This is by Bishop Jenky, C.S.C. (Peoria):
The most fundamental of all human rights is the right to life. All other imperatives of justice and mercy are derivative of the great truth that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God and that all human life is sacred from the moment of conception until natural death. Any cooperation with the grave sin of abortion is intrinsically evil and would certainly imperil one’s eternal salvation.
Although the clear majority of Americans oppose “abortion on demand” and especially the horrific act of murdering a child in the very process of being born, there is renewed effort today at the very highest levels of government to more widely enable and more generously fund the abortion of innocent human life in America and throughout the world. A dehumanized utilitarianism is now promoted as the only standard of scientific research. There are also serious legislative proposals to remove the rights of conscience for Catholic medical personnel and even to require Roman Catholic hospitals to perform abortions.
I am certain that the priests, deacons, religious and faithful of our Diocese are determined to vigorously oppose these efforts, even to the point of civil disobedience if that should ever become necessary. For practicing Catholics, loyalty to Jesus Christ must always supersede all other loyalties, including our ties to political parties, elected officials, schools, other institutions and organizations, even families and friends. In this Easter season as we celebrate the Lord’s victory over death, I wish to strongly reassert our Faith’s unshakable commitment to the Gospel of Life. As an ancient hymn of the Roman Church proclaims: Christ wins! Christ reigns! Christ commands!
— Most Reverend Daniel R. Jenky, C.S.C., Bishop of Peoria
Friday, April 3, 2009
Here, at Public Discourse, is a short version of a paper I gave at our own Patrick Brennan's excellent Scarpa Conference, at Villanova, a few weeks ago. A bit:
[H]ow, precisely, do the anti-establishment norm and the “separation of church and state” vindicate the freedom of conscience? We know that Roger Williams—the founder of the colony of Rhode Island and a fierce and fiery critic of the “soule rape” of religious persecution—connected the protection of conscience with the maintenance of a wall between the “Garden” of religious faith and the “Wilderness” of civil power and public affairs. But again, how exactly does this wall, this separation, protect the “soule,” the seat of conscience?
The “separation of church and state,” it turns out, is a powerful structural principle; it is a principle of pluralism, of multiple and overlapping authorities, of competing loyalties and demands. It is a rule that limits the state (not a program of marginalizing or privatizing religion) and thereby clears out and protects a social space, within which persons are formed and educated, and without which the liberty of conscience is vulnerable. The no-establishment rule, then, protects the liberty of conscience primarily by respecting and protecting the independence of non-state authority.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
. . . according to Wordle. Interesting. And weird.
On this date, four years ago, Pope John Paul II -- John Paul the Great, I believe -- went to his reward. According to this story:
Pope Benedict XVI is marking the fourth anniversary of the death of Pope John Paul II with an evening Mass and new prayers for the Polish pontiff's beatification.
For more materials celebrating the late Pope's life, including homilies delivered by Pope Benedict XVI on the previous anniversaries, go here.
Yuck. This from the new dean of the Episcopal Divinity School:
These are the two things I want you, please, to remember - abortion is a blessing
and our work is not done. Let me hear you say it: abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done.
I want to thank all of you who protect this blessing - who do this work every day: the health care providers, doctors, nurses, technicians, receptionists, who put your lives on the line to care for others (you are heroes -- in my eyes, you are saints); the escorts and the activists; the lobbyists and the clinic defenders; all of you. You're engaged in holy work.
Monday, March 30, 2009
They are connected, says Bishop Murphy. (Full interview here.)
". . . is to abolish the death penalty altogether." So says that right-wing, partisan, shallow, one-dimensional, in-the-pocket-of-the-GOP Archbishop Charles Chaput:
Capital punishment, euthanasia, abortion and war: All these issues raise profound questions for Catholics as we reflect on the sanctity of human life. But while they all touch on human dignity, they don’t all have the same moral content.
Euthanasia and abortion are always, intrinsically wrong because they always involve an intentional killing of innocent human life. War and capital punishment, in contrast, can sometimes be morally acceptable as an expression of society’s right to self-defense.
Both Scripture and a long tradition of Catholic thought support the legitimacy of the death penalty under certain limited circumstances. But as Pope John Paul II argued so eloquently, the conditions that require the death penalty for society’s self-defense and the discharge of justice in modern, developed nations almost never exist. As a result, the right road for a civilized society is to abolish the death penalty altogether.
Over at America magazine's blog, Mark Stricherz explains why "overturning Roe would save lives and be popular." (In so doing, he fleshes out his disagreement with those who, like Michael Sean Winters, David Gibson, and many others, believe the opposite.)
Stricherz is quite correct, in my view, when he states that public-opinion data suggesting that Americans support Roe is -- because Americans do not know what Roe means -- unreliable. A healthy majority of Americans supports an abortion-regulation regime that, under current law, legislatures may not enact.
To return, though, to my hobby-horse: It is not a strong argument against overturning Roe that overturning Roe might not reduce the number of abortions dramatically. (That said, I am entirely confident that it would reduce the number of abortions.) Roe distorted our constitutional law and our politics and constitutionalized (unjustly) an unsound -- or, at the very least, highly contested -- moral premise. It should be overruled even if it leaves open the possibility, as it certainly does, that We the People will decide, at least in some places, to continue permitting elective abortions.
