AmericanPapist Comments
Oops! Barack Obama - 2, liberal "pro-life" Catholics - 0
Yeah, guys, we're waiting to hear on that last question...
Way to go, Doug! I suppose it's hard to see the dead embryos from that far up in the Ivory Tower. I guess it will be as easy to ignore them from the altitude of the Federal bench.
Is fair to preview this?
“A few ardently pro-life Catholics… believe that what they call 'silence and treachery' from the bishops on abortion helped pave the way for Obama's success."
NOW: Is there any doubt that, if pro-abortion “Catholic” lawmakers were excommunicated, will we STILL be murdering 1.5 million babies in Moloch’s altar yearly?
Absolutely? But ohohoh the USCCB keeps displaying intellectual great education, and mannerly refinement, publishing great sounding discourses which insist in covering the pro-abortion-ESCR wolf-culprits as... mere fellow travelers of (Cardinal George Baltimore's sheep skin):
“So many people of good will, dutiful priests and loving religious women, bishops and lay people of the Catholic Church who took our social doctrine to heart then can feel vindicated now (with winner Obama)…
As bishops, we can only insist that those who would impose their own agenda on the Church, those who believe and act self-righteously, answerable only to themselves, whether ideologically on the left or the right, betray the Lord Jesus Christ…”
In other words: congratulations Obama, and (yawning) we feel saaad… in our most august USCCB, checking that the genocide abortion chambers are going full steam.
CAN WE ASK ROME TO EXCOMMUNICATE THE INTELLECTUAL LAWMAKERS–not the surgical minions-OF THE BUTCHERED BABIES?
I’m sure most bishops mean well: so, allow us to be kind but firm:
How will they be judged historically, down the road?
Ten years from now people are going to look back at their pious speeches (not self-righteous, God forbid!!!) and… wonder how it was possible a culture built into the wholesale destruction of unborn life.
Deep regards, and hopwe this polite truths will not be censored
I am a faithful catholic, legal resident of the USA. If FOCA passes and the Mexico City policy is overturned. How can I continue to live in this country? I will not pay one cent in taxes to a government that will use it to kill innocents. My wife is American and she understands that if this happens we will leave. But, what about those who are left here?? This is gonna become a terrible persecution! We can't pay taxes to Obama! God help us, God have mercy of your church and strenghten us in this coming persecution.
There is no way out, we will be forced to refuse. What awaits us? Jail, fines, police, misery (To those true to the gospel who will remain true withnesses) And to those self-called "catholics" who go with the flow and pay their taxes and voted for Obama, for a better economical situation and sacrificed innocent lives, may the Lord have mercy on them and in us. It has begun, I can't believe it, it has begun.
Domine, mane nobiscum.
Joseph, I think you need to place the quotation marks on another word:
liberal
"pro-life"
"Catholics"
Pardon me if I seem arrogant, but, if they're not in line with such a fundamental Church teaching, we'll take the label away from them!
Adolfo,
I understand how you feel. My husband and I have had this same talk. The problem is.....where will we go? We have talked of Canada...my husband has family there. However, Canada is in the same predicament as we are in the US. Ireland? I have family there. People there are leaving the Church in droves. They have approved divorce....abortion and gay marriage are probably around the corner. Where would you go? I agree with you...persecution is probably on the horizon. God give us strength.
What about Malta? Nicaragua and another Central American country protect the unborn in law.Go there and fight with them for a culture of life.
Adolfo,
Did you pay taxes under the Clinton administration? If so, this will be no different. Anyhow, the Early Christians, so far as I know, were never persecuted for not paying taxes to the Roman Empire. I'm pretty sure they paid their taxes. I understand how you feel completely, but I'd suggest revisiting the tax portion of your argument. Taxes are voluntary, you aren't giving the money to the government and asking them to use it for abortions... unless you voted for Obama anyway (the Kmiecs and Vox Novas of the world actually voted for Obama knowing that their tax money would be going towards an aggressive abortion effort... that equals assent to me).
My wife and I are starting to plan moving home to Ireland (she's Irish). But, like Anon stated, Ireland is rife with problems as well. Staving off the hungry EU from devouring them is no small task. Their anti-abortion measures hang in the balance as they are under heavy pressure from the EU to allow abortion. The current Taoiseach is already publicly discussing the government's will to allow for same-sex marriages or state recognition of them. Worse, the people of St. Patrick are in a deep spiritual slumber. Many literally hate their Church. Less than a century ago, their grandparents and great-grandparents would risk being imprisoned or worse to celebrate Mass. Now they are an ungrateful lot, seeking popular culture as a refuge. It's rather sad.
So, we aren't sure what we are going to do either. There is not place in the world to turn where the Church is not under attack by the government.
Oops... I meant to say, "[paying] taxes [isn't] voluntary".
This is such a symbiotic relationship between these two. "You fund my campaign and I will make your abortion industry very profitable". Sick. How can these people sleep at night. Please. Someone explain this to me. I cannot comprehend at all.
An afterthought to my previous comment ... I want to send this picture to the Archbishop of Atlanta to see if he can truly state that this was a historic moment for this country, to elect Obama as president.
Mr. O is merely doing exactly what he said he would do. At least he's a politician that will keep his promises, no matter what the terrible consequences may be!
NRLC-PAC did a wonderful job of presenting the deadly facts about this man but the press did not let the truth out! We must get behind the state pro-life groups like those organized by NRLC and be ready to fight as best we can in the country God has placed us. Some must always be ready to stand for justice for His littlest ones.
Besides, a little persecution may be just what we need to get this job done!
The times are very dark indeed. But one thing is for sure- I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going to just leave this country, which is probably what these kind of people want.
We must engage this culture with all the organs of culture, overwhelming the blog sites, the chatrooms, everything that can allow us a forum to spread the Gospel of Life.
We have some good models of organized resistance to draw from- JPII, Pius XII, Thomas Moore, but above all our strength is in the Lord!
Elrond- "I bring man hope."
Aragorn- "I keep none for myself"
We shouldn't be too greedy with hope, but at this time, we should try to spread it, since where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.
We can't allow ourselves to be phased by the advances of the dark one. We must remain indifferent to him, and try to find the good that is still left, exploit it, and show people that a civilization of authentic love is possible.
This will be difficult, but "nothing is impossible with God."
Thanks for the good post gadfly. I had much the same sentiment of wanting to leave if things got bad for years, but then, fairly recently I've had a change of heart and I've become more convinced that I do need to stay and fight for the Lord. Yeah, times will be dark, but those were also the times where the Church shined the brightest in the darkness.
However, Rev 18:4 still haunts me in the back of my mind:
"Come out of her, my people,
lest you take part in her sins,
lest you share in her plagues; for her sins are heaped high as heaven,
and God has remembered her iniquities."
Hopefully "come out of her" is an exhortation to withdraw from her spiritually, and given the culture as it is, we should have already been doing that.
Kmiec is wrong
Diaspora, surely it has been a spiritual one for some time, the 60's perhaps, but now maybe even a physical one as well. Even people of strength need other people of strength. Where are they? Somewhere
I suppose when you start bestowing a personhood status to embryos, perhaps even zygotes, a lot of things start to seem pretty crazy.
Not trolling, but really now, it's plain as day to see how it's a culture of life: embryonic stem cell research is extremely valuable to the understanding of disease and treatments and if you don't consider embryos people, it's not much different from using lab rats (not to mention that the specimens come from embryos/fetuses which are already dead).
Shirakawasuna,
You're absolutely right, but its just not that easy. There is a signficant body of scientific evidence that says that the embryo, even the zygote, is a human being. So its not just a personal matter to see things one way or another. Its acting on the truth.
Secondly, why are the pro-ESCR's so gung-ho about stem cells anyway? There's been remarkably little progress with stem cells, but no one's reporting it; in fact, they are increasingly becoming a dead end. You are simply incorrect when you say that they are "extremely valuable to the understanding of disease." But there are other means of doing the same thing that do not involve the taking of "zygote" life, and they have proven to be much more promising. When you continue to demand embryonic stem cells even when they don't "work," that's a culture of death.
Shirakawasuna,
Human babies aren't lab rats.
When we start traveling down the road of declaring human organisms to be "non-persons", simply because of their age and location, we're going down a dark and ugly road.
Embryos aren't genetic waste that should be used for experimentation, any more than the "undesirables" (as the Nazis saw them) were. How is experimenting on human embryos, or worse, treating human embryos as raw material, any different from what was done to those in the concentration camps? How is it not a direct contradiction of most of the Nuremberg code of medical ethics, which is a part of the basis for the Code of Federal Regulations (US Health and Human Services regulations)?
Do the babies have the legal capacity to give consent, and have they (point 1)? Are the experiments yielding fruitful results that are unprocurable by other means (point 2)? Are the experiments based on the results of animal experimentation (point 3)? Do the experiments avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury (point 4)? Does the experiment have no a priori reason to believe that death will occur (point 5)? Are preparations made to protect the experimental subject from even the remote possibility of death (point 7)? Is the embryo at liberty to bring the experiment to an end (point 9)? Is the scientist ready to bring his experiment to an end if he has probable cause to believe that the experiment will cause death (point 10)?
The "Doctors' Trial" found quite a few doctors guilty for crimes against humanity because they ran experiments that went against such ethics (and it's sad that we need a list of ethics at all).
You state that the specimens come from embryos/fetuses that are already dead. That's not quite true. The embryo is killed either immediately prior to harvesting the stem cells, or the embryo is killed during the process of harvesting.
By the way, one last thing.
"Personhood" is a BS word made up by people trying to justify abortion and experimentation such as embryonic stem cell research. It's not objectively measurable, and therefore unusable when making such decisions about things like abortion and ESCR.
Thanks, Sam, for pointing out the amazing truth that Adult stem cells are already working and curing disease everyday in America. The possibilities of what we can safely do with these cells continues to astound many in that field of study.
One great source is actually amniotic fluid, which like cord blood, can be stored and use when needed. Even fat cells are a better source, and boy, could Americans supply plenty of those. LOL
Embryonic stem cells have never produced the "magic" results so often touted, yet the Media still proclaims they are needed. If we want cures why not put the money in what is working!
Please check out sites like these for more info.
www.stemcellresearch.org or nrlc.org The nrlc site also has great background and new info on FOCA as well. Get educated!
Sam - No, there is *not* a big body of scientific evidence showing that embryos/zygotes have attained the level of personhood. I'd ask you to give some, but I am absolutely positive that the sources would be highly suspect - that is always the case, I've found. An embryo wiggled an appendage? Clearly it can do your taxes and can feel pain.
As for embryonic stem cell research, you are quite wrong there as well. While I'm aware of no approved treatments directly resulting from stem cell research, the value to understanding development (and thus the prevention of many diseases) is great. To understand why, all you need to do is do about ten minutes of research on the subject. Adult stem cells do not provide many of the valuable information embryonic stem cells provide.
The 'increasingly a dead end' is simply pulled out of thing air and to make a pedantic note, you don't get stem cells from zygotes (zygotes are a single cell).
Matthew A. Siekierski: you are correct, human babies aren't lab rats. Embryos aren't babies, either. To make that claim you need to do some serious bastardization of what you understand to be a baby, because you'll be often talking about something without a sembleace of a brain.
We aren't 'starting' to call embryos nonpersons, they simply aren't by many opinions. Your slippery slope is a significant fallacy and I've never implied that I merely consider age when applying personhood. However, you haven't given any coherent criteria for what establishes it, either - it seems human genes is all it takes, or a 'potential' in most cases, which I'm sure you'll be sure to consider in the future when it's quite easy to clone you using some skin cells (oh no, more skin cells died! Don't go outside or you'll kill a baby!).
It's telling that you compare embryos (or even blastocysts) with the victims of the Holocaust, comparing barely-developed creatures with less ability to feel pain than a mouse to grown people going through immeasurable anguish and torture. I really don't have to answer your questions - you repeatedly make the same insane comparison. All of them assume a form of personhood for embryos (zygotes, blastocysts?) which I flatly deny and which you surely cannot support.
A number of stem cells are not obtained from what you'd call an entire living creature, but part of one which is already dead. However, embryonic stem cells are generally obtained from blastocysts and it does stop development. I'm sure you've deeply thought about the pain that clump of hundreds of cells endures.
Finally, I'll quote you in full: " "Personhood" is a BS word made up by people trying to justify abortion and experimentation such as embryonic stem cell research. It's not objectively measurable, and therefore unusable when making such decisions about things like abortion and ESCR."
Yeah, sorry to burst your bubble but the question of personhood has been about for ages. You're right, it's not objectively measurable (although a definition could supply objective measures) because it is a philosophical topic on which you can disagree and have your own preferred definition.
It isn't unusable, though. If I partly define personhood with properties that require more than a small ball of cells, harvesting stem cells, by definition, is not killing persons. I'm sure this sounds convenient to you, but remember that I simply do not consider that little clump of cells to be a person, that's the honest truth. It is far more ridiculous that you seem to consider it a person, in fact.
Personhood is a concept usually used to bracket out those human beings deemed to be "inferior" or "not human". See: slavery, Nazi Germany. Abortion is no different.
Scientifically, the embryo is a human being at a very early point in his/her life cycle which goes all the way from conception to death.
Commenting by HaloScan
