More details on the CCHD scandal from Deal Hudson.
CCC’s executive director, Deepak Bhargava, states that they are fighting for "lifting restrictions on women’s access to health services." (Bhargava was also a featured speaker hosted by the USCCB at a three-day conference
CCC joined the "Stop Stupak" coalition through its "Campaign for Community Change" arm, explaining, "Of course, no issue is more critical to women’s economic opportunity than the ability to choose when and under what personal circumstances to raise children.
CCC is a member of the National Coalition for Immigrant Women’s Rights (NCIWR). NCIWR requires all members to sign an agreement supporting, among other things, "Reproductive health care coverage financed through public funds provided to all immigrant women regardless of legal and economic status," as well as "equitable access to confidential and non-coercive family planning services and contraceptive equity."
Sean Thomas-Brietfield, Director of CCC’s Taproots Project, wrote an article promoting consensual "polyamory," or "relationships where there is no expectation of fidelity."
CCC developed leaders for same-sex marriage advocacy and homosexual activists through its Generation Change program. In 2008, CCC received a $50,000 grant for leadership training from one of the chief funders of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered) causes, the Gill Foundation.
Ralph McCloud, the current Director of the CCHD, participated in a December 2008 event cosponsored by CCC and the Gamaliel Foundation "Realizing the Promise Forum," celebrating the election of Barack Obama. McCloud is reported to have proclaimed, "Very soon we will see a New Jerusalem." The conference video suggests the CCC is engaged in "partisan political activity" in violation of the CCHD grant guidelines.
This is the second round of incriminating evidence presented by ALL and BVM about the CCC. Three months ago, they issued a press release and supporting researchregarding 31 CCHD grantees with a relationship to CCC — all of which was ignored by the USCCB.
As ALL’s Michael Hichborn points out, these reports have "revealed no less than fifty organizations (one fifth of all CCHD grantees from 2009) that are, in some capacity, engaged in pro-abortion or pro-homosexual causes (www.all.org/cchd). The sad thing, however, is that these recent revelations manifest a pattern of cooperation stretching back for decades."
John Carr’s excuse about what is going on at CCC sound more and more like “I am shocked that gambling is going on here.”
In a related story Bishop Hubbard of Albany and head of the Office of International Justice and Peace at the USCCB has authorized Catholic Charities in his diocese to distribute needles to drug users. When I first saw the story this weekend the excuse reminded me of the condom argument – they are going to do it anyway so let us make it safe. No word yet if Catholic Charities will be issuing cars with large bumpers to protect drunk drivers. I can’t see how this is allowable considering Catholic moral teaching and Canonist Ed Peters is of the same opinion and has a good post on the subject.
In other crappy news. Raymond Arroyo on EWTN’s The World Over had torture apologist Marc Thiessen on to explain why torture is not torture. I was tortured by his logic when I first heard the program. I had wondered why Raymond Arroyo hadn’t corrected and taught his friend Laura Ingraham about the Catholic teaching on torture – now I know – he doesn’t seem to know it either. Defining waterboarding as not torture is just like saying the fetus is not a human person.
13 comments
“Defining waterboarding as not torture is just like saying the fetus is not a human person.”
Oh please.
Cornelius, The Catholic Catechism states in paragraph 2297 that “Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity.”
As much as I’d really like to, I’ve yet to find a convincing argument that water boarding doesn’t fall into the category of torture as defined in that paragraph. If you’ve got a better one than “oh please” I’d be interested in hearing it.
As for Mr. Miller’s last sentence, I notice the Catechism bases its prohibition against torture on the dignity of the human person. I’m pretty sure that’s one of the reasons for the Church’s stance on abortion also, so the comparison seems valid to me.
Oh please, indeed!
Forty-six million murdered unborn babies is not equivalent to three mass murderers getting doused for fifteen seconds each motivated by the need to save thousands of lives. FIRST DIFFERENCE: THE INNOCENT UNBORN BABY DID NOTHING TO DESERVE BEING MURDERED. Killing terrorists (combatant not in uniform, not in a national army, etc.) is not homicide, it’s malicide – see St. Bernard de Clairvaux endorsement of the Knights Templars.
Abortion has been a sin for 2,000 years. Until the Renaissance, torture was jurisprudence. St. Matthew’s Gospel speaks about getting to Heaven without body parts (take out your eye if it offends God).
Abortion is not health care. Pregnancy is not a disease. Secular humanism and Liberalism are pathologies.
Lopping people’s arms off is torture when it’s done to terrorize. Amputations of arms are health care procedures when done to save lives. If the intent is intrinsically evil, it’s sin. If the intent is to save lives it’s licit. When done to save lives waterboarding is . . . ????
Do you believe Nazism aqnd Japanese Imperialism should not have been destrpoyed with maximum military force? Don’t even try to tell us that two wrongs don’t make a right.
Your sordid brand of asinine, misplaced mercy is why we have the most fanatical abortionist running the US.
Some people are stuck on effing stupid.
I went to Catholic School in the 1950’s. One day, Brother had to ‘give it’ to me. He never had to do that again. To this day I thank Brother (RIP). He straightened me out. He taught me there are consequences to my acts.
If you can find a CCC prior to the new, renovated edition see what it says.
Go read Veritatis Splendor.
The geniuses that wrote that one started with “Reason attests . . .” Ok, what is reason? Is it Faith? Is it Hope? Is it Charity? Is it fortitude? Is it justice? Is it prudent? Is it temperance? Is it humility? Is it patience? I’m running out of virtues. I think it’s humanism. And, I don’t accept it.
Then, VS says this is not to negate the conscience or the intent of the act. Then, immediately it takes it back.
Then, VS lists about 65 secular humanist things it intimates are equivalent to genocide and murder like not paying a minimum (whose definition?) wage and farting in someone’s general direction . . .
This confusion and doubt allows saintly people to execrate (not charitable, people!) good men like President George W. Bush and then vote for abortionists – 46,000,000 and counting.
“Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity.”
What all the “anti-waterboarding” crowd willingly ignores is the intent in the CCC definition. The use of waterboarding was used to extract information about future attacks and the networks that enable the terrorists to function, not to “extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred.” So come up with a new excuse to justify your pre-conceived notions and not continue the canard of how this definition transforms an interrogation tool into “torture.”
Tom at Disputations has ably dismantled the “It’s not torture if we are doing it for good reasons” that dastardly asserts. Because I put in a link, or because I gave a lengthy excerpt, it’s being held for moderation here.
Ah, no links. That must be why my first response got booted. Let me try again, except much briefer.
All recent Church documents point out that torture is wrong. Period. Yes, there have been times in the past, particularly the middle ages, where the Church sanctioned torture, but these were supposed to be (not saying it always worked out that way) under circumstances where no other recourse was available. We have other recourses today. Now if we had a Hollywood type situation where the bomb is going off inside the school in less than an hour and the ONLY way to get the cut-off code is to use torture, then we’d probably have to make the call for torture. The act itself would still be wrong, but to allow the outcome would be more wrong. Based on the information we’ve been publicly provided, however, I just don’t see the waterboarding issue falling under that kind of exception.
Waterboarding, at least as far as we civilians KNOW, does not leave permanent, or even temporary, physiological damage; no bodily functions are impaired after waterboarding, and it has been successful in extracting valuable information.
Sexually molesting prisoners does not necessarily leave permanent, or even temporary, physiological damage either, so this bombs as a defense of waterboarding.
And Here is Tom’s dismantling of the “The CCC permit’s obtaining information” argument without links, so it passes the blocker:
For years, people have been interpreting that one statement in CCC 2297 —
Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity.
— as implying that torture for reasons other than those listed — in particular, for interrogation of someone assumed to have information that can save lives — might not be contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity.
As it stands, it’s a mighty sketchy interpretation. It asserts that there’s nothing objectively or circumstantially contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity to torture a prisoner. All you need is a good enough reason. (And what do you know? The reason people today might want to torture prisoners just happens to be a good reason! These interpreters will, though, stipulate that other reasons — to save face after you were double-dog dared to torture the prisoner, say, or to get someone who loves the victim to talk — are immoral.)
I haven’t seen anyone even try to explain why it’s contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity to torture a murderer, but not contrary to those things to torture a would-be murderer. The problem here is that torture isn’t evil because it’s icky, in which case it wouldn’t be evil when not torturing would be ickier. Torture is evil, according to the Catechism, because it’s contrary to respect for the person of the victim, and the respect due the person of the victim doesn’t change based on what you want to get out of torturing him.*
So, as I say, we have an interpretation that really doesn’t hold up on its own terms. The fact that the very next paragraph of the Catechism contradicts this interpretation should settle the matter:
In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order… In recent times it has become evident that these cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person… It is necessary to work for their abolition.
EWTN and Ave Maria should lose their tax exempt status. They have both crossed the line. If they want to compete with secular conservative talk radio it’s only fair they pay the same taxes.
Human dignity: If their mothers and fathers could see them, they would never stop crying.
I knew some of the people who had their human dignity revoked on 9/11/2001 when they had to decide to jump from the WTC rather than be burned to death.
I’ll be 100% against water-boarding (even to save American lives) when you people are 100% against abortion, i.e., stop voting democratic.
Waterboarding is not torture.
As Catholics, we are all morally obligated to help our fellow man reach salvation. If by waterboarding we extract vital information that prevents a prospective terrorist act, then this great sin would not be blackening the soul of the terrorist. Not to mention the saving of those innocent lives.
Look, it’s a fallacy to equate abortion and waterboarding. C’mon guys. Let’s have some honest recognition that we’re up against people who are trying to kill us, no matter what it takes.
The “waterbording is torture” schtick is just a tool used by the liberal democrat catholic to justify voting for BHO. I would need to salve my conscience too if I did what they did!
Whatever your personal opinions on this, EWTN and Ave Maria would do well to rein in Arroyo and Kresta. I’m sure both have good lawyers on staff but it seems they are twitching the dragon’s tail on what they can get away with as a tax exempt religious broadcasters.
It’s unlikely this will happen until something serious happens; Arroyo and Kresta are savvy media professionals responsible for a big chunk of their employer’s success, but important people have a way of thinking rules don’t apply to them. Examples can be found in all walks of life including the Church.
I would think that if they love the Church as much as they say they do (and have no reason to doubt them) that they would not want to do anything that would attract the attention of the FCC or the IRS, not to mention commercial talk radio producers who find themselves competing for market share with tax exempt ones.
If EWTN and Ave Maria are not overtly promoting the GOP then God made me with different ears. Do we really want lapsed Catholics and non-Catholics tuning in and thinking that being Catholic is synonymous with being Republican? Is that the way to win souls?
Stick to the Faith and leave politics down the dial.