Today, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap. and Auxiliary Bishop James D. Conley released a new letter to the Catholics of northern Colorado, titled “Public Servants and Moral Reasoning.” In the letter, they reaffirm the importance of informed moral reasoning when discerning public action, especially in regard to Catholics who serve their country on the national stage. Click here to read the full letter.
The letter concludes:
In his Meet the Press interview, Sen. Biden used a morally exhausted argument that American Catholics have been hearing for 40 years: i.e., that Catholics can't "impose" their religiously based views on the rest of the country. But resistance to abortion is a matter of human rights, not religious opinion. And the senator knows very well as a lawmaker that all law involves the imposition of some people's convictions on everyone else. That is the nature of the law. American Catholics have allowed themselves to be bullied into accepting the destruction of more than a million developing unborn children a year. Other people have imposed their "pro-choice" beliefs on American society without any remorse for decades.If we claim to be Catholic, then American Catholics, including public officials who describe themselves as Catholic, need to act accordingly. We need to put an end to Roe and the industry of permissive abortion it enables. Otherwise all of us - from senators and members of Congress, to Catholic laypeople in the pews - fail not only as believers and disciples, but also as citizens.
4 comments:
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. This won't be Biden's last screwup about Catholic teaching. I suspect that before the election is over a lot of Bishops will be praying for Biden to lose his voice so they don't have to deal with him any more.
I really think this is God turning up the heat & getting many Bishops to finally speak up who haven't in the past.
I really think that the church should talk in more simplified terms. I truely believe after years and years of being on these boards and talking about abortion that Catholics fall into one of three categories - they have gotten so used to being in control of everything in their lives that they think they can control life and death too. Catholics are supposed to believe that GOD has the control, not humans. He owns our bodies, and he decides when life begins and when life ends. Progressiveness in the Catholic Faith- some people just don't care one way or another, they don't care about what the church stands for they want to control it. They have lost their faith.
Finally, there are Catholics that have had abortions, and if they admit that they have done something wrong to themselves they would feel like murderers, so of course they are going to fight on the wrong side of things. I think they have forgotten that God is a forgiving God.
I am a retired military member, a Roman Catholic, and now a "Senior Citizen". I am offended that Catholic clergy, especially Archbishop Chaput and Bishop Morlino, are using their pulpits to try to influence election outcomes.
There are vastly more important issues involved in this - and most elections - than abortion. I'm puzzled, for example, as to why the above clergymen did not strongly oppose the unwarrented invasion of Iraq.
Moreover, the Archbishop and Bishop have no basis to argue that antiabortion is a posture dictated by Christ. There was no such issue in his lifetime - and irrespective of their positions,
I really can not believe that they have a direct line to God.
By overlooking the important concerns of this campaign and voicing opposition to Senators Obama and Biden merely on one issue, Chaput and Morlino have taken a major step in making themselves and the Catholic Church increasingly irrelevant!
I am a retired military member, a Roman Catholic, and now a "Senior Citizen". I am offended that Catholic clergy, especially Archbishop Chaput and Bishop Morlino, are using their pulpits to try to influence election outcomes.
Thanks for your service to this country.
The bishops are doing what they are suppose to be doing--proclaiming Catholic truth and that intrinsic evils outweigh subjective/circumstantial issues. That it is not particularly difficult to discern that one party's platform is more in line with that is just how it happens to be.
There are vastly more important issues involved in this - and most elections - than abortion. I'm puzzled, for example, as to why the above clergymen did not strongly oppose the unwarrented invasion of Iraq.
Respectfully, when people formally support the killing of innocent people, that outweighs all other considerations, a strong economy is meaningless when you've been legally killed. As far as the war, yes, I think Bishops should speak up more whenever military options are entertained. BUT, as Bishop Martino pointed out, and no one has overthrown:
Even the Church’s just war theory has moral force because it is grounded in the principle that innocent human life must be protected and defended. Now, a person may, in good faith, misapply just war criteria leading him to mistakenly believe that an unjust war is just, but he or she still knows that innocent human life may not be harmed on purpose. A person who supports permissive abortion laws, however, rejects the truth that innocent human life may never be destroyed. This profound moral failure runs deeper and is more corrupting of the individual, and of the society, than any error in applying just war criteria to particular cases.
Moreover, the Archbishop and Bishop have no basis to argue that antiabortion is a posture dictated by Christ. There was no such issue in his lifetime - and irrespective of their positions,
I really can not believe that they have a direct line to God.
Not true. During Christ's time, there was the widely accepted practice of exposure. While neither Christ nor Paul explicitly speak to this in the NT (and we could fill volumes on things NOT explicitly mentioned), we see Christian opposition to abortion and exposure in the earliest descriptions of Christian practice by outside observers and in the Didache. Abortion is against Divine Law, "Thou shalt not kill", it is infallible Church doctrine by virtue of its constant teaching, AND it is an offense against reason which explains the existence of atheist pro-life groups.
By overlooking the important concerns of this campaign and voicing opposition to Senators Obama and Biden merely on one issue, Chaput and Morlino have taken a major step in making themselves and the Catholic Church increasingly irrelevant!
I seem to recall another time that the Church risked becoming irrelevant--the Protestant Reformation. But rather than attempt to change the unchangeable to fit in, they remained faithful with divine stubbornness. And the Church endured and continues to endure, battered but doctrinally intact. Meanwhile, mainstream denominations that have swallowed modernist world-views have been reduced to piles of rubble.
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