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I came across the following letter from Roman Catholic Bishop Paul S. Loverde of the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia in the Arlington Catholic Herald newspaper. It is a most appropriate letter given that many who call themselves Catholic and Orthodox oftentimes dismiss the need for legal protection of the pre-born as something that is only one of many issues when, in fact, it is the primary issue. As Bishop Loverde aptly puts it: "If we do not uphold and protect human life in its beginning at conception, there will be no life to uphold and protect thereafter." My mother also told me what her pastor taught in his homily at the Divine Liturgy in her parish this past Sunday: "If you do not make the protection of human life paramount and instead choose to vote for pro-abortion candidates, then please do not call yourself Byzantine Catholic because you are not."

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Pre-Election Letter to the People of Arlington

By Bishop Paul S. Loverde
Special to the HERALD
(From the issue of 11/2/00)

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

On November 7, we shall have the privileged opportunity to exercise our God- given right and moral responsibility to vote in the national, state and local elections taking place on that day. I urge you to participate in this very important process whereby we can join our fellow citizens across this state and country in choosing candidates who will "contribute to the building of a society in which the dignity of each person is recognized and protected and the lives of all are defended and enhanced" (cf. The Gospel of Life, 90).

These days, so much in the newspapers and on radio and television focuses our attention on the forthcoming elections. As faithful citizens, we must weigh carefully the issues facing our nation and our world, and the positions which the various candidates take on those issues. In November 1998, the United States Bishops issued Living the Gospel of Life: A Challenge to American Catholics and in September 1999, Faithful Citizenship: Civic Responsibility For a New Millennium. These documents both offer Catholics guidance in considering seriously their responsibility as citizens and examine a number of issues which have social and moral implications for the welfare of all our citizens and the future of our country.

In Faithful Citizenship, the bishops highlight four moral priorities, which are the concerns, not only of Catholics, but of many people of our land. These priorities enable us to weigh carefully the issues facing us and the positions of candidates on those issues. These four priorities are: protecting human life, promoting family life, pursuing social justice and practicing global solidarity.

Last week The Arlington Catholic HERALD concluded a four-part series on these priorities.

Obviously, protecting human life is the most basic of these four priorities, since the other three would be rendered meaningless without the first. If we do not uphold and protect human life in its beginning at conception, there will be no life to uphold and protect thereafter. As we read in Living the Gospel of Life, "We cannot simultaneously commit ourselves to human rights and progress while eliminating or marginalizing the weakest among us" (20) �. "Human life must be defended in all places and at all times" (33). To be a faithful and serious Catholic necessarily means that one is pro-life and not pro-choice. To be pro-choice essentially means supporting the right of a woman to terminate the life of her baby either pre-born or partially born. No Catholic can claim to be a faithful and serious member of the Church while advocating for or actively supporting direct attacks on innocent human life. Moreover, protecting human life from conception to natural death is more than a Catholic issue. It is an issue of fundamental morality,
rooted in both the natural law and the divine law.

The Church's God-given responsibility is to propose the Truth, thereby offering people the proper criterion for examining issues and making informed decisions that are moral and positive.

"Catholics are called to be a community of conscience within the larger society and to test public life by the moral wisdom anchored in Scripture and consistent with the best of our nation's founding ideals �. Our responsibility is to measure every party and platform by how its agenda touches human life and dignity" (Faithful Citizenship: Civic Responsibility For a New Millennium, p. 8).

As citizens and Catholics, we must be involved in the political process and in the electing of our local, state and national leaders. "The arena for moral responsibility includes not only the halls of government but the voting booth as well" (Living the Gospel of Life, 33). Once again, I urge you to weigh carefully the issues and the candidates from the perspective of the four moral priorities I outlined above, especially the priority to protect the human life of all persons, pre-born and born.

Looking forward to the elections on November 7, I designate Monday, November 6, as a day of prayer and penance in our diocese. Participating in the Eucharistic Sacrifice, visiting the Blessed Sacrament, praying the Rosary, performing penitential acts, such as eating less or refraining from a favorite food: these make tangible our deep desire that the elections will result in leaders who will protect all human life, promote the family, pursue social justice and practice global solidarity - leaders who contribute to the renewal of our country and society by enabling all citizens to restore the culture of life.

I remain one with you in prayer and penance and in the exercise of our privileged right to vote.

Most Rev. Paul S. Loverde
Bishop of Arlington

Thanks Moose for this excellent posting.

The following came from an item that ran in the Sunday bulletin of Epiphany of Our Lord BCC a couple of Sundays ago and which I then posted in our mission's Sunday bulletin...

>>>>>>
"Is the Next Step the Killing of Newborns?" � The month of October had been designated as "Respect for Life Month." But we must remain vigilant throughout the year to protect life�from the moment of conception to natural death. Mary Beth Bonacci, a lecturer for young Catholics and featured speaker at this year's Byzantine youth gathering at Mount St. Macrina, Uniontown, Pa., recently issued the following warning in the "Arlington Catholic Herald": Professor Peter Singer, an ethicist at Princeton University, teaches that babies should not have the protection of the law. In an article titled, "Killing Babies Isn't Always Wrong," Professor Singer writes that a month after a baby is born we should hold a little ceremony admitting the baby to the community and the protection of the Constitution, provided the child is not "defective." If the child is defective, the community should take appropriate action [kill the child]. Peter Singer is of the opinion that while a newborn baby is human, it is not a person. Professor Jeffrey Reiman of American University agrees, saying that infants do not "possess in their own right a property that makes it wrong to kill them." Other university professors who teach young adults and our future leaders have taught the same opinion. In 27 years we have gone from abortion being unthinkable and illegal, to legal abortion, to partial-birth abortion (where the infant is half-delivered and then killed). It is not impossible that the current opinion of these professor would soon be law.
>>>>>

It would be nice, however, if we did have a clear choice between state and national candidates when it came to issue of protecting human life... especially the unborn. But there are very few candidates that offer a true defense of human life position. Many may be against late-term abortions or partial-birth abortions, but they begin to waiver on first trimester abortions or aborting children with known birth defects. In addition, many so called "pro-life candidates" are staunch defenders of the death penalty.

I guess I'll just keep praying and end up voting for the candidate who is the lesser of two evils. May God forgive me.




[This message has been edited by rick neimiller (edited 11-07-2000).]

<b><font color=blue>Brother Rick --

That statement by Mr. Singer should absolutely chill the blood of anyone with any sense of divine morality and justice. You are right. We have gone from abortion to outright murder and the quiet in regards to this gruesomeness is hideous.

I have a question which continues to nag at me. If my thoughts are out of bounds, please feel free to rebuke me.

If I saw a man chasing a 10 year old boy down the street with a butcher knife and shot the man dead, thus stopping the intended murder, neither the Church nor the state would hold me culpable.

Why is it that the Church does not believe in stopping murder by abortion by whatever physical means necessary, providing no life is lost? There seems to be a strange disconnect between the two scenarioss I presented above.

Those who protected the Jews during World War II, especially one Pope Pius XII, were hailed as heroes, even though they broke the laws of Germany. I am sure that those who were rescued from the ovens were grateful that their rescuers didn't just say "We'll say a nice Rosary for you" but instead put feet to their actions.

In looking at the population of Catholics, especially in such heavily union dominated cities like Philly and Pittsburg, I must think that there have been an awful lot of disobedient Catholics in the voting booths tonight. If everyone in this country would live out their Catholic faith, non of the pro aborts would have a chance of a snowball on a hot July day.

May God have mercy on them when they stand before Jesus and try to explain why their wallets were more important than babies lives.

Defensor Fidei -- thoroughly disgusted as I watch the returns.

There is one Evangelical "doctrine" I firmly believe in: The Remnant. It sure helps me sleep well at night, even in a world that places more value on sea turtles than children.


The secular world, including the majority of Christians live in an asylum of topsy-turvy "morality" that our Christian ancestors would find incomprehensible. Catholics are just as prone to aborting their babies as Protestants; ironically Jews, who are overwhelmingly pro-choice, seldom have abortions!


We live in a world of moral,as well as "statistical," chaos. All the more reason to cling to your faith and find comfort in the fact that you are not alone: The Lord always has His remnant who remain strong and firm in the face of spiritual-moral indifference and apostasy. These remnant followers are your brothers and sisters and in this case, the water of baptism is thicker than blood!
Keep the faith and faith will keep you.

Having spent the last week with union members all over Pennsylvania encouraging them to vote, as well as looking at the exit polls showing Gore doing 10 points better with Catholics than Protestants, and our internal AFL-CIO polling data, I would offer some advice to those concerned with Catholic voting behavior.

1. Unlike Protestants where the more Church-going tend to vote Republican and the less church-going vote Democratic, among Catholics, little difference exists between the Church going and the inactive. Interestingly, while Church going Catholics have a negative reaction to any suggestion that they are being "told" how to vote by Church authorities, they tend to agree strongly with the Church in her public policy proposals (pro-life and pro-social justice, i.e. "seamless garment.") Their consistent support for the Church's teachings often leads to a dilemia in the voting booth. They tend to lean Democratic.

2. Inactive Catholics, while more likely to be pro-choice nevertheless lean Republican based on tax policy.

3. Mass going Catholics (rightly or wrongly) tend to see pro-life candidates who other wise lack any compassion or support for Catholic social teachings as insincere and ineffective in protecting the unborn or advancing a culture of life.

4. Here in Pennsylvania, Catholics seemed quite dimissive of appeals to them as Catholics to vote for Bush solely on the abortion issues, when the same sources opposed three statewide pro-life/pro-social justice Democratic candidates. I had scores of people bring me a flyer appealing to Catholics reflecting the above with Catholic voters making it clear that it had no credability with them because of the above mentioned issue.

I guess it also didn't help that the Philadelphia Inquirier ran a story on the Republican operative in Pennsylvania leading the effort to tell Catholics they should vote for Bush because of the abortion issue was also a major fundraiser for the pro-abort GOP Governor Ridge.

K.

<b><font color=blue>Kurt --

You fail to realize that while abortion is the prime issue at stake, there is a great deal more about the Democratic party which is anti-Christian in principle than just one issue.

1. God's Law forbids stealing from others. This includes government licensed stealing by taking my tax dollars against my will and supporting things which I find reprehensible as a Christian. It does not make it "not stealing" for the government to do it!!

2. God's Law forbids sodomy and other sexual perversions as well as sex outside the marital bond, yet the Democratic party just falls all over itself to legitimize such behaviors, often at the expense of parents whose backs they go behind in schools to teach students the "how to's" of sexual intimacy.

3. God's Law forbids that we treat holy things with disrespect, yet it is the Democratic liberals who are always carrying on about "artistic freedom" when some pervert with a cause submerses a Crucifix in a jar of urine and calls that "art".

4. God's Law teaches the right of private property, yet the Democratic party continues to take more and more of the property and rights of the wealthy away from them under the guise of "helping the downtrodden".

Why is it that I am suppose to consider giving my tax dollars to some strung out crack head in San Francisco to be an exercise in "social justice" because this degenerate is considered "disabled" and therefore entitled to Social Security disability payments?

Why is it that anyone who insists upon a certain standard of public morality and decenty is vilified by the leftist liberals in the Democratic party as if we are on the verge of enacting Hitler's Germany circa 1939?

You somehow have bought into the world's notion of what social justice is and who is supposed to administer it. In the process, your Democratic cronies have spent almost 5 TRILLION dollars on all their feel good social programs and the cities are still filled with the poor and downtrodden.

This is the very reason why the Church should be the institution which administers social reforms and compassions. Whenever you let those who are distinctly either non Christian or nominal Christian at best, it is not long before you find them elbow deep with their fingers in the cookie jar!!

Charity first of all begins at home. It is MY responsibility to take care of my parents, not yours!! To take dollars from your wallet to pay for my parents Social Security and Medicaid is immoral, unjust, and just plain thievery. And in the case of my parents, who, due to wise investing by our families, are quite well off, it is also not necessary. Many, many older Americans are equally well off, and for them to expect for you and I to pay for their medications and provide a monthly stipend for them so that they can have a retirement which resembles paradise on earth is just not right.

"Yes, but" I hear you reply, "there ARE millions who are not that well off!! What of them?"

Well, what of them? Have they no family? No children (Remember HONOR THY FATHER AND MOTHER?). No "church family"? Are there no charitable funds they can appeal to?

My point is and ever will be that government is a lousy dispensor of social justice and compassion. Our failed "Great Society" proves that in spades. Just where did 5 TRILLION dollars go to anyway in just 30 years. You could have given everyone on welfare a check for $25,000 every Jan. 1st for the last 30 years and not have spent half of that!!

While I am not saying that the Republicans are "simon pure" or above their own brand of dirty tricks, their agenda is at least closer to Biblical morality than that of the Democratic party, which is just simply about as anti-Christian as you can get!!

I find myself wondering what motivates a person like you to be part of such a party? Would you care to explain it to me? I really, really would like to know, after 8 years of lies, fornication in the White House, selling our secrets to the Chinese, breaking the law of the land, more taxes, repeated attempts to legalize sodomy, etc., what makes the Democratic party of any interest to one who claims Christ as Lord?

I hope I have not been too offensive here, but I see a real disconnect between the things a Christian should stand for and the things the Democratic party endorses.

Will you talk with me about it?

Defensor Fidei

For Kurt:

Just an FYI. Sorry I can't locate the page on the Post-Gazette website, but the newspaper's day-after election results showed that Gore won on by a 3-1 margin within the City of Pittsburgh, taking all 30+ wards. In Allegheny County, I believe he out did Bush by 100,000 votes, Although some of the "wealthier" suburbs went for Bush.

For TruthSeeker:
I understand your anger, especially in regards to the issue of murdering children. But don't lay all the blame on the Democrats. This is not a forum of,for, or against political parties. This is a forum where we can examine our own individual actions as Christians. Just by booting out Democrats or keeping in Republicans does not necessarily a "kinder and gentler" country make. One reason unions came about (and supported whole-heartedly, especially by the Roman Church) was due to the almost inhuman working conditions imposed upon laborers by their "Christian" employers... many of whom were not Democrats.

General Observation:
It is interesting to me that based on the multitude of posts over the past couple years when various individuals have tried to "prove" the authenticity/incorruptability/legitimacy of their respective Churches, they always bring up the culpability of other Churches in direct acts of murder, subjugation, and the conspiracy of indirect acts of silence and complacency. As several folks have said, all of our histories are suspect, but we live in the here and now. What do we now, what do our Churches do now to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, ...?

Bring up the issue of papal infallibility, or the immaculate conception, or the term "Orthodox in union with Rome" and watch the "big board" light up. All of our regular armchair theologians are typing their fingers down to the numbs. Bring up an issue, as Moose did here, on an subject that has direct bearing on our lives and the lives of innocent children and the phone lines seem to go dead. Yes, there are groups that support abortion; but there are groups that support the death penalty.There are groups that support governments that torture, murder, steal, and practice genocide. No one group, no one Church has been free from the blood of innocents. The question is: What do you and I do about it?

[This message has been edited by rick neimiller (edited 11-10-2000).]

[This message has been edited by rick neimiller (edited 11-10-2000).]

Glory to Jesus Christ.

Bring up the issue of papal infallibility, or the immaculate conception, or the term "Orthodox in union with Rome" and watch the "big board" light up. All of our regular armchair theologians are typing their fingers down to the numbs. Bring up an issue, as Moose did here, on an subject that has direct bearing on our lives and the lives of innocent children and the phone lines seem to go dead. Yes, there are groups that support abortion; but there are groups that support the death penalty. There are groups that support governments that torture, murder, steal, and practice genocide. No one group, no one Church has beem free from the blood of innocents. The question is: What do you and I do about it?

I promote prolife on my site. I was undecided until the last days before the election who to vote for: a conscience vote for Pat Buchanan (my comments on him, including criticism, are on my politics page, titled �Monarchy�!) or, better still, Alan Keyes, someone who deserves to be president... or do I do the bidding of the cynical GOP and vote for the only candidate (an empty suit AFAI can tell) being presented as a viable alternative to rank proabortion Al Gore? Well, I held my nose, voted for W by default and of course prayed... and my state went to Al anyway. Whichever man gets the title, nothing really will change. At least I felt better voting for Dole by default in 1996: even though he�s Establishment and most likely New World Order, I liked what I knew of him as a person (disabled World War II veteran) and feel he would have made a respectable if not distinguished president who hopefully would have �quietly governed�.

Of course I have a problem with Bush�s alleged overuse of the death penalty.

<A HREF="http://oldworldrus.com">Old World Rus�</A>


[This message has been edited by Rusnak (edited 11-10-2000).]

There is a great deal of cultural work to be done by the churches outside the realm of politics.

The most recent issue of Touchstone magazine features an interview with Aidan Nichols, a British Dominican. He was asked: �But how does the Church do that (express the notions of unity, truth, goodness and beauty) when people have no instinctive belief in any of them?�

Part of his response was very telling: �Part of what the Church can do is to attempt to purify and reorder people�s imaginations. Another part is to attempt to clarify their ideas, or the ideas that they may be supposed to, imbibe from reading the newspapers or watching television, etc. And part of it is, of course, moral suasion -- trying to have an influence on them by all the means that moral rhetoric can provide.�

These are some terrific marching orders! I think we can have our most powerful impact on society by cleansing and transforming it, person by person, not just voting the rascals out.

In Christ,
Steven

this simple minded thinking is so alarming. when we vote on a single issue disregarding all other issues, we are most likely going to be hoodwinked. first of all, the rest does matter (vote for stalin or hitler because they are pro-life? why not?) second we are most likely being hoodwinked as one candidate poses as a supporter of an issue for the sole purpose of getting votes and is no more committed to that issue than he is to the common good. WE all have to vote for the party and candidate which stands for the common good. i recognize that there are different appraoches to that BUT when a candidate tries the old trickle down (if the rich are rich enough the poor can get table scraps) most of us are setting ourselves to being sheared. wake up. abortion is not the primary issue, people are, all of us. i do regard abortion as a sin, i am totally against it, however i think it is a spiritual and moral issue rathr than a legal one. we get those who are pro-life but pro-death penalty? is there no life involvedd here. it is so easy to support this narrow view of pro-life, since for most of its supporters it never touches them. i may have known people who had abortions, but they did not consult me if they did. perhaps some in my own family had abortions, but they knew what i thought and did not inform me. but to make this the prime issue and elect someone who is in all other issues morally evil is evil too.
the mess in florida is a sign of the mess in our entire election process. 70 billion they report for this election. who bought what? someone is buying a president thats for sure.

>but to make this the prime issue and elect someone who is in all other issues morally evil is evil too.<<

Sorry, but this is utter nonsense and it is wrong of you to call one of the presidential contenders evil because neither are evil, although the liberal one has abandoned much of his original Christian morality for political expediency. If one has no respect for life and will not put the fight for life first, then nothing else matters. I am constantly amazed to see Christians falling to the liberal mantra that abortion is only one of many issues when it is clearly the primary issue. Those who seek to pursue social justice carry no credibility when they choose to ignore the slaughter of innocent human life. Social justice must be pursued at all times on all levels.

Is one of America's political parties holier or better than the other? No. But one political party clearly promotes the culture of death (which is excellently summarized in previous posts) and wishes to confiscate our tax dollars to pay for it. The other has at least a semblance of decency and morality and wants to move away from socialism to allow faith-based organizations to take up their proper role in caring for the poor. Remember that it is not the job of the government to care for the poor and those in need. It is the job of the Church - us - to do this. And if you want to compare socialism to capitalism one quick way is to pick any of the socialist and former socialist / communist countries and compare it to the United States. We, sadly, have poor among us and must continue to help them. But our poor live in abundance when compared to most of those considered wealthy in Africa. We will not assist the poor by forcibly stealing from the rich to bring them to the level of those who have not. We need to assist them by feeding them and teaching them to help themselves.

I'm curious, wasyl1931. You wrote that "to make this the prime issue and elect someone who is in all other issues morally evil is evil too." Did you realize when you wrote this you were calling the Catholic bishops of the United States evil? In their November 1998 letter entitled "Living the Gospel of Life: A Challenge to American Catholics" (and other letters) they clearly teach that abortion is the prime issue. Since Pope John Paul II teaches the same thing to the entire world you must consider him evil, too.

is that why the "moral" ones brought us into the greatest national debt ever, ordered attacks on major countries like grenada and panama, but this is fruitless. i accept you are stuck where you are. for you, "liberal" means bad, "conservative" means good. i supppose. i dont know what those words mean in todays vocabulary. taking from the poor to make the rich richer is as great an evil if not a greater evil than abortion, making the poor poorer and thus more desperate simply makes them more liable to evils such as abortion. if you call an opportunist who is owned by big business and cares nothing for anyone who works for a living good, then we are not talking the same language. there is no conversation possible. to say neither is evil is as much of a judgment as to say that one or both are? i dont judge the men, i do judge what they stand for and what they do. one stands for the powerful, the other for the common man. if 60+% of blacks vote for one man, if maajority of those over 65 vote for one man, if majority of those in unions vote for one man, it would seem that is the man who stands for them. i am not black but i stand with the blacks and all oppressed people. so, i stand with the man who stands with us. bye as would Jesus i think. He doesnt mention standing with the rich man, i donot think***

<b><font color=blue>*SIGH*

Do I really want to type this?

DO I?

Well, since I am sitting here thinking it, might as well get it off my chest and let people perhaps respond to it.

Would you mind telling me, Mr. 1931, how the blacks are being exploited by the Republican party? Give me some concrete examples please, of how we devilish white folks just want them to fry our chicken, shine our shoes and shut up. I don't see it, and what I have seen is that those who wish to succeed do and those who wish to fail, do.

There is no such thing anymore as defacto segregation in this country. That problem has been remediated back in the 60's. The problem now is with those people who would rather miseducate the black man (and Indians and Hispanics) in the inner city, thus keeping them poor and on the reservation. Sound familiar? Like, perhaps, the NEA and the liberal agenda for education?

As for the shouting about the death penalty, I am distressed that people do not understand the difference between INNOCENCE AND GUILT. Why do Catholics continue to try to be kinder than God Himself, Who, the last time I looked, still has a place of torment called HELL reserved for the wicked and fully intends to send the wicked there.

In short, if God is for the eternal death penalty for wicked, why do we think that the wicked should get a pass here on earth?

Would someone give me a good answer for that, please.

And finally, I noted that my statements regarding the party platform of the Democrats and how it totally opposes Biblical morality has gone unanswered. Either you don't have an answer or you realize that any answer you try to give is going to put you on the side which is against the standards our Lord gave to members of His Kingdom.

Weeeeeelllll?


Brother Catechumen Ed

Brother Ed,

BRAVO!

brother ed, might i remind you that the pope and the catholic church has taken a strong stance AGAINST the death penalty? if you want to know if blacks, or other minorities, are still exploited and treated unfairly, ask them. as for your "moral" man, isnt he the one arrested three times? isnt he the one who refused to answer about his drug use? isnt he the one who evaded the draft by a cushy spot with the national guard? isnt he the one who prepared for the presidency by the life of a playboy and ownership of a sports team rather than a life of service? isnt he the one who presides over the worst polluted state in the usa? one problem with the Eastern churches is this knee-jerk reaction which spills over into bigotry and certainly into simple-mindedness. back again, if you are a "moral" "Catholic" praising anti-abortion stances, why then also praise the death penalty which the Churh you belong to condemns. when asked about the FACT that they were executing innocent men, your moral hero said in effect that was the breaks. i wont continue this line, it is clear that you are not up to any logical argument, and your bravo friend can see what kind of hell may await all who are on the side of those who kill people, whether through the law or through attacking small countries. i remain an outraged Catholic.