Tag Archives: pro-life

Deafening Silence

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You know of Christopher Reeve's determination to walk again, right? Well, you'd think that if some paraplegics began walking again, Mr. Reeve and his supporters would be pretty excited–Mr. Reeve is a quadriplegic, and therefore has a more severe injury, but this is still an immense leap!

This is not the case, because those two young women began to walk thanks to their own adult stem cells. And since politics does trump science (and ethics…), I have yet to see this article in the NY Times, Washington Post, Wired, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, or anywhere else but Zenit.org and Lifenews.com.

Had this been done with embryonic stem cells, which is the horse that Mr. Reeve bet on, I imagine there'd be quite a bit more hype.

If adult stem cells provided a cure to quadriplegia, and if Mr. Reeve accepts that treatment, will we learn of it? Will the media continue to spin it so that we really should keep pushing for embryonic research against all ethics and evidence? It won't fail to be interesting, I'm sure. Stay tuned!

Dodging!

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The American Life League seems to not find the USCCB’s recent political statement
as tasteful as I did.

American Life League Response to USCCB Statement on ‘Catholics in Political Life:’ The American Bishops Have Failed
Mon Jun 21,10:46 AM ET
Contact: Joseph R. Giganti of the American Life League, 703-928-9695 or jgiganti@all.org,
Web site: http://www.all.org

WASHINGTON, June 21 /U.S. Newswire/ — “The American bishops have failed,” said American Life League president Judie Brown. “The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops had an opportunity to provide strong leadership on the question of Catholic public figures who favor legal abortion. However, their statement misses the mark on several points. As a result, election year politics has trumped the right to life of the innocent and the protection of Christ from sacrilege.”

How Sad

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It’s rather disappointing to see that a major Christian denomination has to bother debating the issue of abortion. Even if you could argue against the personhood of a first-term fetus, no Christian should advocate abortion as "emergency contraception". The very phrase turns my stomach. "Oh no! I’m infected with a child! Get it out!"

By the way, while I sympathize with victims of rape and incest, the child did not wrong anyone and does not deserve to be executed for someone else’s sin.

Presbyterian Church Will Battle Over Abortion at Upcoming Meeting
by Maria Gallagher, LifeNews.com Staff Writer

Richmond, VA (LifeNews.com) — The issue of abortion is likely to take center stage at a meeting of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in Richmond, Virginia, June 26. A number of presbyteries, or district governing bodies, have submitted abortion-related resolutions to this year’s General Assembly.

Dodging?

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I’m not sure how I feel about the USCCB‘s official comment on the Communion controversy. It seems a bit wishy-washy at points, but it might be the right response. It sounds like a much softer version of what one of the bishops (can’t recall who) said on his own a while ago. Paraphrased, he said, “No Catholic would dare bring his/herself to communion while supporting abortion.” He sidestepped election-year issues by not singling out particular politicians, but he still made his point clear.

Pro-Abortion Politicians Can Be Denied Communion, Says Episcopate
U.S. Bishops Warns Catholics of “Cooperating in Evil”

WASHINGTON, D.C., JUNE 20, 2004 (Zenit.org).- The U.S. bishops’ conference issued a rebuke to Catholic politicians who support abortion, and said that the decision to deny them Communion is up to individual bishops.

Priests Thank U.S. Bishops for Statement
Sat Jun 19,12:27 PM ET
Contact: Jerry Horn of Priests for Life, 540-785-4733

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y., June 19 /U.S. Newswire/ — In a statement released on Saturday, June 19, Fr. Frank Pavone expressed the gratitude of the Priests for Life association, of which he serves as national director, for the June 18 statement of the U.S. Bishops, “Catholics in Political Life.”

On a related note:

U.S. Bishops’ Panel Urges New Kind of Politics
Calls for Focus on the Common Good, Not Demands of Special Interests

WASHINGTON, D.C., JUNE 18, 2004 (Zenit.org).- In testimony submitted to the Democratic and Republican party platform committees, U.S. bishops have called for “a new kind of politics — focused on moral principles not on the latest polls.”

Calling all Fiskers

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This is a long, intelligent, well-written, logical, and rather wrong piece about the Communion controversy written by an atheist. If it were just just laughable pretzel logic, I probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Since is so skillfully written, it ought to be refuted with at least as much skill. Even if I had the time, I wouldn’t present myself as equal to the task. So I’m putting a call out for one or more persons to step up to the soap box. This article screaming for a good fisking.

The Communion Question
[link fixed 06/21/04 – Funky Dung]
Posted by John Holbo

I’ll assume you are an educated person who’s already read Josh Marshall’s post about – what to call it? Bush’s Al-Sadrist gambit: locked in a death-struggle with the forces of democratic reconstruction in your country? See if you can get zealous souls to lay down suppressing fire from the holy places. If you succeed, fine. If the holy places end up getting shelled when the targets lose patience, you cry religious persecution (even if it was pure self-defense) and make hay out of that. It’s win-win.