Posted on 11/19/2008 3:56:29 PM PST by wagglebee
WASHINGTON, November 19, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The possible signing of the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) by President-Elect Barack Obama would be "the equivalent of a war" an unnamed senior Vatican official recently told TIME magazine.
The startling comments make the second time this week that a Vatican official has forthrightly and in the strongest language condemned Obama's extreme policies on abortion. Speaking at the Catholic University of America a few days ago, Vatican Cardinal James Stafford labeled Obama's anti-life policies as "aggressive, disruptive, and apocalyptic," also noting that, "On November 4, 2008, America suffered a cultural earthquake" (see coverage: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/nov/08111703.html).
With Catholic, but outspokenly pro-abortion individuals occupying two prominent positions (Joseph Biden as vice president and Tom Daschle as Health and Human Services Secretary) the specter of public excommunication or denial of communion for prominent members of the Obama Administration has arisen.
The focus of the Vatican’s concern, FOCA, is a bill that would do away with state laws on abortion, including laws mandating parental involvement, or banning partial birth abortion. FOCA would also compel taxpayer funding of abortions, and, of greatest concern to Bishops, would force faith-based hospitals and healthcare facilities to perform abortions.
Obama has in the past said that he would make signing FOCA one of the highest priorities of his presidency.
Last week at the meeting of US Bishops in Baltimore, Cybercast News Service asked Chicago Cardinal Francis George, the current president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, if voting for FOCA would bring a penalty of automatic excommunication for Catholic politicians. The Cardinal did not rule it out.
"The excommunication is automatic if that act is in fact formal cooperation, and that is precisely what would have to be discussed once you would see the terms of the act itself," responded Cardinal George. When asked for more, he added: "The categories in moral theology about cooperating in evil, which make you complicit in the evil even though you don't do it yourself, are material cooperation, which is usually remote and therefore doesn't involve you in the moral action except in a very auxiliary and minor way, and formal cooperation, which would involve you even though you are not doing it, in the way that makes you culpable.
"So we would have to take a look at each case, and at each law, to determine whether or not the cooperation is material or formal. We've never done that."
Cardinal George has, however, personally analyzed FOCA and expressed his grave concerns about the legislation. In a message to the Obama Administration at the end of the USCCB meeting George wrote on FOCA, saying it would, "outlaw any ‘interference’ in providing abortion at will. It would deprive the American people in all fifty states of the freedom they now have to enact modest restraints and regulations on the abortion industry. FOCA would coerce all Americans into subsidizing and promoting abortion with their tax dollars. It would counteract any and all sincere efforts by government and others of good will to reduce the number of abortions in our country."
The Cardinal added: "FOCA would have an equally destructive effect on the freedom of conscience of doctors, nurses and health care workers whose personal convictions do not permit them to cooperate in the private killing of unborn children. It would threaten Catholic health care institutions and Catholic Charities." (see coverage: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/nov/08111209.html )
In light of this possible attempt to revoke conscience rights under the Obama administration, Catholic League president Bill Donohue has urged President Bush to enact regulations, already in draft for months, which would protect the rights of doctors, nurses and health workers from being discriminated against if they refuse to perform or assist in abortions, as well as other morally contentious procedures. "At stake are the religious rights of these professionals," said Donohue.
"To put it differently, were FOCA to become law (it needs to be reintroduced in the House), the culture war that the Vatican official was referring to would come to a boiling point," he warned. "In practical terms, this would mean the closure of every Catholic hospital in the nation: No bishop is going to stand by and allow the federal government to dictate what medical procedures must be performed in Catholic hospitals. Make no mistake about it, the bishops would shut down Catholic hospitals before acquiescing in the intentional killing of an innocent child. Were this to happen, it would not only cripple the poor, it would cripple the Obama administration."
Donohue concluded: "It is for reasons like these that the Catholic League urges President Bush to move with dispatch in instituting rules protecting the religious rights of all health care workers. If Obama wants to undo them, it will set up a confrontation he will surely regret."
See the TIME article:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1859856,00.htm...
See the Cybercast News article:
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=14369
“I guess a Catholic education is not what it once was. “
Not in my daughter’s Catholic high school - they had a mock election right before the real one, and McCain got over 90% of the votes (FWIW, there are about 20% of our students who are not Catholic). The day after the election, one of the senior football players gave us all a laugh when he wrote “DON’T BLAME ME” in white duct tape on the back of his pickup truck, with an arrow pointing to his McCain/Palin bumper sticker which also had his “I’m a Georgia Voter” sticker affixed to it. BTW, our carpool line and the parish parking lot are filled with McCain stickers and pro-life stickers and magnets.
The “Catholics” mentioned in the touted exit polls are, I suspect, the kind who were baptized and then unchurched, at least upon reaching adulthood. I am not personally acquainted with any Obama voting Catholics aside from my cousin, who was baptized but never confirmed, and whose “religiosity” centers around scary Santeria type stuff down in South FL (and she refers to herself as a “bleedin’ heart liberal”).
You raise an interesting point,Sir. One that I have been thinking about as well. When does it become an immoral act to continue the financial support of a regime that engages in the willful killing of the innocent? I myself am a practicing, believing Catholic who will look for guidance from the Church. Maybe we will eventually be called upon to bear witness to our faith that our ancestors who came to these shores would have never believed could happen in America. Trying times ahead.
One of the things I really really like is having caller ID.
If an Obamanation Abomination is what it took to get the Bishops to join as one voice and ‘do their jobs’ as shepherds of the Catholic flock, then something good is already coming out of the election.
I still want to see that Vault Copy of PeeElect Obama’s birth certificate.
McCain was Bush 3?
Obama is Clinton 3! IF he passes the BC test.
Amen, I am totally with you on that. Our last pastor would have been, too. He took a hard line on everyone on matters of faith, and often said he’d rather have two or three true Catholics in his pews than 1,000 faithless ones. He did drive a good few people away, but his faith and leadership were worth every one who left. I miss having him as our pastor terribly, but his new parish is very blessed to have him.
ping
Not what but who - Howard Roark.
Pius found a way to excuse himself from failing to speak out against fascism and the holocaust, so why should Benedict be different when it comes to abortion?
It’s liberation theology, not libertarian theology btw. And yes, the Church leans socialist. Flame on.
Indeed you speak the truth.
Imagine if all committed Catholics and other pro-life Christians were to withhold paying taxes, to the extent that they can. It would be quite a witness to the power of Christ.
The bible does not allow that form of protest. Luke 20:25
As Fu-fu said in post #56, the northern urban Catholics are largely Democrat.
WOW! Only clear thing that McCain said over and over again is about reaching across the aisle — that came across loud and clear.
Never could figure out why he didn’t go after Obama especially on partial birth abortion.
If the Catholic Church discovers that there are sins other than murder this country will be set right.
Thou shall not covet thy neighbors’ goods(wealth).
Its not that the other sins don’t matter, its the gravest must be dealt with first. What good is wealth if you are dead? More importantly, and this is how I tend to vote,(and why most people I vote for never get in) if you are right on life, your priorities tend to be straight and the other issues would be much closer to straightened out. Its about the priorities, man. Life first, everything else, next.
Dr. Joseph Lichten, a Polish Jew who served as a diplomat and later an official of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, writes: "Pacelli had obviously established his position clearly, for the Fascist governments of both Italy and Germany spoke out vigorously against the possibility of his election to succeed Pius XI in March of 1939, though the cardinal secretary of state had served as papal nuncio in Germany from 1917 to 1929. . . . The day after his election, the Berlin Morgenpost said: ‘The election of cardinal Pacelli is not accepted with favor in Germany because he was always opposed to Nazism and practically determined the policies of the Vatican under his predecessor.’ "[4]
Former Israeli diplomat and now Orthodox Jewish Rabbi Pinchas Lapide states that Pius XI "had good reason to make Pacelli the architect of his anti-Nazi policy. Of the forty-four speeches which the Nuncio Pacelli had made on German soil between 1917 and 1929, at least forty contained attacks on Nazism or condemnations of Hitler’s doctrines. . . . Pacelli, who never met the Führer, called it ‘neo-Paganism.’ "[5]
Further reading - "Three Popes and the Jews" by Rabbi Lapide or http://www.catholic.com/library/HOW_Pius_XII_PROTECTED_JEWS.asp
If he’d done anything meaningful he’d have been killed. That he survived indicts him.
It makes no sense to me as Obama was for killing babies born alive after a partial birth abortion just not being pro- choice. He wants to fund abortions everywhere.
What happens when he signs an order that Catholic Hospitals have to honor abortion as part of the American hospital system and that they cannot turn someone away?
Guess I will never understand how anyone raised pro-life could vote for anyone that favors partial birth abortion and killing the baby if it is born alive. That is so far outside the norm that I cannot believe anyone would vote for anyone that supported killing a baby.
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