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Catholics Must Vote to Defend the Right to Life and End the Crime of Abortion
Catholic Online ^ | 8/31/16 | Deacon Keith Fournier

Posted on 08/31/2016 1:17:01 PM PDT by tcg

With the Presidential election in the United States upon us the allegations of "single issue politics" are again being leveled against anyone who condemns procured, legal abortion as immoral and evil. ...We even find people within the Church again attempting to fold the crime of procured abortion into a misguided interpretation of Catholic Social Teaching which pushes a false moral equivalence... 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 ...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.

Faithful Catholic Christians must affirm that all human persons are created in the Image of God and have a fundamental Right to Life. They have an inherent dignity - at every age and stage of their lives. This truth informs our respect for every human life, whether that life is found in the first home of the mother's womb, a wheelchair, a jail cell, a hospital room, a hospice, a senior center, a soup kitchen or on a refugee boat. However, life begins in the womb and that is where that right attaches.

Legal abortion as a "right" was manufactured out of whole cloth by a United States Supreme Court which exceeded its authority, rejected the Constitution, precedent and the Natural Law, embraced junk science, and used a false historical narrative to find a nonexistent "right" in the "penumbra" of the Constitution. In doing so, the Court unleashed the continued shedding of innocent blood. None of this is about "choice". Most thinking people will acknowledge that some choices are always and everywhere wrong. Killing the innocent is the prime example. The younger the victim, the more egregious. ...

(Excerpt) Read more at catholic.org ...


TOPICS: Activism/Chapters; Constitution/Conservatism; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: abortion; catholics; trump; vote
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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.

1 posted on 08/31/2016 1:17:01 PM PDT by tcg
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To: tcg

Before that happens, millions of “Catholics” need to be excommunicated.


2 posted on 08/31/2016 1:20:00 PM PDT by fwdude (If we keep insisting on the lesser of two evils, that is exactly what they will give us from now on.)
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To: fwdude
Before that happens, millions of “Catholics” need to be excommunicated.

They've already excommunicated themselves. That they choose to live their lives piling on sin after sin is between them and their final judge.

3 posted on 08/31/2016 1:21:31 PM PDT by COBOL2Java (Trump is to the political class what Uber is to taxicab companies)
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To: COBOL2Java

Not from what I’ve seen.

Happily done with the “C”hurch for 6 years now. I’m still more prolife than many showing up twice a year for mass and sending their kids to the church’s school. Never see them at the MFL DC or in attendance at our vigils outside PP.

There was no larger offender that the Msgr of Sts Simon and Jude in West Chester, PA who couldn’t bother to raise the topic of protecting the unborn the mass before obama’s first white house win.

Money. Money. Money.


4 posted on 08/31/2016 1:28:06 PM PDT by ConservativeWarrior (Fall down 7 times, stand up 8. - Japanese proverb)
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To: COBOL2Java

Excellent post to an excellent thread ~ T Y!

Liberty and justice for all cannot possibly be achieved by man. The Founders knew that man is utterly incapable of governing his fellow man justly, without adhering to God’s law. They all understood that the foundations for governmental justice and liberty must stem from the ultimate source of all justice and liberties, id est, Almighty God.

A quote from James Madison expressed their beliefs succinctly, “Any country not ruled by the Ten Commandments will be ruled by tyrants.”


5 posted on 08/31/2016 1:30:35 PM PDT by heterosupremacist ("Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." (Thomas Jefferson))
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To: tcg

Sterilize most of africa and most of the middle east and otherwise decent people won’t fear bringing kinds into the world.

Eliminate evil to make more room for good.


6 posted on 08/31/2016 1:34:43 PM PDT by soycd
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To: Mrs. Don-o

PING


7 posted on 08/31/2016 1:35:41 PM PDT by Tennessee Nana
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To: ConservativeWarrior
Not from what I’ve seen.

You can see into their souls? Wow.

8 posted on 08/31/2016 1:38:33 PM PDT by COBOL2Java (Trump is to the political class what Uber is to taxicab companies)
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To: tcg

Archbishop Blase Cupich says getting aborted is no worse than being unemployed or “undocumented.” Archbishop Charles Chaput says there’s no difference between a lifelong abortion fanatic and a pro-life candidate. The Pope says that Emma Bonino, who has aborted 10,000 babies, is “one of Italy’s forgotten heroines.”


9 posted on 08/31/2016 1:40:54 PM PDT by Arthur McGowan
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To: tcg

“Catholics Must Vote to Defend the Right to Life and End the Crime of Abortion”

Most Catholics supported their god in the white mosque in 2012, and the “pope” pimps out the Fraud’s agenda as well.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-campaign-religion-idUSBRE8A71M420121108


10 posted on 08/31/2016 1:42:21 PM PDT by treetopsandroofs (Had FDR been GOP, there would have been no World Wars, just "The Great War" and "Roosevelt's Wars".)
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To: tcg

How can anyone condone or accept the killing of any innocent human being?

We expect to live in safety and we intend to lock up those that cause bodily harm or death to others for their crimes, but we allow the death of an innocent human being (that can’t defend themselves)for their personal convenience.

Why should we support or vote for anyone that supports or allows anyone to harm an innocent human being? Especially Catholic Democrat VP candidate Kaine (Clinton/Kaine)?

God is not pleased with us!


11 posted on 08/31/2016 1:48:45 PM PDT by ADSUM
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To: fwdude

“Before that happens, millions of “Catholics” need to be excommunicated.”

I’m a little off topic here, but with regards to excommunication, my sister shacks up with a devout Catholic (as he claims to be), he’s divorced, been living with my sister for over 10 years. This sister has two children out of wedlock living with them, one has had numerous kids out of wedlock, all living in his house. My sister says this guy attends Mass regular and attends all church functions. As a non-Catholic, she attends many functions with him as his companion.

So how does excommunication work? How does it penalize? No abortions that I know of, but it’s literally a house of bastards. I know my language is blunt, but when I grew up kids out of wedlock was not a good thing, neither was divorce, regardless of ones faith.


12 posted on 08/31/2016 1:50:06 PM PDT by redfreedom
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To: tcg

You can say whatever you wish against the Catholics but they were our only line of defense in this country against abortion for years...

I am a Protestant and I was pro-life before pro-life was cool...

The Catholics were the only place to go if you wanted to join hands in any organized attempt to rid ourselves of the scourge of evil that is abortion...

For years protestant churches called abortion “the Catholic issue” and refused to aid in the fight...

How different our social atmosphere might be today if Protestants had only “humbled” themselves and helped end abortion...

a “Catholic issue” ???

...but the daughters of Protestants were murdering the grandchildren...


13 posted on 08/31/2016 1:51:33 PM PDT by Tennessee Nana
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To: Arthur McGowan

Archbishop Cupich will have to account to God for his words and teachings.


14 posted on 08/31/2016 1:51:46 PM PDT by ADSUM
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To: tcg

2012 RC vote 0bama 50% Romney 48%

The national vote was 0 51% Romney 47%


15 posted on 08/31/2016 1:56:59 PM PDT by xp38
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To: redfreedom

Maybe that will happen, but God is the final and fair judge.

The church holds out hope that people will see the errors of their ways and repent before their death.


16 posted on 08/31/2016 1:57:25 PM PDT by ADSUM
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To: redfreedom
As unsettling as it is to say, you are describing the "better" lapsed Catholic.

Most cafeteria Catholic have had, or militantly support, abortion, use contraception, affirm homosexual sodomy and the redefinition of marriage to include two men or two women, and don't believe 99% of what the Church teaches.

17 posted on 08/31/2016 2:11:45 PM PDT by fwdude (If we keep insisting on the lesser of two evils, that is exactly what they will give us from now on.)
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To: COBOL2Java
I don't buy the "excommunicated themselves" jargon. That's just a cop-out. Excommunication has historically ALWAYS involved an action by the visible Church against a willful heretic.

Lack of such punitive action is implicitly condoning the heretic's crimes.

18 posted on 08/31/2016 2:13:53 PM PDT by fwdude (If we keep insisting on the lesser of two evils, that is exactly what they will give us from now on.)
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To: ADSUM

How about Chaput and the Pope?

I think Chaput is desperate to get a red hat, and thinks going squishy on abortion is the way to edge Cupich out. The Pope just loves squishes.

But Cupich has been burnishing his pro-abortion, pro-sodomy creds for years.


19 posted on 08/31/2016 2:21:37 PM PDT by Arthur McGowan
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To: fwdude

You are correct. There is no automatic excommunication for being pro-abortion. It is, however, a mortal sin.


20 posted on 08/31/2016 2:23:09 PM PDT by Arthur McGowan
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