"Just Look," says Cardinal Egan

The picture on this page is an untouched photograph of a being that has been within its mother for 20 weeks. Please do me the favor of looking at it carefully.



Have you any doubt that it is a human being?

If you do not have any such doubt, have you any doubt that it is an innocent human being?

If you have no doubt about this either, have you any doubt that the authorities in a civilized society are duty-bound to protect this innocent human being if anyone were to wish to kill it?

If your answer to this last query is negative, that is, if you have no doubt that the authorities in a civilized society would be duty-bound to protect this innocent human being if someone were to wish to kill it, I would suggest—even insist—that there is not a lot more to be said about the issue of abortion in our society. It is wrong, and it cannot—must not—be tolerated.

Thank you, Cardinal Egan, for an eloquent and powerful defense of life. Please read the whole thing at Catholic New York.

Hat-tip: Creative Minority Report

Not all issues are equal

As you form conscience, know not all issues are equal, writes Bishop Robert Vasa (Baker, OR) in the Catholic Sentinel, Oregon's Catholic newspaper.

“Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship” ... does, in fact, provide very sound guidance. It is important, however, to properly discern what the document says and what it does not say. The document does not say, for instance, that it is just fine to vote for a pro-abortion candidate as long as one votes for that candidate only because of his or her stand on other important social issues.
...
I am quite confident that if a candidate made a bold proclamation that he or she would actively seek to institute in these United States a concerted program of genocide against any minority group every Catholic, without exception, would oppose that candidate. I am also confident that if a candidate swore that he or she, as the first act of the new Administration, would institute an aggressive program of torture to root out crime, violence and terrorism in this country there would be no doubt that such a candidate would be categorically unacceptable. Rightly so! Further, if any candidate would attest that he or she intended to prosecute the war on terror by the aggressive and random targeting of civilian non-combatants no one, of either party, would give even the slightest thought to wasting their vote on such a position even if the candidate had a marvelous record in the area of all the other social programs. Unfortunately, when candidates for office in these United States make bold assertions that they have every intention of working to assure that the alleged right of a woman to kill her pre-born child is either preserved or even expanded, many Catholics seem to think that it would be morally acceptable to vote for such a candidate as long as they somehow miraculously excised the candidate’s pro-abortion mindset out of the equation. A vote for such a candidate, like it or not, is likewise a vote for the firmly held abortion position; it is inseparable from the person. Just as a vote for a genocidal maniac is a vote for genocide and a vote for the avowed torturer is a vote for torture and a vote for the indiscriminant targeter of innocent women and children is a vote for such targeting so a vote for a promoter of abortion, when there is another less evil alternative available, is a vote for abortion.
[my emphasis]

The full text is well worth the read.

Burke: Democratic Party risks becoming "Party of Death"

In this ZENIT interview, Archbishop Burke says:

At this point, the Democratic Party risks transforming itself definitively into a 'party of death' due to its choices on bioethical issues, as Ramesh Ponnuru wrote in his book 'The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts and the Disregard for Human Life.'

And I say this with a heavy heart, because we all know that the Democrats were the party that helped our Catholic immigrant parents and grandparents to better integrate into and prosper in American society. But it's not the same anymore.

Nonetheless, there are among Democrats some pro-lifers, but they are, unfortunately, rare.

God bless Archbishop Burke for his forthright comment, which I do consider another "sign of hope". My only issue with it is that he says the Democratic Party "risks" becoming the party of death while I think their current platform is already the platform of the Culture of Death -- that which offers the death of innocents as solutions to life's problems.