AmericanPapist Comments
Thomas, Professor Kaveny has been a supporter of Obama for a while. She's on the committee with Cafardi and all that. I'm not sure if you can fairly count her as "coming out of the woodwork" when she's been out for a while.
"Why is is impossible for some to see that the bishops aren't cheerleaders for one political party, they are cheer leaders for the unborn..."
Self-justification.
It clearly highlights the work the bishops have ahead of them. I've even seen a roman collar in the crowd behind Obama. The bishops can speak all they want but the vast majority of Catholics do not spend their time reading Catholic content online. In fact, it's obvious they don't spend time reading it in any format. How do the bishops reach the people, unless they can get into mainstream media, which has done everything it can to blow them off by rendering them to some back page, if they get there at all.
If Obama wins this election, I am convinced that of the many messages God is trying to send, this is one message that will be staring the bishops right in the face.
We didn't get here because they have been speaking up as individuals or as a whole for 40 years. We got here largely through silence, indifference and passivity.
I know many of them are starting to feel the pain and it is leading them to speak up. We need to pray for them, that they will approach these things with greater fervor. I don't know how they can rectify it unless they start to withhold Holy Communion from pro-choice, Catholic politicians, especially those who are misrepresenting the faith in an effort to get votes.
Pray. Pray. And, pray some more.
If anyone is interested in the metro Detroit area, Assumption Grotto will be holding an all night Adoration Vigil into Election Day morning. Tom, if you could please give it publicity we would sure like to pack the Church at least for the 7:00pm Mass on Monday, November 3 and have those who can't come during the night, remain for an hour or so after the Mass. There will be security all night, and we will have coffee and snacks in the vestibule for those spending long night hours. I'm also looking at getting a list of other such things within that post combox so people can join in.
Again, I would like to remind people here that this relentless turn to politics and government as the answer to the abortion debate is futile. Government does not write the laws, we, the people do. While it is objectively wrong to kill the unborn, until public opinion agrees with this statement, imposing it will only be seen as tyranny.
I question the wisdom of some of the bishops for being so intent on blasting the Democratic party for their pro-choice beliefs, only because they seem to let the other party off the hook. The Republicans have had numerous opportunities to overturn Roe v. Wade, but chose not to. If government and the Republican Party were the answer, the problem should have been solved years ago. Instead, so long as abortion exists and the Republican Party plays the part, they get of the hook for explaining why they're not doing enough.
What I also find interesting is how the Church does not make the idea of third party voting more valid. There are a number of independent candidates who are in fact pro-life, and pro-social justice, qualities that can never be found in either the two major parties at the same time. It's sad when there are perfect 'Catholic' candidates who are lost, even to the view of the bishops.
NT
Besides, as Hitler thinned out the number of Jews in Europe, there became fewer Jews actually in concentration camps.
Hitler actually reduced the numbers of Jews in concentration camps.
"Abortion is a moral tragedy..."
Understatement of the year. It's a bloody holocaust in the truest sense of the word. Millions of helpless human sacrifices to the unholy pagan gods of selfishness, fear, and pride upon the altar of sexual liberation and radical feminism.
NT:
Your first paragraph is disingenuous. Government does write the laws in the form of the Legislative Branch, which is elected by the people to represent them.
And to say that pushing for laws to limit or ban abortion as "futile" and "tyranny" is quite absurd. Shall we just throw our hands up in despair and forget about laws against murder?
Yes, we need to work to educate and turn people's hearts away from abortion. But that does not mean we do not push for legislation against abortion.
We can do both.
Tyranny? The vast majority of American support major restrictions on abortion. It's the tyranny of the radical abortion lobby and their evil rhetoric that is imposing their will against that of the majority.
For those who can watch, here is one actor doing his part to bring forth the truth. You can choose Spanish or English. If you are squeamish, when it says to skip to the final words, do so.
Or watch what abortion is. The dismembering of a human being.
www.ObamaMustSee.com
I agree with many of your comments, but if the majority of Americans are in fact pro-life, then why is this not reflected in our laws? Could it be that we have put too much faith in our representatives to actually do something about it? How long does this idea of 'voting in pro-life candidates to change the laws' continue before it's proven useless?
While I agree that we must elect people who share our beliefs on the sanctity of life, putting any faith in the political machine to makes these changes is folly. Abortions are not committed by people who hate babies, or who see them as the scapegoat of a nations demise as Hitler did, they are committed by people who do not understand that a fetus is a child, or chose not to believe so. To say that it is a 'holocaust' is to say that there is a crusade to kill the unborn. While some pro-choice people may come close to this, all common sense, and St. Thomas Aquinas' understanding that all people seek what is good, tells us that people's motives can be misguided by aren't so simple as to say that those who are pro-abortion hate babies and want them dead.
Since this is the case, the 'battle against good and evil' is not a fight that can be fought in the streets, it needs to be fought in our hearts. There are many reasons why people have abortions: fear, pride, connivence, selfishness, and for some a misguided belief of mercy. But none of these reasons are hate for the unborn.
So why then do we treat this battle like a we're going after some kind of stereotypical movie villain? Are enemy is Satan, and he is playing with the heart, minds and souls of this world. He is the enemy. And politics is not the institution which will beat him.
Instead, it is our Church and our faith which will rescue the unborn, not the laws. It will be our own charity and love, not a government program, handout, initiative, or law that will put an end to abortion. Until we as a church can find an acceptable alternative to abortion, they will continue and politics will do little to stop it.
NT
NT, concerning the majority of people who support restrictions on abortion: http://kofc.org/un/eb/en/news/re...ail/
548040.html
NT:
Many Americans are pro life, but their pro life beliefs are often trumped by other concerns, i.e., economic prosperity, war, death penalty, etc...
There is a disconnect with those people who claim to be pro life, but consistently vote Democrat, which (falsely) promises a better economy but is mostly pro abortion.
The Church needs to continue to speak out against abortion and to also teach that abortion supercedes the economy, war (which is prudential), and the death penalty (also prudential). We Christians also need to continue to promote alternatives to abortion, such as adoption, abstinence, traditional marriage (which will solve the problem of the poverty of single parenthood), and charity to assist low income families.
However, to state that laws will do "little" to stop abortion is wrong. Abortion is murder. Murder is against the law. To claim that the law does little to stop murder, and that it is useless, is ridiculous. Good laws reflect God's laws. And Christians need to work towards promoting good laws.
Yes , but we must still change the laws!
We have had tyranny from the Supreme Court! Bush has been more pro-life than any other president since 1973.The pro-life leadership has been pretty abysmal for one thing. Until recently, the bishops as a group have been pretty abysmal in their leadership, too. It all takes time and we need to gain time by electing McCain!
The little progress we have made will completely destroyed, such as the actual decrease in the number of abortions. If Obama is elected the numbers will go up. Crisis pregnancy centers will be closed down and abstinence funding will be gone. All protests at abortion mills will be banned. All doctors, nurses and Catholic hospitals will have to perform abortions.(Under the Freedom of Choice Act which Obama has promised to sign first thing before anything else, such as the economy.) The Children's Health Insurance Program S-CHIP, would not only continue to fund abortions and contraception and adult insurance, it would also delete coverage for unborn children. That is what the Democrats were really fighting for this past year when President Bush vetoed it several times. (You would never have know this listening to the censored news of the major media.) So Democrats really do NOT want to reduce the number of abortions! Planned Parenthood thrives off of promiscuity and abortion and it donates lots of money to the Democrats.So obviously the Democrats are not going to work to reduce the number of abortions. It is not possible that an Obama victory would help advance the culture of Life.
Atheling,
You are right that the Church needs to speak out more about this issue. But it is my feeling that the Church needs to do much more than just speak. If the 'majority' of Americans are pro-life, does this extend to more than their polling preference, or does it make way into their own lives? I think we would all agree that if all those who say they're pro-life did more than simply just vote that way we'd actually see some progress.
My issue here is this, we can't look to the government to solve this problem. Both you and Anonymous talk about federal programs or laws that seem to encourage abortion. I would like to say though that the presence of these things don't require anyone to have an abortion. Every abortion is a choice, done through free will. It may not be the choice that some want, but ultimately it's the one that some people take.
It's similar to the simple wisdom of attracting more flies with honey than vinegar. What is the pro-life honey that we have to offer? Why is it that we depend on the government for money for pro-life programs? The only reason Catholic hospitals will be forced to preform abortions is because of the large amount of federal money they receive. If they said no to the money, they wouldn't have the strings attached.
I fear that this election is bringing to the surface that realization that so many people depend on the government to solve their problems. WE are the country. We as individuals and us as a Church are not bound by federal money, or abortion laws. We are free to help in any way we see fit. And yet, we instead spend our energies focusing on how the 'government' has to save us. It won't. It never has. It never will.
Politics hasn't changed much since Pontious Pilot. We still kill the innocent. And thinking that some day the whole institution is going to come to its senses is a nice belief, but it's not one that we as Catholics are bound to believe. I, myself, believe in the Church, and in it's capacity to care and show the world the love the Father has for us. That's not to say that I don't want to change things, it just means that I prefer to do them on my street instead of Pennsylvania Avenue.
NT:
Whoa, wait a minute. I NEVER supported any federal programs that support abortion. Where the heck did I say that? Stop making inferences where none exist!
Next, your assertion that "politics hasn't changed much since Pontious Pilate" (and it's "Pontius", btw) is patently FALSE. That is a breathtakingly ignorant thing to say, which demonstrates the fact that you have no historical knowledge. It also indicates that you fail to realize the important changes in politics since the rise of Christianity.
Do you know the difference between a republican democracy and a traditional monarchy?
Do you know what habeus corpus laws entail? Do you have any knowledge of the Magna Carta and how it reflects a huge step for the rights of the individual person in political history? Do you understand how the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights have introduced radical changes in government and politics? All these momentous steps are a result of Christ's Incarnation and the ensuing implications for the rights of individual man in the political sphere.
Good Lord, first acquaint yourself with history before you make silly assumptions!
I might also add that your logic does not hold with regards to laws against abortion.
Let's use stealing instead of abortion in your argument.
Does it hold that we should not bother with laws against stealing since there are some who don't believe in property rights, or don't care about upholding them? According to your premise, we should just teach people why it's wrong to steal, rather than enact laws against the practice?
No. We enact and uphold the law, AND teach people (in our homes, churches and in our classrooms) that stealing is wrong. A three year old child may not understand the concept of property rights, but that does not mean that we don't bother with punishing him when he does steal candy from a store.
God gave Moses the Ten Commandments when His people were in their spiritual infancy. When Christ incarnated, He stated that He came to "fulfill" the law - in other words, He wanted us to learn the spirit of the law, not just the letter of the law - but that internalization cannot happen until after the law is first externalized, as it was in the tablets given to Moses on Mt. Sinai.
Without laws, society has no rudder by which to steer themselves properly. Yes, it is up to us to teach our children the spirit of the law, and in this case to realize that abortion is murder, and therefore evil. But we should never fail in our efforts to have such anti abortion laws enacted - indeed if they were in place, it lend greater support in teaching the "spirit" of said law to our children.
"How do the bishops reach the people.."
They could start by instructing their parish priests to publish the bishops' pro-life statements in the parish bulletins. It just doesn't happen here and it makes me livid. Catholics who don't frequent Catholic websites has no idea that the bishops are finally growing spines. They hear a wimpy "vote your conscience" mantra from the pulpit without any guidance on how to FORM one.
atheling you make some good points now and then, but you're not a nice person to people who disagree with you.
Politics may be superficially different now that we have modern voting systems and all that, but the substance of politics has also been largely the same since the fall of Lucifer. Stop accusing people of breathtaking ignorance and total lack of historical knowledge.
Before Christ and after, modern democracies and ancient tyrannies, ancient democracies and modern tyrannies, the Code of Hammurabi or the Consitution of the USA, people vie for power and honor and glory and wealth, and they manipulate and betray and kill and slander and engage in all kinds of treachery to do it.
And that hasn't changed one bit.
Anyone who has read Julius Caeser and Plato and Aristotle and Plutarch and Thucydides and the Bible and Machiavelli and St. Thomas Aquinas would know.
And you call others breathtakingly ignorant, calling on the name of God in the same breath. Amazing. Truly amazing.
And one more thing: I don't have it out for you. I really don't. You're just not a nice person with people who disagree with you and your bile stands out from the civilized comments.
It takes such bravery to endorse a man who's already well ahead in every poll, while his opponent flails about incompetently. Ah, the bravery.
What's really dumb, tho, is these guys thinking BO will give them so much as the time of day once he's elected. HC, he owe's, and that's about it.
alea jacta est.
It's time to pull out the ecclesiatical sanctions.
What I notice is that laypeople and even common priests are trying to usurup the bishops prerogative teach. They claim it is ok to dissent from authentic Catholic teaching that a Catholic voting for a candidate who supports an intrinisc evil like abortion when there are other candidateSSSS (NB not just McCain - and not just the presidency) who do not support an intrinsic evil is cooperating, at least, materially and proximately so in that intrinsic evil. Frankly, you can't vote for Obama without voting for his radical pro-abortion agenda.
Doc:
If the United States Constitution is as irrelevant and corrupt as the rest of political history, then it is because the people are corrupt.
We live in a representative democracy. I, for one, do not believe that the American people are wholly corrupt.
I believe that there is such a thing as American Exceptionalism, which is the glorious realization that our inherent rights and dignity are "inalienable" because they come from God.
No other nation is built on such a creed. I find that spectacular and beautiful.
I'm sorry that you don't. How said.
sad.
I think you are a nice person, Atheling:)
Too bad it costs so darn much to run for political office-I'd vote for you, atheling! : )
atheling, you've confused fantasy and reality. I never said anything about the US constitution being corrupt. Nor about the American people being wholly corrupt. Nor that you're wrong about considering the US Constitution something special. Nor anything else that you think I said. Therefore, the Doc Angelicus you take issue with is not the Doc Angelicus that really exists.
You have a bad habit of projecting false interpretations onto what people actually say, and also projecting character flaws upon them, and then insulting them for it.
And if anything is sad, that is. And unjust.
You obviously think that you're not nasty, and that is also sad. You see yourself as justified in insulting people who disagree with you and/or you believe that what you say aren't insults. Either way, you obviously have no remorse about it.
Also, you have law and politics confused. They're related but they're not the same, except in your mind.
And Ed Peters just said McCain is "flailing about incompetently." I've said as much, perhaps even the identical words. Now, either Dr. Peters is as clueless as you think I am, or maybe I have similar credentials and experience (albeit in different areas) so as to reach the same conclusion as he did. Will you subject him to the same disgusting nastiness as you did me in other threads?
More importantly, is the McCain you love and support really the same man as the one running for president, or is it so only in your mind?
Great apology for insulting NT, atheling. Even if your opinions are justified, your insults aren't but you obviously think that they are.
I didn't say or even think any of the things you accuse me of. And yet you feel justified in lambasting me for what you think reality to be.
And you call me sad.
Sorry about the double post. I reloaded a few times and didn't see the post prior. I thought it got lost and put in a shorter one.
Kathy & Irishgirl:
Yikes. I'm too private to ever consider public office - it's a tough game.
Plus, you have to be very patient with people, and as I'm sure you've noticed, I don't suffer fools gladly ;)
It's your judgment of who is a fool and what constitutes foolishness that's the whole question. That you regard people who disagree with you as fools proves what I said and that you do, actually, have good judgment in one thing:
You should stay out of positions of leadership and public service.
Commenting by HaloScan
