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Kennedy encouraged not to take communion
Rhode Island Bishop Thomas Tobin encouraged Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), one of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s sons, to abstain from communion because of his recent comments regarding Catholic opposition to abortion coverage in the healthcare reform bill.
“He attacked the church. He attacked the position of the church on health care, on abortion, on funding,” Tobin said. “And that required that I respond. I don’t go out looking for these guys. I don’t go out picking these fights.”
But Tobin said he had also asked Kennedy to not take communion back in 2007. Now, he said, he would probably not serve Kennedy communion.
Topic: Religion, WorldMagBlog
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back to top225 Comments to “Kennedy encouraged not to take communion”
Good for him.
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Having a church censure a politician like this kind of poisons the Manhattan Declaration. It gives rise to the viewpoint that the church is already actively engaged in enforcing its rule with its members. That behavior is not likely to engender any sympathy about its “rights of conscience.”
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I applaud the doctrinal consistency of this action. The problem is that it’s not equally applied across all parishoners. And the reason it’s not equally applied is because there would be very few Catholics getting Communion.
In addition to the enforcement complications, strict adherence to this policy would involve priests getting involved with the actual beliefs of their congregants at a level that would make everyone uncomfortable.
Which leads me to conclude, do this for one, or do it for none.
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Should be “do it for all, or do it for none”.
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I think the difference between Kennedy and the average guy in the pew is that Kennedy has publicly disagreed with the Church. If the average guy in the pew spouted off at the pot luck he would probably get the same treatment. Also it looks like he is asking Kennedy to voluntarily abstain from Communion.
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Who does the Bishop think he is to stand between a man and God? The Catholics believe that Communion, as a sacrament, is a tangible means by which God’s grace is imputed. The Bishop is not saying that Kennedy should avoid taking part in a symbolic ritual; he is, in a very real sense, saying that disagreeing with the Church is a sin that can cut one off from grace.
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Conan, you are correct. But that is consistent with Catholic theology – they believe you need an intermediary to intercede between you and God.
KBells – you are correct also. But it still seems unfair to single one person out when many in the pews may share the same viewpoint or be in a greater state of sin.
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“Rhode Islanders react to Tobin-Kennedy dispute.”
http://newsblog.projo.com/2009/11/rhode-islanders-react-to-tobin.html
FTA: “I think the bishop should let it go. The Kennedy family does so much good…”
A local priest, “This past Sunday, I had someone come up to me who is engaged in an alternative lifestyle,” O’Connor said. “He said, ‘What about me? I’m not considered to be 100-percent Catholic, because of what I do in private. Does that mean the bishop could say I can’t receive communion?’”
“O’Connor said he could see a difference between someone whose private life differs from church teachings versus a person whose acts as a public official go against doctrine.”
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#2 Harris, I fail to see how the bishop’s action poisons the Manhattan Declaration, but rather shows that the church is serious about enforcing and standing upon doctrine.
#Conan, Yes, the Bishop does believe he stands between man and God – that’s good Roman Catholic doctrine and yes, your last sentence is spot on:” he is … saying that disagreeing with the Church is a sin that can cut one off from grace.”
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He is the Bishop, that who he is. And no one is standing between Kennedy and God if Kennedy wants to repent, not at all.
Kennedy has made his views publicly known. Others may be taking communion under false pretenses.
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Unfortunately, this looks to me like Rep. Kennedy wrapping himself in a banner and claiming victim, rather than taking a personal matter, directions given in private, to heart and thinking through the Bishop’s request. If Kennedy was genuinely interested in belonging to a church, one would think he would behave in accordance with the teachings of that church or move along to something else.
Kennedy made this announcement, not the Bishop. To me, someone who is no longer a practicing Catholic, that sounds like grandstanding to the secular crowd, not earnestly considering the truth of Scripture.
Regardless of your opinion on abortion, this should trouble anyone who takes God seriously. And we should be praying for Rep. Kennedy and other grandstanders who thumb their noses at the teachings of their faith, to gain a deeper and more personal relationship with the creator of the universe.
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If goes back to the idea does our Christian Faith Impact our World View or does our world view impact our Christian Faith.
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Kennedy abuses his position of authority to actively and publicly oppose and denigrate the teachings of Jesus Christ. Yet he claims the believer’s portion of bread and wine when he goes to church. St Paul says that when we eat and drink unworthily, without discerning what we’re doing, we incur damnation on our own heads. It’s the bishop’s duty not only to defend against the trivializing and exploitation of the Lord’s sacrament, but to protect the souls of those who would do so.
Was no one scandalized at George Tiller’s being in full jolly communion in his Presbyterian church?
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what does God’s Word say about the behavior of the Bishop and Kennedy?
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Kennedy is a politician behaving like a politician. The Bishop is a churchman behaving like a churchman. The reason that these two spheres have come together to engage over this moral issue is that the politician has personally encroached the sphere of the church, not the other way around. Just because a politician has freely and decidedly JOINED himself to that church, that does NOT mean the politician gets to call the shots or make the laws or rules or declare himself free of the church’s doctrines or terms.
For Harris to use the phrase “censure a politician like this” is therefore absurd and illegitimate. Harris is applying the terms and rules of the politician and of secular politics to the church illegitimately. The Bishop is not walking into the legislature or any political sanctuary to impose his opinions and rules there on anyone. Harris obviously misunderstands what is taking place here.
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NJL, #10, said what I was going to say in response to Conan’s question. A Baptist can say that no man can stand between me and God. But to say that the Biship has no authority over your soul cuts at the heart of Catholic doctrine.
This got Martin Luther excommunicated.
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I believe that Tiller communed at an ELCA church, an extremely liberal Lutheran denomination.
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Nah, Conan has it wrong. The guy should be denied communion because he actively and enthusiastically supports and enables the killing of children in various creatively brutal ways.
Publicly unrepentant and foul and obnoxious and proud child murderers are not ‘in communion’ with any aspect of the true Church.
And the argument that the brutal unrepentant genocidal slaying of children is simply ‘between the man and God’ and is a ‘right of conscience’ and is not an issue that the Church should deal with, as Conan makes (and Harris, too, apparently) is so sick and disgusting, it bears no response.
Such an argument is, in fact, demonic in its inception and in its presentation and in its bloody implementation.
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The Word of God is clear
Step one the issue is to be address between the two people . This has been done. Kennedy attacked the Faith the Bishop called him to repent.
Step two the Bishop and Kennedy are to sit down with other an address the issue. If Kennedy still refuses to repent.
Step three the Church is to remove Kennedy from their rolls
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Chas 11.24.09 AT 10:30 AM
NJL, #10, said what I was going to say in response to Conan’s question. A Baptist can say that no man can stand between me and God. But to say that the Biship has no authority over your soul cuts at the heart of Catholic doctrine.
This got Martin Luther excommunicated.
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Chas, it cuts the heart out of the Christian Doctrine. This issue is a Christian Issue.
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Did the priest actually say he wouldn’t let him? It sounds like he asked him not to because it is wrong.
Making this a public thing is hopefully sending a message to the other catholic parishoners as well.
ULTIMATELY, as someone stated above, the person who takes communion is answerable to God.
Also, the Bible states that the pastor (priest) is responsible for his flock.
Please don’t lump ALL priests together. They are NOT the same.
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Michelle,#11, very well put.
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DRILL
Sometimes I get the feeling that you are against abortion.
For people NOT to see it for what it is, when the graphic details are paraded before their very eyes, is REALLY SCARY.
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DRILL 18 – You speak my mind better than I do. Thank you!
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news2me – God’a Word has told us how to handle these issues
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News2me: Once, I saw what was being done in an abortion clinic. Yeah, I am against abortion.
I encourage all readers here or wherever who care about the sanctity of life to get actively involved in organizations such as Vitae, Birthright, etc. And to get actively involved in politics, both local and national, to stop the pro-aborts in their determination to continue and expand the butchery – and to silence those who would stop them.
Abortion is not, however, just a political issue – it is a spiritual and moral issue – it is an ongoing Holocaust that each of us will be judged upon, based on our individual response to it.
3000 children a day in this country alone are butchered, thanks to those who argue for, support, and enable abortion, via their words, actions, and votes. And thanks to us, should we do nothing about it.
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Harris 11.24.09 AT 8:44 AM
Having a church censure a politician like this kind of poisons the Manhattan Declaration. It gives rise to the viewpoint that the church is already actively engaged in enforcing its rule with its members. That behavior is not likely to engender any sympathy about its “rights of conscience.”
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It is dealing with sin with is side the Church.
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Thomas1
“In addition to the enforcement complications, strict adherence to this policy would involve priests getting involved with the actual beliefs of their congregants at a level that would make everyone uncomfortable.”
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Wow, a Pastor/Priest getting involved with the actual beliefs of their congregants, is that not called The Teaching and Preaching of God’s Word. It is when the Pastor/Priest bring the Word of God through the Teaching and Preaching of the Word an it impacts someone moral views.
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OK, this is essentially a church discipline issue. Not a matter of simply “disagreeing with the church”, but instead of acting in open encouragement of sin. Abortion is murder, so for a Catholic politician to promote abortion is the same as him engaging in any other open, unrepentant sin.
The Church has a responsibility to address this sin in order to call him back to Christ. Refusing him communion would be a method of that process I could understand. Maybe not the most directly in line with the Matthew 18 process Pastor Roy outlined, but it could be part of what they understand “treat him as an unbeliever” to mean. Matthew 18 shouldn’t be taken as “do these 3 things and nothing else” in order to deal with unrepentant sin – refusing communion would be in keeping with the heart behind the passage, in the context of Catholic practice.
I agree with what what Joel Mark posted #15.
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1,095,000 lives lost a year by your count, Drill, and I don’t dispute it.
Nor am I an abortion fan, nor a fan of public funding for it.
But! You routinely rail against social programs and public healthcare also.
So… who pays the doctor bills and who feeds all these people when we force the mother to carry the infant to term? And how exactly do we force her?
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Quote Nana #8:
“A local priest, ‘This past Sunday, I had someone come up to me who is engaged in an alternative lifestyle,’ O’Connor said. He said, ‘What about me? I’m not considered to be 100-percent Catholic, because of what I do in private. Does that mean the bishop could say I can’t receive communion?’
“O’Connor said he could see a difference between someone whose private life differs from church teachings versus a person whose acts as a public official go against doctrine.”
Of course, I can see that dealing with sin is not only an individual concern, but also a concern of the church. However, is the Kennedy issue more of a concern because it violates the Catholic Church or a concern for him as a parishioner in error against the Scriptures? What does it mean when a “parishioner” actually addresses a priest and that priest seems more concerned with a public official differing with church teachings than with the person right in front of his face possibly genuinely inquiring about his lifestyle?
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hopesprings – “However, is the Kennedy issue more of a concern because it violates the Catholic Church or a concern for him as a parishioner in error against the Scriptures? What does it mean when a “parishioner” actually addresses a priest and that priest seems more concerned with a public official differing with church teachings than with the person right in front of his face possibly genuinely inquiring about his lifestyle”
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it should not be, as a Pastor everyone is the same no matter who they are. An if that person is living in sin it is part of my calling to reach out to that person an help them understand God’s Word
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The point is that we as humans should have figured out by now that SEX makes babies–if evolution is working, and we are supposedly MUCH more enlightened now.
There are plenty of ways to NOT get pregnant in the first place. They might try ONE or all of those.
ABORTION should not be used as birth control.
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Thomas1 – how does the killing of babies fit God’s Word? An is it ok with God for Christian’s to support the killing of babies ?
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Actually the bishop asked him THREE years ago not to take communion based on his views on abortion. It is Kennedy who brought this up in a recent interview and now the bishop is wondering why three years after the fact that Kennedy wants to make this an issue.
Personally I think it has to do with the Catholic Church’s putting pressure on Democratic representatives to make sure there was an amendment to the health care bill clearly stating that NO tax payer money in any form of subsidy would go to pay for abortions.
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Thomas1:
Go to the following web site to see just a smattering of the alternatives to abortion, in a clickable state-by-state breakdown:
http://alternatives2abortion.com/
My wife and I are heavily involved in and supportive of a number of abortion alternative orgs; I know of absolutely NO one being turned away from these organizations.
There is no ‘need’ for abortion, as you seem to imply, due to a lack of resources.
The sad fact is that most abortions are performed as a form of repeated birth control; less than or approximately one percent of abortions are actually associated with rape/incest.
As far as ‘who feeds all these people’, the ideal would be that the people feed themselves in a morally-based traditional family-oriented vibrant free-enterprise-oriented society with extremely limited centralized government (and the function of the central government mainly to defend borders).
The problem NOW is that we are living in an irreversible Socialist situation, ala Social Security and Medicare and like programs. The ideas were very bad to begin with (to give the State the power and responsibility of ‘taking care of’ the people – because a State that ‘takes care of’ the people is a despotic State, by political design and by evolution.)
But, no, if you have read my previous posts on this topic, you will know that I am no ‘get rid of Medicare and Social Security’ proponent. It is impossible, now; the country could not sustain such a draconian move.
The monsters were created (however unwisely) and now the country is addicted to them – remove them and, yes, the patient dies.
So, no, I do not routinely rail against all social programs – only the unwise or purposely malignant expansion of Statism.
The complete hypocrisy of the Democrat-led effort to take over 1/6 of the nation’s economy is quite evident – it has NOTHING to do with health care and EVERYTHING to do with control of the people.
As you and I both know, the health care system in America is NOT broken – the health care bill is not aimed at the relatively few people who do not have adequate health care – it is aimed squarely at those who DO (already) have adequate health care in terms of increasing governmental control.
A State that aborts children will eventually have no problem with killing its elderly or eliminating its undesirables (political and otherwise).
We are already there, Thomas1, actually.
And this ‘Bill’ you crow about is a giant step further into the abyss.
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Our pastor has an interesting take on abortion — it is in itself, he says, quite possibly the judgement we have already have reaped as a nation. What could be more horrible than a society killing millions of its own children in the womb?
A case, perhaps, of God allowing man to ‘go his own way.’ We keep talking about a coming judgement — but perhaps this is it already, right in our midst and oh-so-acceptable in “enlightened” and polite company.
On the issue of politicians being somehow “singled out” by the Catholic Church, could it be also because they are in a unique position to perpetuate this ongoing horror in our society at large by virtue of their position and power?
I agree, Kennedy appears to be playing to the secular audience here. That he seems to have no sense of self-examination on this matter and openly touts it does not speak well of his character or standing (voluntarily on his part, remember) as a member of the Catholic Church.
He’s free to leave that communion — and he probably should, I’d say. So tired of the whining. Like this position of the church is a surprise to him all of a sudden? He’s, what, shocked?
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since when was a Kennedy ever faithful to the Catholic Church teaching?
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Drill – it’s my understanding that a lot of the resources you’re naming are at or near capacity.
This justifies nothing in the way of killing babies, of course. But few people on the anti-abort side seem overly concerned with what happens to the baby, once born. Or to the mother, for that matter. It’s a public image that your side needs to shake if you ever hope to get what you’re looking for.
Criminalizing abortion will involve law enforcement. How do you propose that would work?
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I understand what you are saying, Chas, and I would agree that a Bishop has a certain amount of power over a person on earth, but I don’t think he can really damn someone to hell. That might, of course, be the doctrine of the RCC, and if so, I bow to your greater knowledge on the subject. The Bishop can certainly keep him from taking communion, and in the church in which I grew up, I never saw this done, but I think the ministers could do that, too, if a person was willfully and openly abusing communion and not just about abortion. We were also told that one should not take communion if one felt at odds with something, if one was aware that an “adjustment” should be made but didn’t. It’s not something you do because it’s part of the service, you do it because you mean it.
I do think the RCC can do what it wants to do on this issue. I don’t think they just single out politicians. If a Planned Parenthood person, or anyone for that matter, blatantly and openly followed the same route, they’d do the same thing; it might not make the news, however.
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It seems to me that for most of the Democratic Party, it is ok to call yourself a Christian, Catholic, Mormon. An say, you support the teaching of the Church, but it is not ok to vote in line with your Church teaching. An no one is to call them on it. The fact is many people in Office today, that call themselves a Christian, Catholic, Mormon, do not support their Church teaching. their moral values, views and ideas are in direct conflict with their Churches teaching.
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since when was a Kennedy ever faithful to the Catholic Church teaching?
Rose Kennedy. Come on, pastor, you’re engaging in a bit of mind reading here. That’s rarely a useful path (tho’ if you’re charismatic, perhaps we’ll cut you some slack: you were exercising the gift of discernment, right?
<this is a joke, btw)
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Thomas1 “Criminalizing abortion will involve law enforcement. How do you propose that would work? ”
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Move it to the Hospital and close down the money business that have made a living off of killing babies. Abortion business is not regulated by the Medical Field.
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Thomas1, can you give some proof of your statement (39)? Among those I know that work diligently in the prolife movement, it is certainly not true. They not only put in much time and money to help these women, I know those who have taken in babies and mothers. I have no reason to believe that statement, do you, really?
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Ok Pastor Roy, can’t leave the slur on Dems alone. I would be happy to introduce you to Dems who do try to be faithful to their church’s teaching. You can start with Rep Bart Stupak (D-MI), who put in the no-money-for-abortion clause in the health plan. Look at his record: you’ll meet a faithful Catholic.
Leader of the Michigan House is Rep Andy Dillon, another explicitly pro-life, faithful Catholic and Democrat.
And I got plenty more at the local level: men and women who do not compromise their beliefs to be faithful to their political calling.
It is the existence of such politicians that in fact give the Catholic Church the ability to call some on the carpet. Others have figured out how to do this, Representative, why not you?
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A cherished, knee-jerk line among liberals, I know, but its basis? Completely unfair. (And it’s getting to be a tired old saw, at that.)
“few people on the anti-abort side seem overly concerned with what happens to the baby, once born”
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Harris 11.24.09 AT 12:24 PM
since when was a Kennedy ever faithful to the Catholic Church teaching?
Rose Kennedy. Come on, pastor, you’re engaging in a bit of mind reading here. That’s rarely a useful path (tho’ if you’re charismatic, perhaps we’ll cut you some slack: you were exercising the gift of discernment, right? <this is a joke, btw)
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Papa Kennedy – Mob Money
JFK – never faithful to wife
Robert – was not faithful to wife
Ted – well leaving someone to die, support gay rights, support killing babies
This kennedy well drugs, support gay rights, support killing babies
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Papa Kennedy – working with NAza Germany which got him remove from his job in england
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Pro-life orgs need and can use resources all the time, but as I noted, no one is being turned away, that I know about. Not with what I am involved with, in any event.
All charitable organizations generally operate ‘at or near full capacity’.
You repeat an establishment lie when you say that ‘few people on the (quote) anti-abort (?) side seem overly concerned with what happens to the baby, once born. or to the mother, for that manner.”
Take the organization Birthright, for example, which I am personally very familiar with. Find out about these things, Thomas1, do not just repeat the talking points of the pro-aborts and the Statists in D.C..
The powerful media and political machinery of the pro-aborts makes many such claims, mostly false. Lies are their currency.
I discussed the criminality of abortion on some other thread recently and simply don’t have time to go back into it today here.
A mother who allows an abortionist to kill her child is (in my opinion) mentally sick (not JUST confused) and is GENERALLY not criminal (I say this with reservation however because too many women use abortion repeatedly as a form of birth control – there their criminality is all too evident).
I believe, however, that if the reality of abortion were fairly displayed in the mass media instead of being covered up and discounted, the use of abortion as birth control would plummet. Perhaps I have too optimistic a view of human nature.
The actual abortionists are criminally insane (sick, twisted, perverted, whatever) and should be treated as such.
The really culpable group, however, is the group made up of the enablers and supporters of abortion, such as this Kennedy character, the miserable subject of this thread. And Pelosi. And Obama. And Reid. Etc. Etc. They are NOT insane – but they are criminal. In a particularly reprehensible way, too; for they do not bloody their hands directly.
They are criminal because they support a Holocaust. How to deal with such craven cowards legally? I really do not know.
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Harris 11.24.09 AT 12:30 PM
Ok Pastor Roy, can’t leave the slur on Dems alone.
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The Party supports gay rights, killing of babies –
Michigan House is Rep Andy Dillon – support gay rights
Rep Bart Stupak (D-MI), – supports gay rights
“It is the existence of such politicians that in fact give the Catholic Church the ability to call some on the carpet. Others have figured out how to do this, Representative, why not you? ”
I do call them out as does other Christian.
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A bit of reality, please.
Drill’s link to abortion alternatives provides a map. Click on New York. Observe how many abortion alternatives are listed on the site for New York and where they are located.
There are more than 2.5 million people on Long Island alone. How many alternatives does the site show for this region?
Of course, there are ones which are NOT shown in Drill’s link. But PP is everywhere and well-advertised. Which do you think a woman in dire circumstances is going to turn to?
These are not talking points. They are legitimate weaknesses in the pro-life methodology. Someone serious about the subject would address these issues instead of dismissing them.
Because, by dismissing them, the disconnect between the goal and the reality become apparent.
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Thomas1 – how does the killing of babies fit God’s Word? An is it ok with God for Christian’s to support the killing of babies ?
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So if this Bishop next year says that someone should not receive communion because he supports barrier contraception within marriage, you’ll all be behind that too?
Kennedy’s position, like most who are pro-choice, is that abortion is legal — which is true — and should be covered by insurance. That’s an entirely valid opinion, and it doesn’t mean he likes abortion or thinks it should happen, just that he supports individual choice.
The Bishop is trying to impose church doctrine on everyone by punishing a Catholic politician who doesn’t believe the church doctrine should be enforced by civil law.
I wonder if the Bishop has advocated withholding communion from Republican Catholic politicians who support capital punishment, which Church doctrine also forbids. I wonder if he would refuse the sacrament to serial adulterer/divorcer/remarrier Rudy Giuliani — probably not, because he’s a Republican.
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Since when is it wrong to hold Christian accountable to the Christian Faith?
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Patrick Kennedy, NOT the bishop, made this a federal issue with his near-rants in the House and politicized his personal relationship with the bishop. Apart from murdering babies, that’s the point here.
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Conan, I’m not aware that anyone has forced Kennedy to be a Roman Catholic. If he doesn’t want to abide by the theology of that church, he’s free to choose another. My question is, what makes a person want to call himself a Roman Catholic if he doesn’t believe that what this Church teaches is true? I think the fact that the Kennedys are known as a Catholic family provides a huge clue–namely, it’s just a label he wears because it’s a family custom to do so.
If he wants to be a “Christian” who supports abortion, let him join the Episcopal or United Methodist church. As long as he has agreed to abide by the tenets of an organization, no one should feel sorry for him if he rebels against those tenets and is then reprimanded. Should we all really be crying over this rich, privileged, spoiled dude who apparently can’t deal with someone standing up to him? I think not.
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“So if this Bishop next year says that someone should not receive communion because he supports barrier contraception within marriage, you’ll all be behind that too?”
I’d be absolutely giddy about it. See, I’m not a Catholic, but I like it when people actually have principles.
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Would you argue that a woman who hires an assassin to kill her husband is mentally sick but not criminal, so no charges should be brought? You seem to apply a different standard which belies your “abortion is murder” rhetoric. Is it murder or isn’t it? And if it is, why carve out a new category of murderer — someone who acted with rational intent and forethought to end a human life, but is too “mentally sick” to face charges?
When these women are arrested, they would be entitled to a trial before a jury of their peers. To convict, a jury must unanimously agree that the woman is guilty of the charges. How many juries of 12 American citizens do you think could be convinced to convict the woman of murder?
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Nana it is ok for Patrick Kennedy,and other to make it a federal issue. It is not ok for the Bishop to point out that Patrick Kennedy,and other are not living their faith.
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The Bishop did the right thing.
The church has ignored sinful situations many times, allowing it’s members to live contrary to Biblical standards –
ALL churches would be wise to reassess what they turn a blind eye to, only to protect themselves from scrutiny.
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“Kennedy’s position, like most who are pro-choice, is that abortion is legal — which is true — and should be covered by insurance. That’s an entirely valid opinion, and it doesn’t mean he likes abortion or thinks it should happen, just that he supports individual choice.”
Just as Kennedy is not forced to be a Roman Catholic, he is not forced to be a politician.
It’s one thing to believe privately that an immoral activity should be allowed because it’s legal; it’s another entirely to go out in public and push for that activity to be more widespread. It’s yet another thing entirely to actually believe that the immoral activity ought NOT be legal, but apparently that kind of consistency of belief and loyalty to principles that transcend time and place is not an option in Kennedy-land.
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” wonder if the Bishop has advocated withholding communion from Republican Catholic politicians who support capital punishment, which Church doctrine also forbids. I wonder if he would refuse the sacrament to serial adulterer/divorcer/remarrier Rudy Giuliani — probably not, because he’s a Republican.”
Again, I’d be absolutely jovial if the Roman Catholic Church made the moral discipline of its members a higher priority, political affiliation notwithstanding.
And, again, I’m not Roman Catholic, but if the RCC wants to discipline its Republican members over support of the death penalty, that’s super. Nobody is forced to be a Catholic, and if one disagrees with the theology of one’s church, I have to wonder what he hopes to gain by remaining affiliated with it.
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CONAN – WHY should abortions be covered by insurance??
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Thomas1: The salient statement you make is that ‘Of course, there are not ones shown on the link’. I do not have any idea about NY, to be honest, but I note our services here (locally) are not shown on that same map, either.
I gave you that link as a starting point, only.
The only reality that means anything, Thomas1, is 3000 children a day in this country, alone.
And as I note, if abortion was openly and honestly discussed and debated and its horror shown in the political arena and in mass media and the entertainment industry, instead of its brutality being deliberately covered up and its use being encouraged as a form of birth control (using taxpayer funds, too), the number of abortions would plummet.
As I have noted before, over 50% of abortions are repeats – i.e. the mother is simply using it as a form of birth control. Those are clearly preventable-by-choice pregnancies, without using abortion as the selected birth control method.
No pro-lifer is ‘dismissing’ any real or perceived lack of alternatives to abortion as unimportant, Thomas1, and you are dissembling to put it that way.
However, if a mere fraction of the resources which go to the profit-based abortion industry and which are expended by pro-abort Statists went to alternatives to abortion (including education of the people of what abortion actually is), much of the problem would be solved.
The Democrats, by and large, are singularly uninterested in this – because they have made the cold political calculation that it is within their interest to support a Holocaust among children, in order to further their political interests.
And yet you and company want us to trust our overall health care to THEM?
Right.
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“The Bishop is trying to impose church doctrine on everyone by punishing a Catholic politician who doesn’t believe the church doctrine should be enforced by civil law.”
But you see, in the mind of the bishop, this isn’t merely “church doctrine” any more than “feeding the poor” is a position unique to the Democratic Party. The preservation of life in the womb is something that all people should favor, regardless of political or religious affiliation.
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“How many juries of 12 American citizens do you think could be convinced to convict the woman of murder?”
Probably around the same number of juries who would have convicted a slaveholder for beating his slave in the antebellum South.
I.e., not many, but this question is immaterial to the question of abortion’s morality. Slavery was eradicated, and hopefully abortion will be, too.
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JJF: As usual, you obscure on purpose, in order to further your political goal of aiding, abetting and enabling abortions.
As I have noted, we do NOT string Great-Granny up on the nearest tree when she, in a fit of dementia-induced confusion, runs Grandpop over with the John Deere tractor. We get her help, medicine, whatever, and take the keys of the tractor away from her. And count it great tragedy.
So a mother who allows an abortionist to butcher her child is not, in my opinion, in full possession of her faculties – she is mentally sick; with the above-noted reservations about repeat abortions.
Your transparent and malicious attempts to bring this discussion to how are we going to handle the criminalization of a mother who aborts her child instead of the only meaningful focus which is on eliminating abortion as birth control shows EXACTLY where you are coming from, JJF.
You actually fit rather neatly in the third group; the supporters and enablers.
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Hartris, your misunderstanding here is profound.
Harris wrote at #45 – “It is the existence of such politicians that in fact give the Catholic Church the ability to call some on the carpet.”
Harris, please read the First Amendment. No politican AND no political document has the power or the right or power to control the church in America with regard to their free dom of belief, practice and expression. Politicians and politics are not the source of the church’s calling or mission or authority and they are not empowered to deprive the church of that either.
Harris is mistaking the USA for a tyrany. We were founded as a gov’t of the people, by the people and for the people. Harris has greatly misunderstood the role of politicians with regard to the church.
In any event, the Catholic church was here (and had the right and duty to call members on the carpet) long before our entire political process was created in America.
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CONAN… wrote: “So if this Bishop next year says that someone should not receive communion because he supports barrier contraception within marriage, you’ll all be behind that too?”
I would still be behind his right to make that stand in his role with his church. It’s a free country (or at least it once was). His accountability on such things is with the church (its leadership and membership), not with politicians. And the accountability that church members are free to apply is in their choice to agrre or offer dissent within the framework of the church; or to stay or leave his umbrella of perceived authority.
CONAN… wrote; “The Bishop is trying to impose church doctrine on everyone by punishing a Catholic politician who doesn’t believe the church doctrine should be enforced by civil law.”
This is patently false, Conan… In your hypothetical, Conan, he would still not be describing or imposing policy for American citizens (let alone “everyone”). He is simply imposing church doctrine on the church, which includes its members, like Kennedy.
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And those members are always free to leave if they don’t agree. I fail to see why people expect the RCC to change rather than the individual who supposedly professes the faith.
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Conan… at #53 – “Kennedy’s position, like most who are pro-choice, is that abortion is legal — which is true — and should be covered by insurance. That’s an entirely valid opinion, and it doesn’t mean he likes abortion or thinks it should happen, just that he supports individual choice.”
This is precisely the position of many religious Southerners prior to the Civil War with regard to slavery. Most of them did not claim to like slavery at all. Many said they wished it didn’t exist in America. In fact, only about 3% of the people even owned slaves in many parts of the South. But they wanted it to be legal so that people could “choose” slavery.
Is that also an entirely valid opinion, Conan?
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I agree with you entirely: the difficulty in securing convictions says nothing about the morality of abortion.
But the question isn’t just the morality of abortion. It’s what laws should be in place regarding abortion. My point is that your top-down legislative approach (and Drill’s) is completely ineffectual.
I also point out that your position (and Drill’s) regarding punishment is inconsistent with your rhetoric that abortion is murder. Either you do not truly believe that abortion is murder, or you do not believe that all murder should be punished.
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CONAN… If the Bishop advocated withholding communion from Republican Catholic politicians who support capital punishment, he would be standing in direct opposition to Scripture (Genesis 9:6 and many other passages). With regard to abortion, he is standing directly WITH Scripture.
Nevertheless, CONAN, he would have that right to assert himself that way and the leaders and members of the church can hold him accountable to Scripture one way or the other or to leave if dissatisfied.
As to adulterers, all should be held up to church discipline and doctrine as long as they persist in that sin and refuse to repent. Once they repent and stop their adultery for good, they can be restored to fellowship. CONAN can isloate various figures, but the issue of adultery should not be decided by party or political affiliations–but only by repentance. CONAN needs to also make the determination of whether a sinner has personally repented or not, then offer opinions about church fellowship.
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As to abortion laws, it is certainly not a right. Actually, it directly contravenes the natural and legitimately legal right of others to life itself. The Supreme Court erred egregiously, obviously. The matter should be dealt with by direct debate and lawful process and not at the federal level. The people should decide.
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Abortion was illegal in this country until 1973, except in a few states, which had recently allowed it. Yet, women weren’t being gassed and killed right and left. What a false argument.
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Move Abortion to the Hospital and close down the money business that have made a living off of killing babies
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Once in the Hospital, the woman will have to prove that the Baby is a danger to her life before a Doctor can kill the baby.
If that happen Abortions will go down.
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Pastor — up date on the Kennedys: your point was that they were all corrupt. The case in point was brought.
And the gay rights thing? I thought the subject was abortion. After all, that’s the bright line with the Bishop and the Kennedy. There are some who equate gay rights and abortion as common evils, I would think there are some categorical differences — you know, like whether some one lives or not.
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Harris 11.24.09 AT 2:26 PM
Pastor — up date on the Kennedys: your point was that they were all corrupt. The case in point was brought.
And the gay rights thing? I thought the subject was abortion. After all, that’s the bright line with the Bishop and the Kennedy. There are some who equate gay rights and abortion as common evils, I would think there are some categorical differences — you know, like whether some one lives or not.
—
the issue is sin and the Churches, pastor/priest/Bishop calling people in power, who calls themselves Christian, to repent.
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JJF apparently is unable to understand the distinction between a person who is mentally sick, taken advantage up, etc. and is involved in the commission of a crime and a person who deliberately and coldly (and in full possession of their faculties) commits a crime.
He says a ‘crime is a crime’. Same punishment for everyone.
Or, wait.
Does not JJF support so-called ‘Hate Crime’ legislation, which assigns culpability to a criminals thoughts and motiviations while committing the crime?
Oopsie. Something stinks here.
JJF also says to Peter L. “My point is that your top-down legislative approach (and Drill’s) is completely ineffectual.
I also point out that your position (and Drill’s) regarding punishment is inconsistent with your rhetoric that abortion is murder.”
Baloney.
I have absolutely NO idea what JJF is fulminating about regards a ‘top-down legislative approach’.
Apparently, he has some sort of antibody system which prevents facts from lodging in his brain – facts regarding the existence – and need for expansion – of alternatives to abortion along with the proper education (in political, cultural, and religious spheres) of WHAT ABORTION ACTUALLY IS.
Further, he keeps coming back to the criminalization of the mother issue – which is not of great interest except to those who want to, through obscuration, maintain the abortion status quo – and to increase it.
The ONLY focus to a right-minded person is the reduction and elimination of abortion, through the closing down of the abortion butcher shops, the complete political and social repudiation of its enablers and supporters in the political and social world, education about what abortion is and what it does to both child and mother, and the expansion of life-affirming alternatives.
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Pastor Roy: “the issue is sin and the Churches, pastor/priest/Bishop calling people in power, who calls themselves Christian, to repent.”
The Bishop is doing his job.
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JJF says crime is crime on this one. Where did he stand on hate crimes?
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And social repudiation would be if we as a society said abortion is wrong the way we did before 1973.
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NJLawyer 11.24.09 AT 2:47 PM
Pastor Roy: “the issue is sin and the Churches, pastor/priest/Bishop calling people in power, who calls themselves Christian, to repent.”
The Bishop is doing his job.
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Yes, the issue is sin and I agree with Bishop, taken a stand. I wish more Minster would do it. God’s Word tells us “that Judgement shall start in the House of God.” I believe we have forgotten this when dealing with people like the Kennedy’s.
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David L. at #62: The problem is that the Bishops who occasionally speak up to say this or that politician should be denied sacraments or even excommunicated almost always do it over abortion. There are other political positions that are equally contrary to church teaching, but that are favored by conservatives otherwise, and I never hear of any American Church official saying the same about politicians who hold those positions.
So your giddiness may be misplaced, if you think this is about principle. It looks much more like political expediency to me.
Nana at #63: I’m not saying whether it should or shouldn’t. I’m saying that the responsibility of an elected representative is to represent all of his constituents, not to impose his own Church’s moral standards on everyone.
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Here is the inconsistency:
If abortion is murder, then those who hire a professional to carry out an abortion are hiring a professional to carry out a murder.
Under the law, they are guilty of murder.
You want to plead a “mental sickness” defense. But the law has reserved that for a very few people who are so disturbed that they are not aware of what they do. Even if we did allow that defense, those who plead it are not let off scot-free. They are committed to mental institutions.
In other words, if abortion is murder, then those who procure abortions must be punished as murderers (or criminally insane murders). Your unwillingness to commit to that is inconsistent with your “abortion = murder” rhetoric.
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Joel Mark: Regardless of whether punishing a pro-death penalty Republican would violate your reading of Scripture, it would be consistent with Church teaching. The RC are against capital punishment, just a much as they are against abortion.
You can argue with them about whether they should be, the fact remains that they are. And yet, somehow their American leaders overlook all the pro-death penalty Republican Catholics taking communion every week. (I specify Americans, because I believe RC Bishops in Europe and other parts of the world are more consistent.)
As for your comment in #69, the Bishop wants abortion to not be covered, and he’s using the tools he has available — wielding his control over the instruments of grace — to influence the politicians to whom he has access. It isn’t much and probably won’t succeed, but that is his goal.
The availability of contraception is less of an issue now, but as recently as the 1960s, state governments could still restrict it, even to married couples. My hypothetical is not so much hypothetical as historical.
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#85 “I’m saying that the responsibility of an elected representative is to represent all of his constituents, not to impose his own Church’s moral standards on everyone.”
First, “all of his constituents” include conservatives who oppose abortion. If representing his constituents means taking positions they agree with, he can’t possibly represent all of them.
If instead it means taking positions favored by the majority, since he was elected by the majority, then one would think he would make known his views on issues he has strong beliefs about, and the majority would elect him to represent them only if they agree with his positions on issues important to them.
If someone has been elected to represent people who have a very different view on an important moral issue from the elected representative’s view, it seems that it must be because:
A. He changed his views after being elected to office.
B. The people changed their views after voting him into office.
C. He misrepresented himself during the campaign.
D. The issue is really not all that important to him, so he didn’t bother to make his views known.
In this case, I have no idea if Kennedy’s views have changed, but I haven’t read anything to indicate they have. I doubt that the views of most of his constituents have changed. That leaves misrepresenting himself during the campaign, not really caring about the issue (at least not as much as getting elected), or that he really does agree with the constituents who want abortion readily available. None of those fit with accepting the moral authority of the Catholic church.
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JJF,
If abortion is made illegal, then the first thing to happen will be that doctors no longer provide the “service.” They should be prosecuted for performing abortions, but if they go out of business, women will not in general have to be punished for contracting for the murder of their unborn child.
There’s a difference, anyway, between the person who pays someone to kill their child and the person who does the actual killing. However, both are terrible crimes. Still, I think most of us would prefer to see the “doctors” who traffic in murder-for-hire prosecuted and put out of business.
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I do not say “crime is crime on this one.” I say that either you do not really believe that abortion is murder or you believe that some murders should go unpunished. That is a logical tautology. You cannot escape it.
Since I credit you with not believing that some murders should go unpunished, I say instead that you do not really believe that abortion is murder. If you believed that abortion was really and truly murder, you would not make exceptions for the health of the mother (how does her danger give her the right to murder an innocent human being?), or for rape and incest (how does the horrific conception give her the right to murder an innocent human being?). You would demand that those who commissioned the murder must be punished as murderers, not let off because really they’re victims, too (is there any other class of murderers you treat with the same leniency?).
Half-hearted measures intended to make your views more palatable to the public actually show the inconsistency between your rhetoric and your true belief.
That said, I am fully confident you believe that abortion is horrific. I know you believe it kills an innocent person. But you do not really see it as murder, plain and simple.
But to answer your question, I am against hate crime laws. If a man beats another, he should be convicted of assault and punished accordingly. Whether his motive was envy, jealousy, rage, or prejudice should not matter.
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Folks it is sin leading to sin.
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CONAN… please cite an example wherin a Republican Catholic made critical public comments regarding Catholic opposition to the death penalty in relation to a policy where he is taking a stand contrary to the Catholic doctrine, even after having been told in the past by a churchman that this was inappropriate.
I do not think this Bushop is being political at all. Not one bit! It is a moral and religious issue and the Bishop is acting responsibly and with integrity. And Kennedy (like the rest of us) is still free to have his opinion and vote his policy and deal with the consequences of that stand.
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Conan, you say, “The problem is that the Bishops who occasionally speak up to say this or that politician should be denied sacraments or even excommunicated almost always do it over abortion.’
Well, that’s all you hear about because it makes the news. Are you seriously claiming that nobody gets barred from communion in the RCC?
This happens all the time, and it’s really more mundane than you think. As my pastor says, this kind of thing is “boringly normal” across church history, and even our Reformed evangelical church bars people from communion occasionally. And none of the cases is about abortion or politics. It’s about morality. It’s called church discipline.
The only time you hear about church discipline is when it makes the news, and the only time it makes the news is when some liberal “hero” to the mainstream media goes against those nasty, evil priests and suffers unjustly from the “corrupt but all-powerful system.” It’s just a stupid morality-tale that fits the anti-clerical prejudices of the liberal media.
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CONAN… as to my comments at #59, the Bishop is accountable on this matter to his church, not to politicians. And Kennedy is accountable to the Bishop ONLY to the extent that Kennedy chooses to be as a member of the church.
And the Bishop is imposing absolutely nothing on anyone in the political realm.
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Great point David L.
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Ok. But some women will still procure an abortion illegally. They must be charged with first-degree murder, right?
What is that difference? Is there a difference between the person who pays someone to kill her husband and the person who does the actual killing? Is there a difference between the person who pays someone to kill her toddler and the person who does the actual killing?
Why would you prefer that?
My point in all this is that your very hesitancy to punish women who procure abortions is evidence that despite pro-life rhetoric, you do not really believe abortion is murder.
This is significant to me because I suspect that your moral intuition, not your rhetoric, is correct. It agrees with St. Augustine:
…and with St. Bede:
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Pauline: Or maybe it means that the majority of his constituents agree with his position. In that case it’s the Bishop who is asking him to ignore the will of the people who sent him to Congress.
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JJF: “Since I credit you with not believing that some murders should go unpunished, I say instead that you do not really believe that abortion is murder.”
You might be wrong on that one. Consider the burning bed case. That was clearly murder, certainly premeditated. I could see myself as a prosecutor in many instances not pressing charges. Probably wouldn’t be a prosecutor for long, but there it is. And back in the day in the courthouse I was considered by some to be “every prosecutor’s friend.”
So, you don’t really know…now do you?
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JJF,
That’s an interesting quotation from Augustine, but I’d have to say he’s wrong on this point. It’s funny, first of all, that he ties the soul to bodily sensation–as if paralyzed people have less of a soul than others. Second, if Augustine knew as much as we know now about embryology, I think he’d have a different opinion.
But still, the Didache (the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) predates Augustine and explicitly forbids the killing of a fetus by abortion.
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Insomuch as the mother-child life-affirming relationship is biologically special as well as spiritually sacred, the idea that, in general, a mother who acquiesces in the murder of her child by an abortionist is NOT mentally sick is completely counter to natural law as well as to spiritual law.
And yet JJF makes it over and over.
Note that a mother who coldly and deliberately and in full knowledge of what is being done has an abortion is, indeed, criminal.
However, most women who are given adequate information about what abortion is and are shown/experience the reality of their living child via ultrasound/etc. elect NOT to have an abortion.
The entire abortion process at PP and at abortion clinics is purposed and constructed to obscure from the mother the reality of the human life within the mother.
Once again, the ‘criminalization of the mother’ issue is a smokescreen thrown up by abortion proponents.
And once again, the ONLY focus to a right-minded person is the reduction and elimination of abortion, through the closing down of the abortion butcher shops, the complete political and social repudiation of its enablers and supporters in the political and social world, education about what abortion is and what it does to both child and mother, and the expansion of life-affirming alternatives.
Amazing how that statement scares the living daylights out of the enablers and defenders and supporters of abortion.
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I really don’t see where JJF thinks he’s going with this.
Abortion is legal murder: there are no legal penalties. If abortion were made illegal, then there would be. No one’s going to start trying to enforce the penalties before it’s made illegal, of course: that wouldn’t make sense.
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Where is the quote from Augustine located? A citation is needed. My searching on him brings very different results, eg,
Therefore brothers, you see how perverse they are and hastening wickedness, who are immature, they seek abortion of the conception before the birth; they are those who tell us, “I do not see that which you say must be believed.”
- Sermon 126, line 12
See more at http://priestsforlife.org/magisterium/earlychurchfathers/augustine.html
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JJF is certainly not going to where Drill is suggesting he go. Drill has told him over and over about enabling something that is totally morally wrong, but he just doesn’t want to get it.
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Drill says:
And once again, the ONLY focus to a right-minded person is the reduction and elimination of abortion, through the closing down of the abortion butcher shops, the complete political and social repudiation of its enablers and supporters in the political and social world, education about what abortion is and what it does to both child and mother, and the expansion of life-affirming alternatives.
Nope.
You’ll never get the political and social repudiation you want unless and until you address the very legitimate concerns facing women with unwanted pregnancies, what to do with 3000 babies a day regarding food, clothing and medicine, and how the practice will be punished once it’s illegal. It’s not enough to “cross that bridge when you get there”.
I am confident that a serious expression of concern and some practical solutions would pretty much eliminate abortion from our society. Asking for your ideas doesn’t make someone a defender, enabler or supporter of the practice of abortion, which as you say, has terrible repurcussions all around. It merely makes them an engaged debater.
They’re asking you to consider the terrible repurcussions of making it illegal, because there are indeed some.
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How naive to think that abortion is about food, clothing and medicine for these babies. Or is it more dishonest to say that? Abortion is about convenience.
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#104: It would be enforced just… like… any… other… crime? What would make it so much harder to deal with? How would food/clothing/medicine be dealt with for all the children? Um… just like with any other children? “Terrible repercussions?” Do tell.
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Do tell, indeed. Oddly, when our society was poorer and people worked harder, the baby got fed, the diaper got changed, etc., etc. This isn’t about “terrible repercussions” at all. It’s about selfishness and a lack of personal responsibility. Back in the day, I have no doubt that many families would have been happy to take a birth control pill or two, but that didn’t exist. They also didn’t seek out killing their en masse.
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Malthus is so 18th cent. There is no lack of anything needed to care for babies in this country and we’re certainly not over-populated. If PP really wanted to help women plan for parenthood, it would also help women through their pregnancies so the child could go to another family.
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Perhaps I am misunderstanding some fundamental point. Explain it plainly, and I will do what I can to understand it. I definitely get the feeling that I am not being understood.
I will be as clear as I can.
Here is a valid syllogism:
1. All who commit murder should be punished severely.
2. All who procure abortion commit murder.
3. Therefore all who procure abortion should be punished severely.
Since the syllogism is valid, if you disagree with the conclusion (#3), you must say that one of the premises (#1 or #2) is false.
So which premise is false?
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#109: Yes. Once abortion is made illegal, the women/abortion providers/boyfriends/husbands, I think, could be punished much the same as if it was another type of murder we were discussing. I’m thinking that the case of choosing the mother or the baby would work much like any other circumstance where a doctor must choose between two patients. Rare exception, not the rule.
Of course, that’s not going to happen now, because abortion is legal, and you can’t make a retroactive law. But once it is illegal, sure.)
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Folks we hear from the left, when a minster falls from grace, how we should be policing our own. An calling our own to repent.
Now we have a Bishop who is policing one of his own and call this person to repent. An the left he saying that we need to leave that person alone.
Any one else finds this funny?
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tjs catlover – instead of making it illegal,why can we not make it so the woman must go to a hosptial to have the abortion.
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Ok. So once abortion is illegal, women should be charged with first degree murder and punished accordingly. Depending on their state, that may be 20 to life or it may be the death penalty.
Do I understand you correctly?
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#112: Going to a hospital to commit murder is no better than going anywhere else. How would that help?
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tjs catlover 11.24.09 AT 5:50 PM
#112: Going to a hospital to commit murder is no better than going anywhere else. How would that help?
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First off by moving it to the hospital, the woman must prove that the surgery is need, To the Hospital, An prove that the baby is a danger to her life.
Second the woman can not use a false name and the Doctor now must obey Hospital Standards. That means no a one day visit kill to the child an send her home with no follow up.
Third the baby killing companies are now closed, no money being funneled to the Kennedy’s and Obama’s of the world
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JJF says: Here is a valid syllogism:
1. All who commit murder should be punished severely.
2. All who procure abortion commit murder.
3. Therefore all who procure abortion should be punished severely.
It is, however, not the correct syllogism.
Let’s try this:
1. All who commit murder and who are aware of what they are actually doing should be punished, with the type and degree of punishment commensurate with a number of factors, including motive, provocation, etc. Those who commit murder under severe mental handicap, sickness, or out of ignorance of the nature of the act itself are treated (and incarcerated as necessary), not punished.
2. All who procure abortion commit murder.
3. Therefore all who procure abortion should be either punished or treated, depending on #1.
I believe that #1 is more in line with our present system of justice.
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First off by moving it to the hospital, the woman must prove To the Hospital that the surgery is need, , An prove that the baby is a danger to her life.
Second the woman can not use a false name and the Doctor now must obey Hospital Standards. That means no a one day visit to kill the child an send the woman home with out no follow up.
Third, if something goes wrong people now know who to sue.
\Fourth the baby killing companies are now closed, no money being funneled to the Kennedy’s and Obama’s of the world
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#113: I am not a lawyer, and I understand the definitions of various degrees of murder vary depending on state and various degrees of mitigating factors. But, as a baseline, I don’t see why not. That’s obviously not going to be immediately attainable, but I’m thinking it should be the ultimate goal. As you say, if you believe the babies are people, treat them like people.
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Basically, start with the assumption that babies are people. There’s no reason to have a completely separate system for them. Treat the killing of a baby the same as the killing of someone else. Determination of degree, manslaughter, penalties, etc. can be the same.
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Most violent crimes are governed by state law, but there is a a federal “Unborn Victims of Violence Act.” It recognizes as a legal victim any “child in utero” who is injured or killed during the commissioin of a fedral crime of violence. The law lists 68 federal crimes that cover federal jurisdictions and federal officials.
The bill defines “child in utero” as “a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb.”
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tjs catlover by moving it to the hospital it becomes hard to kill the baby because it is going to cram someone life stlye.
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Remember this?
http://online.worldmag.com/2009/11/12/14-instead-of-13-deaths-at-fort-hood/
“Most news accounts on the shooting at Fort Hood reger to 13 dead, but let’s not forget there was a 14th victim: soldier Francheska Velez’s unborn baby.
The Unborn Victoms of Violence Act would seem to apply because it was committed on federal property, the shooting was done by a member of the military and it could be classified as an act of terrorism.
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25 states have FETAL HOMICIDE laws that recognize unborn children as victims throughout the period of pre-natal development. It seems we already have some legal guidance on this matter.
Crimes That Claim Two Victims:
http://www.nrlc.org/Unborn_Victims/Two_Victims/index.html
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Nana – I wonder if Obama and HOlder had something to do with not charging him with 14 deaths.
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Pastor Roy, do we know yet exactly what the charges are?
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Nana 11.24.09 AT 6:39 PM
Pastor Roy, do we know yet exactly what the charges are?
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I believe it was for 13 murders
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Just check 13 counts of premeditated murder
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So, it seems that killing a child in the womb isn’t murder because a mother hires a non-violent doctor to commit it.
This is what Patrick Kennedy wants to protect, not the baby. He should join another church and be quiet. What a spoiled brat.
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Nana “What a spoiled brat.” he a Kennedy
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People in the United States don’t know about these horrors. Nor do they remember what women’s lives were like here before abortion became legal. Before 1973, single women who got pregnant were fired from their jobs. Younger ones were sent to maternity homes for unwed mothers and their children were put up for adoption. Married women who got pregnant were forced to carry pregnancies to term regardless of their circumstances – even if they had so many children that they couldn’t afford to feed another one…
Ok all around?
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And a citation for that quote Thomas -
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#131: +1
#130: But assuming there is an actual citation,
“single women who got pregnant were fired from their jobs.” –Excessive. UnChristian as well. This, if true, doesn’t need to come back: it helps no one.
“Younger ones were sent to maternity homes for unwed mothers and their children were put up for adoption.” –The problem with this is …? If the “maternity homes” are there to help women with pregnancies …? And they’re not being forced to keep children they can’t support. Win-win?
“Married women who got pregnant were forced to carry pregnancies to term regardless of their circumstances – even if they had so many children that they couldn’t afford to feed another one…” –What happened to the adoption of the last example? Plus, contraception exists nowadays. And the church should help if they want the child. Family should help if the church doesn’t. If neither works, we’re back to adoption.
And abortions that take care of these “issues” are overwhelmingly ridiculously overshadowed by convenience abortions.
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#97 “maybe it means that the majority of his constituents agree with his position. In that case it’s the Bishop who is asking him to ignore the will of the people who sent him to Congress.”
Conan,
No, the Bishop is asking him to refrain from taking communion. If his own view is – like the majority of his constituents – contrary to the position taught by his Church, then he is sinning according to the faith he claims to hold. If the Church matters enough to him to want to take part in its sacraments, why does it not matter enough to shape his views on an important moral issue?
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Nana, you’re surely old enough to remember what it was like. There is a citation, from a doctor who testified at Roe. You can look it up.
Re: TJS -Example 2 is problematic only if the woman in question doesn’t want to go. Then it becomes incarceration. We don’t want that, do we?
Contraception existed then, and failed then. We are speaking of existing unwanted pregnancies. The Catholic rhythm method produced many a child. As to adoption… healthy white babies are in high demand. Others, not so much. And when they age out of the system without proper parenting… The church and family should help, if there is one and they can. But if they don’t, then what?
I’m not suggesting the children shouldn’t be born. I’m stating that facile references to abortion alternatives that don’t exist does not advance the agenda of fewer (or no) abortions.
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#134: If the woman doesn’t want to go? Then she can handle the pregnancy on her own. If she wants help, she can get it. But abortion is not an option. Is this not the philosophy of pregnancy resource centers? I don’t know about in the past: I’m not old enough, and I’m not a woman.
As an aside: I said before that if the choice is incarceration or murder, (you’d call it abortion), I’ll go with incarceration. We do all in our power to prevent other murders, why not abortion?
“healthy white babies are in high demand.” –I thought I heard that this was a myth. Anyway, every person I can think of that I know who has adopted children either adopted black or Asian kids.
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Pauline: Perhaps he believes that abortion is wrong, but because it is legal, thinks it would be wrong of him, as an elected representative, to impose his personal belief on others.
Do you support other cases where a politician might seek to limit your access to something legal, based on his religious beliefs which you might or might not share?
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Thomas, I remember when men didn’t want their futures ruined by by having fathered bstrds, when men didn’t want their reputations sullied by the consequences of their rapes, when men couldn’t face their own hypocrisy, when women were duped by men’s lust pretending to be love, when women bought the lie that a baby was just a bunch of cells, when radical feminists were wcreaming for a right to their own bodies instead of fiving the separate life within them the same chance they had, when Roe was decided on a lie with the most egregious reasoning, when Blackmun’s clerk said that as a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method that Roe borders on the indefensible. No one has produced a convincing defense of Roe on its own terms any more than the Dred Scott decision.
I remember when women would rather have life preserved in a family they couldn’t give them and didn’t have to live with the guilt of murder on their consciences.
I remember when women and men could make hard choices in favor of life.
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#136,
Conan,
The point I was trying to make is, how did he get elected as their representative to begin with? It’s not like he suddenly discovered he was elected and that abortion was an issue. It’s been an issue for three decades. Before he was elected, he knew it would be an issue. So does he think it’s wrong, but he chose to run for office representing people that he knew would want him to promote abortion rights? (In which case he can’t feel very strongly about its wrong-ness.) Or does he think it’s OK, and in that case why is it important to take communion at a church whose moral teaching he doesn’t feel obliged to follow?
As for your second question, “Do you support other cases where a politician might seek to limit your access to something legal, based on his religious beliefs which you might or might not share?” – I’d like to give you an honest answer, but I’m having trouble thinking of an example other than abortion. Can you suggest one?
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This is a distinction without a difference. Your #1 is not significantly different from my own. Mine was just less wordy. In our hypothetical, of course women who commit murder against their unborn children would be punished “in line with our present system of justice.”
You argue that these women are criminally insane, on the spurious reasoning that nothing could be more insane than denying the maternal instinct. Even if we overlook your faulty logic (equivocating on legal and colloquial definitions of “insane”), the law still treats criminally insane murderers harshly. Those women would be committed to mental institutions. Are you willing to say that this should be the punishment meted out to women who procure abortions?
Again, your unwillingness to see these women treated as murderers belies a lack of belief that abortion is really murder. If a man smothered his toddlers in their sleep, you would not argue that he is a victim who should not be punished but should be presented with “life-affirming alternatives.” Your moral impulse recognizes that man as a murderer. And your moral impulse fails to recognize aborting women as murderers. As does the moral impulse of the vast majority of Americans, including pro-lifers. I think that should inform our discussion of the topic.
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Pauline, check out the Patrick J. Kennedy II bio. Wikipedia is good enough with links. If he weren’t a Kennedy he wouldn’t have been elected to anything, let alone re-elected. His youth, addictions, mental health problems and family influence are all forgivable. As an adult, he seems to be using them to rationalize his failings and simply live up to the Kennedy reputation of getting away with his own defensive political ambitions, either not caring, or oblivious to the fact that he is being used by Pelosi & Co.
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Conan,
My understanding is that although the RCC is generally opposed to capital punishment in most cases, it is not forbidden. Murder is. Big difference.
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Thomas1,
You are trying to pass the responsibility of caring for unwanted children off on charitable prolife organizations. The primary responsibility lies with the parents!
Prolife orgs do try to help, but the parents are responsible. Nearly all parents know how to avoid causing an unwanted pregnancy.
It’s time for them to act (or maybe NOT act is more appropriate!) on that fact.
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JJF – you’re just talkng off the top of your head and ignoring the real world. Once the lying pro-abortion gangs involved the federal legal system, they ignited a fire that has no ultimate moral leg to stand on.
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And I just want to say, TJS Catlover, that I appreciate your logical consistency and your honesty in admitting to something unpopular.
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Also, it seems obvious to me one reason Patrick Kennedy likes to refer to himself as Catholic, other than family tradition, is that it’s worth a lot of votes in his part of the country.
Of course, claiming to be Catholic (or Baptist, or whatever) for the votes it will get you is not just a Kennedy thing!
But we can’t be sure of that, maybe he’s just “confused” about what it means to be a Catholic Christian!
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RRBAR, I’m not sure I follow you. Parents have a broader choice than avoiding pregnancy when they know a baby has been conceived.
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RRBAR, if this Kennedy is confused by his father and uncles about what it means to be a Roman Catholic, he’ll have a long political fall trying to ride the Kennedy coat-tails. Too much water has gone under the bridge. He needs to be his own man.
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JJF: You suscribe to me exactly what I said was NOT true. And you are flailing, as you well know. There is a HUGE difference between your definition of a murderer who murders in cold blood and an accomplice of a murder who is of unsound mind or mental condition.
As our present legal system fully recognizes, so your argument is, as usual, totally fabricated.
By focusing on the secondary victim (and accomplice, i.e. the mother of the child) in an abortion, you simply want to take the legal spotlight off the butchers in the abortion clinics who actually kill the children and you want ESPECIALLY to take the spotlight off the truly criminal enablers and supporters of abortion, including politicans and those so-called ‘citizens’ who vote for them and celebrate the butchery by their vote.
Wonder why, JJF? Oh yeah. We all know why.
That third category of enabler sort of rings your bell, doesn’t it?
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JJF, the distinction without a difference IS the difference. You are not thinking logically.
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Why does there have to be a difference?
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According to the pro-abortion-choice crowd, the decision of a mother to kill her baby is an agonizing ordeal, much like a wife who decides to kill an abusive husband and is then judged incompetent for the purposes of sentencing. The legal conclusions are based on the evidence of the woman’s state of mind. These are the mitigating circumstances on which a murder sentence is rendered.
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#144: Thanks. I try.
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TJS, I think because it isn’t any more cut and dry than self-defense in a domestic violence matter. The stae of mind has to be considered.
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I’m thinking there are two main effects of murder on a murderer. There is the spiritual effect and the legal effect. Spiritually, murder is a sin. (And a bad one, if we decide to make that distinction.) It has been so since the creation of the universe, and is unchanging. But, it can be forgiven, spiritually, as can anything else.
The legal effect is different. A person must deal with legal consequences even if they are forgiven spiritually. Legal consequences can change.
Murder and abortion are both sins, and, indeed, abortion is a subset of murder.
However, currently, murder is illegal, while abortion is legal.
The spiritual consequence is independent of that.
The pro-life crowd sees babies as people. I see babies as people. Legally, when you kill a person, that is generally murder, with varying legal consequences.
Therefore, I should think the goal of the pro-life movement would be that the killing of a baby is the same as the killing of someone else under the same circumstances. A premeditated abortion = a premeditated murder, etc.
Abortion is a different circumstance, and would probably necessitate some legal hoops. Like, just how responsible is a boyfriend who pushes for an abortion? Where exactly do the woman and the provider fit in? When exactly is accidental miscarriage manslaughter, and who exactly is responsible in various circumstances? Unfortunately, I’m not a lawyer, nor a judge, so I don’t really know fine points of law. Maybe I could research it. What I can say now is that I think babies are completely people and therefore should be completely legally treated as such.
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This Kennedy could go a long way in redeeming the shameful Kennedy legacy by standing up for and confirming the Truth of Christ’s and his church’s position on the sanctity of all life. Otherwise he’ll just go down as a another fool in rejecting God’s creations by rationalizing the murder of babies for convenience, legal punishments aside, he’s on the wrong side of history.
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TJS, please scroll up to my previous posts on this and google fetal homicide.
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Pauline: As for your second question, “Do you support other cases where a politician might seek to limit your access to something legal, based on his religious beliefs which you might or might not share?” – I’d like to give you an honest answer, but I’m having trouble thinking of an example other than abortion. Can you suggest one?
I alluded to one earlier: Contraception. Catholics oppose birth control just as much as abortion, but most Protestants part company with them there.
Until the Supreme Court overturned laws against contraception in Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 — using the same “right to privacy” principle they later used in Roe v. Wade — it was possible for states to outlaw it. Connecticut had a law, passed in 1879, that banned “any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception,” which Griswold overturned. The law applied to married couples along with unmarrieds.
Now, imagine if you lived in the years right after the Griswold ruling, and a Catholic Bishop said that Catholic politicians who supported contraception should be barred from the sacraments. Would you be as quick to defend the Bishop as you’re being here?
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I think someone’s missing something, and it’s quite probably me.
I didn’t think I thought any differently from other pro-life people, and I was surprised that JJF brought the issue up. Isn’t the entire point of the pro-life movement that babies are people?
So, like in all those laws you referenced, Nana, we’d just remove the exception for abortions? (As there would be no legal abortions?) Oh, and specify that it counts no matter the stage of development.
So, any woman who went out and got an abortion anyway would be guilty of paying someone to commit murder for her, under all the same laws as apply to such a circumstance, and perhaps a few that would have to be created to deal with any issues abortion uniquely brings up, if anyone can think of any.
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Grisswold v. Connecticut overturned an 1879 statute that was almost never enforced. As a precedent for “due process,” it was a fantasy stretch that Roe v. Wade twisted and used in its offensive reasoning. Building case law on these and ensuing decisions have killed a lot of babies.
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Conan, a Catholic bishop did not make a big deal out of Kennedy and communion. Kennedy did! It was not political until Kennedy thought he could score points by following Pelosi’s orders. If he keeps it up he’ll further erode his allegiance to the RCC. It has nothing to do with what happens in a bedroom, and everything to do with protecting the innocent.
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Google: Fetal homicide. Unborn Victims of Violence Act.
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Nana: It is true that Connecticut didn’t usually enforce the law, but the law was on the books and, before the Griswold ruling, could have been enforced at any time. Can you imagine having been using condoms with your husband for the past five years because you wanted to delay starting a family until his career was established, and having a new Catholic attorney general come in and decide that law should be enforced, thus making you a criminal?
In a free society, people in positions of leadership have to balance their personal convictions with what the public is legally entitled to. That’s all I’m saying. I don’t know what Kennedy thinks of abortion in his private life. He may be all for it or he may think it’s a grave evil. But whether he’s at one end of the spectrum or the other, or somewhere in between, his role as a Representative is to represent his constituents, not himself.
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And yet you have explained neither the difference nor the illogic.
Again, here is my argument:
1. All who commit murder should be punished severely.
2. All who procure abortion commit murder.
3. Therefore all who procure abortion should be punished severely.
The difference offered was that #1 should read “punished in line with our present system of justice (which treats those of unsound mind or who acted without intent differently).”
To which I say, of course. I never said any differently.
But I will make that clear in the argument, if it helps:
1. All who commit murder should be punished according to our present system of justice.
2. All who procure abortion commit murder.
3. Therefore all who procure abortion should be punished according to our present system of justice.
Fixed?
And still, most here hesitate to accept the conclusion of this valid (and, according to your presuppositions, sound) argument. Drill first said these women were criminally insane (an argument which would not hold up one minute in court), but refuses to say they should be committed to institutions as the criminally insane would.
He then implies they are mere accessories to murder. Again, this is an argument which, if abortion is truly murder, has no merit. The person who hires another to carry out a murder is not considered an accessory. She is just as guilty as the one who does the killing. But even so, he will not say that they should be punished as accessories to murder, who also get jail time.
So you (and he) have a problem. You call abortion murder. But you do not call those who procure abortions murderers. You want to exempt them entirely from the system of justice we have in place to deal with murderers.
This is logically inconsistent, and it betrays your lack of belief that abortion really is murder. If you really believed it was, you would treat the woman who procured an abortion the same as you’d treat the woman who drowns her babies in her bath tub. Her emotional state at the time may be an extenuating circumstance that should be taken into account, but she is a murderer all the same and must be treated as such.
So explain the error in my thinking. Or, if you can’t, respond with insults and impugn my motives. Drill manages to get by with that.
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#39 Thomas1
“But few people on the anti-abort side seem overly concerned with what happens to the baby, once born. “
My wife and I adopted three, at 12, 10 and 12 years. Is that good enough for you?
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Bob Buckles – I’m sure you love your children, and they you, making all of you fortunate. No one called you a hypocrite here.
But you solved a micro-problem. We’re speaking of the macro-problem of what to do with 3,000 babies a day.
Further up-thread, facile platitudes such as “the parents would be responsible” or women “would either go to a pregnancy center or handle the pregnancy on their own” reflect a similar disconnect between the real social issues facing both the women and the babies thusly made, and the proposition that once abortion is criminalized, much changes for both parties.
Note: Those of you who consider that women who abort could assert a defense of diminished capacity or insanity to a related murder charge… might want to rethink that. What about a woman who considers it and decides against it at the 11th hour? Is she still insane? Temporarily insane? And…
Is such a woman then automatically fit to raise a child? Do we haul in mental health folks to make sure?
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Thomas1- how does someone call him self or her self a Christian while supporting the killing of babies?
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The distinction without a difference argument made by JJF is absurd.
Even now we distinguish the act of murder in dozens, perhaps hundreds of ways, legally:
First degree, second degree, manslaughter, aggravated manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, not guilty due to insanity, not guilty due to mental incapacity, etc., etc.
Again, this is simply an attempt to take the spotlight off the butchers in the ‘clinics’ and most particularly off the REAL criminals (cold and calculating), the enablers and supporters of the butchery in the political, cultural, and entertainment spheres.
Thomas1: what do we do with 3000 babies a day?
We CARE for them is what we do; although if abortion was not available as a form of birth-control, that number would plummet.
But, however many there are, we do NOT KILL them.
Imagine that.
What a bizarre and old-fashioned idea.
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Right.
So will you affirm, Drill, that women who procure an abortion should be subjected to our system of justice, which will determine (based on their intent, their awareness of the crime, their mental fitness, etc) whether they should be charged with first degree murder, second degree murder, manslaughter, etc?
And then of course they must be subject to whatever punishment goes with that crime. Execution or life in prison if the DA can prove first degree murder. 5 years (with time off for good behavior) if he can prove manslaughter. Commitment to an institution if the result is not guilty due to insanity. Etc.
Right?
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drill question how does someone call him self or her self a Christian while supporting the killing of babies?
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jjf – the same question
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And if not, Drill, then by refusing to prosecute murderers, are you not an “enabler and supporter of the butchery in the political, cultural, and entertainment spheres”?
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Conan,
I did use contraception the first two years of marriage, but it would hardly have been a terrible thing if it were not available. We waited because we had heard recommendations to give ourselves a couple of years to get to know each other before adding a third person to the mix. After our second child (which took seven years of trying) and a difficult pregnancy, I had my tubes tied. But if I hadn’t been able to have that done, I would not have been greatly worried about having another child – it didn’t seem likely. And if we did have one, maybe we’d have the girl my husband hoped for.
(We’ve talked about adopting a girl, not an infant but a somewhat older child, but when our younger son turned out to have autism, we decided bringing in another child who would need extra attention – since an older child would be bound to have some issues due to whatever circumstances separated her from her birth parents – it would not be in the best interests of either of them at this time.)
So I can say easily enough that I would not be greatly bothered by a representative making it harder to get birth control, but I don’t have much of a stake in it personally. I also can’t imagine that it would gain much traction politically, so I wouldn’t be worried that the availability of birth control would actually change. I would applaud a representative being consistent with his own moral convictions even if they differed from mine.
But all that is still peripheral to the question of why I might have a representative whose views differed from mine unless mine were the minority view and I didn’t vote for him. If the majority want abortion to be available, they vote for someone who intends to keep it that way. Presumably that’s what happened with Kennedy. That’s the way our system works.
What doesn’t make sense is for Kennedy to either oppose abortion personally but intentionally get elected to a position where he will take the opposite position, or to be OK with it personally – and still expect to be in communion with the Catholic church.
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JJF: You have a problem.
Your problem is this: You know you are absolutely in the wrong in your support and enabling of abortion. All of natural law AND whatever rudimentary smattering of spiritual understanding you still retain informs you of this.
Your response is this; you will somehow attempt to find a way, however ludicrous, to cast those who want to STOP the butchery as SOMEHOW aiding and abetting abortion. I am not sure why, except perhaps it salves your conscience. Whatever.
You cast yourself in the ridiculous light of a hypothetical German seventy years ago who maintains that those who want to close the extermination camps are therefore responsible for the extermination going on in the camps!
You are told by your culture, which owns you, mind, heart, body, and soul, that you are ‘okay’ on this issue.
Well, you are not ‘okay’.
You have tried to fabricate your way out of it as always by ignoring the central question of your own complicity and guilt in the murder of children – and by making obtuse and fantastical side arguments which are utterly irrelevant to the ongoing butchery.
This attempt to deflect the attention from the raging river of the innocent blood of children, caused by that which you support, is truly pitiable, JJF.
What is it about saving lives that you find incomprehensible?
And a question for myself (and others here) – why even bother asking?
We already know the answer.
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Repeated:
Conan… at #53 – “Kennedy’s position, like most who are pro-choice, is that abortion is legal — which is true — and should be covered by insurance. That’s an entirely valid opinion, and it doesn’t mean he likes abortion or thinks it should happen, just that he supports individual choice.”
This is precisely the position of many religious Southerners prior to the Civil War with regard to slavery. Most of them did not claim to like slavery at all. Many said they wished it didn’t exist in America. In fact, only about 3% of the people even owned slaves in many parts of the South. But they wanted it to be legal so that people could “choose” slavery.
Is that also an entirely valid opinion, Conan?
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Drill, you have a problem too.
By painting people who oppose abortion as actually supporting it because they ask (very) pertinent questions and point out logical inconsistencies you lose their support.
By referring to the practice of abortion using technically accurate but incendiary language (”baby killers”, “raging river of innocent blood”), you invite similar comparisons from the other side: “misogynist”, “treating women as incarcerated receptacles”).
Neither of these things advances the very valid cause of reducing and eliminating the practice of elective abortion in American society. In fact, this thread could show as an example of how not to persuade pro-choice people to the contra position.
My issue with your approach centers on facile dismissal of issues such as medical care, costs, and how best to encourage adoption. JJF is focusing on whether you believe it should be prosecuted as murder. (You raised a mental health defense, then dropped it when the question came up that if a woman who considers abortion must be mentally ill, perhaps she isn’t fit to raise the child if she changes her mind.) I, too have issues with the problem of criminalization and punishment and how it would best be handled.
Upthread, you stated that the ONLY consideration is making abortion illegal.
It’s clear from this thread that this is not true.
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Thomas1 can you please answer my question, thank you
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Pastor Roy, I’m sorry, but no.
You’ve acknowledged having limited writing skills, which is not as much problem in dialoguing with you in this format as you might think.
However, complex discussions cannot be reduced to sound bites. You have a tendency to ignore points made by other posters and your own posts lack enough substance to enable others to form a response. Further, your cheapening of 9/11 in a vain attempt to make cheap political points yesterday left this New Yorker both disgusted and sad on your behalf.
Until this changes, I can’t engage you in conversation here. Sorry.
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Thomas1 – the fact is you can not call yourself a Christian an support the killing of baibes.
AS for my written skills that is an just a reason to avoid the truth of the issues,
As for “Further, your cheapening of 9/11 in a vain attempt to make cheap political points yesterday left this New Yorker both disgusted and sad on your behalf. ”
The fact is Obama has a history of relationship with people who has attacks NY Police Office and the Military.
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There is no different in the cowards that attack Police Station and the Military with bombs i the 60’s and the Cowards that killing our people on 9-11.
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“However, complex discussions cannot be reduced to sound bites. You have a tendency to ignore points made by other posters and your own posts lack enough substance to enable others to form a response”
when it is God’s Word, there is no discussions. What God Word calls a sin is a sin.
As for “lack enough substance to enable others to form a response” your problem is you can not twist your far far left views in your response.
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Drill:
Again you refuse to discuss the topic and respond instead with insults and inferences about my evil motives.
I want only to arrive at a right understanding of what abortion is and how it should be dealt with in the public sphere. I notice that though you keep saying it is murder, you do not treat it as murder. I find this inconsistency significant in coming to a right understanding. If even the moral impulse of its staunchest opponents cannot consistently treat abortion as murder, then we should not treat it as such.
I have discussed my own position on abortion before. I hesitate to do it again because it only invites more lies and abuse from you on an issue that I find very serious. But I realize my line of questioning has led to the impression among others whom I respect that I am pro-choice, which is not true.
So I’ll explain my own view. I believe that at some unknown point in its development, the fertilized egg becomes a person. Though Augustine’s term has limited use in a secular society, I’ll use it: at “ensoulment” the fetus becomes a person.
After that, it is morally wrong to kill it. It ought to be illegal to kill it.
And, to answer Pastor Roy’s question, I will say what Drill will not:
It ought to be a criminal offense to kill a baby.
But this of course leads to the larger problem in the abortion debate: enforcement. If abortion is criminalized, how would we punish women who illegally procure abortions? Again, our moral impulse rises against that idea. Is this a fault of our moral impulse, or do we correctly recognize that it would be unjust to punish a woman for that. But if it is unjust to punish a woman for abortion, then how can we say it is wrong for her to procure one?
These are questions I do not know the answer to. My mind is divided between the logical force of the fetus-is-a-person argument and my uneasiness with its consequences. It cannot reconcile the logic of the “abortion is murder” argument with everyone’s refusal to treat it as such.
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But, JJF, fetal homicide is a federal crime in certain instances, so we have a legislative history from where to begin the process of refining murder charges for those involved in aborting babies.
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jjf – since we can not make it against the law at this moment. I am in favor of moving it to the Hospital.
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Nana – how are you today?
I am sad Mr. Thomas1 will not talk to me.
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There is nothing complex about abortion. Cries of complexity simply form a smokescreen to mask the horror from view and to enable the butchery to go on.
As does the cries for ‘more civil’ language. What utter nonsense.
Let us by all means come up with more tolerant, softer word-choices and acronyms to describe genocide; that word, after all, so offends the genocidists among us, and just so does not move the debate forward.
Let me rewrite the relevant part of the Parable of the Good Samaritan for JJF and Thomas1:
Then, lastly, there was a Samaritan who was traveling on that road between Jerusalem and Jericho and who happened upon the beaten, robbed man.
Now this Samaritan was concerned and really wanted to help.
So he immediately left the man there, still bleeding in the road, and traveled into town, had dinner, then checked to see if there was a room available at the inn where he could lodge the man.
The innkeeper told him that he could get better rates if he waited until the weekend to get the room.
This seemed a good idea to the Samaritan so he waited until the weekend.
In the meantime, he organized a bake sale and collected donations in order to raise money to help the victim back on the road.
He did not raise quite enough, so he decided to wait until his next paycheck came in, which was only in two weeks.
But, in the meantime, he had formed a discussion club focused on debating the various techniques available for giving aid to the beaten man; he wrote a monograph on the stupidity of a few of the townspeople who actually wanted to go back immediately and help the beaten man, submitted it to the Journal of Left-Wing Charity, received favorable reviews, rewrote it, had it accepted and it was published.
He was invited to speak at numerous conferences on his activities in support of the beaten man and so had to put off going back to actually help the beaten man.
In the course of time, he was instrumental in forming an Institute, composed of all the latest thinkers and intellectuals, which was dedicated to bringing help to the beaten man on the road.
He was eventually elected President of this Institute and became a world-acknowledged authority on bringing help to the victim. This Institute employed two hundred thousand workers world-wide.
Anyway, eventually the Good Samaritan died, without actually ever getting back to that road between Jerusalem and Jericho.
Which was a moot point anyway, since the beaten, robbed guy died the same day the Good Samaritan had originally found him.
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Hi Pastor Roy, I’m fine enough.
Worse things could happen than T1 impolitely singling you out. But when we all post, we post to everyone. Right?
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drill – can you answer my question please.
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Nana 11.25.09 AT 1:11 PM
Hi Pastor Roy, I’m fine enough.
Worse things could happen than T1 impolitely singling you out. But when we all post, we post to everyone. Right?
–
Yes, we can pick and chose who to respond to and not.
As for young Mister Kennedy, his problem is he was not taught God’s Word.
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Drill:
For something “not complex,” you sure have a hard time answering a simple question about it.
If abortion is murder, then women who procure abortions are murderers, right? They should be subjected to our system of justice, which will determine (based on their intent, their awareness of the crime, their mental fitness, etc) whether they should be charged with first degree murder, second degree murder, manslaughter, etc?
And then of course they must be subject to whatever punishment goes with that crime. Execution or life in prison if the DA can prove first degree murder. 5 years (with time off for good behavior) if he can prove manslaughter. Commitment to an institution if the result is not guilty due to insanity. Etc.
Right?
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Drill, I really don’t need you to re-write parables for me. I could do the same and it would be childish, so I won’t.
It’s clear that you’ve missed the point. In fact, an argument can be made that it is *you* who is trying to mask the horror which everyone, including the baby faces when it comes to abortion. You just want it stopped at any cost. The problem with that is that some of the costs are the very lives you purport to want to save.
Your refusal to discuss the legitimate concerns surrounding criminalization of abortion belies what I believe to be your very sincere commitment to the issue.
We can agree to disagree… or rather, agree that abortion is evil and should be stopped, but disagree on the idea that valid solutions for all concerned need to be considered on a very practical level.
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Pastor Roy: Your question in #169?
I do not know how someone can support killing children (either by word, deed, or vote) and yet call themselves Christian.
Could King Herod call himself a Christian, even as he was ordered and organized the butchering of the children in Israel, in the failed attempt to eliminate the Christ?
Could the worshipers of Moloch call themselves Christian, even as they threw their children into the fiery maw of their idol?
I think not.
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drill – thank you
JJF can you please answer the question.
Thomas1 can you please answer the question.
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Nana, there was nothing impolite or “singling out” in my response to Pastor Roy – he asked a direct question, and I answered it with a polite explanation, which I felt the man deserved.
Though it is quite clear that you and I have very, very divergent ideas about what’s polite and what isn’t.
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Does ABORTION equal FETAL HOMICIDE? Yes. It’s time to overturn Roe and deal with everyone’s right to life.
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Thomas, elaborating on a person’s shortcomings that bother you was not, I think, your best form. I simply thought you could do better.
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JJF and Thomas1: Neither of you have made any effort to understand (or you pretend to not understand) the numerous posts which repeatedly answer (for instance) your peripheral and useless question regarding the legal status/treatment of secondary victim (and accomplice) in an abortion, the mother.
You are terrified of the real problem – yourself. Because as a facilitator (whether by word, deed, or vote), you will do and say anything to attempt to deflect the cold and clinical truth of what you facilitate.
One last effort because to argue with a person who will so resolutely defend the indefensible is a waste of time:
If abortion is made illegal, the actual murderers will be put out of business. If abortion is openly and honestly described, whether it is illegal or legal, the incidence of women who attempt to obtain an abortion (and proceed) will plummet. And the hypocrisy, bestiality and criminality of those who support it will be exposed for all to see. As has been repeated endlessly above and just as endlessly ignored by you, in the event of abortion being made illegal, a woman who proceeds to obtain an elective abortion in the face of all this, would indeed be subject to prosecution for the murder of her child.
Thomas1: I did not really rewrite the parable for you.
I think you are still struggling a bit with the meaning of the original version.
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“Thomas1: I did not really rewrite the parable for you.
I think you are still struggling a bit with the meaning of the original version”
Drill – Wonder if he is struggling with how his world view fits with God’s Word. He comes across as a very smart person, who lacks Spiritual understanding of God’s Word.
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Drill – I Wonder if he is struggling with how his world view fits with God’s Word. He comes across as a very smart person, who lacks Spiritual understanding of God’s Word.
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Nana – choosing to disengage with someone in a debating forum deserves an explanation, especially when he asks a direct question. “I don’t like you.” or “I disagree with you.” are sufficient, but neither are really true in the case of me and Pastor Roy. Not all of us communicate the same way, but sometimes that makes discussion just not worth the effort. I think that calling his attention to this issue may help. It may not, but I tried.
Drill, the idea that you view such concerns to be peripheral and trivial proves my point completely, as does your angry tone and the fact that it took almost 200 posts for you to answer JJF’s simple question. This does not fill me with glee. Rather, it showcases the idea that while abortion can be viewed as an objective evil, stopping it is far more involved than most pro-life folks care to admit.
As to whether or not I understand the parable of The Good Samaritan, I submit that this does not concern you. Rather, it’s between me and God. Since I’m not Catholic, any intercession on my behalf is neither welcome nor required.
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I answered the question in post # 49, Thomas1. First time I was asked it, I believe.
An ‘angry’ tone proves your point? What point is that?
And you seem to be confusing the term ‘angry’ with the phrase ‘clinically accurate descriptions’ once again.
Further I never said that criminality issues involving the mother in an abortion were ‘trivial’. Another lie. Not as important as the saving of a human life, yes. But please do not fabricate what Drill says.
It would seem that my revision to the ‘Good Samaritan’ parable was well-targeted, after all.
Perhaps, however, I should have retitled it, just in your honor, so to speak.
The Useless Samaritan would have worked better, I do believe.
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Oh, Drill, your giblets seem to be in a perpetual uproar. I apologize for poking them through the bars.
As for things being useless, I posit that blanket calls for banning abortion which don’t address all issues raised here are precisely that: useless.
I’d rewrite the myth of Sisyphus (Drillyphus?) from this perspective, but clementines won’t find their way into the cranberry sauce all by themselves. Happy Thanksgiving.
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Happy Thanksgiving to you, too, Thomas1.
In the short interval that this thread has been active, approximately 4000 to 4500 children were murdered in abortion ‘clinics’ in the U.S., from sea to shining sea.
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There it is!
Now was that so hard?
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What seems hard, JJF, is for you to apply your reading skills.
That question was answered quite adequately and fully dozens of times on this thread, as you know.
The only really hard question is one that should trouble you very, very much and one you spend enormous effort avoiding.
But, unless I am much mistaken, it bothers you very little, if at all.
Which is sad.
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Drill, I know of 38 foster children who have been adopted recently – two in my extended family.
Two college-age expectant mothers are living with families I know.
One expectant mother I know is in a Catholic home for unwed mothers.
A local pro-life pregnancy center has received more baby clothes, furniture and maternity clothing than it has room for, but it’s going fast.
A family down the street is getting more support than they expected from neighbors for their daughter who is pregnant after a raped.
Open adoptions are not uncommon, and mothers and children of closed adoptions are reuniting with each other and the adoptive parents – all grateful for each other, including myself.
My stomach goes into knots thinking of the innocent dear ones denied their chance to live by by adult non-aborted babies who only see the negative aspects of God’s gift of life.
The living have much to be grateful for, whether they know it now or not.
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One way to help with adoption is to find a way to lower the cost. So more people can enford it,
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Well, this is an interesting thread.
We all agree on the main point, and yet there are still 200-ish posts arguing it.
What’s the problem? Everyone agreed, I thought, that the pro-life position argues that abortion is murder, with the appropriate legal consequences when it is hypothetically enforced.
Where we disagree is whether the pro-life position is the right one.
Am I missing something?
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Nana: I agree with you whole-heartedly. We are involved as well in both pre and postnatal pro-life organizations and there are a lot of opportunities out there – and pressing needs, too.
TJS Catlover: Nope, you nailed it.
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sill, I so much appreciate all your faithful and cogent scriptural comments. We have to keep reminding double-minded nit-pickers of our adherence to God’s order, whether we understand it or not. His ways are higher than ours and that’s what we follow instead of second-guessing and selectively pre-empting His perfect values.
Man’s law changes according whims majority emotions, yet we hold fast to “first things” and trust our Father to direct the paths of all the ones He loves. I know that you know all this. It is not the Sysiphus struggle. The battle is the Lord’s.
I’m confident you will have a thankful Thanksgiving as I keep you and yours in my prayers.
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You probably know that 209 was for you, DRILL – I don’t know what happened.
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Joel Mark at #174:
The issues are not comparable. The slaves were unquestionably persons, born and, in most cases, grown up. There was no ambiguity at all about that. There is with the unborn. You regard the unborn as fully persons, but the law and many other moralists and ethicists argue that they are not.
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Don’t you remember, Conan, when slaves were NOT full persons/citizens under the law??? Where do you find the legal ambiguity on that apart from politics? “Person” is an arbitrary legal concept based on utility and convenience.
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Nana: Slaves were never not persons. (If you’re talking about the “3/5 of a person” provision of the Constitution, that was about determining the number of representatives, not about the individual slaves. There was already a conflict between the slave states and free states, and the compromise was that slave states could only count 3/5 of their slaves when deciding how many representatives they got. The goal was to limit the Congressional power of the slave states.)
An adult black man or woman is a person, whether slave or free. A two-month embryo may or may not be, depending on who you ask, on what criteria you use to define it.
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The Bishop wrote a private, confidential letter to Kennedy because Kennedy was publically asserting that he was a doctrinally pure Catholic while berating the Catholic church for its opposition to abortion funding. Kennedy made the letter public, not the Bishop. The one intejecting the contoversy into the public record in an attempt to influence policy is the politician, not the priest.
Augustine and Bede lacked the technical advances in the field of embryology that we enjoy today.
Murder is a term of legal definition, as is the concept of personhood. The act of incorporation creates an entity, an association of persons or a business that is treated as a separate person under the law. A fetus might not be a person under Roe v. Wade, as slaves were not persons according to the Dred Scott decision, but a genetically distinct living human being is killed during every abortion.
The laws against abortion that existed prior to Roe v. Wade were laws against medical practitioners only. Abortion was the crime, not murder. No mother was ever prosecuted for performing, seeking or undergoing a medical procedure for which she had no training or expertise. She was considered another vicitm. Nor could, for practical purposes, a doctor be prosecuted successfully if the prime witness was made by law complicit in the crime and could therefore not be compelled to testify.
My sister delivered a baby while unwed in 1969. She was not fired, disowned, or sent off to a home. She was allowed to give her up for adoption rather than compelled to raise her. Because a doctor with a financial interest in performing abortions testified so, doesn’t make the claims absurdly false.
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The problem, TJS Catlover, is that everyone did not agree on that. It took Drill 200 posts to reluctantly affirm that he would see aborting women prosecuted as murderers.
He’s not alone in that. Most pro-lifers (you being a notable exception here) hesitate to say “the mother must be punished as a murderer.” Many agree with Sarah Palin: “And, um, if you’re asking, though, kind of foundationally here, should anyone end up in jail for having an … abortion, absolutely not. That’s nothing I would ever support.”
We apply a different standard to aborting mothers than we apply to murderers. I find this worth discussion.
Now, I know Drill is saying “I said that all along,” but it’s just not true. In fact, it was exactly his dithering response in post #49 –
–that led me to ask why he would
For the record, here are his responses.
Ok, repeat aborters are “criminals,” but he still hasn’t said they should be punished as murderers, which is precisely the point. So I ask again.
Again, it sounds very much like Drill is not willing to treat these women as murderers (i.e., let the courts decide if they are of sound mind and fully aware of what they’re doing, then mete out punishment according to the laws regarding murder). Isn’t it odd that one would find it “of no great interest” whether murderers are paying for their crimes?
So the strategy is to say they’re mentally unstable. As I point out, this argument would not hold up in court (where the requirements for the insanity defense are more rigorous than Drill’s “could any sane person do a thing so unnatural?”). Also, it is not an argument we would advance for a woman who hired an assassin to kill her husband.
Again Drill vaguely admits that a few women who murder their babies are “criminal,” but it is of no great interest to him (as he said in #80) what happens to them. This I find very inconsistent.
It’s not as simple, he says, as punishing them as murderers. You have to take into account their mental derangement. Ok, then. Wouldn’t you let the courts decide if they were deranged? And if so, wouldn’t they be committed to a mental institution as other criminally insane murderers are? I ask him exactly that, and he responds:
So he doesn’t want them treated like murderers. They are in fact victims. They’re not the real killers.
Again, a position that is entirely inconsistent with the belief that abortion is murder. The analogy of a woman hiring an assassin to kill her husband again applies. She is just as guilty as the assassin. She is in no way a victim of the assassin.
When finally pinned to the wall, Drill acts like he’s been saying all along exactly what he very conspicuously would not say.
So there’s the problem. As Drill clearly demonstrates, our moral impulse hesitates to punish aborting women as murderers. We want to call them victims, or mentally unstable, or just misinformed. And they should be let off for that, we say. Never mind that the murder laws already have ways to deal with people who are mentally unstable (criminal insanity) or act in ignorance (manslaughter). We want an entirely different standard for these women.
The very fact that we undertake such contortions to avoid the blunt force of a very simple syllogism — abortion is murder, and murder is a crime — indicates that the problem is, indeed, complex.
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Well, I did not know that JJF was still arguing that the morality of killing children is ‘complex’.
I suppose, following his Messiah, he might even say it is ‘above his paygrade’.
JJF makes an incredibly long complex post which totally (and, as usual, purposely) misrepresents what was said on this thread.
The question regards the guilt and treatment of the secondary victim in an abortion (the mother – who also is the accomplice to the murder) has been answered NUMBERS of times, quite adequately, by a number of posters on this thread. JJF lies when he says it was not.
I refused to be diverted by this red herring from the central focus which is on the absolute complicity of those who like JJF support, enable and celebrate via their actions and deeds (as well as their words) in the genocide of abortion. Again, JJF lies to us, to himself (perhaps) and to the author of Life about this ONLY critical point.
JJF and others like him are the exact equivalent of the facilitaters and supporters of the Holocaust in Germany 70 years ago. He knows it and does not have the basic integrity to admit it and move on.
There is nothing complex about abortion.
There is nothing complex about evil.
And there is nothing complex about JJF and the other supporters of abortion in this country..
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The attempt to make complicated the clear absolute of a moral question such as abortion is as old as Man himself.
And so the debate began in the Garden: surely you will not die, for when you do THIS, this and that will happen and that will not happen – it is so much more complicated than just ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, you see, and that tyrannical Creator who gave you breath does not want you to understand the wonders and entertaining complexities of these sorts of questions and that, really, there is no such thing as absolute good or absolute evil – just varying shades of endlessly debatable gray, you know!
Bleah.
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I quoted you directly.
And yet again, your post does not in the least address my argument — that our hesitancy to prosecute women as murderers belies an inability to treat abortion as murder. And, yet again, you instead asserts secret motives that supposedly direct my posts.
Then why do you want to treat aborting women differently than you would treat other murderers? Other murderers would have their day in court. The courts would decide if they are mentally fit, if they were aware of what they did, and punish them accordingly.
Drill, you are regularly personally offensive. You go out of your way to do it. I have not treated you that way. I haven’t seen anyone else on this thread treat you that way. Are you unable to discuss a topic without resorting again and again to insults and claims about how the evil motives you invent for your opponents means you don’t have to bother answering their arguments?
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JJF: No, I am not ‘regularly personally offensive’ toward you.
But please leave off with the implied notion that abortion is just another issue, like how much to raise property taxes or whether we should change immigration laws or even nationalize health care, etc. and that ‘decent’ people can argue about the complexity of the morality of killing children, as you regularly do.
A politican who supports abortion is rotten to the core, regardless of their stance on any other ‘issue’ – and anyone who knowingly supports that politican, including you or anyone else, likewise.
I will admit guilt, however, that I am indeed offensive toward your affirming ‘position’ on the murder of children – and whatever toxic motives that brew inside you which inspires that unsupportable position.
Deal with it.
Or don’t.
Your culture lets you sugar-coat your support of abortion and even calls it good.
I won’t.
And that is your problem, should you choose to make asinine remarks (complexity) about the ‘topic’ of abortion.
Supporting evil is your choice, not mine.
But calling you out (and others like you) on it is what I do and what I am required to do.
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Ken (214) makes a very good point about the crime of abortion. I’ve never called abortion murder, though especially in later stages I would think it should be seen as some kind of homicide. And unlike some others, I see no moral problem in charging the woman who intentionally procures such an abortion with a crime. The only justifiable reason that I can see to get or give an abortion is to save a life—literally.
The arbitrary, deliberate killing of a human being should not be a matter of an individual’s choice. Arbitrary killing is immoral, and should be immoral by anyone’s standards. Though they would deny it, I think many abortion supporters know this intuitively. It shows in the way abortion clinics are shielded from the kind of regulations hospitals have, and women in clinics are not given full disclosure about what is actually happening in the procedures.
All that being said, I still supported Obama in the election. We’re in tremendous economic crisis, and I thought he could stabilize the economy faster and with less trauma to those most vulnerable in such a crisis. That’s good for all of us. Also, I have not seen a credible challenge to the idea that the unborn fare better in a good economy, since there are fewer abortions in a good economy. So, I hope Obama is successful in turning the economy around soon. I couldn’t support him over the long haul for many other reasons.
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So you feel it’s your mission simply to post every now and again and call me evil.
You don’t care to explain or justify your double standard. You deny complexity even as you treat abortion differently than other murders (the very definition of complexity — that it requires differential treatment). You just post every so often with EVIL BABY KILLING ENABLER GUILTY NAZI.
Alright. I’ll deal with that. And you deal with this:
You hold a position that you cannot or will not logically defend.
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Not calling you evil, JJF. The position you hold on these threads is evil, however.
There is no ‘double standard’, except in your own mind, or rhetoric, more than likely.
Abortion is murder and it needs to be stopped in its tracks.
There are Absolutes; your fear and terror of that fact is justified. Your denying it is not.
A decent person does not stop to review the ‘complexities’ of the situation when they see someone being murdered in front of their eyes.
They stop the murder.
What part of that position that I hold needs a ‘logical’ defense to satisfy a moral relativist such as yourself?
Finally:
Given the anonymity of the internet, For all I know, you could be a faithfully pro-life person very cleverly posting as a pro-abort in order to demonstrate the deviltry (and the moral/spiritual absurdity) behind the pro-abort position and the idea of the relativity of killing children.
And for all you know, I am a pro-abort posting in order to attempt to paint pro-lifers as ‘inflexible’ and ‘unwilling to see the complexity of the issues, the gray areas, blah, blah, blah’ and ‘verbally abusive’ because clinically accurate language is used to describe abortion and the link is made directly back to abortion supporters and enablers.
Whatever. Grow up – you defend the murder of children and I call you on it for what it is.
And that simply makes you livid.
Well, great.
Maybe that is the first step on the road back to a sense of humanity, and a moral clarity on the black and white question of whether or not the butchering of children is acceptable.
One can always hope.
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Those who commit murder under severe mental handicap, sickness, or out of ignorance of the nature of the act itself are treated (and incarcerated as necessary), not punished.
That may be how Drill wants our criminal system to work, but that’s not how it works, nor how Americans want it to work. Our prisons are full of the severely ill, ignorant, and deprived. We imprison people because we are mad at them and want to damage them. We say it’s for our protection, and we continue to harvest new generations of criminals. We imprison people unnecessarily and have no interest in treatment.
I’d be all in favor of allowing Drill to write criminal laws against abortion provided he applied the same procedures to all crimes. I’d like trials to be less about what lawbreakers do and more about their mental handicaps, neurosis, fears, ignorance, conditioning, and limitations. Anyone who steals anything other than a pack of hamburger meat must be severely mentally ill. Anyone who punches you in the face must be emotionally damaged and needy of help. Anyone who defrauds the treasury must be a candidate for intensive psycho-dynamic therapy. Etc.
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Yes, there is.
We just spent 200 posts with you unwilling to say that women who procure an abortion should be subjected to the same legal process that all murderers are. If there were no double standard, you would not hesitate to say that the woman who procures an abortion should be tried with whatever the DA thinks he can prove.
Then if the woman’s defense can establish insanity, she should be treated accordingly (committed to a facility for the criminally insane). If the woman’s defense can establish that she didn’t really know what she was doing, she would be treated accordingly (convicted of manslaughter and sent to jail for 5 years or so).
You were unwilling to affirm that. You instead said that the mother who hires a professional to murder her unborn baby is “generally not criminal” but is “a secondary victim” whom you and all “right-minded people” had “no great interest” in prosecuting.
That, Drill, is a double standard.
You see, you have one standard for murderers, and another standard for women who procure abortions. Your standard is something like this: only repeat offenders should be prosecuted. The rest should be seen as mentally unstable victims. You do not hold that standard for women who hire assassins to kill their husbands, do you? Does everybody get one dead husband for free, then after that they have to go to court and explain themselves to a jury?
And I talk about this not just to embarrass you. It’s a wide spread double standard. Sarah Palin, the poster-girl of the religious Right, is even more egregiously illogical:
So you, like most pro-lifers, call abortion murder, but you are unwilling to treat it as such. What should we make of that?
Or am I wrong? Will you here affirm that women who procure abortions should be subjected to exactly the same judicial process as women who hire assassins to kill their husbands? If that judicial process finds them of unsound mind or unaware of their crime, then they get off with their lighter sentence. And if it doesn’t, these women get life, or death, according to the judicial process of their state.
Will you affirm that?
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JOEL MARK The Bishop is not walking into the legislature or any political sanctuary to impose his opinions and rules there on anyone.
The bishops actually had envoys on Capital Hill urging representatives to vote for Stupak.
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