In office less than a week, and Obama is already receiving sharp criticism from the Vatican:
The Times of India reported:
ROME: A senior Vatican official on Saturday attacked US President Barack Obama for “arrogance” for overturning a ban on state funding for family-planning groups that carry out or facilitate abortions overseas.
It is “the arrogance of someone who believes they are right, in signing a decree which will open the door to abortion and thus to the destruction of human life,” Archbishop Rino Fisichella was quoted as saying by the Corriere della Sera daily.
Fisichella is president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, one of a number of so-called pontifical academies which are formed by or under the direction of the Holy See.
“What is important is to know how to listen… without locking oneself into ideological visions with the arrogance of a person who, having the power, thinks they can decide on life and death,” he added.
Obama signed the executive order cancelling the eight-year-old restrictions on Friday, the third full day of his presidency.
“If this is one of the first acts of President Obama, with all due respect, it seems to me that the path towards disappointment will have been very short,” Fisichella said.
“I do not believe that those who voted for him took into consideration ethical themes, which were astutely left aside during the election debate. The majority of the American population does not take the same position as the president and his team,” he added.
American Catholics who voted for Obama shouldn’t be surprised or disappointed. Anyone paying attention would have known this was coming. And the “path towards disappointment” has only begun. Also on his agenda is the Freedom of Choice Act, which would eliminate restrictions on abortions nationwide. Obama, who has such magnanimous mercy for the hardened Jihadists at GITMO, has set his sights on the defenseless unborn.
You can sign the “Fight FOCA” petition, here.
Hat tip: Gateway Pundit
Nice Deb 
I’ve added a link and quotation from your post to Obama bailing out Mexican abortion clinics
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You’d think that if someone thought the question of when life began was above his pay grade, he’d think long and hard before overturning any ban on taxpayer funded abortions, no matter where they are conducted, wouldn’t you?
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As a Catholic, I know abortion to be sin. As a white man, I know that most of the abortions in this country were little white people. I can’t help but think he knows this too, and takes it as seriously as I do. (Sura 2:29)
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maybe i mentioned this before but here goes again….
I wonder if he ever thought of aborting his 2 precious girls while they were growing inside his bitter half’s womb.
I wonder when he named them and started dreaming about their lives and what they would look like and how they would act.
I wonder if he viewed them as a punishment or something that could easily be thrown away.
I wonder if this man has a soul because surely if someone calls Jesus their Lord then surely they view life with more respect then this man does.
This is the ONE reason I will never vote for anyone who chooses to abort a PERSON in the womb.
Damn you BHO
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Obama on abortion, 8/16/08: “I think that when you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific
perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade.”
Anyone with a functional brain knows he skirted the question; more importantly, he lied, IMO.
“…above my pay grade.” What a lame excuse for not answering a legitimate question!
Obviously he believes his present “pay grade” not only allows him to have an opinion…but also to commit the U.S. to footing the cost of overseas abortions.
When will faithful Americans reach the point of fighting for our esteemed values?
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His Excellency Archbishop Fisichella is a few years late to the party. After all, why should Barack Obama, a man filled with overweening pride, who represents a party that denies all other rights — except for those it grants to its allegiants and fellow-travelers, of course — balk at asserting absolute and final authority over matters of life and death? Just because six thousand years of civilized tradition, including two thousand years of Christian thought, is horrified by the notion? Surely that should be no barrier to the grand designs of The Anointed One!
“When you violate the rights of one man, you violate the rights, of all men, and a public of rightless creatures is doomed to destruction.” — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
(See also these.)
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Obama is a “miserable failure”
I must admit that this is sweet revenge. A few years ago tech savvy internet users with Bush derangement syndrome linked President Bushes bio with the Google search term “miserable failure.” Now the label has been transferred to President Barack Obama.
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I loathe Obama but I agree with this decision. Providing women with family planning choices including abortion is vital to raising the standard of living for girls and women in third world countries.
Like everyone else, I hope that young girls and women would opt for abstinence or use birth control until they are in a position to care for children but the reality is that there is little access to information on such issues in poor countries.
As to the Catholic Church even having an opinion on this issue, I would hope that they would concentrate on providing women with full access to the life of their own organization before they decide that they have the right to make reproductive decisions for others.
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How is the Catholic church making reproductive choices for others? By opposing US tax dollars being used in a foreign country’s family planning facility?
Ya think that may be a bit of a stretch?
And why would they want to “concentrate on providing women with full access to the life of their own organization”? What does that have to do with anything?
As a Catholic woman, that’s the LAST thing I want my church “concentrating” on, thank you very much.
But thanks for your comment.
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Why is “raising the standard of living” an acceptable argument in favor of infanticide? Why should our tax dollars be used for such a reprehensible purpose in the middle of “an unprecedented economic crisis” here at home. Why can’t the taxpayers of those nations use their own money to kill their children?
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In our Catholic Church today our Father gave an impassioned defense of life. I have never heard the Church so still, you could hear a pin drop. We are at war with Obama over this. I am doing and will continue to do whatever I can do to stop our money from being used for abortions. He has drawn the lines clearly for us.
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Francis W. Porretto Says:
January, 25, 2009 at 5:41 am
His Excellency Archbishop Fisichella is a few years late to the party. After all, why should Barack Obama, a man filled with overweening pride, who represents a party that denies all other rights — except for those it grants to its allegiants and fellow-travelers, of course — balk at asserting absolute and final authority over matters of life and death? Just because six thousand years of civilized tradition, including two thousand years of Christian thought, is horrified by the notion? Surely that should be no Says:
January, 25, 2009 at 2:34 pm
I loathe Obama but I agree with this decision. Providing women with family planning choices including abortion is vital to raising the standard of living for girls and women in third world countries.
Like everyone else, I hope that young girls jeanLouiseand women would opt for abstinence or use birth control until they are in a position to care for children but the reality is that there is little access to information on such issues in poor countries.
As to the Catholic Church even having an opinion on this issue, I would hope that they would concentrate on providing women with full access to the life of their own organization before they decide that they have the right to make reproductive decisions for others.
nicedeb Says:
January, 25, 2009 at 3:26 pm
How is the Catholic church making reproductive choices for others? By opposing US tax dollars being used in a foreign country’s family planning facility?
**********************
Part of those tax dollars are mine and I’m more than happy to see them give women and girls family planning options.
With reference to the comment about Catholic women participating fully in the life of the church, I would hope that having a few more women in power might have saved some kids from abuse by rogue priests.
I also don’t appreciate having a bunch of men who reject women at their core, telling women how to make the most significant decisions of their lives. Abortion is a complex issue. Zealotry from either side is not the source of a resolution, imo.
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JeanLouise, I deleted the double post for ya.
Part of those tax dollars are mine and I’m more than happy to see them give women and girls family planning options.
Well, some of us, including the Catholic Church, are not interested in having our tax dollars go towards the sort of “family planning” being advocated. That does not amount to us “making reproductive choices for others”.
As for women “in power” in the church…that is the wrong way to look at it. I don’t see priests as having “more power” than nuns, for instance. I just see them as having different roles to fill in their vocation to serve God.
A better screening process for potential priests, and perhaps more oversight at seminaries is the antidote for rogue priests.
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Thanks for deleting the double post, Deb. Computer malfunction.
As to your comment that the Catholic Church doesn’t want it’s tax dollars to go toward family planning, I feel compelled to remind you that neither the Catholic Church nor any other church pays taxes. So, what you’re saying is that you, as Jane Q. Citizen, don’t want your personal tax funds to contribute to family planning education or services in foreign countries. As it happens, I, another Jane Q. Citizen, disagree.
Not to get into a big thing about your church which is your business and your choice, but it’s an abusive system that denies women full participation in the life of the church. The proof is in the pudding. Wide-spread, horrific abuse occurred in recent times. I am of the opinion that if women held equal authority in the RCC, that they might have objected to the offering up of millions of potential victims for predator priests. I could be wrong, though.
Whatever the truth of that, the idea that a rich, pampered man in Rome says that God doesn’t want the eleven-year-old victim of incestuous rape to have an abortion is offensive at its core. He’s not offering housing and a lifetime of professional counseling for the victim, whereever the incident may occur. He’s not protecting the victim from a system that would allow her to be returned to the same dysfunctional family to be abused again. He’s not guaranteeing food and clothing and an education and a healthy family for her. He’s just insisting that she pay a lifelong consequence for an act which was done against her.
So, as a person who has worked with sexually abused children, including the eleven-year-old who was raped and impregnated by her older brother, I’d say the Pope just needs to shut up about this issue.
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We’ll have to agree to disagree about woman priests. You see it as some sort of panacea, I see it as a nail in the coffen.
The case of the 11 year old girl is grievous to be sure, but don’t lay that on the pope’s doorstep. The church backs up its pro life position with extensive counseling and services for the unwedded mother.
In this case, surely the child was taken into protective services?
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Why would women priests be a “nail in the coffin” for the Church, if you don’t mind me asking?
The little girl lived in a horribly dysfunctional family. The case haunts me. When I encountered her, living in the home were her mother, her twenty-five year-old brother, her seventeen-year-old sister and her three-year-old daughter. The brother had fathered that child out of rape, as well. It’s been years so I’m not sure why the brother was back in the home but he was. He left during the course of my criminal investigation but the mother in the family was nuts and constantly lied for him. I took the little girl out of the home and Children’s Services put her back. That’s when mom took the kid to get an abortion. This was pre-DNA, mid-eighties, the kid refused to testify and there was no way to find the fetus to test, anyway.
I thought the abortion was the best thing for the girl although it made my case impossible to prosecute. Her mother was determined to protect her son and her daughters be damned. Children’s Services was no help.
In short, a man was creating his future rape targets and I’m fine with the fact that the spirit of one fetus, if it had a spirit, went to live with God, skipping sure hell on this earth.
These children need more than counseling. Many of them need families. As long as there are tens of thousands of foster children, unclaimed by families, I’ll oppose anyone who opposes family planning and the right to choose an abortion.
I’ve seen some things that are worse than being an angel in heaven.
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I’ve never understand why the children aren’t taken from the parents in these horrible situations. It seems that there was plenty of evidence, even without the DNA, even without her testimony. You and others, certainly were witnesses.?
I’ve heard plenty of awful stories, myself, as my mother was an administrator in a children’s hospital where she saw many horrible cases of abuse. It seemed like, most often, the children returned to the abusive parents.
I’ve seen some things that are worse than being an angel in heaven.
I just don’t believe it’s for us to deny anyone a right to life based on what we believe the quality of their life may be.
I’d rather see the child taken away from an abusive and dysfunctional family, and put up for adoption.
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The only witness to the actual rape was the victim and the suspect. Without the victim’s testimony, I needed physical evidence which was lost when the mother took the child for an abortion without telling anyone.
This is another one we’ll have to agree to disagree on. Abortion should be safe, legal and rare. There are times when it’s the only rational decision. This little girl’s mother made the right decision for the wrong reasons, imo.
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I’m glad that you have exercised your right to an opinion separate from that of the Catholic church, JeanLouise. However, I am not Catholic, and I believe my questions in response to your remarks remain unanswered.
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BIC,
To begin with, I don’t think that the destruction of a fertilized egg equals infanticide. To paraphrase someone, if you were fleeing a burning building and could only rescue one, a fertilized egg in a petrie dish or a six-month-old infant, I’d choose the infant. You’re equating a potential human life with an actual baby.
Secondly, controlling the size of one’s family and determining when the family can economically support children frequently makes the difference between living in abject poverty, including starvation, and living a life that has some meaning beyond survival on the most basic level.
Thirdly, I believe that federal law still prohibits tax funds from being used to fund abortions. The difference is that agencies that to provide information or abortions can now receive funding. It’s a slight but distinct difference.
Fourthly, we live in the world. Unwanted pregnancies contribute to poverty. Poverty encourages political instability and political instability bleeds over borders. It’s to our advantage to assist other countries in reducing their poverty.
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Not to get into a big thing about your church which is your business and your choice
…so you’ll just take a few shots as you drive on by. That’s the classic: “I don’t mean to insult you or get into an argument, but you’re wrong and ugly. Now can we move on?”
it’s an abusive system that denies women full participation in the life of the church
What an awful, judgmental attitude. First, the Catholic Church’s position is based on religion, not chauvinism. It’s not something that can be evaluated by feminist standards or corrected by enlightened thinking.
Second, participation is entirely voluntary. If you disagree with the tenets and restrictions, move on. The catechism is a package deal – you don’t get to pick the parts you like and ignore the parts you don’t.
Third, Catholics don’t normally consider priesthood a necessary requirement to fully participate in the Church. Fewer than 1 in 10000 Catholic men become priests, and the other 9999 don’t feel like they missed anything. At worst the Church is denying “full participation in the Church” to 1 in 10000 women – pretty insignificant issue to warrant damning the entire religion.
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Men have a choice to become a priest or not. Women have that choice made for them by men.
Denying women a full voice in their relationship with God is a huge issue, imo. No mainstream religion that permits women to participate fully in the life of the church suggests that using birth control is a sin. Clearly, there are real life issues raised by participation in excessively patriarchal religious organizations.
You got it right on the “enlightened thinking” point. No one would accuse the RCC of suffering from an excess of enlightenment.
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Jean Louise
it’s an abusive system that denies women full participation in the life of the church…”
As a Catholic woman I can assure you that I am not being kept from “full participation in the life of the church” and I most assuredly have a full voice in my relationship with God. The church teaches that men and women have equal diginity in the eyes of God. Equal does not mean same. Just as there are things that a woman cannot choose, there are limitations on men. They cannot be nuns, wives, mothers or sing the role of Tosca to name but a few. A woman who wants to be a priest does not know and/or believe the doctrine of the church and therefore should not be in any position of leadership. The teaching of an all male priesthood is not based on a disrepect for women. It is based on the divine plan of marriage and how it is woven throughout scripture. In the case of a priest, he stands “in pax christi” (in the place of christ). Christ is the bridegroom the church is the bride. (A man should love his wife as Christ loves the church…) Were a woman to stand in that place it would be the same as endorsing homosexual marriage (another impossible oxymoron in the doctrine of the church). It is interesting to note, however, that until very recently, ONLY the catholic church had religious vocational role for women in the structure of their church. They are the only church that acknowledged a woman could have a special religious calling. Hmmmmm… There are more reasons for a male priesthood but that is the one that means the most to me.
“To begin with, I don’t think that the destruction of a fertilized egg equals infanticide. ”
Your belief or disbelief does not change reality. I can say that I THINK I am 7 feet tall but that would just make people KNOW that I am nuts. Left alone, that fertilized egg grows into an utterly unique human being. Aborted, that person will never exist. It really is that simple. Science bares this out, the unborn have a complete, independent set of DNA.
“To paraphrase someone, if you were fleeing a burning building and could only rescue one, a fertilized egg in a petrie dish or a six-month-old infant, I’d choose the infant.”
For a Catholic who is true to church teaching, this is a non-issue (impossible in general anyways) as there would NEVER be a fertilized egg outside of a mother’s womb. So scoop up your baby and run, your unborn child is safe in your womb. Catholics believe in natural conception and natural family planning. They are also consistently pro-life regarding abortion, death penalty and euthenasia.
“You’re equating a potential human life with an actual baby.”
When you were in your mother’s womb, you were a life. Again, science supports this, as does the church. Aborted, your life would have ended before anybody on this earth met you, but that does not mean you would have never existed. Pro-choicers want to believe that it is just a clump of cells so they can justify their selfish choices. “This life will inconvenience my life so it must die” is inherently selfish. In their (your) mind it is not killing a person if you say it isn’t a person…. But as I said earlier, it is not something that you get to choose. It either IS a life or IS NOT.
Here’s a question for you. As I understand it, it is a crime to destroy an eagle egg in California. Why? because it is an eaglet. I have a friend who sees this unequal treatment of unborn eagles and unborn babies as just fine because eagles are an endangered species and we humans are not. What do you think of that logic?
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BIC,
BiW, but please, continue.
To begin with, I don’t think that the destruction of a fertilized egg equals infanticide. To paraphrase someone, if you were fleeing a burning building and could only rescue one, a fertilized egg in a petrie dish or a six-month-old infant, I’d choose the infant. You’re equating a potential human life with an actual baby.
And commencing with my response, it is both inaccurate, and dishonest to refer to a fetus as a “fertilized egg”. In truth, most women have no idea they are pregnant until they have progressed well past the mere “Fertilized egg” stage. Your paraphase is an inapt analogy, because it assumes your dishonest conclusion as fact, and then compares it to choice made where one has to make a determination about the comparitve values of the lives of your examples in order so save one, which is not the same as the situtation at hand. Your dishonesty assumes that an unborn human, who did nothing other than be conceived is somehow less human simply because it cannot emote from its mother’s womb. Secondly, controlling the size of one’s family and determining when the family can economically support children frequently makes the difference between living in abject poverty, including starvation, and living a life that has some meaning beyond survival on the most basic level.
I can conceed that people can and should have the right to plan their families. However, abortion isn’t a plan. It is a reaction, be it a reaction to not sticking to a plan or not having a plan. Planning is deciding not to get pregnant and acting accordingly afterword. However, if contraception is a right that should be paid for by taxpayers, then it should be paid for by THEIR taxpayers, not us.
Thirdly, I believe that federal law still prohibits tax funds from being used to fund abortions. The difference is that agencies that to provide information or abortions can now receive funding. It’s a slight but distinct difference.
Which then frees up more funds in these agencies to pay for the infanticide. The net effect is the same.
Fourthly, we live in the world. Unwanted pregnancies contribute to poverty. Poverty encourages political instability and political instability bleeds over borders. It’s to our advantage to assist other countries in reducing their poverty.
Poverty is poverty. If you believe that it is the root of political instability and a threat to our security, then attack poverty, not the baby humans. Poverty exists in the second and third world largely because the haves have the will and the means to take from the have nots. Following your logic, we should actually intervene in many of these nations and replace their kleptocracies with governments that correct this condition. This is something that will not and should not happen, because we do not have the resources necessary to be the world’s Daddy. As for the political instability, you might consider the fact that many of the nations one might point to as an example are ruled for decades by the same people, or the same type of people, and yet the ones that represent a real threat to us and our way of life are not like that because of poverty and political instability, they are threats because much like people who believe that abortion on demand should be a right, they worship death, and will gladly kill innocents to prove their point.
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Regarding birth control
The encyclical Humanae Vitae warned of four resulting trends if the use of artificial contraception became widespread: a general lowering of moral standards throughout society; a rise in infidelity; a lessening of respect for women by men; and the coercive use of reproductive technologies by governments. These predictions have come true and more so. Because we have sterilized marital relations, people no longer understand the very definition of marriage (two shall become one). They do not see the procreative nature of M/F relations as having anything to do with marriage. We are reaping what was sown many years ago when Catholics in America wanted to practice what was popular in the moment rather than what was true church teaching.
Many sociologists link the decline in society in the recent years directly to widespread use of the pill.
For a full understanding of the impact of birth control please read The Vindication of Humanae Vitae at:
http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=6262
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Thank you for weighing in, Marie.
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“Whatever the truth of that, the idea that a rich, pampered man in Rome says that God doesn’t want the eleven-year-old victim of incestuous rape to have an abortion is offensive at its core.”
That “rich pampered man in Rome” is the Pope. He is the leader of the visible church on earth and it is his job to teach truth. Truth is not always easy. Sometimes is hurts. The hurt here, however, is not from the Pope, it is from the older brother who raped her and the mother who protected the brother. Abortion worsened the problem as she had no evidence of the rape by her brother so now she is back in the horrific situation. I can assure you that the Pope would find all of this tragic.
He’s not offering housing and a lifetime of professional counseling for the victim, whereever the incident may occur. He’s not protecting the victim from a system that would allow her to be returned to the same dysfunctional family to be abused again. He’s not guaranteeing food and clothing and an education and a healthy family for her. He’s just insisting that she pay a lifelong consequence for an act which was done against her.
Of course the Pope does not individually solve each of the above problems. He is the leader of the Church and with that job comes different responsibilities (Just as Barack Obama will not address each individual problem, he will oversee overseers as it were). Catholic Social Services and Catholic Charities does many of these works (as well as offering Project Rachel for women who have had abortions and need counseling for the grief).
“So, as a person who has worked with sexually abused children, including the eleven-year-old who was raped and impregnated by her older brother, I’d say the Pope just needs to shut up about this issue.”
First, I believe (although I do not have statistics to support this) that very few abortions in the world are done in such tragic circumstances. Again, sometimes truth and doing what is right is hard and to not acknowledge that would be unfair. I also understand that it must be brutalizing to you to have to encounter these situations. But to blame the ills of the world on the Pope is not fair. His calling is to teach truth, regardless.
I will even go out on a limb to support the Church in the Priest abuse scandal. It was awful. The Church has acknowledged that mistakes were made and they have learned from those mistakes. All priests and bishops will have to pay a great price of rebuilding trust for the sins of but a few. Note that these mistakes have happened (by a greater percentage than the catholic clergy) in schools, daycares, families and other churches but the press (and lawyers) grabbed ahold and ran. I am grateful for that for while it has humbled the church, it has made her stronger. Other churches now come to the Catholic church to have presentations of the VIRTUS program designed for keeping kids and vulnerable adults safe. The church is full of fallible people who do things wrong. The only guarantee given the church, by Christ, was that the Pope could not teach what is doctrinally false.
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Oh, I forgot…
And the gates of hell will not prevail against her….
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Deb-
Thanks for the welcome!
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In all the comments written by the Catholic faithful on this topic, I detect no independent thought and no understanding or sympathy for the eleven-year-old girl or any other girl or woman who survives the hell of unwanted pregnancy. I see the same sort of hubris that is demonstrated by the people who worship Obama and cannont conceive of him being wrong no matter how bizarre his decisions.
People like that frighten me. I’m a religious person but I have never been asked to believe that any earthly being deserves that kind of faith.
Thank you, Lord, for treating me as your adult child and trusting me to use my reason and experience, your word and the holy spirit to steer through this very complicated life. Thank you, Lord. I love your gift.
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No mainstream religion that permits women to participate fully in the life of the church suggests that using birth control is a sin.
Reread what you wrote, and look at your biased underlying assumptions. Can’t find them? I’ll help:
You are assuming that the truth of a religion can be defined by the influence of women, and/or the approval of birth control. That has nothing to do with the truth of a religion. You can’t say,”only those religions which follow my personal values are valid,” in fact, you can’t even judge the truth of a religion by your value system.
You are also assuming that birth control is “correct,” which means you’re basing your argument that women are right on the presumption that they are right. That’s a very tight circle.
No one would accuse the RCC of suffering from an excess of enlightenment.
And that’s why your argument is completely off track. The Catholic Church has nothing to do with enlightenment, at least in the popular secular sense. The adherents of the Church are trying to follow the will of God, not the criticisms of Womens’ Studies professors.
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I detect no independent thought and no understanding or sympathy for the eleven-year-old girl or any other girl or woman who survives the hell of unwanted pregnancy.
You need to turn up the gain on your detector. Meanwhile, my detector isn’t registering any understanding or sympathy on your part for the Catholic Church.
Personally, I don’t believe that rape and incest victims should be denied abortions. That’s one reason I’m not a Catholic. But I understand that the Church has thought about the issue and come to its own moral decision, and I respect that. Apparently you don’t.
Talk about hubris.
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Lord, forgive them for they know not what they do.
Btw, none of the men in the RCC who made the decision will ever be pregnant. They’re trying to fob their ancient superstitions off on women and girls that they’ve never met who live in circumstances they don’t understand.
No, while I respect their right to hold their own views, I certainly do not respect their attempts to force their views on others.
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I’m sorry, Jean Marie. I didn’t realize that your stance on abortion was merely a means to take shots at the Catholic Church, and not something that you were willing to defend on non-ecumenical grounds. Next time, post your colors early so we know your real motivation for using the bandwidth.
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They’re trying to fob their ancient superstitions off…
Wrong again. And “ancient supersitions?” You’re really a jerk, aren’t you.
No, while I respect their right to hold their own view
Very respectful, given that you belittled and patronized their religion in the preceding sentence. In any case, once again you’ve wandered off the logical path. I said I respected their decision, not their right to that decision. Respecting their right to that decision is nothing special – I hope everybody acknowledges the right of religious organizations to make decisions.
I certainly do not respect their attempts to force their views on others.
Oh yeah. Disagreeing with abortion and birth control is “forcing your view on others.” In the meantime your statements and votes are trying to force your view on us.
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Black, I didn’t realize that “Nice Deb” was a conservative Catholic or I wouldn’t have come to the blog. I do oppose the patriarchy of the Catholic Church and other faiths like it whether they’re Christian, Muslim, Jewish or whatever.
geoff, you might want to try to disagree without calling names. It’s not a good reflection on either your church or “Nice Deb”.
I’m sorry that I crashed your party. I won’t be back. I prefer blogs where people can disagree respectfully.
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I was trying to be nice, even though you were slamming my church like nobody’s business.
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geoff, you might want to try to disagree without calling names.
You might want to review your comments, dear. You started with pejorative statements long ago.
It’s not a good reflection on either your church or “Nice Deb”.
Being an atheist, I don’t have a church. And nothing I say reflects on Nice Deb. Just as nothing you say reflects on her.
I prefer blogs where people can disagree respectfully.
Then you should have disagreed respectfully. And you could have tried actually responding to other peoples’ comments rather than continuing your monomaniacal rants about patriarchal religions, or harping on the case of the 11-year old (tragic? absolutely. evidence for policy change? not so much).
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I’m sorry that I crashed your party. I won’t be back. I prefer blogs where people can disagree respectfully.
I won’t apologize for asking questions that you were unable or unwilling to answer honestly while you shouted about the wrongness of other’s beliefs with all the smug condescension you could muster. Anytime you want to have an honest discussion, bolstered by facts and reason, we’ll be here, waiting for your better-conceived attempted to enlighten, rather than deride.
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Haven’t had a chance to come back until now. I see that Jean Louise has “quit the discussion” but will answer just in case she checks back.
“In all the comments written by the Catholic faithful on this topic, I detect no independent thought…”
To say that a Catholic’s reasoning is somehow less independent than your own is fundamentally rude. Would I be an independent thinker if I agreed with you? You have no idea the process by which I came to the RCC. To assume that it is non-intellectual superstition demonstrates a lack of tolerance for people who believe differently from you.
“Thank you, Lord, for treating me as your adult child and trusting me to use my reason and experience, your word and the holy spirit to steer through this very complicated life. Thank you, Lord. I love your gift.” “Lord, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
To end with this is the height of self righteous arrogance. (Allow me to paraphrase: “By thy divine guidance Lord, I am right and they need your mercy. Thank you for making me better than them.”) According to you, I must be a non-thinking, unenlightened, ignorant excuse for a human being who mindlessly follows the hierarchy of a church? I argue points and you insult. My choice to be a member of the RCC is based on logic, reason, prayer and most significantly, the Bible and history (Oh, and I too feel lead by the Holy Spirit).
I have never been to Nice Deb’s blog before (for that matter have never been to another blog before). I don’t think my comments reflect on her any more than yours do. I have found the tone here to be very polite, with the exception of you Jean Marie. You have basically said, “I am right and you are non-thinking, non-compassionate idiots for disagreeing with me.” That is not healthy debate, it is childish name calling.
“I detect….no understanding or sympathy for the eleven-year-old girl or any other girl or woman who survives the hell of unwanted pregnancy.”
I am ending with this because, to me, it is the most offensive. To say that I, or others who have posted here, have no sympathy for persons in difficult or tragic circumstances is, at best, demonstrating the inability to read. As I posted earlier, truth can be hard, it can hurt, but to ignore truth because it is painful does not help a situation. The church offers forgivenesss and love and compassion along with a high standard of truth. The charitable organizations within the church do an amazing amount of good and compassionate work because the teaching of the church is to go out and be the hands and feet of Jesus.
For those who take issue with the churches position on birth control, I would argue that if you support sex outside of marriage or abortion you are not following church teaching anyway so I doubt the birth control prohibition is significant to you aside from a talking point. The RCC church’s teachings on sex, marriage and life need to be understood and taken as a whole to make sense. If you are interested in the reasons for the teaching I can recommend a great book: Good News about Sex and Marriage by Christopher West. In this limited forum I cannot possibly share the full beauty of the churches teaching.
I have children and know first hand the highly personal, intimate even invasive nature of pregnancy. I also know how to get and not get pregnant. (And yes, Creighton Model Natural Family Planning does work) Sexuality brings with it a responsibility. More to the point, actions have consequences. The actions of others can have consequences on us as well. If a drunk driver hits me, it is tragic that their wrongdoing impacted my life, and yet, I have to move on from that point. Rape is a tragedy of immense proportion. While I would be unlikely to fight legislation that preserved the right to abortion for victims of rape and incest, I would still encourage a victim to allow that child a life. Again, actions have consequences. If a woman decides to have an abortion, a life is ended, that is a consequence. She may or may not suffer personal consequences (guilt, shame, loss) but surely the life that was never shone the light of day loses the right to life.
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JeanLouise,
Since you are a proponent of infanticide, I’m sure you’re not above a little white lie about “not being back”. So, I’m confident you’ll see this.
In the horific case of the 11 year old rape victim…if you want to advocate for killing someone in that circumstance, let me recommend the rapist. Unfortunately, libs never want to punish the criminal they are happy killing his offspring instead.
If you want a board that allows polite disagreement let me recommend the Huffington Post (oh wait…), or the Daily Kos (oh, no not that one either), I know that Democrat Underground (hmmmm, forget it…)
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For Nice Deb, the Catholics and others who oppose abortion on this blog,
These next four years are going to be enormously important in the fight for life. I want to encourage you to take any action that you can to stand up for your beliefs. The pro-abortion forces are energized like never before and they are advancing on all fronts. This is just the first shot of many.
I promise that I will do all I can do as well.
God Bless,
Jason
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It seems that the Pope speaks with just as much arrogance as he accuses Obama of speaking.
How can anyone consider the starvation of thousands of children every single day, anything less than human destruction? Third world countries need the “help” of family planning organizations more so than the first world countries do. The last thing these countries need is the political influence of a church that would teach them to be fruitful and multiply, or a Pope that lives a life of luxury dangling carrots in the faces of the starving in hopes of getting more converts. The church has had enough time to make some real difference to the hungriest and neediest in the world, and it has nothing more than increased human suffering and destruction.
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I disagree with your premise that the answer to poverty is making sure people don’t have kids.
And lay off the Catholic church, which has done more to feed the poor than any UN program ever has.
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I disagree with the premise that the answer to poverty is making sure people have more kids.
If you wouldn’t want to use birth control if the probability were that you’d watch your children starve to death, more power to you. However, you don’t have the right to make that choice for everyone else in the world.
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I disagree with the premise that the answer to poverty is making sure people have more kids.
But of course I never suggested that.
However, you don’t have the right to make that choice for everyone else in the world.
Thank you, that’s not a right I want. You, however, want to make a choice for me using my tax dollars.
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“You, however, want to make a choice for me using my tax dollars.”
Nope, I don’t want to make choices concerning how your tax dollars are spent. Apparently the 44th President of the USA (who’s paid taxes) made that choice for you (and the rest of us tax payers) and the Vatican (who does not pay taxes in the US, along with the US churches which help enrich it and often times are affiliated with programs that are partially funded by tax dollars) is busy playing politics again.
But, the beef here isn’t really about tax dollars is it?
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Nope, I don’t want to make choices concerning how your tax dollars are spent.
Could have fooled me.
Apparently the 44th President of the USA (who’s paid taxes) made that choice for you
And I reserve the right to bitch about the injustice of it.
the Vatican (who does not pay taxes in the US, along with the US churches which help enrich it and often times are affiliated with programs that are partially funded by tax dollars) is busy playing politics again.
The Catholic church doesn’t consider the life issues, “politics”.
But, the beef here isn’t really about tax dollars is it?
But of course it is. It’s about being unwilling participants in the grave injustice of abortion.
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Nope, I don’t want to make choices concerning how your tax dollars are spent.
But if they are used to murder unborn children and guild the practice with a thin veneer of respectability because of theuse of US tax dollars in doing so, then you appear to be just fine with it.
You seem concerned for the starving children. How about forcing the kleptocratic regimes of the turd world to pay for these “necessary” expenditures themselves?
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I’m not sure that this is still true, but 20 years ago the problem with many impoverished countries was that the parents wanted lots of kids to ensure that they’d be taken care of in their old age. It’s the traditional poor man’s retirement plan. Providing access to family planning services won’t help when the parents already have a plan.
It was also noted that increasing prosperity tended to lower the birth rate, as people could then manage their retirement without burdening their children. Contraceptives and abortion are at best a band-aid – it’s economic progress that will truly change these peoples’ plight.
Just found this article, which does a good job of explaining the poverty-birth rate dynamic, and the pointlessness of introducing family planning services.
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The point of the above comment being that there’s a clear path to fixing the problem that does not invoke any moral issues.
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I guess that view is still current.
Of course, you often have a chicken-or-the-egg situation, where you can’t achieve prosperity until you slow the birth rate. In that case, perhaps it would be better to let other agencies fund family planning services, while the US focused on economic development. That would avoid the moral issues and controversy associated with spending taxpayers’ money on a hot-button issue.
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“If you wouldn’t want to use birth control if the probability were that you’d watch your children starve to death, more power to you. However, you don’t have the right to make that choice for everyone else in the world.”
I’ll try not to duplicate points made by others.
The RCC is not against family planning, it teaches that artificial birth control is sinful. Creighton Model NFP is a very effective way to forego a large family should the need arise. I, for one, have health reasons for not having more children. The church has given me a moral, healthy and safe way to plan my family. If I had no way to provide food for future children, I would consider that a reason to not have more children (and the church would allow for that reasoning). The church is concerned about compassion AND truth, not just what seems easiest and nicest on the surface.
That said, the bottom line of this discussion is whether or not our tax money should fund family planning/abortion services in other countries. It is quite arrogant to go into a country and tell them they are too poor to have children. Thank you Geoff for the links to two great articles that make clear the reasoning that many cultures have regarding having children. We see many children as a burden rather than a joy. Other cultures see them as a joy, a blessing and an investment in their survival and future (yes, free labor). Before you judge this as abusive, think of the history of our own farming communities and the work ethic, teamwork and family structures that grew from those communities. Children born into a family that lovingly teaches them to work and be responsible have done a service to the world.
Large families have been seen as a blessing in most cultures for centuries. We, on the other hand, see children with price tags attached. Yes, it costs money to raise children, but we go far beyond the actual needs in our country and surround our children with so much stuff that they do not know they have worth apart from their belongings. They each need their own room (individual space is so over rated). They each must be in 15 activities. They must have the right clothes, the right toys, the right electronics….
We are so busy coddling the little darlings that we also fail to teach them to work. I am a college professor and was shocked to learn that many parents now want to have maid service available to their children in the dorms. It is seriously troubling that a child has graduated from HS and never learned to clean a room. No wonder the parents think the child is a burden!!!!!!
As a culture, we have shifted many wants into our needs categories. Those lifestyle choices have led us to where we are as a country right now – a spoiled group of people who need instant gratification that leads to lack of planning that leads to things like wreckless spending/crippling debt and yes unwanted pregnancy/abortion.
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It’s quite simple. Ask yourself, would I wanna be aborted? To not have the life i’m living now. Majority of americans would say no! Obviously because you value your life! Well then that answers the question. We removed a tyrant over 70yrs ago for taking life. Why would america move back to that step of history to better itself.
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