Below is from the Catholic Herald in the UK
Why Barack Obama has to be seen as an enemy of the Catholic Church
We need to be alert: he is not without influence, even on this side of the pond
By William Oddie on Friday, 25 February 2011
President Barack Obama waves when he came to the graduation ceremony at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana in 2009 (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Is Barack Obama the most anti-Catholic American president in living memory?
I don’t mean, of course, that he has openly attacked the Church (though it was noted that, at his inauguration as president, contrary to normal practice there was among the clergy invited to attend not one single Catholic, though he made a point of inviting the controversial — because openly and actively homosexual — Episcopalian (i.e. Anglican) bishop, Gene Robinson).
What I mean, though, is that across the whole spectrum of contemporary moral issues, he is passionately committed to a series of views which run directly contrary to those of the Church. All this has caused at least one Catholic bishop (there are probably others) to call him anti-Catholic.
As a Senator, he supported sex education, to be provided by Planned Parenthood, to children of five years old. He consistently voted for abortion, including partial birth abortion. He voted (twice) against Bills prohibiting public funding of abortions; he voted in favour of expanding embryonic stem cell research; he voted against notifying parents of minors who had undergone out-of-state abortions; he voted for a proposal to vote $100,000,000 for the funding of sex-education and contraceptives (including abortifacients) for teenagers; he opposed the “Born Alive Infants Protection Act” on the Senate floor and in 2003 killed the bill in committee. This would have outlawed “live birth abortion,” where labor is induced and an infant is delivered prematurely and then allowed to die.
In the US, Catholics, of course, have noted all this, though their reaction to it has been inconsistent to say the least. In April 2009, the supposedly Catholic University of Notre Dame scandalously conferred on him an honorary degree. Archbishop John C. Nienstedt of St Paul and Minneapolis protested, and demanded that the invitation be withdrawn. His letter, to the president of Notre Dame, Fr John Jenkins (a Catholic priest, if you please) was a real stonker:
“Dear Father Jenkins:
“I have just learned that you, as President of the University of Notre Dame, have invited President Barack Obama to be the graduation commencement speaker at the University’s exercises on May 17, 2009. I was also informed that you will confer on the president an honorary doctor of laws degree, one of the highest honors bestowed by your institution.
“I write to protest this egregious decision on your part. President Obama has been a pro-abortion legislator. He has indicated, especially since he took office, his deliberate disregard of the unborn by lifting the ban on embryonic stem cell research, by promoting the FOCA [Freedom of Choice Act] agenda and by his open support for gay rights throughout this country.
“It is a travesty that the University of Notre Dame, considered by many to be a Catholic University, should give its public support to such an anti-Catholic politician.
“I hope that you are able to reconsider this decision. If not, please do not expect me to support your University in the future.
“Sincerely yours,
“The Most Reverend John C. NienstedtArchbishop of Saint Paul and Minneapolis”
Obama now has the institution of marriage in his sights. He last year issued a “proclamation” (which you can read on the White House website) on the occasion of the “Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Pride month”, indicating his intention to “give committed gay couples the same rights and responsibilities afforded to any married couple, and repeal the Defense of Marriage Act….”, and his conviction that “An important chapter in our great, unfinished story is the movement for fairness and equality on behalf of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community.”
The Defense of Marriage Act was, ironically, signed into law by another Democratic President, Bill Clinton. Under the law no state (or other political subdivision within the United States) needs to treat as a marriage a same-sex relationship considered to be a marriage in another state; it defines marriage clearly as a legal union between one man and one woman. It passed both houses of Congress by large majorities: Obama has no chance of getting it repealed. So he is now doing what he can to undermine it. This is where things get complicated for a limey who doesn’t quite understand the convolutions of the American legal system. According to the CNS,
“In a Feb. 23 statement, Attorney General Eric Holder said that although the administration has defended the 1996 law [i.e. the Defense of Marriage Act] in some federal courts, it will not continue to do so in cases pending in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Unlike in the previous cases, said Holder, the 2nd Circuit ‘has no established or binding standard for how laws concerning sexual orientation should be treated’.”
This, apparently, is enough to impede the Act’s operation, enough, at least, seriously to alarm the American Catholic Bishops: here’s CNS again:
The U.S. bishops’ Office of General Counsel said the Obama administration’s decision to no longer support the Defense of Marriage Act in legal challenges ahead “represents an abdication” of its “constitutional obligation to ensure that laws of the United States are faithfully executed.”
“Marriage has been understood for millennia and across cultures as the union of one man and one woman,” the office said in a statement issued Feb. 23 after President Barack Obama instructed the Justice Department to stop defending the federal law passed by Congress and signed into law in 1996 by President Bill Clinton.
That’s how things stand. How much effect in practice will Obama’s initiative actually have? Maybe someone who understands American jurisprudence better than I do can explain. At the very least, as the American bishops say, refusal to support the law is “a grave affront to the millions of Americans who both reject unjust discrimination and affirm the unique and inestimable value of marriage as between one man and one woman.”
What next? The fact is that on this side of the pond, as well as in the US, President Obama needs watching. He may have been weakened in the Congress: but a President of the United States always has considerable power, to do evil as well as to do good. He is much more popular in many European countries than he is in the States: and he is not without his influence here. A man who is admired and respected as much as he has been, and in many places still is, can do harm through his words and deeds, even where he has no direct power.
I think he ought to be admired and respected very much less than he is.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
Billboard protests
Below is an excerpt from Priests for Life....I personally believe until we 'see 'abortion we cannot regret it and deal with it....the wrong billboards are being protested and taken down. Per the article in the WSJ a few weeks back, 41% of all pregnancies in NY city end in abortion and an even higher amount of African American babies.
Please see below....
Dr. Alveda King, director of African-American Outreach for Priests for Life, released the following statement today regarding the billboard in Manhattan that proclaims “The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb.” The billboard was taken down after pressure from local politicians and neighborhood residents.
“It is an outrageous act of censorship that this billboard was taken down,” Dr King said. “This billboard should be posted in every city of the country. And it should provoke outrage in the African-American community—not because it is racist, but because of the truth it reveals; the truth that is being kept from the African-American community.
“Black people in New York and all over the country should be outraged at the numbers of black babies we lose every single day to abortion. An astonishing 60 percent of African-American pregnancies in the five boroughs of New York City end in abortion. That’s unfathomable!
“Some people are angry about the billboard, but that anger is misplaced. We should all be upset and heartbroken that so many African-American women have bought into the lie that abortion will solve their problems. Legal abortion has been with us for 38 years, and the problems facing the African-American community have not gone away.”
Dr. King concluded: “The message of this billboard is totally accurate. The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb! It’s a travesty of justice that it is being taken down.”
Please see below....
Dr. Alveda King, director of African-American Outreach for Priests for Life, released the following statement today regarding the billboard in Manhattan that proclaims “The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb.” The billboard was taken down after pressure from local politicians and neighborhood residents.
“It is an outrageous act of censorship that this billboard was taken down,” Dr King said. “This billboard should be posted in every city of the country. And it should provoke outrage in the African-American community—not because it is racist, but because of the truth it reveals; the truth that is being kept from the African-American community.
“Black people in New York and all over the country should be outraged at the numbers of black babies we lose every single day to abortion. An astonishing 60 percent of African-American pregnancies in the five boroughs of New York City end in abortion. That’s unfathomable!
“Some people are angry about the billboard, but that anger is misplaced. We should all be upset and heartbroken that so many African-American women have bought into the lie that abortion will solve their problems. Legal abortion has been with us for 38 years, and the problems facing the African-American community have not gone away.”
Dr. King concluded: “The message of this billboard is totally accurate. The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb! It’s a travesty of justice that it is being taken down.”
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Pro-abortion leader: We’re losing
Frances Kissling was the founding president of the National Abortion Federation from 1977-1980 and president of Catholics for Choice from 1982-2007.
I’m always interested in what Kissling has to say, because these days she often spends her time taking her own side to task, insightful in that regard. This was no different in Kissling’s op ed piece in the Washington Post on February 18. It was fascinating.
Kissling admits her side is losing. But it seems to me the actions she suggests will only hasten the day when preborn human life is preserved again in America. In other words, I don’t think that her side has any way out. There is no path to success. Excerpts:
In the nearly four decades since the Supreme Court ruled that women have a fundamental right to decide to have an abortion, the opposition to legal abortion has increased dramatically. Opponents use increasingly sophisticated arguments – focusing on advances in fetal medicine, stressing the rights of parents to have a say in their minor children’s health care, linking opposition to abortion with opposition to war and capital punishment, seeking to make abortion not illegal but increasingly unavailable – and have succeeded in swinging public opinion toward their side.
Meanwhile, those of us in the abortion-rights movement have barely changed our approach. We cling to the arguments that led to victory in Roe v. Wade. Abortion is a private decision, we say, and the state has no power over a woman’s body. Those arguments may have worked in the 1970s, but today, they are failing us, and focusing on them only risks all the gains we’ve made.
The “pro-choice” brand has eroded considerably. As recently as 1995 it was the preferred label of 56% of Americans; that dropped to 42% in 2009 and was 45% in 2010, according to Gallup polls. And abortion rights are under attack in Congress…. Meanwhile, 29 governors are solidly anti-abortion, while 15 states passed 39 laws, most of them restrictive, relating to abortion in 2010 alone….
[U]nfortunately we’re not going to regain the ground we have lost. What we must do is stop holding on to a strategy that isn’t working, and one that is making the legal right to abortion more vulnerable than ever before.
We can no longer pretend the fetus is invisible. We can no longer seek to banish the state from our lives, but rather need to engage its power to improve women’s lives. We must end the fiction that an abortion at 26 weeks is no different from one at 6 weeks.
These are not compromises or mere strategic concessions, they are a necessary evolution. The positions we have taken up to now are inadequate for the questions of the 21st century….
The fetus is more visible than ever before, and the abortion-rights movement needs to accept its existence and its value. It may not have a right to life, and its value may not be equal to that of the pregnant woman, but ending the life of a fetus is not a morally insignificant event…. Abortion is not merely a medical matter, and there is an unintended coarseness to claiming that it is.
We need to firmly and clearly reject post-viability abortions except in extreme cases….
Those kinds of regulations are not anti-woman or unduly invasive. They rightly protect all of our interests in women’s health and fetal life….
Finally, the abortion-rights movement needs to change the way it thinks about the state. Right now government is mainly treated as the enemy…. The public is ambivalent about abortion. It wants it to be legal, but will support almost any restriction that indicates society takes the act of abortion seriously. For the choice movement to regain popular support and to maintain a legal right to abortion, it has to work with the state….
We have been demanding that the state mind its own business. That lets government abdicate all responsibility for funding reproductive health care. We need more responsible and compassionate state policies.
But respect for fetal life also requires that men and women take every step possible not to create fetuses they will have to abort….
The moral high ground on abortion is not to be found in asserting an absolute right to choose. Instead, it is to be found in the movement’s historic understanding that when abortion is illegal, it is poor women who suffer….
These shifts I am suggesting are not about compromising or finding common ground with abortion opponents. Compromise assumes that there are two parties prepared to give up something in return for settling an issue. Neither opponents nor advocates of legal abortion are willing to do that. But, for pro-choice advocates, standing our ground will mean losing ground entirely….
If the choice movement does not change, control of policy on abortion will remain in the hands of those who want it criminalized. If we don’t suggest sensible balanced legislation and regulation of abortion, we will be left with far more draconian policies – and, eventually, no choices at all.
Frances Kissling was the founding president of the National Abortion Federation from 1977-1980 and president of Catholics for Choice from 1982-2007.
I’m always interested in what Kissling has to say, because these days she often spends her time taking her own side to task, insightful in that regard. This was no different in Kissling’s op ed piece in the Washington Post on February 18. It was fascinating.
Kissling admits her side is losing. But it seems to me the actions she suggests will only hasten the day when preborn human life is preserved again in America. In other words, I don’t think that her side has any way out. There is no path to success. Excerpts:
In the nearly four decades since the Supreme Court ruled that women have a fundamental right to decide to have an abortion, the opposition to legal abortion has increased dramatically. Opponents use increasingly sophisticated arguments – focusing on advances in fetal medicine, stressing the rights of parents to have a say in their minor children’s health care, linking opposition to abortion with opposition to war and capital punishment, seeking to make abortion not illegal but increasingly unavailable – and have succeeded in swinging public opinion toward their side.
Meanwhile, those of us in the abortion-rights movement have barely changed our approach. We cling to the arguments that led to victory in Roe v. Wade. Abortion is a private decision, we say, and the state has no power over a woman’s body. Those arguments may have worked in the 1970s, but today, they are failing us, and focusing on them only risks all the gains we’ve made.
The “pro-choice” brand has eroded considerably. As recently as 1995 it was the preferred label of 56% of Americans; that dropped to 42% in 2009 and was 45% in 2010, according to Gallup polls. And abortion rights are under attack in Congress…. Meanwhile, 29 governors are solidly anti-abortion, while 15 states passed 39 laws, most of them restrictive, relating to abortion in 2010 alone….
[U]nfortunately we’re not going to regain the ground we have lost. What we must do is stop holding on to a strategy that isn’t working, and one that is making the legal right to abortion more vulnerable than ever before.
We can no longer pretend the fetus is invisible. We can no longer seek to banish the state from our lives, but rather need to engage its power to improve women’s lives. We must end the fiction that an abortion at 26 weeks is no different from one at 6 weeks.
These are not compromises or mere strategic concessions, they are a necessary evolution. The positions we have taken up to now are inadequate for the questions of the 21st century….
The fetus is more visible than ever before, and the abortion-rights movement needs to accept its existence and its value. It may not have a right to life, and its value may not be equal to that of the pregnant woman, but ending the life of a fetus is not a morally insignificant event…. Abortion is not merely a medical matter, and there is an unintended coarseness to claiming that it is.
We need to firmly and clearly reject post-viability abortions except in extreme cases….
Those kinds of regulations are not anti-woman or unduly invasive. They rightly protect all of our interests in women’s health and fetal life….
Finally, the abortion-rights movement needs to change the way it thinks about the state. Right now government is mainly treated as the enemy…. The public is ambivalent about abortion. It wants it to be legal, but will support almost any restriction that indicates society takes the act of abortion seriously. For the choice movement to regain popular support and to maintain a legal right to abortion, it has to work with the state….
We have been demanding that the state mind its own business. That lets government abdicate all responsibility for funding reproductive health care. We need more responsible and compassionate state policies.
But respect for fetal life also requires that men and women take every step possible not to create fetuses they will have to abort….
The moral high ground on abortion is not to be found in asserting an absolute right to choose. Instead, it is to be found in the movement’s historic understanding that when abortion is illegal, it is poor women who suffer….
These shifts I am suggesting are not about compromising or finding common ground with abortion opponents. Compromise assumes that there are two parties prepared to give up something in return for settling an issue. Neither opponents nor advocates of legal abortion are willing to do that. But, for pro-choice advocates, standing our ground will mean losing ground entirely….
If the choice movement does not change, control of policy on abortion will remain in the hands of those who want it criminalized. If we don’t suggest sensible balanced legislation and regulation of abortion, we will be left with far more draconian policies – and, eventually, no choices at all.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Here we go again
Well, at the prompting of a few good friends to start blogging again...here I am, Lord....it is I Lord, you know the one who is a great sinner and hears you calling in the night. I promise myself to be more consistent!
I keep thinking what could I possibly say that people might want to hear....well, as John, says, I always have a lot to say and especially about life. I used to be on the other side of the fence, much like Abby Johnson. from Planned Parenthood...believed women should have their rights and be able to do anything with their bodies that they want...it is their right. What I was ignoring in all of that thinking was that God is the one who gives, and takes, life. I thought that way before I knew God...before I realized He made me in the image and likeness of himself....not to destroy life but to live the life He gave me and to live it fully in His name. I get that now and my life has forever changed. How about yours?
I keep thinking what could I possibly say that people might want to hear....well, as John, says, I always have a lot to say and especially about life. I used to be on the other side of the fence, much like Abby Johnson. from Planned Parenthood...believed women should have their rights and be able to do anything with their bodies that they want...it is their right. What I was ignoring in all of that thinking was that God is the one who gives, and takes, life. I thought that way before I knew God...before I realized He made me in the image and likeness of himself....not to destroy life but to live the life He gave me and to live it fully in His name. I get that now and my life has forever changed. How about yours?
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