Diocese Paper Editor with Guts: Kansas City Takes on Jesuits

California Catholic Daily ^ | June 29, 2009 | Jack Smith

[Alex Murphy]

Editor’s note: Jack Smith, who sent out this blog from the Kansas City Key, that diocese’s newspaper, gives an example of how the bishops can fight a good fight.)

Thursday, June 25, 2009
America Mag's Calumny in Service of a Human Master

A number of recent editorials by Catholic Obama partisans have sought to discredit the U.S. Bishops and the pro-life movement as a whole by grossly misappropriating the words of Kansas City – St. Joseph Bishop Robert W. Finn.

Sometimes with attribution, sometimes without, but never in context, they have ripped four words, “We are at war,” from a 3,981 word address Bishop Finn made to a pro-life convention April 18, and given it meaning and context of their own making.

None have been so egregious as the Jesuit editors of America. This week’s Current Comment editorial in America disgraces the paper and the Society. It is vicious calumny in service to wicked ends.

Here it is:

A Higher Righteousness

Over the course of his career, George Tiller, M.D., performed over 60,000 abortions, specializing in what are euphemistically called “late-term” abortions. His murder at Wichita’s Reformation Lutheran Church on Sunday, May 31, has sparked soul-searching among some pro-life advocates. Did incendiary speech against brazen abortionists contribute to an overheated environment that then led to the doctor’s murder? Was Scott Roeder, the unstable man who allegedly killed Tiller, egged on by “hate speech”? What moral responsibility do activists and church leaders bear to prevent moral and political criticism on both sides of the abortion divide from escalating into hate speech?

It is not hard to find examples of incendiary speech. Tiller’s critics were wont to step up to the line of incitement and then draw back. Bill O’Reilly regularly called the Kansas doctor “Tiller the baby killer”

[Alex Murphy]

...the message is clear – Bishop Finn’s comments are to be identified with O’Reilly’s, and whether or not they are responsible for Tiller’s murder, they and all pro-life people who speak forcefully in defense of life will find themselves in hell.