Three cheers for Charles Chaput, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Denver, for this magnificent teaching document setting the Speaker of the House -- a self-described "ardent practicing Catholic" -- straight about what her Church actually teaches and expects its communicants to believe on abortion. Rarely do religious leaders of any church speak so clearly and forcefully about faith and morality in public life. Here's a characteristic passage:
Ardent, practicing Catholics will quickly learn from the historical record that from apostolic times, the Christian tradition overwhelmingly held that abortion was grievously evil. In the absence of modern medical knowledge, some of the Early Fathers held that abortion was homicide; others that it was tantamount to homicide; and various scholars theorized about when and how the unborn child might be animated or "ensouled." But none diminished the unique evil of abortion as an attack on life itself, and the early Church closely associated abortion with infanticide. In short, from the beginning, the believing Christian community held that abortion was always, gravely wrong.Of course, we now know with biological certainty exactly when human life begins. Thus, today's religious alibis for abortion and a so-called "right to choose" are nothing more than that - alibis that break radically with historic Christian and Catholic belief.
Abortion kills an unborn, developing human life. It is always gravely evil, and so are the evasions employed to justify it. Catholics who make excuses for it - whether they're famous or not - fool only themselves and abuse the fidelity of those Catholics who do
sincerely seek to follow the Gospel and live their Catholic faith.
Magnificent. Of course many Catholic Democrats and Christian Democrats will continue to vote and serve the Democratic Party. Earlier he wrote:
But [Catholics who support pro-choice candidates] also need a compelling proportionate reason to justify it. What is a "proportionate" reason when it comes to the abortion issue? It's the kind of reason we will be able to explain, with a clean heart, to the victims of abortion when we meet them face to face in the next life--which we most certainly will. If we're confident that these victims will accept our motives as something more than an alibi, then we can proceed.
And further:
Carter lost his bid for re-election, but even with an avowedly prolife Ronald Reagan as president, the belligerence, dishonesty, and inflexibility of the pro-choice lobby has stymied almost every effort to protect unborn human life since.In the years after the Carter loss, I began to notice that very few of the people, including Catholics, who claimed to be "personally opposed" to abortion really did anything about it. Nor did they intend to. For most, their personal opposition was little more than pious hand-wringing and a convenient excuse--exactly as it is today. In fact, I can't name any pro-choice Catholic politician who has been active, in a sustained public way, in trying to discourage abortion and to protect unborn human life--not one. Some talk about it, and some may mean well, but there's very little action.
"Pious hand-wringing." Exactly so.
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Cleveland: While the homosexual, Socialist and MSM ménage à trois did allow the smoke of Satan into the Church via V II, in the final analysis the trio failed.
Good words, Cleveland. We are singing from the same hymnal, if B XVI is successful. (He was a reformer at the masonic council, never forget). Chaput, good man. O'Malley too. I am reserving judgement on Burke. But yes, the smoke is clearing and no one will be happier than I when that devilish miasma has been dispersed for good.
Non praevalebunt, indeed.
I'm going to pour myself a B&B (not my own concoction, but the orthodox monkish elixir!) and toast you cyber-spatially. ;-)
I simply fail to comprehend why men (good, strong, moral, intelligent, God fearing men) have stood by and allowed the government to take away their God given right, their moral responsibility to protect their unborn children. WHY?
Why is it considered a crime if the father through an act of violence ends the life of his unborn baby, yet the mother can do so with no repercussions? (legal repercussions that is - for without a doubt the emotional and spiritual repercussions are many).
The government has said that a father has no right to protect his own children because it is the mother who carries that child within her womb, not the father.
Fathers are parents too. These children (whether born or unborn) are theirs as much as their mothers. DNA proves that. One may argue that the act of sex does not make a father. Yet can’t that argument work both ways?
God has given the blessing (yes BLESSING because that’s decidedly what it is no matter how inconvenient, painful, or scary it may seem initially)... God has BLESSED women with the marvelous ability to carry a tiny developing HUMAN LIFE inside their bodies until at such time it can sustain some minimal form of independence on it's own... and just because that God given gift belongs to women doesn't in the least minimize the fathers right and responsibility to care, nurture, and protect his child.
There will be an accounting one day and men whom God ordained as the head of the home will be held accountable before the Lord. Just as in the beginning, when Eve sinned first and then talked Adam into sinning; it was Adam whom God confronted first. Why? Because it was Adams responsibility to protect his family and he failed.
I address this to men, wake up! You are important, so very important, to the lives and welfare of your children. I simply cannot understand why in only a few generations godly men have set silently by and allowed their rights to be stripped from them. Why?
Ok, I get it that there are many irresponsible, self absorbed, selfish men, who because of their own fear and weaknesses have readily stepped aside and shirked the responsibility to their children. But I also know there are just as many, if not more honorable men whom have felt the pain and hopelessness inherent in a society such as ours which beats into them, one precedent at a time, the message, the lie that they don't count, that their rights are just as nonexistent as the yet to be born babies.
In no way does this diminish a women’s responsibility to her children. She, in whom God bestowed His creative energy, when He gave her the gift to bring forth life, is just as responsible as the father to insure protection for her baby. It's unconscionable that either would in any way, through direct or indirect means, choose instead to kill their own child.
Men - your families need you! Your women, your children need you to be the godly men God created you to be. Stand by your families… Write your representatives, they will listen! Your vote counts, let it be heard! Your prayers count, let them be heard!
I say THANK YOU! And BRAVO to Archbishop Chaput. The truth is rarely appreciated by the masses. More often it tends to offends the most, the closer it comes to the neediest and deepest part of our souls deprivation.
Thank you Archbishop Chaput.
For those of you who are infatuated with Absp. Chaput's "knowledge" and "fortrightness," let me give you an example from 2002, in which the good arsebishop criticized Justice Antonin Scalia's thoughtful questions about the Church's revisionism on capital punishment (from Front Page Magazine):
In response to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s thoughtful disagreement with the church’s revisionist stance, published in First Things in 2002, Chaput stated:
"When Catholic Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia publicly disputes church teaching on the death penalty, the message he sends is not all that different from Frances Kissling disputing what the church teaches about abortion,... the impulse to pick and choose what we're going to accept is exactly the same kind of 'cafeteria Catholicism' in both cases.”
Frances Kissling is a former nun who leads Catholics for a Free Choice, which advocates legalized abortion.
(Cdl. Joseph) Ratzinger exposed Chaput’s irresponsible ignorance less than two years before becoming pope. In July 2004, the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued the following as part of a letter to Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, D.C. concerning the American bishops’ stance toward Catholic political candidates:
“Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion….There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about … applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.”
Until the good arsebishop issues a public apology to Justice Scalia, I will not pay attention to anything he says. Scalia is a good and honorable man; Chaput is an ignorant, ambitious charlatan who is bucking for a better see (Los Angeles, maybe?)
If you are confused (and you might be), only the first and last paragraphs of the last post are *not* from Front Page Magazine (damn HTML tags!)
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