Cardinal Rigali's Statement for Respect Life Sunday
(Hat tip: Catholic Online)
From Zenit:
... Today, ... we face the threat of a federal bill that, if enacted, would obliterate virtually all the gains of the past 35 years and cause the abortion rate to skyrocket. The "Freedom of Choice Act" ("FOCA") has many Congressional sponsors, some of whom have pledged to act swiftly to help enact this proposed legislation when Congress reconvenes in January. FOCA establishes abortion as a "fundamental right" throughout the nine months of pregnancy, and forbids any law or policy that could "interfere" with that right or "discriminate" against it in public funding and programs. If FOCA became law, hundreds of reasonable, widely supported, and constitutionally sound abortion regulations now in place would be invalidated. Gone would be laws providing for informed consent, and parental consent or notification in the case of minors. Laws protecting women from unsafe abortion clinics and from abortion practitioners who are not physicians would be overridden.(emphasis added)
Restrictions on partial-birth and other late-term abortions would be eliminated. FOCA would knock down laws protecting the conscience rights of nurses, doctors, and hospitals with moral objections to abortion, and force taxpayers to fund abortions throughout the United States. We cannot allow this to happen. We cannot tolerate an even greater loss of innocent human lives. We cannot subject more women and men to the post-abortion grief and suffering that our counselors and priests encounter daily in Project Rachel programs across America.
For twenty-four years, the Catholic Church has provided free, confidential counseling to individuals seeking emotional and spiritual healing after an abortion, whether their own or a loved one's. We look forward to the day when these counseling services are no longer needed, when every child is welcomed in life and protected in law. If FOCA is enacted, however, that day may recede into the very distant future...
Labels: Bishops, Culture of Death, Pro-Life
posted by Pro Ecclesia 12:38 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
The precise consequences of this horrible bill have to be communicated to the public and to both Democrats and Republicans in Congress in ways that brings home what will occur. For example, what will happen to Catholic hospitals if they refuse to provide the abortion procedure? Based on the polls, Obama looks to be our next president. If that perception becomes reality, we’ve got to convince enough members of Congress to oppose the legislation so that Obama’s will isn’t done here.
But Doug Kmiec assured us that this bill wasn't that bad. He wouldn't have lied to us. If I can't believe Doug Kmiec, I can't believe anything.
This is an area where the Bishops can and should exert some muscle against "pro-choice" Catholics. A vote for this bill isn't some passive "personally opposed, but ..." nonsense, but is an active vote to enshrine abortion on demand without exceptions as a federal law, and to strip Catholic hospital and health care workers of their conscience rights.
The USCCB should in unity declare that a vote for FOCA by any Catholic will merit automatic excommunication.
The Catholic bishops should get together with leaders of other denominations and in the strongest terms possible, they should condemn the moral bankruptcy of the Democratic Party as the "party of death" which supports in its platform unlimited killing of human beings in the unborn stage.
The Catholic bishops and other religious leaders should then take a strong and courageous moral stand, having declared the Democratic Party to be morally bankrupt, by calling for all Christians to vote ONLY for John McCain for President and ONLY for Republican candidates for the House and Senate and for all other offices.
The Church leaders should argue that it is necessary to elect a Republican Congress and Republican President as the only possible way to pass a federal statute to stop or reduce the killing of unborn children.
Evangelical Protestant ministers this past Sunday had the courage to stand up to the IRS and risk their tax exemption by endorsing John McCain. It is time for the Catholic Church and all other pro-life denominations to do the same, because Barack Obama and the Democratic Party politician present a deadly threat to all unborn children and we must do everything that we can in the next month to defeat them to safeguard the lives of the next generation.
Bad idea, Joe. First, you’re asking Christians to place unquestioning faith in the Republican Party. No thanks. No human institution deserves that kind of faith. Second, given the corruptive nature of power and the fickle way that Republican’s have defended the life issues, I suspect that the Republican Party would use the uncritical allegiance of the Christian churches to further its own political ends.
I heard that, Crankycon, probably here at Jay’s blog, but I haven’t had an interest in reading Doug Kmiec lately. What was his argument?
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