Rich Leonardi examines "The Pro Lifer's Dilemma" next Fall and the suggestions of Russel Shaw, George Weigel and Archbishop Chaput:
What say you? Could you explain pulling the lever for a "President Guiliani (or Romney)" to Christ and abortion's 47 million victims?
Here is the document in question:
In his book Why the Democrats Are Blue: How Secular Liberals Hijacked the People's Party, Mark Stricherz argues that the change from the "people's party" to a party of secular-elite values can be traced to a particular political moment -- and one that few people would think. Deal W. Hudson sat down with Stricherz to talk about what he calls "the greatest untold story in American politics."
(Hat tip: Opinionated Catholic)
The Boston Globe reports:
BALTIMORE - Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston, saying the Democratic Party has been persistently hostile to opponents of abortion rights, asserted yesterday that the support of many Catholics for Democratic candidates "borders on scandal."(emphasis added)
In his sharpest comments about the political landscape since he was installed as archbishop of Boston four years ago, O'Malley made clear that, despite his differences with the Republican Party over immigration policy, capital punishment, economic issues, and the war in Iraq, he views abortion as the most important moral issue facing policymakers.
"I think the Democratic Party, which has been in many parts of the country traditionally the party which Catholics have supported, has been extremely insensitive to the church's position, on the gospel of life in particular, and on other moral issues," O'Malley said.
Acknowledging that Catholic voters in Massachusetts generally support Democratic candidates who are in favor of abortion rights, O'Malley said, "I think that, at times, it borders on scandal as far as I'm concerned."
"However, when I challenge people about this, they say, 'Well, bishop, we're not supporting [abortion rights],' " he said. "I think there's a need for people to very actively dissociate themselves from those unacceptable positions, and I think if they did that, then the party would have to change."
[Read the whole thing]
The Los Angeles Times' editorial begins at the height of condescension:
Pope Benedict XVI will be preaching on his visit to Washington and New York next April, his first trip to the United States as pope. That's part of a pope's job description. But many American Catholics hope that the papal visit will double as what politicians in this country call a "listening tour." They know that, erudite as this former theology professor may be, he still might be able to learn something from their experience in a pluralistic country where the Catholic faith has flourished despite -- or because of -- the separation of church and state. . . .Earlier this year, Benedict seemed to endorse the hard-line view, answering "yes" when asked if he agreed with the idea that Mexican legislators who voted to legalize abortion should be excommunicated. But a spokesman later issued a clarification that, while reasserting church teaching against abortion, left unclear whether the pope would deny Communion to pro-choice politicians.
When Benedict comes to the United States, he is likely to be importuned by conservative Catholics to side with the hard-liners. He would be wiser to listen to other Catholics, laypeople as well as clergy, who know what mischief would be caused by a decree that would seem to force some Catholic officials to choose between their responsibility to their constituents or the Constitution and their standing in the church. These American Catholics believe, as President Kennedy said in 1960, in "an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the president -- should he be Catholic -- how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote."
Give me a break. After all, we are talking about the same Pope Benedict XVI who once remarked:
The modern idea of freedom is thus a legitimate product of the Christian environment; it could not have developed anywhere else. Indeed, one must add that it cannot be separated from this Christian environment and transplanted into any other system, as is shown very clearly today in the renaissance of Islam; the attempt to graft on to Islamic societies what are termed western standards cut loose from their Christian foundations misunderstands the internal logic of Islam as well as the historical logic to which these western standards belong, and hence this attempt was condemned to fail in this form. The construction of society in Islam is theocratic, and therefore monist and not dualist; dualism, which is the precondition for freedom, presupposes for its part the logic of the Christian thing. In practice this means that it is only where the duality of Church and state, of the sacral and the political authority, remains maintained in some form or another that the fundamental pre-condition exists for freedom.(Excerpted from "Theology and the Church’s Political Stance" in Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger: Church, Ecumenism and Politics: New Essays in Ecclesiology (NY: Crossroad, 1988).Where the Church itself becomes the state freedom becomes lost. But also when the Church is done away with as a public and publicly relevant authority, then too freedom is extinguished, because there the state once again claims completely for itself the justification of morality; in the profane post-Christian world it does not admittedly do this in the form of a sacral authority but as an ideological authority – that means that the state becomes the party, and since there can no longer be any other authority of the same rank it once again becomes total itself. The ideological state is totalitarian; it must become ideological if it is not balanced by a free but publicly recognized authority of conscience. When this kind of duality does not exist the totalitarian system is unavoidable.
Perhaps the Los Angeles Times should consider whether the Church should remain "a public and publicly relevant authority" to those who profess the Catholic faith and yet obstinately and publicly repudiate her very teaching by their legislative actions?
Here's an introductory primer on what the Pope thinks about issues of Church and State.
Deal Hudson says I'm still searching for the words to express my disappointment in Fred Thompson's "Meet the Press" interview from last Sunday. (You and me both):
For Thompson to repudiate the pro-life plank of the Republican Party is, well, it has to be said, political suicide.Unbelievable.He entered the race with the advantage of a 100 % pro-life record.
Thompson was supposed to be the one candidate who could unite social and religious conservatives because he didn't have the "complications" of the other candidates.
Thompson just created a major complication for himself by doing exactly what he should not have done: Give pro-lifers a reason to support another candidate.
See Also: National Right to Life Endorsement of Fred Thompson Has Some Concerned: Questions about his opposition to Human Life Amendment and poor response to Schiavo case, by John Connolly. LifeSiteNews. November 14, 2007.
(Hat tip: PewSitter.com)
From LifeNews.com:
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Former member of Congress Henry Hyde will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom next Monday for his work opposing abortion. For decades, after his landmark Hyde Amendment stopped federal funding of virtually all abortions, Hyde became the pro-life movement's elder statesman on Capitol Hill.
Hyde was first elected to the House in 1974 and served as chairman of the House International Relations Committee and the House Judiciary Committee from 1995 to 2001.
In those positions, Hyde advanced pro-life legislation and worked to stop using taxpayer dollars to subsidize abortions in other countries.
Hyde's lasting legacy will be the federal Hyde amendment, which has prevented federal tax dollars from being used to fund almost all abortions since 1976. The Supreme Court heard a case in 1980 challenging the law and upheld it as constitutional.
[More]
Awakenings: The Schiavo case revisited, by Wesley J. Smith
The Weekly Standard 11/05/2007, Volume 013, Issue 08:
On October 19, only months after being nearly dehydrated to death when his feeding tube was removed, Jesse Ramirez walked out of the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix on his own two legs. Ramirez is lucky to be alive. Early last June, a mere one week after a serious auto accident left him unconscious, his wife Rebecca and doctors decided he would never recover and pulled his feeding tube. He went without food and water for five long days. But then his mother, Theresa, represented by lawyers from the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund, successfully took Rebecca to court demanding a change of guardianship on the grounds that Rebecca and Jesse's allegedly rocky marriage disqualified her for the role.The judge ordered that Jesse be temporarily rehydrated and nourished. Then Jesse regained consciousness. Now, instead of dying by dehydration, he will receive rehabilitation and get on with his life--all because his mother rejected the reigning cultural paradigm that a life with profound cognitive dysfunction is not worth living.
Ramirez is only the latest instance of an unconscious patient waking up after being consigned to death by dehydration. . . .
There was an historic election in Louisiana last Saturday. My home state got a new Republican governor. Yes, in the state of Katrina, which the liberal media has falsified into a "Bush-caused catastrophe," the state went Republican--and not just Republican, but with a highly conservative, pro-life Republican. Let it be clear: many of those from Louisiana knew right off the bat that the Katrina disaster was the product of years of insitutionalized Democratic mismanagement and corruption in New Orleans and Louisiana politics. Yet, the liberal media, oblivious to the facts, boldly projected their anti-Bush obsession onto the disaster and gave the nation a false picture of the cause of the disaster. Much the same is happening with the exaggerated emphasis on global warming.
A new generation is taking over in Louisiana. The new Governor-elect Bobby Jindal is at 36, the youngest governor in the nation. But note that youth is not enough--what makes Jindal special is that he combines youth with an entirely new approach, because there are young clones of the mentality that gave us years of Democratic mismanagement and mediocrity in Louisiana politics. Jindal is also an enthusiastic convert to Catholicism from Hinduism. His parents were born in India. He is a graduate of Brown University and was a Rhodes Scholar. And another great plus: he is not a lawyer! So, a lot of false assumptions fell yesterday: that Katrina would be a Democratic political boon, that Louisianians would not vote for a "non-white" governor, that Louisianians are satisfied with corrupt business as usual, that Louisiana is berefet of intelligent political talent. The skinny, non-lawyer, Republican Rhodes Scholar with roots in India is now the face of Louisiana politics. That's about as different from past Louisiana political figures as you can get. Saturday may finally have been the day that Louisiana really joined the Union. Now, the hard task becomes how the liberal media can spin the facts away and somehow transform this eruption of reality into some kind of evil that can be ascribed to President Bush. (For further details, see this Wikipedia link.)
Catholics Against Rudy has a new petition, by which you can express your public opposition to the candidacy of "pro-choice Catholic" Rudy Giuliani:
We are Catholics who will not vote for Rudy Giuliani in the GOP primary. The purpose of this petition is to allow faithful Catholics to speak out against Rudy Giuliani's abysmal record on non-negotiable "Culture of Life" issues (e.g., abortion, embryonic stem cell research) and traditional marriage, and to publicly oppose his candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination.
"We are starting a conversation with Catholics across America and hope you will join us. Hillary shares your vision for the common good -- quality, affordable health care for all Americans, better educational opportunities for our children, and a plan for peace and stability from Baghdad to Darfur. Together we can make this vision a reality."
... Excluding, of course, those not yet born.
Senator Clinton launched a "National Catholic Steering Committee" to garnor support amongst Catholics for her presidential campaign. Ad Majorem Dei Gloria has the details.
Abp. Raymond Burke on Canon 915 In the Light of the Law Sept. 10, 2007:
One of America's sharpest canon lawyer bishops (Abp. Raymond Burke of St. Louis), has just published a terrific article in perhaps the world's most prestigious canon law journal (Periodica de re Canonica in Rome), on a topic of vital interest to the Church in the world (the correct application of Canon 915 on denial of Holy Communion). Best of all, it's available on-line here.Just in case you missed it -- consider it as a 'must-read', especially in light of 2004's presidential race, with the scandal of pro-choice Catholic John Kerry insisting on his right to the Eucharist (not to mention this election with a certain former mayor of New York).
Meanwhile, Catholic News Agency reports that Cardinal McCarrick has recommended that the Catholic Church forcefully preach the pro-life message to presidential candidates rather than following Archbishop Burke’s suggestion of denying them Communion.
Credible veteran conservative columnist Cal Thomas has his usual common sense take on Al Gore and global warming at this link. It always amazes me how naive many of the Gore cultists are--their leader does not even live up to his own preaching on global warming in his own public lifestyle of extravagant and lavish energy consumption. Alas, we are all born looking for someone to believe in, we are all hard-wired to look for a messiah. Yet, the true Messiah came, died, rose again, and will return--and remains available this very day for the asking. There is no need to look elsewhere and be ultimately disappointed and disillusioned. The false messiahs have fallen repeatedly and some still nostalgically look back to them: Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Che. Others like Castro keep hanging on by their fingernails. Yet, other false messiahs, such as Darwin for example, were never looking for messianic status but are more the product of fanatic followers who "dogmatize" the contributions of important historical figures beyond their original intent. The question remains for all of us: who is your messiah? Is the one you have, whether explicitly or implicitly, worth it? Can he deliver?
(Hat tip: American Papist)
Christopher's dad, Dr. Philip Blosser, reports at Musings of a Pertinacious Papist:
Son Christopher (of Against the Grain, Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club, & Pope Benedict XVI Fan Club) has just sired a son, Raphael Joseph Feldman-Blosser. If you're familiar with his blogs, you may wish to send him a congratulatory note -- with or without a cigar.All the best to you and your growing family, Christopher!
Archbishop Burke vs. Rudy Giuliani: "Matching Wits with an Unarmed Foe" American Papist has the goods. October 3, 2007.
The pro-life movement is on the offensive against Planned Parenthood:
"This fall, 89 cities in 33 states across the nation will unite for a unique pro-life campaign called 40 Days for Life -- an intensive effort designed to raise awareness, save lives, bring healing, and prepare America for the beginning of the end of abortion.
The campaign will be conducted simultaneously in all locations from September 26 - November 4."
The main component of this campaign is peaceful vigil outside Planned Parenthood clinics or other abortion facilities. Here is the link to learn more and to see how you can help.
I attended the kickoff event in one city, Ann Arbor, Michigan, at the local Catholic charismatic parish. As usual, the most moving testimony was from two women who choose to be silent no more and to speak of the immense damage that abortion does to the mother involved. By the mercy and healing power of Jesus, these women are free today to live full lives and to speak truth to power courageously and prophetically. Although they still carry scars from their great error, they are able by the power of Jesus to move on, experience peace and joy, and now go about doing good and teaching others. Just the other day, another woman told me about the horrors of her own abortion and about the insidious workings of Planned Parenthood when she volunteered there years ago: exorbitant profit margins on birth control pills and suppression of information about the harmful consequences of abortion to the woman. She also told me that if anyone had intercepted her on the way to the abortion clinic and urged her to turn around, she would not have had the abortion.Pro-Abortion Kerry’s Lecture Cancelled at CUA Due to “Scheduling Conflict” :
WASHINGTON, DC, September 21, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - LifeSiteNews.com reported last week that Catholic University of America's (CUA) newspaper 'The Tower' had revealed that the College Democrats at CUA had received the necessary permission from the administration and subsequently invited pro-abortion Senator Kerry to lecture at the University.In its current issue released just today, The Tower newspaper is now reporting that according to both the Senator's congressional office and the College Democrats, "Sen. John Kerry will not speak at the University this semester due to scheduling conflicts[…]
Mark Arnone, president of the College Democrats at CUA, had initially been forbidden by officials at the University Center, Student Programs and Events (UCSPE) to invite the pro-abortion senator to lecture. However, after appealing the decision with a six page explanation on the reasons why Kerry should be allowed, Arnone received permission from UCSPE director Bill Jonas.
While no response was ever received from Jonas' office, LifeSite did receive an answer to a similar question from Victor Nakas, Associate Vice President for Public Affairs. Mr. Nakas claimed that Senator Kerry was never issued a "formal" invitation but that "[t]he College Democrats decided to explore the possibility of inviting Senator Kerry."Nakas however, explained that a Kerry lecture at CUA would not be a contradiction to the USCCB policy. "Unfortunately, some people are misinterpreting the bishops' statement on Catholic politicians. We verified with the bishops themselves that the intent of the statement was to refuse a platform to speakers who would be invited to speak on those specific issues for which they hold positions that are at variance with the fundamental moral teachings of the Catholic Church (emphasis in original email).
Nakas continued, "This means, for example, that we would be violating the letter and the intent of the bishops' statement were we to invite Sen. Kerry to speak on abortion. However, we would not be violating the letter and the spirit of the bishops' statement were we to permit the College Democrats to invite Sen. Kerry to speak on the environment or the Iraq war."
Huckabee clueless on Reagan/Keyes pro-life Mexico City Policy, by Helen Valois. September 22, 2007 RenewAmerica analyst:
Bill Clinton knows about the Mexico City Policy. Immediately upon taking office as President, on behalf of his virulently pro-abortion base of support, Clinton rescinded Ronald Reagan's prohibition on U.S. taxpayer funding of abortions overseas.READ THE REST.George W. Bush knows about the Mexico City Policy. When he became our country's Chief Executive, one of his first acts was to restore the policy's protections afforded to the innocent unborn around the world, and to American taxpayers.
But in last Monday's Values Voter debate in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, candidate Mike Huckabee proved that he doesn't have a clue about this landmark pro-life foreign policy.
Here's the relevant portion of the debate:
JANET FOLGER: The Mexico City Policy states that as a condition for a foreign organization to receive federal funds, they will neither, quote, "perform nor actively promote abortion." Would you work to apply this Mexico City Policy to organizations within the United States, as well as abroad?
MIKE HUCKABEE: I just want to clarify, and I'm not trying to be difficult, but I want to make sure we're not being asked to apply a Mexican law to United States law. Is it the principle you're after, or the law itself?
FOLGER: It's the principle of not giving our tax dollars to organizations within our country that actively promote or provide abortions.
HUCKABEE: OK. I just want to make sure that we were not in essence agreeing to abide by a Mexican law.
FOLGER: No. It's an American law.
HUCKABEE: OK. All right.
Disappointed? -- You bet.
By the way: I like Alan Keyes. I'm not sure if he has a chance of winning the nomination, but nonetheless, I'm glad he's in the race. He's a skilled debater and will keep the others on their toes. Another Catholic statesman we can be proud of.
To stereotype a person is to locate him in a category that forbids recognition of his individuality.(emphasis added)
It gives preference to the fictional over the real, the abstract over the concrete. Hence, it is an act of injustice, and has much in common with a laundry list of detestable “isms”: racism, sexism, colonialism, communism, etc.
And yet, despite the near universal repudiation of stereotyping, it remains active, indeed, even fashionable, to stereotype Catholics.
According to this stereotype, a Catholic is a one-dimensional creature that acts solely on the basis of a faith that he cannot share with non-Catholics. As a consequence, Catholics are often disenfranchised from the political process simply because they are Catholics. As we read over and over again in the secular press, “Catholics should not try to impose their faith on others,” “Church and state must remain separate,” “We live in a pluralistic society,” and so on.
In reality, a Catholic is not simply a believer. He is also a knower, and one, as a matter of fact, who has a great enthusiasm for reason. The philosophy of politics is not alien to the Catholic mind either historically or presently.
Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI have sought passionately and persistently to remind Catholics of their proper place in the democratic scheme of things, which is to help in providing society with a rational basis that makes justice and peace possible.
In other words, a Catholic is a humanist in the best sense of the term. To limit him to his faith is to stereotype him unjustly.
In his encyclical, Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love), Pope Benedict draws a clear line between the Church and the state when he writes, “The Church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible. She cannot and must not replace the state.”
On the other hand, the role of the Church, according to the Holy Father, “is simply to help purify reason and to contribute here and now to the acknowledgment and attainment of what is just.”
Properly formed Catholics provide a corrective when reason gives way to trends, opinion polls, political correctness, pressure groups, convenience and a peculiar form of relativism that claims to be absolute (the “dictatorship of relativism”).
***
The world of politics should welcome Catholics because they actually show a more cultivated appreciation for reason than what is usually displayed by self-serving politicians or legislators who sacrifice justice for convenience.
Robert George, professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University, has made the observation that the Catholic Church is far more committed to reason and rational discourse than is the world of secular politics. “It seems to me,” he states, “that these people have it backward. The Church’s moral teachings are in line with reason; secularist ideology is not.”
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During the 2008 election, CPS was pleased to contribute to the efforts of both Catholics Against Rudy and Catholics Against Biden, in light of the deviations of both from Catholic teaching on abortion.
Our present contributors are Jay Anderson of Pro Ecclesia * Pro Familia * Pro Civitate; Stephen Dillard (of Southern Appeal; Jeff Miller aka. The Curt Jester; David Schrader of Catholics for Bush and Christopher Blosser of Against The Grain.
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