Showing posts with label American Life League. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American Life League. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Making a Deal with the devil


Bzz bzzz bzzzzz! Did you hear about the Catholic bishops' conference being in bed with the pro-aborts?

Bzz bzzz bzzzzz! It's the Catholic Campaign for Human Development! They gave money to the socialist baby-killer-backers!

Bzz bzzz bzzzzz! The head of the place was on the board of one of those commie-lib poverty-pimp outfits. And they're backing gay marriage and abortion rights!

Ohmigawd!

OF COURSE, the American Life League and the Bellarmine Veritas Ministry never bothered to contact anyone at the CCHD for comment -- that was left to Our Sunday Visitor, which was reporting on the online conflagration. Then again, it's not like these folks are real journalists -- the kind who seek facts and strive for balance -- they just play them on the Internet.

What we have here are activists in search of "gotcha," and that's fine. Just don't pretend it has anything to do with journalism . . . or Catholicism.

Now, mind you, I don't doubt that there's at least some smoke where the witch hunt says it has uncovered the towering inferno. Frankly, I find that the Catholic "peace-and-justice" crowd is at least as consumed by progressive politics as the Catholic "pro-life" crowd is by a slavish devotion to Republican talking points.

And it matters not whether you're prattling on about how "we are church" or happen to be more Catholic than the pope, it's still a sad fact that Jesus Christ and Catholic doctrine get pimped out to politicians and principalities.

In a church no less riven than anything else about the United States these days, that's to be expected. Alas.

BUT THE AWARD for excellence in unmitigated gall and sheer hypocrisy has to go to "conservative" Catholic "intellectual" Deal Hudson, who has busied himself touting what awful sinners the commie-libs at the CCHD be.

What abortion supporters the commie-libs at the CCHD be.

What Bad Catholics (TM) the commie-libs at the CCHD be.

From the Inside Catholic website:
This is the second round of incriminating evidence presented by ALL and BVM about the [Center for Community Change]. Three months ago, they issued a press release and supporting research regarding 31 CCHD grantees with a relationship to CCC -- all of which was ignored by the USCCB.

As ALL's Michael Hichborn points out, these reports have "revealed no less than fifty organizations (one fifth of all CCHD grantees from 2009) that are, in some capacity, engaged in pro-abortion or pro-homosexual causes (www.all.org/cchd). The sad thing, however, is that these recent revelations manifest a pattern of cooperation stretching back for decades."

These latest findings make it impossible for the USCCB not to sever its ties with the CCC. However, the situation is made more difficult by the news that John Carr -- who oversees the CCHD as the USCCB's Executive Director of the Department of Justice, Peace, and Human Development -- served on the CCC board from 1999 to 2006 and on its executive committee from 1999 to 2001. Carr was hired by the USCCB in 1987, but his involvement with the CCC goes back to 1983.

ALL research shows that in 2000, while Carr served on its executive committee, CCC itself received a $150,000 grant from the USCCB. Carr's resume at the USCCB Web site does not mention his service at the CCC, while other published versions of his resume do.
I'D LISTEN to Deal if I were you. After all, it takes one to know one . . . on all counts.

Let's go back to the summer of 2001, shall we? That's when President George W. Bush was trying to figure out what to do about funding embryonic stem-cell research.

Historically, the Catholic Church has been -- forgive my phraseology -- death on research involving fetal and embryonic stem cells. That's because it all starts, somewhere, with dead fetuses and discarded, cannibalized human embryos.

And even if you're not the one doing the killing of a developing human being, conducting research with the cannibalized "parts" constitutes significant "cooperation with evil."

Look at it this way, "Well, they were dead anyway, and we didn't want them to go to waste" was the same justification the Nazis gave for making lampshades out of the skin of Holocaust victims, not to mention harvesting the gold fillings they'd no longer be needing.

You shouldn't be surprised that Catholics think Jesus Christ would frown on such.

Not that that stopped Hudson, among other "conservative" Catholic "intellectuals," from trying to gild the moral-theology lily as they "advised" Bush, which is what I think folks call influence-peddling nowadays. From a July 8, 2001, article in the Los Angeles Times:
Now, however, three conservative Catholics who advise the White House are saying a compromise may be possible. Depending on how the details shape up, these opinion leaders may publicly offer arguments for why some funding of embryo experiments is morally acceptable and help Bush win support for the policy among Catholic leaders and voters.

The advisors are focusing in particular on one option, now under discussion among White House aides, in which the government would pay only for research that uses existing stem cells scientists already have isolated from embryos. Any experiment that caused the destruction of additional embryos to obtain new cells would be ineligible for federal funds.

Spokesmen for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which represents the church in the United States, specifically have rejected this idea, saying it would make the government complicit in embryo destruction. But one of the nation's leading Catholic thinkers on abortion issues now is offering a different view. "I can imagine circumstances in which this would not only be politically acceptable but could be a morally justified policy," said Robert P. George, a moral philosopher at Princeton University who participates in a weekly telephone conference of Catholic intellectuals that often includes White House staff.

Another participant in the weekly calls, Rev. Robert A. Sirico, who leads a Michigan-based ethics think tank, said he has told the White House that the compromise might be regarded as acceptable and consistent with church teachings if it ensures that the government never pays for the destruction of another embryo.

"I am open to it," said Deal W. Hudson, editor and publisher of Crisis, a Catholic magazine. While the compromise would be "a victory for those who want to use embryonic stem cells, it can also be seen as a victory for the pro-life side," Hudson said, "because it ensures, for the time being, that there is no more government support for the destruction of embryos for their stem cells."

The stem cell issue came up during the conference call Thursday, Sirico said, but he would not give details. The Catholic advisors have seen no formal proposal and have not endorsed any.

Still, the comments from the three advisors suggest there is more diversity among conservative Catholic leaders regarding the stem cell issue than previously has appeared in public debate. If Bush moves in any way to support embryo cell research, it will be crucial that he win the support of at least some conservative Catholic leaders, George said. "Then they could say there's a range of opinion and that this issue is not like abortion or euthanasia," which are uniformly condemned by church leaders and ethicists.
AFTER BUSH announced his decision, which was unappreciated by the Catholic hierarchy, I heard from a friend tuned in to such matters that, according to "Catholic gossip circles in DC," Hudson had been "spotted around town looking like the cat who ate the canary today."

This friend said he'd heard that Hudson was "praising Bush's decision as 'Thomistic,' and taking credit for influencing the president's thinking -- which I'm sure he did."

Pot. Kettle. Black.

And we won't even go into why it was that Hudson abruptly quit as a "Catholic-outreach adviser" to Bush's 2004 re-election campaign. That was a doozy.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

And a doofus plumber shall lead them


The problem with the pro-life movement is the same as the problem with the evangelicals . . . and the "orthodox" Catholics . . . and even the pro-Obama Catholics United crowd.

And it's an old problem at that, as old as the gospel.

The problem with pro-lifers is tribalism and zealotry. We're right, the Almighty is on our side, let's go out there and smite the Other for the glory of God.

I wonder how glorified God is feeling nowadays, with all the calls for revolution, demonization of the president, nasty signs about Ted Kennedy and all manner of anger, shouting, paranoia and bad behavior undertaken in His name.

BACK IN JESUS' TIME, one of the things the Pharisees, et al, couldn't get their heads around was that this man who claimed to be the Messiah didn't at all act like everybody knew the Messiah should act. The Messiah should be raising an army and kicking the Romans' butts all the way back to Rome.

Obviously, this "teacher" who preached blasphemy and upbraided the religious authority of the day was a scandal and a nut, and the sooner he was crucified, the better it would be. And when Pilate tried to finesse matters by proposing to release Jesus
as part of the Passover amnesty, the first-century tea party would have none of it.

"Give us Barabbas!" They wanted the murderer and insurrectionist released instead. A man of action. A fighter of Romans.

In refusing to render unto Caesar, they likewise were hell-bent in their refusal to render unto God. By 66 A.D., the Zealots had launched a revolt against Roman rule.

By 70 A.D., the Roman legions sacked Jerusalem, cut out the heart of the revolt and destroyed the temple, thus
fulfilling Christ's prophecy that "there will not be left here a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down." By 73 A.D., the last Jewish stronghold at Masada had fallen, leaving not a single survivor -- the defenders all killed themselves rather than be taken by the legions.

TODAY, WE HAVE parts of the Catholic and evangelical subcultures seemingly spoiling for a fight against a new Caesar. We have a prominent "Catholic" pro-life organization deriding its own church and bishops for being insufficiently zealous in denying a dead, pro-choice senator a public funeral Mass.

We likewise have pro-life organizations acting as if the answer to America's culture of death lay in the Barabbas model, as opposed to the Jesus of Nazareth model. The American Life League, "the largest grassroots Catholic pro-life organization in the United States," distributed signs to Washington "tea partiers" last weekend urging "Bury Obamacare with Kennedy."

And LifeSiteNews.com saw fit to run this cartoon
with its story about ALL founder Judie Brown and other pro-life leaders trying to stop Kennedy's Catholic public rites:


YEAH, IT'S what you think it is. It's not only objectively disgusting, it's also just as uncharitable toward a man who, in his last days, well may have repented of his legislative advocacy of abortion rights.

It seems to me that we in the pro-life movement -- not to mention the "birthers," the Obamacareophobics and the "tea partiers" -- have to come to terms with the rise of the modern-day Zealots. This coincides with the Obama Administration having to deal with its own Zealot uprising -- the Zealots Against Zealotry, as it were.


On the left, the Zealots like to cuss a lot, call names and revel in their tastelessness. Occasionally, they'll threaten a "mass action" or a demonstration of some such.

On the right, more than a few Zealots threaten armed revolt as they march down the road to Masada. And, as noted previously, this is the company groups such as ALL choose to keep.

WEDNESDAY, I discovered there was such a thing as National Pro-Life Radio. And on it, amid the typical "pro-lifey" programs and Christian music, you have programs like Faith 2 Action with Janet Porter.

Let's just say Porter and her callers like "tea parties," hate "socialism" and love them some Rep. Joe Wilson, of "You lie!" fame. Wednesday's guests were Joe Wurzelbacher (a.k.a., "Joe the Plumber"), Phyllis Schalfly and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.).

And what can the pro-life movement learn from Joe the Plumber? Mainly that Joe the Plumber is a blithering idiot. Don't take my word for it -- here's a partial transcript of Wednesday's show:
Caller: I need to ask you a question, OK? Straight out, I just want to know if you think Mr. Obama is a liar.

Joe the Plumber: Yes, I do. I respect Joe Wilson for saying it -- maybe not in the spot he needed to do. If anything, he needed to apologize to Congress, not the president, because he has been lying -- y'know, it's been proven time and time again, he pulls numbers out of the air . . . $50,000 for a foot amputee when doctors are sayin', "No, it doesn't."

The guy's been lying left and right, and we're gettin' a taste of what he really wants to do. So, yeah, I believe the man's a liar.

Caller: Well, so do I. Just like you, I been tryin' to get a business going myself. It's tough. And I just don't need to be payin' all this kind of money for these . . . for what? Other people that, that suckin' m-my royalties?

Joe the Plumber: Well, no, it is tough, especially for a small business. I mean, the state's into your business, and then you also have the federal government into your business, and they seem to want a part of it they really don't deserve.

It seems like we're penalized more and more for trying to fulfill the American dream. It's almost like they don't want us to be a country of producing individuals; they want us just to consume and depend on the nanny state, and we can't do that.

Janet Porter: Couple thoughts I just want to interject, Ray, that if you get four friends, you get a group rate, which is gonna save you money if you can still come and you can check the website . . . we're gonna get some stuff streamed and some tapes for you to hear.

But one of the things, too, regarding Joe Wilson -- he is actually the first congressman in history to be formally rebuked for his behavior toward the president. It's interesting. He apologized right away -- something I have yet to hear from Nancy Pelosi regarding the CIA -- but immediately everybody's saying 'You must be racist.' In fact, they interjected things he didn't say -- the word 'boy,' for example -- didn't happen.

I saw the same thing happen to you (speaking to Joe the Plumber). Were you called racist during this campaign?

Joe the Plumber: Oh, absolutely -- just because I shave my head and got blue eyes, I must belong with the Aryan Brotherhood. So, I was called a racist right off the bat, but you got to understand politicians -- Republicans and Democrats both -- that's just a political tool. That's just to rile people up to take their eye off the real issue and press advantages home they believe they have, which is just disgusting.

You want to see real racism? Go to Israel and in the Middle East, where they teach that Jewish are literally pigs. Not figuratively, but literally, and they call for the whole destruction of the race. I mean, the racism here in America -- don't get me wrong, there is there, I grew up around it, but it's not nowhere near as strong or as grievous as it is over in the Middle East and other parts of the world.

It's just a political tool for our politicians to use and to keep us divided -- and remember, they do not want Americans to be united. Otherwise, again, we'll hold them accountable and make them do their job.

Janet Porter: By the way, the House rules now are banning the words 'liar,' 'hypocrite' and 'intellectually dishonest' -- boy, they're, instead of calling people and making them accountable for what they say, and say 'Hey, listen, this has not been accurate. What you're saying has been so far off from the bill itself -- the truth -- uh, but no, instead what they're doing is they're, they're they're banning speech. I find that to be troubling. Do you?

Joe the Plumber: Well, absolutely. It goes along the lines of the political correctness. I don't know how many people realize that, but that actually started over in Germany. They wanted to, ah . . . 'How, how do we get communism to spread?' And they're like 'Well, you need to take down Western civilization.'

So they had a think tank, and they came up with this critical thinking, ah, critical, ah . . . ah, ah, critical thinking t . . . think tank, to where they . . . 'Well, you know, political correctness, that's the way of doing it -- I mean, it came to be known that. But it's pretty much criticizing anything and everything.

And that's where we find ourselves at now.
AND THAT'S WHERE the pro-life movement and "Christian America" find themselves at now.

Perhaps now would be a good time to quit digging, leave the Republicans to their own crazy-pants meltdown, and shut the hell up if all you know how to do is shout.

And in the silence, perhaps it also would be a good time for the pro-life movement and "Christian America" to pray -- pray specifically for faith, hope, love, charity . . . and brains.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

No sign of life


Pro-life, my ass.

This (above) is the kind of thing we can come to expect today from some of America's thoroughly politicized national "pro-life" organizations.

For the low, low price of $5, those seeking to uphold the sanctity of human life "from creation to natural death" can join the American Life League in making sport of the natural death of a politician they've officially designated as "the Other." Funny this should come from an organization that says we must fight Planned Parenthood because it sells sex "as bait to steal souls — your children’s souls."

With tacky revenue-generators like
"Bury Obamacare With Kennedy" and Pharisaical demands about whom the Roman Catholic prelate of Boston may or may not grant a Roman Catholic funeral, one must wonder what happened to ALL's "soul." Apparently, at some point the souls of ALL and other significant portions of the pro-life movement must have been pilfered by the Republican Party.

It had to be soul theft, because Lord knows the pro-life movement didn't get enough in return for it to be considered a transaction.


IF GROUPS such as the American Life League aren't mere tools of the GOP and the health-insurance industry, why is ALL condemning some Catholic organizations for signing on to the mere concept of health-care reform? From a recent ALL press release:
Catholic Charities USA, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and the Catholic Health Association are urging their members to support "healthcare reform now," (i.e., current legislation that includes tax-subsidized abortion and rationed care for the sick and elderly).

ALL was alerted to the scandal when supporters passed along an action alert issued jointly by Catholic Charities and the de Paul Society, in which they tell members and supporters, " [W]e must maintain momentum for health care reform efforts with calls and emails supporting health care reform immediately. The gr
oups that do not support health reform have been blanketing House members in opposition to any reform. Your members of Congress need to hear from you that you support health care reform, and that the system needs to be reformed now."

The Catholic Health Association produced a video which begins with a clip of President Obama, the most pro-abortion president in history, rallying Congress to support his health care plan. The de Paul Society inserted the video in its web site.

After American Life League issued a statement condemning this move, Catholic Charities USA described "online media reports" as "inaccurate," "disingenuous" and "politically motivated."

"We reported, verbatim, the statements these organizations sent their members," Brown responded. "These groups are apparently attempting to work out a backroom deal with the Obama
administration. Their primary concern is universal health care, while the preborn and the elderly are left behind as collateral damage. As institutions rooted in Catholic social teaching, these groups should be at the forefront of the fight against the injustice of rationed care for the poorest of the poor, of tax-subsidized abortion and contraception, and of disregard for the health of the sick and elderly.
THE TROUBLE IS, today's health-care system is all about rationed care, as well as subsidized abortion and contraception -- all at the hands of private, profit-driven insurance companies. Every denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions, every denial of payment for treatment received, every lifetime limit on claims and every denial of coverage for life-saving treatment is all about rationing care so that insurance companies' profits might be maximized.

Likewise, some 86 percent of private insurance policies now cover elective abortions.
Who needs government, right?

One supposes that babies must somehow be less dead when dispatched with revenues from policyholders than when the deed is done by "government." If this supposition is false, then where are the all the ALL press releases hyperventilating against the evil, baby-killing private insurers?

If ALL and other "pro-life" groups are so committed to the sanctity of life "from creation to natural death," why do they rail against health-care reform
period instead of merely decrying the objectionable proposals within the present health-care reform bills? This is especially relevant given that federal "death panels" exist only in the fevered imagination of Sarah Palin, and taxpayer-funded abortions under "Obamacare" are far from a done deal.

And what about ALL making sure reams of its tasteless, mean-spirited little "Obamacare" protest sign found their way all around the weekend "tea party" in Washington? What better way for a group to associate itself with stuff like this:



IN CASE you can't read everything, the yelling woman's sign calls President Obama a "fascist," and her shirt reads "The Cure for Obama Communism Is a New Era of McCarthyism." Fascist communists???

And ALL, in its infinite wisdom, also successfully managed to associate pro-lifers with this, too:


ONE THING can be said of ALL, just as it can be said for the "teabaggers" in general -- their zeal, and anger, is all-consuming.

In the name of the people, they do the bidding of corporate America.

In the name of freedom, they call -- or remain silent amid calls -- for a "new era of McCarthyism" . . . and the ideological witch hunts that accompanied the original era of McCarthyism.

And in the name of God and "a Christian nation," they tolerate threats of armed revolt, demonize those who disagree with them, make light of a senator's death, sow hatred and fear . . . and ultimately give aid and comfort to the Prince of Darkness and his evil designs.

The ironically named American Life League -- that which accuses others of stealing souls -- acts as if its primary directive is to steal the soul of the pro-life movement and set it against itself. And, once again, Americans are not without their reasons for equating "pro-life" with "pro-nut."

AS AN ORDINARY Catholic layman who believes what his church proclaims -- as someone who really does embrace the right to life from conception to natural death -- I find that there is indeed a last straw, and that it has disappeared.

And I now wish to disassociate myself from what is commonly understood to be "the pro-life movement."

This utterly and unfortunately politicized "movement" may be pro-something, but that something isn't necessarily life. Or the Author thereof.




IN CASE YOU'RE INTERESTED, here are some of the folks with whom the American Life League decided to get in bed.

Granted, these folks probably don't represent a majority of those at the Washington "tea party." But if they represent even 20 percent, be afraid. Be very afraid.