Personhood FL - PersonhoodFL is a Christian grassroots non-partisan organization

Com­men­tary by JUDIE BROWN of Amer­i­can Life League

Over the years I have tried on many occa­sions to under­stand the appar­ent dis­con­nect between the bureau­crats at the United States Con­fer­ence of Catholic Bish­ops and the fun­da­men­tal teach­ing of the Roman Catholic mag­is­terium that the act of abor­tion is a heinous crime, fre­quently defined by the popes as mur­der.  

We know, for exam­ple, that dur­ing the debate regard­ing health care reform, the USCCB coined the term “abor­tion neu­tral,” and most recently, accord­ing to the New York Times, explained their cur­rent dilemma in a rather odd way.   

The United States Con­fer­ence of Catholic Bish­ops which has lob­bied for decades to per­suade the gov­ern­ment to pro­vide uni­ver­sal health insur­ance, says it opposes the bill unless it bans the use of sub­si­dies for plans that cover abortion.

“We have said to the White House and var­i­ous Sen­ate offices that we could be the best friends to this bill if our con­cerns are met,” Richard M. Doer­flinger, a spokesman for the bish­ops on abor­tion issues, said in an inter­view. “But the con­cerns are kind of intractable.”

This state­ment present the same chal­lenges that many USCCB state­ments have over the years. The first is the sug­ges­tion that if a ver­sion of Obama’s health care reform pro­posal “bans the use of sub­si­dies for plans that cover abor­tion,” the USCCB will be so happy it will appar­ently cozy up to the Obama forces and be “friends.” If that has not trou­bled your ulcer, per­haps this will.

What exactly does it mean to refer to a pub­lic pol­icy in pre­born child killing as “kind of intractable?” Is that in the same cat­e­gory as “a lit­tle bit pregnant?”

Merriam-Webster tells us that “intractable” is defined as “not eas­ily gov­erned, man­aged or directed.” So can we pre­sume that the USCCB is “kind of” stub­born about this mat­ter of abor­tion? Is the USCCB attempt­ing to help the Obama admin­is­tra­tion under­stand that when it comes to abort­ing a child, they just want to make sure that tax­pay­ers don’t have to pay for them, or at least not all of them. 

Don’t for­get, the USCCB is on record with an “abor­tion neu­tral” state­ment, explain­ing that it sup­ports Hyde-type lan­guage, which means that in the cases of rape, incest and the life of the mother, abor­tion would be cov­ered by tax dollars. 

Where exactly is that per­mit­ted in Catholic teach­ing? Or are we wit­ness­ing a pat­tern of behav­ior that equates USCCB posi­tions with polit­i­cal prin­ci­ples rather than Catholic prin­ci­ples? Albeit a “real­is­tic” approach for a polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion, how can it be so for the orga­ni­za­tion that allegedly rep­re­sents more than 200 men, ordained into the Catholic priest­hood, and fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of the Apostles?

A good friend and fel­low Catholic, Tom Longua, a pro-life pio­neer and apol­o­gist, sent an e-mail in which he pro­vided his per­spec­tive. It is cer­tainly worth repeat­ing: “It’s pos­si­ble that Doer­flinger him­self may be ‘absolute’ about the prin­ci­ple of not accept­ing the fund­ing of baby-killing, but hav­ing dealt with so many Amer­i­can bish­ops for so many years, he knows only too well that many of them are not absolute [on] any prin­ci­ple, so he inserted the words ‘kind of’ to hedge his bet here.”

Either way, it occurs to me that the USCCB spokesman and the ordained priests, each of whom has now been ele­vated to the office of bishop, arch­bishop or car­di­nal, should not be lob­by­ing one way or the other for this sort of health care reform. The USCCB should be using its influ­ence and plat­form in the pub­lic square to teach the prin­ci­ples of Catholic doc­trine. Period. The pre­born, the elderly and the infirm don’t need the same old, same old rhetoric that we have grown so accus­tomed to from the USCCB. 

I must say though, before leav­ing this sub­ject, that Mr. Doer­flinger is no stranger to the con­tro­versy caused by strange com­ments made by the Catholic bish­ops he serves in his post as asso­ciate direc­tor of the USCCB Sec­re­tariat of Pro-Life Activ­i­ties. Many of these com­ments are a bit off-key, if one lis­tens to the har­mo­nious teach­ings of the Catholic church ver­sus the USCCB’s bish­ops and their indi­vid­ual ren­di­tion of those teachings. 

Take, for exam­ple, the ques­tion of human per­son­hood, a fun­da­men­tal philo­soph­i­cal posi­tion of the Catholic Church that is also prov­able by sci­ence and logic. As Pope John Paul II explained in 1996 when speak­ing of the rights of human embryos, “a prob­lem which directly con­cerns the dis­cus­sion between biol­o­gists, moral­ists and jurists is that of the basic rights of the per­son, which must be rec­og­nized in every human sub­ject through­out his life and, in par­tic­u­lar, from his moment of origin.”

This is not a lofty ideal, but rather a fun­da­men­tal truth regard­ing exis­tence from the moment of his or her bio­log­i­cal begin­ning. And yet, the bish­ops dis­agree, at least when devis­ing state­ments to address the human per­son­hood ini­tia­tives in the var­i­ous states.

For exam­ple, the nine Catholic bish­ops of Florida signed a joint state­ment, issued by the Florida Catholic Con­fer­ence, oppos­ing the Per­son­hood Florida effort. As LifeSiteNews.com reported, 

The Con­fer­ence, which serves as the offi­cial pub­lic pol­icy voice of the Florida bish­ops, released an email alert Fri­day after­noon, alert­ing sup­port­ers that, “although the bish­ops of Florida clearly share the desire for our state laws to rec­og­nize all life from its very begin­ning to nat­ural end, after care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion and delib­er­a­tion with legal coun­sel, the bish­ops do not sup­port this cur­rent amend­ment effort.”

The same e-mail noted that sig­na­ture col­lec­tion would not take place in any parish or dioce­san entity in the state.

The same cor­re­spon­dence included a link to a more thor­ough state­ment by the bish­ops, which may be accessed on the Con­fer­ence web site. The state­ment, dated Sep­tem­ber 19, affirms the bish­ops’ col­lec­tive com­mit­ment to “the full legal recog­ni­tion of the right to life of every unborn child and the defense of human life in all its stages, from con­cep­tion to nat­ural death.”

How­ever, the state­ment con­tin­ues, “it is our opin­ion, and that of the legal experts with whom we have con­sulted, that pas­sage of this amend­ment would not achieve the goal of over­turn­ing Roe v. Wade.”

The bish­ops first note the unlike­li­hood of such an amend­ment pass­ing, given Florida law’s stip­u­la­tion that con­sti­tu­tional amend­ments be approved by at least 60% of vot­ers. Fur­ther­more, the fed­eral courts would almost cer­tainly strike down such an amend­ment as uncon­sti­tu­tional, and the bish­ops express fear that, should the case be heard by the United States Supreme Court (which is presently dom­i­nated by pro–Roe jus­tices) it might well “lead to a reaf­fir­ma­tion of Roe.”

The bish­ops go on to reaf­firm their view “that it will be more pru­dent to pur­sue incre­men­tal mea­sures that add to exist­ing pro­tec­tions in law and help change hearts and minds.”

What sort of pru­dence is it that opposes an effort to teach cit­i­zens the human­ity of the pre­born? Catholic bish­ops have pub­licly opposed state per­son­hood efforts in state after state for what I per­ceive to be purely polit­i­cal rea­sons. As Amer­i­can Life League Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Shaun Ken­ney sug­gested, is such a state­ment a type of “false pru­dence?” Or is it that the polit­i­cal agenda of the USCCB, in con­cert with the var­i­ous state Catholic con­fer­ences, is not well served by finally stand­ing up and say­ing that Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton are evil deci­sions, in direct vio­la­tion of the nat­ural law and there­fore invalid? Should the USCCB and its state equiv­a­lents make such a bold state­ment, only God knows what might hap­pen, but it cer­tainly would not be the ful­fill­ment of a polit­i­cal agenda that appears to be leav­ing human per­son­hood behind.

When I exam­ine the facts, com­par­ing the dev­as­tat­ing blow var­i­ous bish­ops have deliv­ered to state per­son­hood efforts with a national spokesman of the USCCB’s sort of, kind of, maybe pol­icy on health care, I am left with a sick feel­ing in my extremely con­ser­v­a­tive Catholic heart. It is with the great­est sor­row that I wit­ness this ongo­ing deba­cle being per­pe­trated by the Catholic apos­tles of our day. I fear that, per­haps, human respect has over­taken many of them. I worry that poll­sters, lawyers and politi­cians may have dis­tracted them from Christ’s ever timely reminder, uttered to His first apos­tles (Matthew 10:32–33):

Every­one who acknowl­edges me before oth­ers, I will acknowl­edge before my heav­enly Father. But who­ever denies me before oth­ers, I will deny before my heav­enly Father.

In this year of the priest, I believe it is time for each of us to pray for the cur­rent day apos­tles of Christ, our Catholic bish­ops, and to entrust them to the patron saint of priests, Saint John Vian­ney, who once so very wisely wrote,

Do you know what the devil’s first temp­ta­tion is to the per­son who wants to serve God with ded­i­ca­tion? It is human respect.

Com­men­tary by Gary L. Morella
 
It is SCANDALOUS beyond belief, in my esti­ma­tion, for pur­ported Bish­ops to REFUSE to sup­port a State ‘Human Life’ Con­sti­tu­tional Amend­ment for the spe­cious rea­son that a fed­eral amend­ment would be bet­ter. Instead of lis­ten­ing to their legal advis­ers, who DO NOT HAVE A CATHOLIC CLUE about the mat­ter, how about lis­ten­ing to GOD ALMIGHTY via the INFALLIBLE Teach­ing Mag­is­terium of Holy Mother Church on faith and morals? “THOU SHALT NOT KILL!” Just how many more inno­cents have to die before our bish­ops get this right?

Why would ANY CATHOLIC, much less a bishop or a priest, NOT SUPPORT ANY effort to stop baby killing on ANY level, fed­eral, state, or local, IMMEDIATELY? How Catholic bish­ops can take such an unprin­ci­pled pub­lic stand in dis­cour­ag­ing a state from stop­ping baby killing makes a mock­ery of the afore­men­tioned Catholic moral teach­ing, i.e., it cries out to Heaven for vengeance!

What the heck are these bish­ops wait­ing for? They have state rep­re­sen­ta­tives who are more Catholic than they are by orders-of-magnitude, and they will give them NO SUPPORT WHATSOEVER! That is a MORTAL SIN, since this is known grave mat­ter via con­sis­tent Church teach­ing, the world knows it is grave mat­ter, and yet our fraud­u­lent bish­ops do the devil’s work by DISCOURAGING those who are try­ing to do God’s work. IT JUST DOES NOT GET ANY MORE SERIOUS THAN THIS, which is a prime exam­ple of why the insti­tu­tional Church is NO LONGER CATHOLIC, and HAS NOT BEEN since the allowed built-in ambi­gu­i­ties of Vat­i­can II, by those who would destroy the Church from within, did their nefar­i­ous work!

It is com­mon knowl­edge that even if Roe v. Wade was over­turned, that would not stop baby killing on the state level, which means that any state ini­tia­tive to do the right thing on ANY MORAL ISSUE, e.g., abor­tion, homo­sex­u­al­ity, euthana­sia, stem cell research, et al, such as reported below in Geor­gia, DESERVES THE UNRESERVED SUPPORT of Catholic clergy and laity in this country!

Fraud­u­lent pro-life can­di­dates and some promi­nent judges tell us that the states should decide this seri­ous issue in a demo­c­ra­tic fash­ion via some type of pop­u­lar vote, no doubt! It is NOT Catholic teach­ing that God’s laws are sub­ject to MOB RULE ON ANY LEVEL! When are Catholics, who are NOT sup­posed to check their faith at the door upon enter­ing pub­lic life but rather to WITNESS to it for salvation’s sake, per the end of Matthew’s Gospel, going to get that right, espe­cially Catholic clergy?

Man’s laws are sub­sidiary to God’s in the moral order, PERIOD! And if that sem­i­nal truth is not in fed­eral and state con­sti­tu­tions, then it darn well should be; else, they are not worth interpreting!

I find it sad that, when God works through state leg­is­la­tors, high-ranking clergy, who should be excom­mu­ni­cated for their pub­lic sins, dis­cour­age His work.

Even Scalia can­not get the sem­i­nal Catholic truth right that the state deserves no say what­so­ever on whether abor­tion is OK. The state is obliged to obey God’s Law for pro­mo­tion of the com­mon good in lead­ing ulti­mately to a super­nat­ural good in accord with God’s Divine Plan for His Cre­ation. In the tra­di­tional Catholic view, the state derives its author­ity from God (although the peo­ple may from time to time decide who exer­cises that author­ity), and the state is sub­ject to the law of God includ­ing the Nat­ural Law. In the Enlight­en­ment view, the state derives its author­ity hor­i­zon­tally, from the peo­ple. It is the peo­ple, rather than the Law of God, which defines in what way, if any, the power of the state will be lim­ited. And, if the peo­ple give rights, the peo­ple can take them away. Just who or what is appealed to in the absence of uni­ver­sal moral absolutes as a func­tion of God’s Law? What do you do when your neighbor’s per­son­ally cre­ated “uni­verse of rights,” as a func­tion of his “autonomous unen­cum­bered self” con­flicts with yours? Easy answer — anar­chy results!

To fal­la­ciously argue, as Scalia does, in a strictly pos­i­tive law sense, that the fed­eral gov­ern­ment has no con­sti­tu­tional right to allow abor­tion while there is no prob­lem at all with defer­ring the killing of inno­cents to the indi­vid­ual states, i.e., let the peo­ple demo­c­ra­t­i­cally decide, is pure a sim­ply a vio­la­tion of the fun­da­men­tal philo­soph­i­cal prin­ci­ple of non-contradiction in that “Some­thing can­not ‘be’ and ‘not be’ at the same time in the same respect.” Killing inno­cents in their moth­ers’ wombs is an abom­i­na­tion regard­less of whether it is done on the fed­eral, state, or local level, PERIOD!

To “Ren­der to Cae­sar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” does not exempt Cae­sar from ren­der­ing to God to Whom Cae­sar owes his exis­tence! Some­one needs to ask Scalia “How is the com­mon good served by see­ing no prob­lem with baby killing on the state level if the mob decides that such bar­baric behav­ior is accept­able? And just where, in the Con­sti­tu­tion of this Coun­try, Mr. Jus­tice Scalia, does it say that we must check our faith at the door upon entering

pub­lic life? More­over, where, Mr. Jus­tice Scalia, does Catholic teach­ing call us to do so when God trumps every­thing for the sake of man’s eter­nity, i.e., where does the Church teach that unjust laws that are con­tra­dic­tory to God’s in the moral order must be obeyed? Sed con­tra, Mr. Jus­tice Scalia, we are called to wit­ness to the eter­nal truths of the Catholic faith for the sake of the com­mon good lead­ing ulti­mately to the super­nat­ural end intended for man by God, not the devil! For shame, Mr. Jus­tice Scalia, that you can­not see the sem­i­nal Truth Who is a Some­one, not a something!

Com­men­tary by Judie Brown
 
Thank you. Your insights are spot on.
 
Com­men­tary by Kasan­dra Barker

The actions of the Florida Bish­ops is so dis­heart­en­ing. It seems the Bish­ops are tak­ing on too much respon­si­bil­ity for any “polit­i­cal fall­out.” This is not food-stamp pol­icy; it is about life itself. How else do we see the over­turn of Roe, unless Per­son­hood amend­ments are adopted, “incre­men­tally” state by state?

Com­men­tary by Judie Brown

As tragic as the deci­sion by the Florida Catholic Con­fer­ence is, I want you to know that an orga­ni­za­tion known as CATHOLICS FOR PERSONHOOD is now up and run­ning in Florida. So we praise God for that!

You know that I agree with you and find the entire sit­u­a­tion with so many Bish­ops sim­ply awful. But God is in charge, praise HIM!

Com­men­tary by Ray

Maybe you need to edu­cate me here a bit. I’ve been read­ing up on the sub­ject of the Health Care debate. I know that the USCCB would be inter­ested in help­ing out the med­ical sys­tem where as Catholic hos­pi­tals are a large part of all the hos­pi­tals in the U.S. All non-for –profit hos­pi­tals are hurt­ing fina­nially. As Catholics we want to ful­fill or oblig­a­tion to help the poor and sick.
I don’t under­stand how you can take the word of the New York Times as the truth. I haven’t read any­thing from the USCCB that indi­cates that they are abortion-neutral. I didn’t even find those words in the Times arti­cle.
I believe we are liv­ing in a time of mis­in­for­ma­tion and this doesn’t help mat­ters out.
Car­di­nal Rag­ili, Bishop Cha­put, Bishop Mur­phy and the Bishop of Kansas City have been bold in their sup­port for “Life”. I you really want to know what the Bish­ops believe go to their web­site. Recently I heard Bishop Joseph F. Nau­mann and Bishop Robert Fin in an inter­view with Ray­mond Aryoa on EWTN. You need to lis­ten to this inter­view, these men are real heroes for the cause of ‘Life’. We need to left up our Bish­ops they are under a lot of stress and many close to the faith under­stand that they are a strong wit­ness to Hope!
I have always believed in the work ALL but I’m hurt by your attach on the USCCB. I don’t see how the blan­ket state­ment against all bish­ops is warranted.

Com­men­tary by Joe

I am sorry to say these per­son­hood amend­ments are just not going to work. Sure, the bish­ops should sup­port them but not much time and energy should be put into them.

We are try­ing to achieve the hard­est pos­si­ble goal, total pro­tec­tion of all unborn chil­dren, not just after implan­ta­tion but all the way back to con­cep­tion. Then we pro­pose to do it in the hard­est way pos­si­ble through a pub­lic ref­er­en­dum. We lost by a huge mar­gin in Col­orado (73–27) and will lose every­where else we try this.

In Florida more­over, you need not 50% as in Col­orado but 60% to pass a con­sti­tu­tional amend­ment. We will prob­a­bly get 30% of the vote. Even a super­hu­man effort in that state will lead to defeat by a very wide mar­gin. This strat­egy just will not stop the killing of unborn children.

We need to orga­nize to elect a pro-life, pro-human Pres­i­dent and a pro-life, pro-human House and Sen­ate. We do not have this right now. After achiev­ing this, we could then make pro-life, pro-human appoint­ments to the Supreme Court, over­turn Roe vs Wade and get a rul­ing that the rights of the unborn are pro­tected by the 14th Amendment.

While wait­ing for Roe vs Wade to be elim­i­nated, we should urge state gov­ern­ments to sim­ply ignore the rul­ing and shut down the abor­tion crime indus­try in their states. There is an argu­ment that states that Roe vs Wade is only a judi­cial opin­ion and is not bind­ing on any­one but the par­ties to the case.

Com­men­tary by Judie Brown

The USCCB has pre­sented their “abor­tion neu­tral” posi­tion on their web­site, not in the NEW YORK TIMES. I am happy to edu­cate you. Here is the link: http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/national/2009–07-17-bg-healthcare-abortion.pdf

Ray, I am not ques­tion­ing the sin­cer­ity of the Catholic Bish­ops but rather chal­leng­ing the record. What was reported in the New York Times has been reported else­where includ­ing the USCCB itself, so please don’t hold it against Amer­i­can Life League for going to the source.

This is one of many such ques­tions fraught with con­fu­sion because of the USCCB’s state­ments. I am a huge fan of Bish­ops Nau­mann and Finn who con­tra­dict much of what the USCCB bureau­crats are spilling forth from their offices.

I would sug­gest you do some research; the USCCB state­ments are not FROM the Bish­ops but ON BEHALF of them and many times they are not con­sis­tent with what ortho­dox Bish­ops are saying.

For the more com­ments: http://www.all.org/newsroom_judieblog.php?id=2787#

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