Or, pro-choice voters as Muslim invaders? I don't know if Bishop Robert Finn of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph wanted to go there, but he did, in his latest column in the diocesan newspaper:
"Our Catholic moral principles teach that a candidate's promise of economic prosperity is insufficient to justify their constant support of abortion laws, including partial-birth abortion, and infanticide for born-alive infants. Promotion of the Freedom of Choice Act is a pledge to eliminate every single limit on abortions achieved over the last thirty-five years. The real freedom that is ours in Jesus Christ compels us, not to take life, but to defend it...
...Join me in calling upon Mary in this month of the rosary. In 1571, in the midst of the Battle of Lepanto, when the future of Christian Europe was in the balance and the odds against them were overwhelming, prayer to Our Lady of the Rosary brought the decisive victory. We ask her now to watch over our country and bring us the victory of life."
Lepanto is a favorite analogy of many bishops, especially in Europe, where people may more easily get the reference. I think in today's interreligious climate, we could find another. Though the Hitler/Stalin route is pretty well-traveled, too.
H/T: Catholic World News
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Refresh my memory, does the good Bishop happen to reside in a state that has capital punishment? Or is this a political statement, not a spiritual one?
To equate abortion to capital punishment is like comparing, in my opinion, the proverbial apples to oranges. Explain to me how killing an innocent baby is the same as inacting justice on one found guilty of murder? Sorry, I don't buy that argument. God will forgive the murderer if they choose to repent but justice and consequence for action still needs to be conducted. The innocent have the right to LIFE, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of HAPPINESS and no one has the right to take it from them. We all have the right to choose, but we must live with the consequences of bad choices and decisions. It's called accountability brother........
Let me explain, Mike, abortion is killing a human fetus and capital punishment is killing a living human being. In other words, both involve killing, and on the thinking of the bishop, both involve killing human beings.
The bishop wrote, "The real freedom that is ours in Jesus Christ compels us, not to take life, but to defend it..." Can't you see that his argument focuses on taking life; it does not focus on alleged guilt or alleged innocence?
So, it is also relevant to ask him about not only capital punishment, but also an unprovoked war with all of its attendant killing of human beings on all sides--a "taking life" issue. Then there is the refusal to support adequate health care, life saving health care, for all citizens--that too is a "taking life" issue, a failure to "defend life." Beyond that there is the refusal to support significant changes in our economic system to reverse the widely known causes of poverty, life taking poverty--another failure to "defend life."
In the bishop's own terms, his argument is indefensibly one-sided and narrow minded, as well as politically naive.
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