So what was accomplished?

Liberal Catholics got exactly what they wanted. They are now able to feel good about voting a pro-death canidate because he wants to lessen the need for the holocaust (opps I mean abortion). Barrack Obama understands that the debate over abortion will continue but hopes that we can work together to end poverty and war, and just agree to disagree about slavery (opps I did it again). Hopefully we can remain civil in our debate and accept the fact that people of good will disagree about racism and anti-semitism (I mean abortion and infanticide). They got exactly what they hoped for nice words that make them feel better and help them forget the actions of this president.

And Obama got what he wanted. He got a parade of dissenting priests, spouting Card. Bernadine's discredited seamless garment theory, equating the murder of an innocent to poverty, economics, and prudential judgements about war. He got these priests to accept the language of "lessening the need for abortion," glossing over the fact that this probably means promoting contraception, and that talking about lessening the need for abortion is like talking about lessening the need for murder, or racism, or genocide, as if these things were needed in the first place or we could concede that we don't want to end these intrinsic evils. He got an opportunity to make Catholics feel ok about disobeying the Church. He got the opportunity to paint the Church as divided against itself, and to paint the hierarchy as mean spirited partisans rather than as pastors of souls.

Who wins here? Barrack Hussein Obama.
Who looses? Humanity, and the principled rational debate.

Obama waxes elequent but what we need to ask is one simple question what is he talking about? What are we doing when we abort?
Answer: We are intentionally killing a human life, AKA murdering! The reasons, methods, and situations may mitigate the moral culpability but don't change this fundamental fact.

Barrack Obama supports murder and wants us to accept that people can agree to disagree about the relative value of murder and come together to "solve" other problems. He wants us to lessen the need for murder, rather than to work to end it, because Barrack Obama believes it is good, and sometimes needed, to murder babies both in and out of the womb (this last part is actually a logical position because there really is no difference between a baby inside or outside the womb).

Lessons to be learned:
1) Failure to lead the flock leaves the flock vulnerable to false prophets, wolves in sheeps clothing, and pastors will be held accountable for this failure.
2) The gloves are off, pastoral staffs have a pointed end for a reason.
3) The "Vatican II" approach to church governance is not authentically a fruit of the council and is causing grave scandal.
4) Someone needs to start holding priests accountable for what they teach and do
5) And someone needs to start making difficult decisions about Catholic institutions that are Catholic in name only.
6) We need to teach and articulate that abortion is murder, that support for abortion (let alone funding of it) is support for mass-murder, and that Catholic teachings about policy issues like war, social welfare, economics, etc. (which are applications of fundamental principles but can be debated) are of a different kind than teachings about fundamental moral principles which are always and everywhere valid. Injustice, Murder (three types of which are Abortion, Infanticide, and Genocide), Theft, Racism, Lying, Blasphemy, Adultary, Fornication, Contraception, etc. are always wrong, and for a person to promote one of these makes him unworthy of being honored by any institution that values truth, beauty, and goodness!

Finally, we should learn that in one regard the left is correct:
7) Catholics and Christians need to be more careful about partisanship. The left has correctly precieved an occasional bias toward the Republican party. Just because they are the party of the big tent, and are at least willing to give the pro-life cause a hearing doesn't mean that they are the Catholic or Christian party. Christians must be a prophetic leaven and challenge both parties to repent and believe in the Gospel, or at least to seek the common good in accord with the natural law. Just because a president is 99% for us (read President Bush), if he does not fundamentally agree that all life is sacred with no exceptions (even though this is a politically difficult position) then he has given into the culture of death and cannot be honored by the Church.

Waterboarding

My comment on the story: Torture: Do the ends justify the means?


Before entering seminary I was active in Republican circles in DC and my old spiritual director used to tell me, remember Ron not to confuse the party with the Church.

I think we live in a very divisive and partisan age. Americans no longer share a common culture, i.e. we worship different gods, and as a result our political imaginations and perceptions do not provide an adequate lowest common denominator to move forward with a fruitful debate. Representitive democracy will not long last when we can’t agree on even fundamental principles.

It use to be that killing a baby or hanging a captive man upside down and pouring water down his nose would be consider wrong; the first time, every time, all the time! Sure we were willing to fight an unjust aggressor and even to punish a criminal, but we would never accept the wholesale killing of innocents or the inhuman cruelty of torture. The proof that we have fundamentally changed as a society, and lost something that used to hold us together is in the 8th ammendment to the constitution. VIII. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. The ammendment prohibits cruelty to the guilty, never mind cruelty to the possibly guilty or to those who “know too much,” are inconvenient, or unpleasant even if they didn’t do anything themselves. And yet whether in the case of abortion or torture this is what we are doing–we are being cruel because we think someone poses a danger to our life, our happiness, our plans.

Whether its safety and security for our nation or the ability to “choose” not to be bothered with a living Child–the God that these positions represent is not the Christian God.

Someone said that this debate is only helping the democrats, maybe that is true, because they have had 40 years to come to grips with the fact that their god is libertine hedonism whereas we are just now beginning that slippery slope.

But unless Catholics and Christians wake up (and also Jews and Muslims and the rest) and realize that apologizing for the Republicans will only enable them to stray further from the path, then we will soon find American a country with two parties that are fundamentally opposed to God.

You want to help the Republicans, and I do, call up your GOP rep and party boss and tell them as much as you are against abortion you are equally against torture. Tell them that torture is unacceptable and that the GOP needs to distance themselves from any and all that defend it. I wish some of my co-religionists had had the integrity to tell the democratic party this when faced with a choice between social justice and abortion back in the 70s. This debate is sapping the vigor from the Republican party, just as moral issues sapped the Democrats for the past 40, and its not going to get better until Republicans come to grips with who they are. The question is, who will they be if they don’t move away from supporting what everyone knows is torture?