Free Republic

In an age of sound bites and agenda driven news reports, the architects of a new cultural order have slipped one more phrase into the lexicon of the cultural struggle. I maintain that we adopt at our own peril. The phrase is Gun Rights. Guns have no rights. People do. The real Right at issue is the Right to Self Defense. That includes the right to keep and bear arms. Rights are goods of human persons. Human Rights come not from a civil government but from God...

Insisting that the civil law of the Nation recognize the Natural Law Right to Life is all about affirming that human rights are not determined or given by the State. As the American founders expressed it, they are endowed by the Creator and are inalienable. When there is no human person to exercise them, all the rhetoric extolling them is sloganeering. The Right to Life currently informs our criminal justice system. For example, in our criminal law, we prosecute someone who intentionally takes the life of a woman with child in a vehicular homicide for two criminal offenses. The irony is obvious.

Recognizing the Right to Life in the civil law is not a matter of pushing "religious" beliefs on a pluralistic nation. The Right to Life is revealed by the Natural Law. When the civil law of a Nation fails to recognize the Natural Law Right to Life and promulgates laws which condone the taking of innocent life, such laws are unjust laws and therefore not law at all. Finally, medical science confirms what our conscience long ago told us. We routinely operate on these children in the womb. We send 3 and 4D ultrasound photos of them as they grow in that first home of the whole human race.

These children are members of our human family. We all know it. Those who deny it are lying to themselves and deceiving others. Legalized abortion is the denial of the Right to Life of an entire class of people backed up by the police power of the State. It is an egregious, ongoing, human rights violation which demands our continual efforts to eradicate it.

The language surrounding legal abortion reveals an Orwellian newspeak. Phrases such as "Abortion rights" are dangerous. Abortions do not have rights, only human persons have rights. Human rights are goods of human persons. When there is no human person to exercise them, all the rhetoric extolling them is sloganeering. When there is no recognition of a preeminent right to life, what follows is an erosion of the infrastructure of all human rights.

Recognizing the Right to Life is not only a political issue. The Pro-Life position is a worldview, a lens through which we view every political, cultural, social, economic, security and international issue. This worldview must also inform every aspect of our participation in society, including how we vote...

Catholic Christians should not vote for any candidate who denies that the fundamental Right to Life must be recognized and protected in the civil law when another candidate is available who recognizes that fact. This is the case even when the alternative candidate may not fully comprehend all of the implications of that recognition. In good conscience, if there is no difference on this matter between the candidates, one could hypothetically refrain from voting. However, voting carries with it its own moral obligation. Not voting can have the effect of helping elect a candidate who denies the Right to Life.

We should determine which candidates' positions will move us closer to ending legalized abortion, work to influence them and surround them with good counsel, and then vote for them. If they are elected, we must then do all we can to expand their understanding of the truth concerning the Right to Life and its vital implications across the public policy spectrum.

Certainly, the Right to Life has implications not only in the womb, but throughout the entire spectrum of life. The embryonic human person, the child in the womb, the disabled, the needy and the elderly are all members of our human family. We can never condone their intentional killing as some kind of exercise of a "freedom to choose".

However, human life and the Right which protects it, begins in the womb. Procured abortion is never a moral choice but a crime, whether the civil law of the State currently prosecutes it or not. Political candidates who deny this Right to Life are complicit in this crime and must not be supported...

The Child in the womb is our first neighbor and it is always and everywhere wrong to take the life of an innocent neighbor. And, the Pope is right, there is absolutely nothing "progressive" about legal abortion. It is regressive, moving us backward. Our failure to recognize the Right to Life in the law undermines our claim to be a compassionate and caring society. All the talk about compassion for the poor rings hollow when we fail to hear the cry of the ones whom Teresa of Calcutta rightly called the "poorest of the poor".

There can be no enduring lasting solidarity upon which to build a secure future in a culture that kills its own children and calls it a right. No politician or political candidate who advocates for legalized abortion, or for euthanasia, passive or active, should ever receive the support of Catholic Christians. They are being morally incoherent.

...Duck Dynasty offers a refreshing break from what is offered on much of cable television programming. A&E Network made the correct decision to lift the suspension of Phil Robertson. In announcing its decision, A&E also announced it was launching a campaign to promote what it called "tolerance" among all people. I hope it signals a return to sanity - and promotes true tolerance - the kind which includes faithful Christians and others who will not deny their faith. I look forward to the new season...

...Please, name the main threats for Russia.

Patriarch Kirill - I think that the main threat for Russia is loss of faith, rejecting faith as people's conscious choice. Not under pressure as in the Soviet times, but voluntary contempt of the Heavenly Kingdom for the sake of vanity and illusionary attractions of the earthly kingdom.

Unfortunately, there are signs of this process. For the sake of comfort and joys people refuse following moral norms. Thus, gradually, limits of sin and righteousness are washed away. And what was considered unworthy of a person: alcoholism, drug-addiction, lust, prostitution, homosexuality become norm.

Society has always suffered vices, but today as in times of Roman and other civilizations decay they were considered socially approved. In result the institute of traditional family is collapsing. Rooted in sins, man lives in passions and doesn't want to hear a sermon about Christ as acceptance of the Gospels commandments demands him to reconsider his behavior, to change himself, to make a spiritual effort to overcome imperfection...

...The reason Duck Dynasty is so popular is people are not buying into this new Cultural Revolutionary ideology. They know it is not true. They know it will not promote the common good. In fact, much of the media is apoplectic about the interview. The entertainment subculture, which has erected a new golden calf, which many mind numbed Americans dance around, has found a goldmine to propel their ratings.

In particular, the propaganda media, the new Cultural Revolutionary guard - which has not only bought the agenda of a small section of the homosexual/lesbian community is seeking to compel the entire culture to change the truth about marriage and the family but has become its agents - is absolutely aghast!

Phil Robertson has now been suspended from the show. Well, that is just one more example of the danger which I tried to address. Political correctness run rampant!

Update: Though the network did not release a full statement upon suspending the Patriarch of the Robertson family indefinitely from the show, Phil Robertson offered these words in a Press release:

"I myself am a product of the 60s; I centered my life around sex, drugs and rock and roll until I hit rock bottom and accepted Jesus as my Savior," he said. "My mission today is to go forth and tell people about why I follow Christ and also what the Bible teaches, and part of that teaching is that women and men are meant to be together.

"However, I would never treat anyone with disrespect just because they are different from me. We are all created by the Almighty and like Him, I love all of humanity. We would all be better off if we loved God and loved each other."

Like the fate of the social outreaches of the Church which place children without mothers and fathers in homes for adoption, her hospitals, soup kitchens, and other vital outreaches to the poor are now at risk of being shut down.

We will not stop our missionary efforts because solidarity demands that we continue. We are called to love the world as God so loved the world. As the Body of Christ, we continue the redemptive mission of Jesus our Head. This administration which purports to be an advocate of the "least of these", may soon be revealed as more akin to a hostile Caesar.

Our sincere hope is that the moderator of the third debate, Bob Schieffer, a veteran newsman and the host of Face the Nation on CBS, will get out of the way and let these two candidates debate. The American people have a right to hear where they each stand as they prepare to pick the path of their future and the future of their children.

For those looking for heat with little light, they got the price of admission in Tuesday's second Presidential debate. However, for those hoping for much more, those concerned about the candidates governing philosophy and wordview, the slugfest in Hempstead failed to deliver

There are Catholics like Joe Biden who claim to follow what is too often called the "spirit" of Vatican II while rejecting the very foundations that important Council proclaimed. Then, there are others, like Paul Ryan, who grasp the implications of what it means to infuse the values informed by their Catholic faith into their political participation on fundamental moral issues such as the Right to life

Those who have read us both know that we have not always agreed. However, we have chosen to combine our voices at a critical time in U.S. History to do absolutely everything we can do to influence this election! So we will do just that in this series leading to the most important election in our lifetime...

One cannot be a faithful Catholic and deny the Right to Life for our first neighbors in their mother's womb. Nor can one be a faithful Catholic and fail to defend true marriage and the family and society founded upon it. Given our numbers, U.S. Catholics can determine the outcome of this election.

Catholics should insist that we are not fully human unless we are in relationship with one another. Freedom and human flourishing are not found in a notion of the isolated individual as the ground of human freedom. We were made for communion. We are one another's neighbors and we truly are called to stand together in solidarity. We are also responsible for one another and must build societies which further humanize us and enable us to live in peace together.

The first society is the family. It is there where we learn socialization and are schooled in the virtues which make good citizenship even possible. Thus the family must always be the guide, polestar and measuring stick for any broader social and governing structure. The family is the first government, the first school, the first church and the first mediating institution. All other government must defer to this first cell of social government and move out - or up - from there, never usurping the primacy of the family...

To grasp the truth that dignity of all human labor derives from the dignity of the human person who engages in it requires what St Paul rightly called a renewal of the mind (See, Romans 12:2).

Labor Day invites us to examine how we view our own labor in the light of what the Church proclaims about the dignity of all human work, no matter what kind, precisely because it is done by human persons who are created in the Image and Likeness of God. A Catholic vision of work views it in light of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. The entirety of our human experience was assumed by Jesus, including our labor, our human work. The Son of God worked. He was in communion with the Father and His work was joined to the Father's work. That is the same relationship we now have with the Father through our Baptism into Christ.

The Ebenezer Scrooge/Jacob Marley caricature was utterly demolished by the time it was all over. That does not mean it will not be used again. However, the Romney/Ryan campaign had signaled its tactical plan to refute the claims of their opponents by facing them head on.

There was one particular line which stuck with me from the Romney acceptance speech because it was a refreshing rejection of the hyperbole which accompanied the last Presidential race in the United States. The Republican Presidental candidate looked out at the enthusiastic convention attendees and, through television and the internet, into the living rooms of millions of Americans as well as millions of observers around the world. He offered what would be called in the business world a bottom line comment, "President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise is ... to help you and your family."

As I have expressed in the past, authentically Catholic and genuinely Pro-Life, Paul Ryan not only knows Catholic Social Doctrine, he maintains that he actively seeks to integrate the principles it offers into his own public service and the policy proposals he offers

Ryan's opponents efforts to demonize him and think they can deflect the American public from listening to his considered positions on the vital issues and challenges we face as a Nation will not only fail, I now believe they will backfire. Ryan's demeanor is warm, human and real - a refreshing change in a political atmosphere polluted with vitriol, vapid detraction and denigration. He lifts up the listener while he speaks truth to a Nation struggling through a desperate hour. He gives the listener hope that they, with good and effective leadership, can actually rebuild the American promise and re-secure the American dream for their children. In short, he dispenses hope in an hour when it is in short supply.

I heard CNN's Wolf Blitzer interview Reince Priebus, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, on Tuesday evening. Throughout the interview Blitzer used that phrase now touted regularly by these ministers of propaganda disguised as reporters - "abortion rights".

The phrase is now routinely used by the main stream media. They also call those who want to defend babies against pre-emptive lethal strikes against them opponents of "abortion rights." The claim of a "right" to abort an innocent child is heinous enough when it is described as a woman´s "Right to Choose."

People can and do make immoral and intrinsically evil choices such as taking innocent human life. The current state of the positive law in the United States - since the horrendous Supreme Court decisions in Roe and Doe - is that there is one group of human persons who can be killed by "choice", our youngest neighbors.

That "choice" now wrongly is protected by the Police Power of the State. Rather than being outlawed like all other intentional killings, abortion has been given a status as some sort of "super right" in the United States. The media is now routinely using deadly loaded language to hide the evil. Their sophistry must be exposed and opposed...

"Where intrinsic evils are not involved, specific policy choices and political strategies are the province of Catholic lay mission...Vice Presidential Candidate Ryan is aware of Catholic Social Teaching and is very careful to fashion and form his conclusions in accord with the principles mentioned above. Of that I have no doubt. A Catholic conscience can never take exception to the prohibition of actions which are intrinsically evil. Nor may a conscience well-formed by reason or the Catholic faith ever choose to vote for someone who clearly, consistently, persistently promotes that which is intrinsically evil. However, a conscience well-formed according to reason or the Catholic faith, must also make choices where intrinsic evil is not involved. How best to care for the poor is probably the finest current example of this..." Bishop Morlino

Mitt Romney's bold choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate ensures that the exchange of correspondence between the Cardinal of New York and the Republican Vice Presidential nominee will now become a part of framing the issues in what promises to be one of the most important Presidential contests in U.S. history. The principles of Catholic Social Teaching and their application have now entered the 2012 campaign.

To ansel12:

Your comment is utter nonsense. Read his writings over many years. He left the Democratic party when Ronald Reagan ran.The last Democrat he even considered supporting was GOVERNOR Bob Casey who was censored by the Democrats. He has been a stalwart full circle conservative, social and fiscal, who has been fighting the fight for a long, long time. In fact, he was a huge Santorum supporter this time and Huckabee last time.

Knee jerk comments like yours on this forum limit could its ability to bring more in.You probably meant well, but please use better judgement.

One simply cannot be a faithful Catholic and hold what is euphemistically called a "pro-choice" position on abortion or fail to defend true marriage and the family and society founded upon it. The same elite who currently control the Democratic Party - which abandoned its one time support for all the poor, including children in the womb - has now abandoned true marriage and the family and society founded upon it. They will reflect this in their official party platform during their convention in September...