the Oct. 30 the church bulletin claimed that Clinton is influenced by Satan. 
 
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 The bulletin took a quote from a 2015 speech by Clinton out of context to make it appear that through Satanic intervention the Democratic nominee, using techniques from trailblazing community organizer Saul Alinsky, was telling Christians to change their religious beliefs to support abortion. 
 
 “The devil does this through tactics outlined by Saul Alinsky with the outcome as Hillary Clinton stated ‘And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed,’ to draw us away from God’s teachings regarding the sanctity of life to those of the world and its prince,” the bulletin said. 
 
 Clinton, speaking at the Women in the World Summit, was actually talking about eliminating cultural barriers that prevent girls from attending elementary school and women from attending college, as well as obstacles that stand between enforcement of domestic violence laws and access to reproductive and maternal healthcare. 
 
 Lawyers who study churches and other nonprofit organizations said the statements violate regulations that prevent tax-exempt groups from speaking in support or against political candidates. 
 
 The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego on Wednesday said the messages in the flier and bulletin do not reflect Catholic teaching or diocese policies, are inappropriate, and that voters should use their conscience to determine which candidates to support. 
 
 “It’s not a mortal sin to vote for Democrats, number one. And number two, the church doesn’t take positions on this, and we’re not going to,” diocese spokesman Kevin Eckery said. 
 
 In a speech Tuesday at the Center for Catholic Thought and Culture at the University of San Diego, Bishop Robert McElroy stressed the importance both for his faith and for the country of religious leaders like himself staying out of candidate elections. 
 
 “I speak to you tonight as a bishop who is part of a long tradition in Catholic episcopal leadership in the United States which holds that both the Church and society are best served when bishops refrain from publicly endorsing or favoring, either directly or indirectly, specific candidates in partisan elections,” a transcript of his address says. 
 
 The diocese said the flier was not authorized by the parish, but it was somehow inserted into the Oct. 16 bulletin. 
 
 “For all I know someone thought that they were doing a service,” by putting it into the bulletin, Eckery said. “The pastor said it was not something he had reviewed or approved.” 
 
 In his homily three weeks before the flier appeared in bulletins the church’s pastor, the Rev. Richard Perozich, discussed those same five points from the flier and how they’re relevant in this upcoming election but didn’t mention political parties, candidates, or damnation. 
 
 “In the church, we have what we call the five non-negotiables, things that are most important, and they’re around life issues. There’s life, from conception to natural death. There’s marriage and sexuality, embryonic stem cell research, cloning and euthanasia. When we vote, we don’t vote for candidates who support these things, even if they support other things that we really like,” said Perozich, according to a recording of the Sept. 25 homily posted on the church’s website. 
 
 Eckery said Perozich was not available for comment. 
 
 Francine Busby, the head of San Diego County Democrats, said she saw the flier and thought it was absurd to the point it didn’t seem like something the faith she grew up in would publish. 
 
 “My initial reaction was that this was extreme and completely over the top in the accusations,” she said. “I thought it was important to bring it to the attention to the diocese, just as a friend. I know that they didn’t mean it. … Clearly this was something that the diocese would never ever approve.” 
 
 While the bulletin cites “The Voters Guide for Serious Catholics” from El Cajon-based Catholic Answers Press to claim that voting for a Democrat results in eternal damnation, the guide references neither Democrats nor Republicans, and says voting by political party is an ineffective way to align with Catholic teachings. 
 
 “Do not just vote based on your political party affiliation, your earlier voting habits, or your family’s voting tradition,” the guide says. “Years ago, these may have been trustworthy ways to determine whom to vote for, but today they are often not reliable. You need to look at the stands each candidate takes. This means that you may end up casting votes for more than one party.” 
 
 The Clinton-as-Satan comment was in an article from the Oct. 30 bulletin headlined “Voting Catholic” that discusses contemporary issues that Catholics have long stood against like abortion and same-sex marriage, plus ones that Eckery said are not a part of Catholic teachings and out of line with diocesan policy. 
 
 The article, which was written in the bulletin and not an insert, listed 10 “sins” that have “enslaved” American society created by politicians, judges and the voters who support them.
– If you live in San Diego and plan on voting for Hillary, it's best you don't read two recent newsletters from Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. In the Oct. 16 bulletin for the Old Town church, which is used as an election polling site, a flier was inserted. Along with criticism of five political hot topics (including abortion and euthanasia) came a warning for voters, the San Diego Union-Tribune notes. "It is a mortal sin to vote Democrat … immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell," the flier read, adding GOPers don't violate any of the mentioned policies, while Dems violate them all. The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego says the flier wasn't OKed by the parish and that it doesn't know how it emerged. In its Oct. 30 edition, the bulletin specifically named Clinton in a section called "Voting Catholic," reading at one point, "We are called by politicians such as Hillary Clinton, deplorables." (It's unclear who wrote or OKed the passage.) The diocese of San Diego's response has been unequivocal: "It's not a mortal sin to vote for Democrats, number one," a rep tells the Union-Tribune. "And number two, the church doesn't take positions on this." On Thursday, Bishop Robert McElroy warned 100 parishes that "while we have a moral role to play in explaining how Catholic teaching relates to certain public policy issues, we must not and will not endorse specific candidates," per the Union-Tribune. Attorneys point out IRS rules stop tax-exempt groups like churches from maligning or supporting political candidates.