Tag Archives: Pro-life

“Moving Our Country from Democracy to Despotism,”

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A call to action delivered by Cardinal Francis George:

As Catholic bishops and American citizens, we are deeply concerned that such an action on the government’s part would be the first step in moving our country from democracy to despotism. Respect for personal conscience and freedom of religion as such ensures our basic freedom from government oppression. No government should come between an individual person and God–that’s what America is supposed to be about. This is the true common ground for us as Americans. We therefore need legal protection for freedom of conscience and of religion–including freedom for religious health care institutions to be true to themselves.”

Full text follows:

“Hello. I am Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop of Chicago and President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. I’d like to take a moment to speak about two principles or ideas that have been basic to life in our country: religious liberty and the freedom of personal conscience.

On Friday afternoon, February 27, the Obama Administration placed on a federal website the news that it intends to remove a conscience protection rule for the Department of Health and Human Services. That rule is one part of the range of legal protections for health care workers–for doctors, nurses and others–who have objections in conscience to being involved in abortion and other killing procedures that are against how they live their faith I God.

As Catholic bishops and American citizens, we are deeply concerned that such an action on the government’s part would be the first step in moving our country from democracy to despotism. Respect for personal conscience and freedom of religion as such ensures our basic freedom from government oppression. No government should come between an individual person and God–that’s what America is supposed to be about. This is the true common ground for us as Americans. We therefore need legal protection for freedom of conscience and of religion–including freedom for religious health care institutions to be true to themselves.

Conscientious objection against many actions is a part of our life. We have a conscientious objection against war for those who cannot fight, even though it’s good to defend your country. We have a conscientious objection for doctors against being involved in administering the death penalty. Why shouldn’t our government and our legal system permit conscientious objection to a morally bad action, the killing of babies in their mother’s womb? People understand what really happens in an abortion and in related procedures–a living member of the human family is killed–that’s what it’s all about–and no one should be forced by the government to act as though he or she were blind to this reality.

I ask you please to let the government know that you want conscience protections to remain strongly in place. In particular, let the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington know that you stand for the protection of conscience, especially now for those who provide the health care services so necessary for a good society. Thank you and God bless you.”

acertainslantoflight writing in Catholics in the Public Square reports the meeting of President Obama with Cardinal Francis George.  “The statement from the USCCB said: “The meeting was private. Cardinal George and President Obama discussed the Catholic Church in the United States and its relation to the new administration. The meeting lasted approximately 30 minutes.”

Private, yes, but one can guess that Obama’s attack on conscience issues in health related fields had to be in mind and mouth. The meeting followed by one day Cardinal George’s warnings of emerging “depotism” with the removal of conscience protection.

EWTN report here

Educators Fail – Lawmakers Fail – Journalists Fail – False Compassion Fails!

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We have important moral and ethical problems to face in America and in the world.  In order to make educated decisions, people need to be educated.  Our present culture seems determined to keep the people, young and old, in the dark as to the life that lives and moves and has its being within a mother’s womb.

National Geographic will take you inside the womb, so that you can watch the reality.  While Planned Parenthood, funded by U.S. dollars, enters into the most personal and profound decisions women can make, offers less than the reality.  For the woman making a life changing decision, a decision that will impact, for better or worse, how she thinks and feels about herself and others,especially her own child, Planned Parenthood obscures the facts in favor of  its own agenda.  Planned Parenthood will, for instance, turn the monitor away from the pregnant mother during a sonogram procedure.  Why trouble the client with the fact within the womb of their client, an actual picture of the truth, the infant/fetus growing  within them.  Why is that? Could it be that seeing is believing and believing can effect a decision to abort, when such a decision would effect the financial bottom line of this booming mega-business?

Our schools are no better.  Values-free education is of  no value when it comes to living a moral, ethical human life.  Giving teenagers less than science, and telling them less than the actuality of  pregnancy and person-hood is to fail them.  We propagandize them, when we pretend they will not be effected by decisions that society makes for them in lieu of  the education that can with present technology show them, in flesh and blood, not only the life in the womb, but abortion as it really is.

When the young teenager is aborted of the baby she carries within her, she sees it and feels it, and then has to live with it.  What teacher, lawmaker, journalist or councilor has prepared her for this reality, rather than failed her  in the name of compassion and/or convenience?  False compassion leaves scars too deep to be helped by a brochure hastily given before dismissing the girl to make way for their next act of “mercy?”

The education needed for today’s moral and ethical decisions goes beyond the facts of pregnancy to the heavy lifting science touching on  embryonic stem cell research.  Here journalistic misinformation and purposeful skewing of the facts muddy the waters. Archbishop Charles J. Chaput spoke of  “The Evil of Embryo Destruction – In embryonic stem cell research, end does not justify the means.”

Commenting on journalistic integrity Chaput responses to the Denver Post:

In the debate over federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, some of the massive media coverage has been fair, accurate and thorough, but much of it — too much of it — has fallen short of reasonable journalistic standards.

By far the most troubling piece I’ve seen was the editorial, “Zealotry vs. science,” published by the Denver Post….. in this case, the Post used bombast and misleading information to argue its support for federally funded embryonic stem cell research in a way reminiscent of a not-very-bright bully.”

Ed Morrisey talks about the issue here with more from Archbishop Chaput

Religion and Morality Are Indispensable Supports of Democracy

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The Left would like to place marriage, decisions regarding life and end-of-life, abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and quite possibly cloning, outside of religious proscriptions. They would like to forget, or rather, re-write history. It is the Church’s message that is the foundational structure of our liberty, our National conscience, our democracy and our human rights. In fact, it is the message of Christianity that is the bench-mark of Western Civilization.

George Washington’s in his Farewell Address emphatically states, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them.”

John Adams, who followed Washington in the Presidency writes, “Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone, which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand…. The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a greater measure, than they have it now, they may change their rulers, and the forms of government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty. They will only exchange tyrants and tyrannies.”

Issues of marriage, decisions regarding life and end-of-life, abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and cloning are precisely where separation of church and state have meaning. Said another way, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” The Left would like to isolate the message of the Church, have us believe it speaks to practicing members alone. However, it is God who speaks through His Church, and God speaks from Eternity. He breaks into Time, all time, lighting up every Age. The Church’s commission obligates it to announce Truth to all peoples of all times. Their message is the stuff of a true humanity.

One Man’s Prayer

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Paul Edwards, a columnist writing for Townhall.com,  is compelled to pray for President Obama and more. After just 50 days in office:

“President Obama has clearly acted in opposition to righteousness by lifting the ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, reversing the Mexico City Policy which forces the use of your tax dollars to fund abortions at overseas abortion facilities, and by acting to rescind the “conscience clause” which protects doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other medical personnel from participating in abortions against their personal, private convictions.”

“He has elevated science above God by appealing to science rather than to morality in deciding to sacrifice the lives of future generations of unborn children for the false promise of “cures” for the present generation.”

Edwards says he will pray for wisdom, strength and protection for our President but cannot pray that plans, that clearly oppose righteousness and do harm to people, succeed.  He says that there is precedent for praying that unrighteous plans come to nothing:

“There is scriptural precedent for praying that the ungodly plans of God’s appointed leader fail. David repeatedly prayed that King Saul’s plans against him would fail.”

Does the agenda that so clearly “devalues the cause of life” that  President Obama has instituted deserve our support?  I’m praying for a righteous, moral, conscientious America, and that God will bring to naught evil plans that destroy life, make science a god and institute convenience as a dictator.

Edwards points to mainstream media pundit writing for Newsweek , Howard Fineman and American Enterprise Institute ‘s Kevin Hassett as reasonable men who “are now beginning to question whether or not Barack Obama is intentionally acting to harm the interests of the American people.”

Expansion of Human Embryo Experimentation.

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Thoughts of the Great Unwashed point  here for a read on the label given Obama as the “abortion president”:

One of the most outspoken abortion opponents in Congress labeled President Obama the “abortion president” on Friday in response to news that Obama intended to sign an executive order Monday lifting restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., accused Obama of launching two attacks on pro-life measures. In addition to lifting President Bush’s stem cell restrictions, Obama intends to lift regulations from the Bush administration that allow health care providers and institutions to refuse to participate in abortions on grounds of conscience.

“Why does the president persist in the dehumanizing of nascent human life when better alternatives exist? Human embryo-destroying stem cell research is not only unethical, unworkable and unreliable- it is now, demonstrably unnecessary,” Smith said.Smith labeled Obama’s stem cell policy an expansion of “human embryo experimentation.”

Obama’s ‘Science’ Fiction – Possible vs Permissible

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“Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible.”

Although Charles Krauthammer is wrong on where to draw the line in stem cell research, I think you will find his stance against President Obama’s stance a must read.  Krauthammer is “not religious” and so to his mind sees no definitive guideline as to when person-hood is bestowed. To my mind the science of it tells the tale.  Peering into the beginning moments of life with powerful cameras records the change from ova and sperm entities to new being with all the where-with-all to command the hormones and functions of the mother’s body to make possible its continuance and growth. It has not only presence but power to command.

The Truth of the matter, and our relationship to the Creator from the instant of our becoming a unique individual at the conjoining of ovum and sperm,  is still hidden from Krauthammer.  It does help to have the Truth that is revealed by the Creator through the Scriptures, the Church and the Tradition of both Church and Man (Natural Law.) I leave this as another issue for another day.  Krauthammer does believe in Evil. He opposes Obama’s replacing Bush’s line with “no line at all.”

This is more than moral abdication. It is acquiescence to the mystique of “science” and its inherent moral benevolence. How anyone as sophisticated as Obama can believe this within living memory of Mengele and Tuskegee and the fake (and coercive) South Korean stem cell research is hard to fathom. [My emphasis]

Though Krauthammer does not know when to confer person-hood, he says:

“I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix. Moreover, given the protean power of embryonic manipulation, the temptation it presents to science and the well-recorded human propensity for evil even in the pursuit of good, lines must be drawn. I suggested the bright line prohibiting the deliberate creation of human embryos solely for the instrumental purpose of research — a clear violation of the categorical imperative not to make a human life (even if only a potential human life) a means rather than an end.

Krauthammer judges Obama as morally arrogant in the extreme, dismissing “his critics as ideological while he is guided exclusively by pragmatism (in economics, social policy, foreign policy) and science in medical ethics.” Or so Obama expects us to believe.

Krauthammer says of President George W. Bush:

“Bush’s nationally televised stem cell speech was the most morally serious address on medical ethics ever given by an American president. It was so scrupulous in presenting the best case for both his view and the contrary view that until the last few minutes, the listener had no idea where Bush would come out.”

I am reminded of the recent movie, I Am Legion, a futuristic nightmare with basis in possibility if not history for a scenario of science run amok. Krauthammer concludes his dismembering of Obama’s so called reasoned logic:

Dr. James Thomson, the pioneer of embryonic stem cells, said “if human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough.” Obama clearly has not.

“Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible.”