Pro-life

It is so easy to cringe at Herod’s slaughter of the innocents. This was such an evil man whose lust for power would brook no interference. Where even Caesar Augustus said of him “It is better to be Herod’s dog than one of his children.” A child was seen as a rival and the age of that child was not important, just the threat of the child to his life of privilege.

Yet we have become a society of Herods. Herodian marriages and Herodian relationships. The so-called unexpected pregnancy views the child as a threat. A threat to their current lifestyle. A threat to a financial situation and an individual autonomy that is inward and not self-giving. Children are viewed as a zero-sum game where what they consume of time and money is taken from you with no return. Our openness to new life is dependent on more mercenary conditions that must be satisfied first and if they are not met instead of sending out soldiers for the slaughter we hire the abortionist.

From the bottom to the top of our society the Herodian attitude rules. We have a President that we as a culture re-elected who voted for infanticide rather than to allow any threat to legal abortion. A president who time and time again has seen possible grandchildren as a threat and a punishment for his daughters. We have both Herodian mothers and/or Herodian fathers pressuring for the elimination of a threat. Even those open to life will accept the slaughter of the innocents via IVF as long as one child survives. The Highlander approach to parenthood “That there can only be one” when multiple embryos are transferred to the uterus.

If Herod had known a way to prevent even the possibility of a threat to him he would surely have used it. Sterilization of the people of Bethlehem or injected contraceptives would have been an idea welcome to him if he had enough lead time. We have those tools of manipulation that Herod lacked and we put them to use. First our selfishness demands access to means to prevent life and then we demand that others pay for that means. When children are a financial strain then of course even the prevention of children is a financial strain that must be eliminated. We might point out Sandra Fluke as the cheerleader of this attitude, but the way was paved by the normalization of contraception and the shutting of the door to life.

While our society has many trappings of the celebration of Christ’s birth we also have many celebrations of the Herodian mindset. We have become post-Christian, but not post-Herod.

Mary the Blessed Mother of Christ, pray for us.

Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny Child,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.
Lullay, thou little tiny Child,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

O sisters too, how may we do,
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling for whom we do sing
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Herod, the king, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day
His men of might, in his own sight,
All young children to slay.

That woe is me, poor Child for Thee!
And ever mourn and sigh,
For thy parting neither say nor sing,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Via Wesley J. Smith

Har de har: The BBC is creating a comedy series called Way to Go about friends who establish an assisted suicide business. “Way to go:” Get it?

I am reminded of the recent The Three Stooges movie homage to the original comic team that had the boys willingly attempt a mercy killing.  This is nothing less than the normalization of suicide.

Oh, and by the way, this idea was already proposed for real in Oregon ($5000 for the whole package, including music and flowers), but the psychiatrist would-be entrepreneur lost his medical license for other reasons before he could open the doors.  Meanwhile, in Switzerland, suicide clinics rake in the dough.

Culture of death, Wesley?  What culture of death?

Msgr Robert Hugh Benson a Catholic convert and son of the then-Archbishop of Canterbury wrote a quite excellent apocalyptic novel called “Lord of the World” where he envisioned in his future world “ministers of euthanasia.”

“He gave no more thought to his exposition of the Christian creed; it was a mere commonplace to him that Catholics believed that kind of thing; it was no more blasphemous to his mind so to describe it, than it would be to laugh at a Fijian idol with mother-of-pearl eyes, and a horse-hair wig; it was simply impossible to treat it seriously. He, too, had wondered once or twice in his life how human beings could believe such rubbish; but psychology had helped him, and he knew now well enough that suggestion will do almost anything. And it was this hateful thing that had so long restrained the euthanasia movement with all its splendid mercy.”

This idea of euthanasia being a splendid mercy is certainly on the upswing especially with the very idea of a “mercy killing” which displays the irony of Satan. But it is more despair than mercy that drives this and it is usually not the despair of the victim, but the despair of the mercy killer towards an actual understanding of the dignity of life. You certainly don’t look at the paintings of the late Dr. Kevorkian and find joy in them.

We can only expect more and more positive portrays of assisted suicide in the media. In the movie Soylent Green we say a portrayal of this and we learned to be more alarmed that “Soylent Green is people” than that the character Edward G. Robinson seeked assisted-suicide at a government clinic in despair at this fact. Whether murder in this form will take the path of the government clinic, faux-religious component, or a combination of the two remains to be seen.

“We should neither of us shrink from the task, awful though it be to contemplate. “Euthanasia” is an excellent and a comforting word! I am grateful to whoever invented it.” — Dr. Seward in Dracula by Bram Stoker

A wonderful letter to be read at Mass in the Diocese of Peoria.

Dear Catholic Believers,

Since the foundation of the American Republic and the adoption of the Bill of Rights, I do not think there has ever been a time more threatening to our religious liberty than the present. Neither the president of the United States nor the current majority of the Federal Senate have been willing to even consider the Catholic community’s grave objections to those HHS mandates that would require all Catholic institutions, exempting only our church buildings, to fund abortion, sterilization, and artificial contraception. This assault upon our religious freedom is simply without precedent in the American political and legal system. Contrary to the guarantees embedded in the First Amendment, the HHS mandates attempt to now narrowly define and thereby drastically limit our traditional religious works. They grossly and intentionally intrude upon the deeply held moral convictions that have always guided our Catholic schools, hospitals, and other apostolic ministries.

Nearly two thousand years ago, after our Savior had been bound, beaten, scourged, mocked, and crowned with thorns, a pagan Roman Procurator displayed Jesus to a hostile crowd by sarcastically declaring: “Behold your King.” The mob roared back: “We have no king but Caesar.” Today, Catholic politicians, bureaucrats, and their electoral supporters who callously enable the destruction of innocent human life in the womb also thereby reject Jesus as their Lord. They are objectively guilty of grave sin. For those who hope for salvation, no political loyalty can ever take precedence over loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ and to his Gospel of Life. God is not mocked, and as the Bible clearly teaches, after this passing instant of life on earth, God’s great mercy in time will give way to God’s perfect judgment in eternity.

I therefore call upon every practicing Catholic in this Diocese to vote. Be faithful to Christ and to your Catholic Faith. May God guide and protect His Holy Church, and may God bless America.

Most Reverend Daniel R. Jenky, CSC
Catholic Bishop of Peoria

This subject does remind me of something Archbishop Chaput said back in 2007.

I think there are legitimate reasons you could vote in favor of someone who wouldn’t be where the church is on abortion, but it would have to be a reason that you could confidently explain to Jesus and the victims of abortion when you meet them at the Judgment…and we will meet them. That’s the only criterion. It can’t be that we favor a particular party, or that we’re hostile to the war, or so on.

In other news from Thomas Peters at Catholic Vote:

Next Tuesday, America heads to the polls.

But before that, on Sunday, Catholics across the country will go to Mass.

When I go to Mass this Sunday I’ll be using the social app Foursquare to check in and announce via Facebook and Twitter that I’m “celebrating my First Amendment right to religious liberty by attending Mass.”

You don’t have to use Foursquare to participate, simply update your Facebook and/or Twitter account with some sort of announcement this Sunday that you are going to Mass (I think Facebook and Foursquare do this best). The Twitter hashtag we are using is #CHECKINSUNDAY.

Just this week Pope Benedict said our Catholic faith is personal but not private.

I have mixed feelings about this initiative considering that the Obama Administration has tried to redefine religious freedom as meaning the right to go to Mass, services, etc.  To actually live out your faith by their redefinition – not so much. Still I am more in favor of this than against it.

So if you had a country with 0.497 population growth what would you do?

Well if you were France you would you would have the government totally cover the cost of abortion (though not the moral cost).  If you were France and already running a $13 billion dollar health-care system deficit you would also pay for it with a tax on retirees.  Death and taxes together again.

From an excellent interview by Mary Frances Boyle of the NCRegister with Sister Constance Veit of Little Sisters of the Poor regarding the HHS Mandate.

How will the Little Sisters of the Poor be affected by the HHS mandate?

For the time being, we are not directly affected by the mandate. We have until the end of this year to provide certification that we meet the criteria for the one-year exemption currently in place. So, most likely, if nothing changes in the law, we will have to face this concretely Jan. 1, 2014.

Cardinal [Timothy] Dolan blogged about the HHS mandate and its impact on Catholic organizations and services. He is very clear about the costs of the mandate. For example, if we were to stop offering health insurance rather than comply with the mandate, we would have to pay a $2,000 penalty per employee. This penalty aside, it just does not seem right to us to stop providing health insurance to our employees.
If we chose to offer insurance without the objectionable services, we would honor our consciences, but we’d have to pay $100 per day per employee. As the cardinal figures it, for an organization with 50 employees, that would mean almost $2 million per year.

So if the mandate is still standing in 2014, all of our U.S. homes will be facing serious financial difficulties. To put this in perspective, we already have to make up at least half of our operating expenses through donations, because Medicaid reimbursements cover only about half of what it costs to care for the elderly in the way they deserve. So the potential fines or penalties we’re looking at just make it that much harder.

To put  this in perspective the Little Sisters of the Poor with roughly 300 religious would need to pay 30,000 a day in fines.  They could of course decide to only help the Catholic elderly so as to actually meet the requirements of the HHS mandate for a religious exemption.  After all according to the HHS Mandate “For the gate is small, and the way is narrow that leads to exemptions, and few are those who receive one (unless they are union donors).”

What actions have the Little Sisters of the Poor taken in order to combat the mandate?

At this point, we have not joined in any lawsuits. Our efforts have centered on praying and educating ourselves about the issue.

We issued our own statement back in March — which is highly unusual for us — because we felt that we wanted to support the bishops as much as possible.

As women religious who are grateful to be daughters of the Church, that is very important to us.

That’s why we issued a public statement and, later on, why we signed on to a joint letter sponsored by the bishops and the Lutheran Church.

During the Fortnight for Freedom, we had a lot of prayer initiatives in our homes, like daily Holy Hours with the elderly and speakers. And I was asked to speak about our mission and the need for religious liberty at a congressional reception sponsored by the bishops’ conference during the fortnight.

I have been a Little Sister for 25 years, and I have never seen our congregation so active on a public issue. So that is an indication of its importance. The only other time I have seen a response like this from our congregation was in the early 1990s, when euthanasia and assisted suicide were being debated in the European Parliament, and our superior general at that time took a public stand.

Normally, our lives are very hidden.

Funny how the media is full of stories of the Vatican cracking down on women religious who serve the poor and none about how the Obama Administration  is cracking down on women religious who serve the poor.  If the LCWR is reformed they will be more able to help the poor, if the President succeeds there will be less women religious able to help the poor.

I’ve often thought that modern liberalism often has an irony deficit.  More proof is derived from this new President Obama campaign ad.

Hello! My name is Brittany and I live in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. I am 25 years old (but I will be 26 on October 3rd!). I am a registered Democrat and I have been voting since I was 18. I am one of the 47% of Americans who fall under Mitt Romney’s definition of “entitled” and “unable to take responsibility for my life.” I have Down syndrome.

I started working part-time in 2004 when I was in high school. I graduated in 2008 and have worked at that job ever since. My employer receives money from the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare so that I can work, and the public transportation people receive money from them to take me back and forth to work. My mother applied for Social Security’s Supplemental Security Income program (SSI) for me when I was 19. I really want to make lots of money and have a hot tub someday, but SSI subtracts my paychecks from my SSI benefits, so I don’t have much to put into a savings account.

I am now working for a store, folding clothes and doing returns. I like my job a lot! I make $4.98 an hour and I am allowed to work 25-30 hours a week (I have paid $542.72 in federal, FICA, state, and city taxes this year as of August 31st). I just got my own apartment and share it with another girl like me. I get to pay rent now ($325 a month) and pay for my telephone and cable because I like the Disney Channel. I was not allowed to take my dog with me, but I can hang all of my Hannah Montana posters on my bedroom wall. My mother still has to help me with my medications and handling my money and stuff.

First off I did not like Gov. Romney’s comment which was suppose to be red meat for supporters who attended. It is just another form of class warfare and while it is a problem when people who could and should have skin-in-the-game and don’t – citing broad percentages like this doesn’t help. This ad though attacks a position that nobody is against in general and certainly can not be assigned to what the Governor says he plays to do.

Considering just how many children with Down Syndrome are aborted and never given a chance to draw any kind of salary this ad seems like an odd choice for them. Obamacare and future iterations will not be kindly to children with any chromosomal condition or other genetic defects. What I mean by “not be kindly” is that they will be murdered. Obamacare coverage of preventive services include prenatal testing for “genetic or developmental conditions.” The only thing this type of testing will prevent is the child being born. The present culture of death is already doing this and the so-called death panels of IPAB will certainly see the economic possibilities over the dignity of human life. This is just another example of covering something with a cry “for the children.”

The funny thing about Obamacare is that they brag about covering pre-existing conditions and then erect the IPAB so as to not cover existing conditions.

[Source]

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) — Two national groups are throwing their support behind a former parochial school teacher who claims she was fired for trying to get pregnant using in vitro fertilization.

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine and the American Civil Liberties Union filed friends of the court briefs Monday supporting Emily Herx.

Herx sued the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend in federal court in Fort Wayne in April, claiming she was discriminated against for a disability when her teaching contract wasn’t renewed. Herx suffers from infertility, which is protected under federal law.

She underwent in vitro fertilization, which is banned under Roman Catholic doctrine. When news of Herx’s treatment came to light, diocesan officials decided not to renew her contract. The Equal Employment Opportunities Commission ruled in her favor in January. [Source]