Pope: "Non-Negotiable Human Rights" include "Right to Life and Right to Freedom of Conscience"

Lifesitenews.com ^ | 5/5/09 | Thaddeus M. Baklinski

[Mrs. Don-o]

Kolo, I went to a prolife prayer service yesterday with my husband, and it gave me something to think about.

The service began with some simple hymn-singing and a short introductory prayer, and then there were two speakers: first, the woman who runs the local Crisis Pregnancy Center, and second, a woman who had an abortion 17 years ago.

It’s all what I’ve heard so many times in the last 30 years. You always start with prayer. You always hear from the motherly woman who is on a mission of mercy to the gals who are facing an untimely or difficult pregnancy. You always listen carefully to a post-abortive woman’s account of her long journey through numbness, denial, broken relationships, troubled conscience, sadness, anger, grief, repentance -— and healing: the theme is healing, as it has been since the late 70’s when I first got involved in prolife, as it has been since the days of the first abortion abolitionists, like Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, over a century before that.

It is all rooted in the commandment of Christ to care for “the least” of his brethren, the needy ones, and among the most needy are the child untimely conceived and his troubled mother; all rooted in Christ’s identification with the child, for “whoever receives this child receives Me, and receives not only Me but Him who sent Me.”

[Mrs. Don-o]

May he live 100 years!

[TradicalRC]

In the meantime, you may wish to use the God-given faculty of reason and ask yourself What did Jesus tell them to do with the sword? Execute people?

No. Apparently Christ advised them to get a sword as a nifty decoration for the wall.

If you consult the logic department in your God-given computer situated in your head, you will soon recognize that the "execution" in this case was done by God and not by Peter, because, as the scriputres remind us, vengeance belongs to God, not man, and not the Church.

Then why did God wait for Peter to give the sign? Hint: it might have something to do with Christ giving the authority to Peter on earth.

[TradicalRC]

The genuine, original, orthodox Catholic Church, not the Frankish innovation you call Catholic Church, forbade capital punishment.

Really? Justinian I, Saint of the Orthodox Church, thought capital punishment was just dandy for the Manichaeans. So much for your historical revisionism of the Orthodox Church.

[TradicalRC]

Accordingly, there is no Catholic country in the world.

Doesn't Malta count?

[kosta50]

You do a pretty good job of repeating communist propaganda

You are amazing: I give you verifiable historical facts (form western sources) and you call it "communist" propaganda!  Given that you seem to think so highly of Cardinal Stepinac, I could say, then, that you do a pretty good job of repeating fascist propaganda. 

Do you want to repeat Josip Brosz [sic] Tito's lying propaganda against Alois Cardinal Stepinac which will not prevent his canonization as a saint

Alojzije Stepinac was a traitor and a collaborationist Catholic archbishop of Zagreb in the so-called Independent State of Croatia, a staunch ally of Hitler's Germany. That John Paul II canonized this monster is a shameful reminder that the Vatican can err, as it did when it helped many a former Nazi war criminal find safe heaven in the West.

Franco, as a Catholic, did not roll over and play dead. He fought the reds and anarchists and defeated them

Franco was Hitler's and Mussolini's friend and ally. You find that admirable?

The reds and anarchists in Spain burned more than half of the Catholic Churches, raped and murdered countless nuns and murdered more than half the Spanish priests before Franco was able to overcome them and give them a small portion of what they had earned.

No one is defending the reds. They have "earned" their reputation in Russia earlier in the century where they destroyed 98% of the churches and killed tens of thousands of clergy.  Franco had every right to fight them. But Franco choose Hitler and Mussolini as the right guys to do business with. Right cause, wrong choice.

Here is your hero Francisco Franco and his buddy Adolf Hitler using their fascist salute to jar your memory.

I suppose you would say that just because Britain, France and the US did nothing to help Franco, they were "communist" too? Reptilian brains would think so.

He did not curl up in the corner whimpering that God must want him to be murdered.

The Russians didn't either, but the help that came was not sufficient to turn the red tide.

Instead he slaughtered the red and anarchist perps while some folks go around whining that they must kiss up to their communist bosses as though that were required of them by Christ

Apostle Paul says Christians are to submit to all authority, because authority is form God.

"For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves."—Rom 13:1-2

Now, Paul also says that he was given all this from Christ and last time I checked your Church agrees with that. So, I would say, that Christians really don't have an option in choosing to resist any authority except on their own authority, which is not from God and which carries a penalty according to St. Paul himself.

You have yet to make a biblical, or historical case for this belligerent attitude which you say is what the catholic Church teaches.

[kosta50]

The Orthodox directly benefited from Stalin's theft of Catholic Uniate Churches in Ukraine.

Oh, yes, after losing 98% of the churches and tens of thousands of clergy, the Orthodox Church in Russia benefited greatly! LOL!

Again, if all the Orthodox were in the habit of resisting their communist bosses, they would have lost fewer churches and fewer Orthodox clergy and laity under their former seminarian Djugashvili who became Stalin

Your history is flawed. The Russians resisted the Bolshevik revolution as much as they could. Without effective outside help, decimated at the eastern front by the Germans, weakened by treason from non-Russian minorities, the Whites (pro-czarists) succumbed to the better organized Reds, and were defeated.

Do you miss that pillar of virtue Slobodan Milosevic

No. Do you?

OTOH, I am certainly glad that Milosevic is dead

Very charitable of you.

Maybe Serbia will have a chance for freedom but probably not. The bad habits of a millenium are too hard to break

You are right. Just pray tell which country has a history of freedom that goes back a millennium?

I do know certain peace-obsessed and non-representative Catholics who admire Serbia as a colorful little satrapy, so picturesque, so thoroughly a throwback, so anti-American

As compared to the sex-slave trading, drug-trafficking little puppet "state" of Kosovo that was illegally snatched away from a  sovereign country in violation of all international conventions, but supported by war-obsessed allegedly "representative" Catolics like yourself?

As for Serbs being "so anti-American," I remind you that the freely elected government in Serbia is very much pro-American and that Serbia has been an American-sponsored satrapy since October 2000. 

In fact, the first country Serbia's president visited was the US only two days after his election! I suppose you don't count the people there as pro-American except that they elect por-American officials despite the fact that only ten years ago American bombs killed over 5,200 civilians in three months of the bombing campaign over Serbia.

For being so forgiving, more like forgetful and opportunistic, Serbia is Europe's leading trailer trash country. No other country is so self-debasing.

Do you think Americans would forgive someone for killing an equivalent number of civilians in a war of aggression so that California can secede from the Union? I doubt it. Rest assured: based on their voting record, Serb citizens are more pro-American than Americans. In fact, Serbia should be our honorary pet country. You can kick her, starve her, spit on her, beat her, kill her offspring, and she wills till be your pet.

[kosta50]

As to open resistance against the Nazi regime in Germany, try Cardinal Faulhaber, the Lion of Munich, who went after Hitler from the pulpit doing what few Orthodox leaders in Russia ever did

I never denied individual Catholic martyrs who stood up and even gave their lives for what is right. But, do you think close to one hundred thousand Russian bishops, priests, and monastics died because they supported communists? Don't be ridiculous. They died because they refused to cooperate with the monstrous Soviet regime. 

JP II was crucially instrumental in the fall of the Iron Curtain

I have heard this bogus theory peddled before. It's rubbish.

Joseph Ratzinger was 16 years old when arrested by American troops. He was briefly detained and released.

And there were 16-year olds who resisted the Nazis and were punished for it. He wasn't enthusiastic but he wasn't actively resisting either. 

Catholics and Protestants have every right to observe the collaborationist nature of the Orthodox church in Russia because it WAS collaborationist

In that case they should also recognize that the Catholic Church and Protestant communities were actively cooperating with the Nazi and fascist regimes.

You cannot very well celebrate as virtue the spineless cowardice of those who somehow see it as a moral imperative to refuse resistance by force of arms to tyranny and then whine about others complaining of that truth

Then you are calling spineless cowards all those Christian martyrs who died at the hands of various oppressors, beginning with protomartyr +Stephen, +Ignatius, +Peter and +Paul, and countless others. And you consider yourself a Catholic?

If you wonder why the chronic moaning and groaning in SOME Orthodox circles is despised in the manlier [sic] circles of Christianity which have fought the beasts...in Constantinople many hundreds of years ago...

Oh, testosterone! I should have known it would come down to that. How "Catholic!" With your mindset, I am surprised no one has yet condemned Jesus for being such a pacifist weenie to let himself be tortured and crucified. And all those weenie Christian multitudes letting themselves be slaughtered and eaten by beasts in the arenas. Bunch of effeminate pacifist weenies, right? And you call yourself  Catholic? You are on the roll.

And as far as Constantinople is concerned, the pope tried to stop it when he learned of the travesty, and centuries later John Paul II apologized for it. Does that make him a "weenie" too?

When the Muslim navy threatened Europe at Lepanto, it was Catholic naval power that sent the Muslims to Davy Jones' locker

What "catholic naval power?" When exactly was the Catholic Church a naval power?  The countries that participated in wars may have been Catholic countries, but their wars and politics were secular.

 When Vienna was threatened by a Muslim siege, it was Catholic Jan Sobieski, a Lithuanian Catholic who was king of Poland who headed a Catholic army that lifted the siege of Vienna, with no help whatsoever ferom the Orthodox.

Um, well, that's because the Orthodox countries were under the Ottoman occupation mainly because the Catholic countries refused to come to their aid when they need them. The fact that the Polish army saved Europe form the Ottoman conquest has nothing to do with them being Catholic. Peter the Great defeated Sweden and no one says his were "Orthodox" armies! LOL!  The Church did not participate in any of these wars. This is like someone saying that Shinto Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor! It's moronic! Do you understand that? I doubt it, bur I ask you anyway.

We would all be caterwauling that there is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet if we depended on the Orthodox of the time

The Orthodox survived five hundred years of Ottoman slavery and retained their Church and their Holy Tradition unchanged despite martyrdom and pogroms and lack of any help from the Catholic side. Unlike your Church, we did not commit liturgical suicide to the point of mocking God with clown masses and similar abominations.

As for "caterwauling," the show ain't over yet.  Despite all the "Catholic" victories, Islam is the fastest growing religion on earth and almost neck and neck with the Catholics. What good is winning a battle if you lose the war?

[kosta50]

You have no problem spouting Tito's communist propaganda against the RCC

I usually reference my factual claims (unless widely known) and I don't remember ever using Tito as my reference.

and nuzzling Obamamessiah as preferable because of his potential to destroy our country by pacifism in the face of our nation's enemies and collaboration with them

I don't remember endorsing any such person, nor his alleged collaboration with our enemies. You are either making ad hominem comments or you have me confused with someone else.

I knew a man in New Haven (now dead of heart trouble) by the name of Bill Kirkiles who was a Greek Orthodox partisan leader against Tito when Tito was stealing the children of Orthodox in Macedonia and Northern Greece to be sent off to Stalin for "re-education"...while people like you sat around whining about the evils of taking up arms and killing those reds who needed killing. Bill killed them and so did many Orthodox but not the kind who would embrace an Obama...

Why are you telling me this? What does this have to do with me, the Orthodox Church and her teachings? People do what they wish to do, but neither Christ nor the primitive Catholic Church professed any taking up arms and killing people. In fact, the Greatest martyrs in the Church would qualify as pacifist weenies in your book.

The concordat negotiated with the German government (whose president was the non-Nazi Paul Hindenberg) was typical of Vatican concordats all over Europe

So?

There was Lutheran resistance to Hitler in the form of heroes like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who went back to Germany to be hanged by Hitler in the endgame of Nazi rule

As I said, many Christian martyrs, individually did resist and paid with their lives for the sake or righteousness, but their communities and the Catholic Church, as institutions, collaborated with the Nazi regime.

Was there something you objected to in the Roman Catholic Church's opposition to communism?

I don't remember ever suggesting that it did. Are you in a habit of smearing people with your unsupported insinuations? I don't remember, however, the Catholic Church resisting communism by picking up arms. On a practical level, the Church learned how to "live" with communist regimes while being opposed to communism in principle.

Do you not only like Tito but also his and Stalin's ideology??? Do you really wonder why people who share such views you are despised by civilized men???

When and where did I say I liked Tito's ideology? You are suggesting things I never said. There is nothing civilized about people who make up lies. There is nothing Catholic about them either.

When you accuse those who fought and resisted of "hypocrisy" and "ignorance," you have spent too much time looking in the mirror and you emit the same odor as Obama would if he claimed fiscal responsibility as central to his (and your?) ideology.

It is you who consider Christian martyrs "weenies" and not "manly" enough. You are so full of hate, spilling it out as personal insults that I can't imagine how you can live with yourself, or go to church, if you go to church. I truly pity you.

Run your own church if you can and mind your own business which does not include the RCC.

Last time I checked, this is not a Catholic-caucus article, but rather an open forum for all to participate with their views. I think you are confused as to the rules of the Religion Forum. But after reading your hate-filled responses I wouldn't be surprised if you just don't care. Perhaps it's not "manly" enough to care; only "weenies" care, right?

[Religion Moderator]

Discuss the issues all you want, but do NOT make it personal.

[kosta50]

No. Apparently Christ advised them to get a sword as a nifty decoration for the wall.

What did he tell them to do with the sword? Execute people?

Then why did God wait for Peter to give the sign? Hint: it might have something to do with Christ giving the authority to Peter on earth.

He gave the authority to all the Apostles (Mat 18:18). In Mat 16 he promised he would give it to him. In Acts 5:12 it says the signs were happening among all the Apostles, not just Peter. Anyway,  there is no evidence that Peter was killing people for lying with this new authority .

Anyway, Acts 5:1-11 is an anecdote used for teaching and not necessarily that really happened any more than the talking donkeys in the Old Testament.

[kosta50]

Really? Justinian I, Saint of the Orthodox Church, thought capital punishment was just dandy for the Manichaeans. So much for your historical revisionism of the Orthodox Church.

He was sainted for the same reason St. Paul was sainted despite his murderous past: he did a lot for the Church.

[kosta50]

Doesn't Malta count?

If Malta counts, so does Italy or Spain. The question is, how many go to church, as Petronski suggested.

[BlackElk]

So Hitler's power and Stalin's power were from God and Christians should have done what they were told: running the Gulag, stoking the ovens, whatever! It certainly is true that you and I are not co-religionists and, in the absence of your conversion, we never will be.

Franco used Hitler's Luftwaffe and then turned on him to extricate Spanish ancestry Jews on threat of making Spain available for American airbases to facilitate our invasion of Europe. You and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade may disagree.

I will concede but one point to you. The government of Serbia after the overthrow of Milosevic has been a considerably better and more pro-American government.

If you do not want to be viewed in a lens that reveals your propaganda on Cardinal Stepinac and a variety of other matters to be as similar to communist propaganda, then do a better job of distinguishing it.

Uber-coward Neville Chamberlain's British government thought nothing was worth fighting for. He is not well-regarded. Vichy France was, well, Vichy France. FDR was the president who made the blunder of recognizing the soviet regime, a foolish blunder not indulged in by presidents as diverse as Wilson, Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. Neither Britain nor France nor the US were then communist but then communism is not the only error of the era. There was also cowardice in the face of evil. By 1945, that was partially rectified. In 1989, the other shoe fell along with the Iron Curtain of the Russian communist empire.

This is not a closed Catholic thread. You post your beliefs. I post mine. One of my beliefs is that the governance of the Roman Catholic Church to which you do not belong is none of your business. I don't remember suggesting that your views be suppressed in any way. If anything quite the contrary. When you post as you post, you reveal yourself and that is good. What is your point???

On second thought, don't bother because it would only lead to more useless yak-yak and no resolution. RSVP but I won't. It has been real.

[kosta50]

So Hitler's power and Stalin's power were from God and Christians should have done what they were told

According to Paul, yes. He did not distinguish between "good" authoirty and "bad" authority. Nor did he call on Christians to rise up and rebel.

Early Christians died an masse in the areans for simply professing their faith and refusing to worship caesar. These martyrs are considered fools 20 centuries later by some who preted to be "traditional" Christians.

The Apostolic and catholic Church did not call for insurgency and "just war," but for martyrdom. f you disagree with that you disagaree not with me but with Apostolic Christianity.

I gave the the writings of the Church Fathers and I gave you quotes from the New Testament. If you have issues with them, that's soemthing between you and God. When you find a passage in the Gospels that teaches us to rebel or to seek an eye for an eye let me know.

[annalex]

calling anti-abortion the highest Church dogma is heresy.

It indeed would have been heresy, but no one said that it is. It is among the five non-negotiable principles of social policy, as opposed to other aspects of social policy where reasonable Catholics can take diverging views, but not any kind of highest Church dogma.

[annalex]

he actually quoted someone in particular

Yes. So find the quote, find my response to the quote, and if questions remain, ask the question.

[Kolokotronis]

Once again, Alex, here are the ravings of the heretic Martino about the "dogma" of anti-abortionism.

"“No, the taking of innocent human life is so heinous, so horribly evil, and so absolutely opposite to the law of Almighty God that abortion must take precedence over every other issue. I repeat. It is the single most important issue confronting not only Catholics, but the entire electorate.”"

That's rank heresy, but his violation of the canons relating to his episcopal jurisdiction should be enough. The man should be silenced, deposed and sent to a monastery.

[annalex]

I showed you from the context that bishop Martino was talking about issues of social policy and not comparing church dogmas. See my poast 72 on this thread.

The letter you were quoting from A PASTORAL LETTER FROM BISHOP MARTINO is addressed to the faithful of his diocese.

I think you need to admit that nothing in the letter violates any canon or proclaims any heresy even by the Easter Orthodox standards, were they to apply to bp. Martino.

[Kolokotronis]

“I showed you from the context that bishop Martino was talking about issues of social policy and not comparing church dogmas.”

I know the context. Its a heresiarch playing politics and seeking to gain an advantage for his political choices by playing with “dogma”. Alex, there is absolutely no doubt what the heretic Martino was saying and continues to say. All the parsing of words on this site can’t change that. You are not saying that “anti-abortionism” isn’t a dogma of the Latin Church, are you?