Pro-life

Politicians normally don’t welcome being singled out for public criticism. Yet Charlie Angus is actually hoping he’ll continue to be the biggest target for the Roman Catholic Church’s wrath over legalization of same-sex marriage. "I’m a Catholic in exile," says the New Democrat MP for Ontario’s Timmins-James Bay riding. "I wouldn’t want that to happen to any other MPs and their families. I’d prefer to be the sad anomaly."

Angus has been denied communion by his parish priest since affirming his support for same-sex marriage last January. A former Catholic school trustee and choirmaster, he no longer feels welcome at his local church. His wife and three young daughters don’t go anymore either, the youngest missing her first communion as a result. And what happened to Angus could soon become the norm. Bishops from around the world are currently meeting in Rome for the first synod under Pope Benedict XVI. Among other doctrinal matters, they are discussing whether the holiest sacrament — the taking of bread and wine symbolizing Christ’s body and blood — should be withdrawn from Catholic politicians who flout Church teachings.

Symbolizing Christ’s body and blood. No surprise that this article is so one sided when they couldn’t even get the fact about the Catholic belief in the Eucharist right.

Currently there’s no consensus among Canadian bishops about how, or even if, Catholic politicians should be disciplined for deviating from Church teachings. That’s left to the discretion of parish priests. Hence, Windsor-Tecumseh MP Joe Comartin, another NDPer who supported gay marriage, was banned from teaching marriage preparation classes and other church activities.

What! Somebody who doesn’t have the basic understanding of what marriage is is prevented from teaching marriage prep? What a scandal! Hey, anybody can get the ingredients wrong once in a while. Only having one man and one women who are free to marry is a difficult recipe to memorize. I mean if a baker used only egg yolks to make Angel food cake would we ban him from teaching other chefs on how to make Angel food cake?

Whether that would compel Catholic politicians to toe the Church line, however, is debatable. "I’ll go take communion with the United Church, for heaven’s sake," scoffs Vancouver Liberal MP Hedy Fry. Toronto Liberal MP Maria Minna says she has disagreed with the Church on a number of issues — its handling of pedophile priests, its refusal to admit women to the priesthood, its stance on same-sex marriage — and has never docilely accepted every dictum from Rome. "If my faith depended entirely on the behaviour of the institution, I don’t think we’d have too many Catholics left," she says, contending that politicians "have a responsibility to the whole country," not just to their church.

Scratch a dissident on one issue and what you will find underneath is a white-washed tomb. A theology as brittle as dead man’s bones with only a thin-veneer of Catholic culture painted on the outside. An ecclesiology more associated with nationalism than having any basic understanding of Christ’s bride the Church.

But Comartin worries that moderate Catholics, who are already feeling alienated, will leave and start a splinter church if the Pope condones denying communion to politicians like him. Moreover, if the Church is going to exclude liberal Catholics from communion over issues like gay marriage, where will it stop? [Source]

Well they have already started a splinter Church that has much to associate it with Protestantism. If you have no need to follow the pope and the Church’s magisterium and you think an apostolate is a government program exactly what Church do they think they are attending? It is one thing to know what the Catholic Church is and what it teaches and then disagree with her reasoning. Most of the disagreements our totally out of ignorance. They will complain about a couple dogmatic teachings of the Church when in reality they should be complaining about the whole nature of the Church according to their understanding. By rejecting the authority of the Catholic Church they are in reality rejecting the Catholic Church. Garbage in – garbage out. A mistaken ecclesiology leads to garbage theology.

Hat Tip to Letters From a Young Catholic for sending me the story.

Nelson GP Dr Joseph Hassan, a 40-year-old married father of four, wrote to the 50 patients a fortnight ago telling them he would no longer prescribe contraceptives or refer women for sterilisation.

The letter, which listed doctors who would provide the services, told patients their fertility was a gift to be looked after and not something to be treated with medication like a disease.

"I have done this in response to a personal journey," he told the Herald. " … I have been praying about God’s direction on this in my life. Over the last few weeks, in various ways, I have felt this is the direction I should take."

Dr Hassan, who also opposes abortion and has set up a crisis support programme as an alternative, said he had long been troubled by the conflict between the Church’s teaching on contraception and his medical practice. He said other doctors would prescribe contraception and his move would not increase the teen pregnancy rate, which was due to other factors, "not just a lack of contraception".

New Zealand has the third-highest teenage pregnancy rate in the developed world. In 2002, 3 per cent of female teenagers aged between 15 and 19 became pregnant.

Ms Williams said she was surprised by Dr Hassan’s move. "It’s really out-of-the-Ark stuff these days."

Dr Hassan said he knew of at least five other Catholic GPs who had had "a similar kind of journey to me". [Source]

"It’s really out-of-the-Ark stuff these days." I guess she would prefer a flood of contraceptives to reduce humanity.

Alleluia, I can’t believe I read the following in an AP story on stem-cells.

Currently, scientists must sacrifice human embryos to harvest such cells, which can form any tissue type and are seen as valuable for studying and treating illnesses like diabetes and Parkinson’s disease. [Source]

Sacrifice human embryos is exactly the right description of what happens. That one life is sacrificed to help others. The only real difference is that our sacrificial altars are more sterile. The rest of the article also surprisingly balanced in having Catholic opponents state their opinions on some of the newer ways to extract embryonic stem-cells without killing the embryonic person or supposedly not creating a person in the first place.

LONDON, OCT. 10, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor spoke out against an assisted-dying bill being considered in Britain, warning that the "right to die can become a duty to die."

The archbishop of Westminster made that comment on the BBC One’s "Sunday AM" program, in regard to the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill being debated today in the House of Lords.

He was asked by the interviewer whether the matter of death is "not an intensely personal thing which should be left to the individual and not to churches?"

"It’s not only a personal thing," the cardinal responded, "it’s a common thing and I think the churches have a right to say what they deeply believe regarding the sanctity of life and also regarding the consequences of particular actions.

"With regard to assisted dying and this bill of Lord Joffe, first of all I’d say, with the growth of hospices, which care for the dying — and I’ve been to many — there’s no doubt that there are now ways of palliative care that we didn’t have before and therefore that great moment, or moments, or time of going to the next life, of dying is a very important moment and time in a person’s life — "

…Meanwhile, in Glasgow, Scotland, Archbishop Mario Conti, the vice chair of the joint Bioethics Committee of the bishops’ conferences of Britain and Ireland, made a statement on the assisted-dying bill.

"Legally assisted suicide is the first step to getting rid of the elderly and the terminally ill," Archbishop Conti said. "Those who deny this are so focused on the particular question that they fail to see the broader consequences.

"Such a law would change the role of doctors subtly but significantly from carers of the sick to dispatchers of their patients. Legislators, medical personnel and patients alike should resist this move.

Exactly right, the right to die will become the duty to die. We too easily make people feel like a burden for daring to stick around when they should just off themselves "with dignity." The misplaced compassion of those who see their relatives suffering move to try to put an end to it instead of doing what they can to enter in to it and to reduce their suffering. Archbishop Mario Conti is also right but in many ways doctors have already become dispatchers instead of healers. Abortion has already entered in to corrupt the medical profession from life-saving to life-taking.

Gerald Augustinus points to a NARAL site.

Generation Pro-Choice

It’s not just your mother’s pro-choice movement…
If you support access to birth control, sex education and abortion, and you’ve never lived in a time when abortion was illegal — then congratulations, you are Generation Pro-Choice. And we need your help getting other young people involved in the fight to protect the right to privacy and a woman’s right to choose — or else quite frankly, we’re gonna lose it.

Generation Pro-Choice so there won’t be a next generation. There is just something ironic about making a statement like "It’s not just your mother’s pro-choice movement." Those with pro-choice mothers must praise the luck of not being born in an inconvenient time or when a baby quota had already been met. That the pendulum of choice was in the life swing instead of towards the abortionist’s knife. Those with pro-choice mothers have played a game of womb roullette. Womb roulette is just like Russian roulette except that an empty chamber causes death.

The Paragraph Farmer looks at abortion and how it corrupts everything it touches. in a great post that covers a column by James Taranto and links a song by America to Justice Blackmun.

From a Commonweal magazine article on Judge Roberts:

As a result, many Catholics will ask whether the bishops will apply the same “all or out” standard to Judge Roberts that they applied to Kerry or, more disgracefully, to longtime Congressman David Obey (D-Wis.), a thoughtful critic of abortion who failed to support the whole prolife agenda.

And just exactly what is there definition of a thoughtful critic of abortion? Well I guess it include someone who correctly voted the partial birth abortion ban, but also opposed President Bush’s “Mexico City initiative” (which limits foreign aid funding of abortion-providers overseas) and voted to allow them for abortion in military hospitals. Beyond that he also opposes the Presidents restrictions on Federal embryonic stem-cell research.

The rest of the article is typical Commonweal boilerplate of widening the issues to just abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, same-sex marriage, and other and other “non-negotiable” (The scare quotes are his) What he refers to as "so-called life issues." You can learn a lot about what an author thinks by the scare quotes used and what gets proceeded by a ‘so-called.’ And of course he also appeals to the late Cardinal Bernadin. As Papabile emphasized the other day that what often is left out is the fact that the Cardinal’s said that abortion was the first concern in his speeches on a consistent life ethic. Too often the seamless garment is used to smother babies in favor of government supported programs for the poor.

Some early reports associated Roberts with the Federalist Society and its hankering to return to pre-New Deal restrictions on federal powers. That position is at odds with important elements of Catholic social teaching.

Gee I must have missed the magisterial documents on how the Federal government is responsible for all these programs and how subsidiarity would mandate this. I had the opposite impression.

The stem cell Extremist points out some testimony from Edmund Pellegrino’s testimony before congress in 1999. He is President Bush’s new appointed head of the President’s Council on Bioethics.

The embryo’s moral worth is not determined by its instrumental value for others. This would be to absolutize utility and to devalue the lives of all other classes of vulnerable human beings. The societal consequences are grave indeed.

These ethical objections cannot be over-ridden by the claim that the embryo is entitled to a "special respect" but that this respect can be violated if there is sufficient benefit for others. Respect is inherent in the moral status of what the human embryo is in fact. Respect is neither conferred nor removed by arbitrary social convention or convenience.

Nor can the ethical issues be side-stepped by calling the blastocyst a "pre-embryo." This is a euphemism of convenience with no ethical or biological justification. There is no arbitrary point at which we can logically confer or withdraw the moral claim of the embryo for protection of its life.

A human rights advocate and well-loved television personality comes to Grand Junction this week to talk about his work on behalf of those afflicted by famine, war and abuse.

M*A*S*H fans may best remember Mike Farrell from his portrayal of Capt. B.J. Hunnicutt on the popular television series, but some of his best work today occurs largely outside of prime time.

The Catholic Foundation hosts Farrell this Friday at its third annual Western Slope dinner at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Grand Junction. [Source]

Human rights activist? I will let his words be the judge. "Where I part company with those who presume to call themselves "right-to-lifers" is that I believe the issue of a termination of a pregnancy is a question that ought to be left up to a woman and her doctor."

The Catholic Foundation in the Diocese of Pueblo has a web page up all about Mike Farrell and mentions his opposition to the Death Penalty, but of course not his favoring of the death penalty for the unborn. No mention of him working as an activist for the homosexual rights movement either.

You can comment about just how appropriate the pick is here.

Diogenes at CWN reports:

Catholics for a Free Choice has set up a dummy WYD blog to shill for the transparently bogus "international youth coalition" that just happens to echo CFFC’s talking points, etc. There are some amusingly bad attempts at forging spontaneous reactions in the comments boxes.

Well the comment boxes are now gone – so much for free choice in expression.

Note that Tim Drake reports that some journalists are exploiting the event to squeeze out of the kids the anti-Church opinions they want to hear and broadcast — a fact doubly confirmed by the "youths" of Kissling’s cadre, gloating about "interviews galore." Surprised?

Well as to be expected, not surprised. The media could walk into a gold mind and come out with joy at finding Iron Sulfide (fool’s gold). Though I guess it is a good thing that the culture of death shrills from CFFC have volunteered to play the part of the Tares at WYD.

The faux blog from the prophets of prophylactics links to a ABC News story where the headline refers to WYD as Catholic Woodstock which might be one of the lamest comparisons ever and quite the opposite of that festival for nihilism in upstate New York. But the article they link to is interesting when it compares the depth (or lack of) of arguments on both sides.

On the pro-abort side:

"I think that responsible Catholics should be able to decide for themselves what they want to do around sexual health and reproductive rights,"

"I think the church leaders hold views that are out of touch with most Catholics and [they] promote policies that aren’t smart,"

The Church’s position noted:

Quoting Pope John Paul II’s book called "Love and Responsibility," Loyola College professor of theology Stephen Miles explains that the pope justified the church’s traditional stance on sex because it represents a total self-giving on the part of the partners. "Sex for the sake of pleasure is about self-gratification, so it interferes with our efforts to realize our vocation," said Miles. Humanity’s vocation is to give ourselves away according to the pope’s writings, he said. Catholicism teaches that sex has two purposes, one of which is to unite with your partner and the other is to have children — neither excludes pleasure, he adds. "Legitimizing contraception would divide both purposes," said Miles. "The church has an interest in listening to others but it resolves differences through careful study of stricture," Miles said. Catholics have to be very careful bringing interest group mentality into the church, he added. To him the "Catholics for a Free Choice" point of view lacks religious rigor. "If there is to be an argument for contraception, it has to address the teaching of the church and if it does, then the church would have to change teachings."

Or to put the contrasting views more succinctly – self-gratification compared to self-giving.