Catholic Priests to Nancy Pelosi: Condemn Abortion or Leave the Church

From Family Security Matters.

Catholic Priests to Nancy Pelosi: Condemn Abortion or Leave the Church
by FR. FRANK PAVONE


Tuesday, June 18, 2013



Dear Mrs. Pelosi,

Last Thursday, June 13, you were asked a question in a press briefing that you declined to answer. The question was, "What is the moral difference between what Dr. Gosnell did to a baby born alive at 23 weeks and aborting her moments before birth?"

Given the fact that the Gosnell case has been national news for months now, and that Congress, where you serve as House Democratic Leader, was about to have a vote on banning abortion after 20 weeks fetal age, this was a legitimate question.

Instead of even attempting to answer the question, you resorted to judgmental ad hominem attacks on the reporter who asked it, saying, "You obviously have an agenda. You're not interested in having an answer."

Mrs. Pelosi, the problem is that you're not interested in giving an answer.

Your refusal to answer this question is consistent with your failure to provide an answer to a similar question from me and the members of my Priests for Life staff. Several years ago, we visited your office with the diagrams of dismemberment abortion at 23 weeks, and asked the simple question, "When you say the word 'abortion,' is this what you mean?" In response, nothing but silence has emanated from your office.

In what way is this refusal to address an issue of such national importance consistent with the leadership role you are supposed to be exercising? Public servants are supposed to be able to tell the difference between serving the public and killing the public. Apparently, you can't. Otherwise, you would have been able to explain the difference between a legal medical procedure that kills a baby inside the womb and an act of murder -- for which Dr. Gosnell is now serving life sentences -- for killing the same baby outside the womb.

Moreover, you stated at the press briefing on June 13, "As a practicing and respectful Catholic, this is sacred ground to me when we talk about this. I don't think it should have anything to do with politics."

With this statement, you make a mockery of the Catholic faith and of the tens of millions of Americans who consider themselves "practicing and respectful Catholics" and who find the killing of children -- whether inside or outside the womb -- reprehensible.

You speak here of Catholic faith as if it is supposed to hide us from reality instead of lead us to face reality, as if it is supposed to confuse basic moral truths instead of clarify them, and as if it is supposed to help us escape the hard moral questions of life rather than help us confront them.

Whatever Catholic faith you claim to respect and practice, it is not the faith that the Catholic Church teaches. And I speak for countless Catholics when I say that it's time for you to stop speaking as if it were.

Abortion is not sacred ground; it is sacrilegious ground. To imagine God giving the slightest approval to an act that dismembers a child he created is offensive to both faith and reason.

And to say that a question about the difference between a legal medical procedure and murder should not "have anything to do with politics" reveals a profound failure to understand your own political responsibilities, which start with the duty to secure the God-given right to life of every citizen.

Mrs. Pelosi, for decades you have gotten away with betraying and misrepresenting the Catholic faith as well as the responsibilities of public office. We have had enough of it. Either exercise your duties as a public servant and a Catholic, or have the honesty to formally renounce them.

Sincerely,



Fr. Frank Pavone
National Director, Priests for Life

U.S. Bishops Mobilize American Catholics For War Against Obama

Barack Hussein Obama has made many miscalculations in his tenure as President but probably none will go down in history as more damaging than his decision to attack the Catholics in America.  At this very moment, U.S. Catholic Bishops are mobilizing an army...an army of servants of Christ to wage battle against the Heretic in Charge.

From the report at CNS News:

Having organized 43 plaintiffs—including the archdioceses of New York and Washington and the University of Notre Dame—to file 12 different lawsuits against the Obama administration last Monday alleging the administration is violating the religious freedom of Catholics, the Catholic bishops of the United States are now preparing Catholics for what may be the most massive campaign of civil disobedience in this country since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and early 1960s.

The biggest mistake made by Obama is one of numbers - he has reached out to homosexuals in this country seeking that voting bloc, yet at the same time he is driving away a voting bloc that is 100 times the size of the gays.  How's that for numbers?  I guess that's further evidence why this nation's deficit has risen so steeply under Obama.

The other miscalculation that Obama made is that Catholics in America are all apostates like Nancy Pelosi - Obama actually believes that the majority of Catholics approve of abortion, defy the church's stance on contraception and overall morality issues.  Obama is so wrapped up in his narcissistic aura where he truly believes people in this country are abandoning their faith to follow him that he is setting himself for a November Nightmare.  It's high time that the Protestants of America stand behind their Catholic brothers and simply and decisively take down this President.

U.S. Bishops Prepare Catholics for Civil Disobedience: ‘We May Need to Witness to the Truth by Resisting the Law’


(CNSNews.com) - Having organized 43 plaintiffs—including the archdioceses of New York and Washington and the University of Notre Dame—to file 12 different lawsuits against the Obama administration last Monday alleging the administration is violating the religious freedom of Catholics, the Catholic bishops of the United States are now preparing Catholics for what may be the most massive campaign of civil disobedience in this country since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and early 1960s.

“Some unjust laws impose such injustices on individuals and organizations that disobeying the laws may be justified,” the bishops state in a document developed to be inserted into church bulletins in Catholic parishes around the country in June.

“Every effort must be made to repeal them,” the bishops say in the document, which is already posted on the website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “When fundamental human goods, such as the right of conscience, are at stake, we may need to witness to the truth by resisting the law and incurring its penalties.”

The bulletin insert reminds Catholic parishioners that the bishops have called for “A Fortnight of Freedom”—which they have described as “a special period of prayer, study, catechesis, and public action”—to take place from June 21 to July 4.

The bishops have noted that June 21, when this fortnight will begin, is the Vigil of the Feast of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More. Fisher was a Roman Catholic cardinal whom the English monarch Henry VIII beheaded in 1535 after he refused to act against his conscience and take an oath asserting that Henry was the supreme authority over the church in England. That same year, Henry VIII also beheaded Thomas More, his former chancellor, for the same reason.

The sterilization-contraception-abortifacient mandate is set to go into effect for most health-care plans on Aug. 1, about four weeks after the bishops' "Fortnight of Freedom."

In campaign speeches delivered this week after the Catholic dioceses and organizations filed their 12 lawsuits, both President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama indicated that the administration intends to move forward and enforce the mandate.

Mrs. Obama brought it up in a stump speech in Cleveland on Monday afternoon, less than three hours after the Catholic bishops had announced their lawsuits.

"You can tell people how, because we passed health reform, insurance companies will now have to cover preventive care--have to," said Mrs. Obama. "Things like contraception, cancer screenings, prenatal care--and they have to do it at no extra cost. People have to understand that’s what that fight was for."

President Obama signaled his personal commitment to enforcing the sterilization-contraception-abortifacient mandate, using virtually identical language about it in back-to-back campaign speeches Wednesday and Thursday in California and Iowa.

"We don’t need another political fight about ending a woman’s right to choose, or getting rid of Planned Parenthood or taking away affordable birth control," Obama said. "We don’t need that. I want women to control their own health choices, just like I want my daughters to have the same economic opportunities as my sons. We’re not turning back the clock. We're not going back there."

The bulletin insert the bishops have prepared to distribute in parishes around the country in June specifically references the late Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was imprisoned in Birmingham, Ala., on Good Friday 1963 for marching without a permit to protest the racist segregation laws enforced in Alabama in that period.

While detained, King, who was a Baptist minister, wrote his “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” in which he said the moral justification for civil disobedience against Alabama’s segregation laws was derived from the writings of the Roman Catholic saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.

“During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Americans shone the light of the Gospel on a dark history of slavery, segregation, and racial bigotry," the Catholic bishops say in their bulletin insert. “The civil rights movement was an essentially religious movement, a call to awaken consciences.

“In his famous ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ in 1963,” the bishops says, “Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. boldly said, ‘The goal of America is freedom.’ As a Christian pastor, he argued that to call America to the full measure of that freedom was the specific contribution Christians are obliged to make. He rooted his legal and constitutional arguments about justice in the long Christian tradition: ‘I would agree with Saint Augustine that ‘An unjust law is no law at all.’… A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.’”

The bishops have argued that elements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—AKA Obamacare—including the so-called “preventive services” mandate, would force faithful Catholics to act against their consciences and the teachings of their church. The mandate requires that virtually all health-care plans in the United States cover, without any fees or co-pay, sterilizations and all Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives, including those that cause abortions.

The bishops also object to the manner in which Obamacare deals with abortion generally. In April, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a background paper explaining how Obamacare not only would use tax dollars to fund abortions but would also force Americans to pay for abortions with the premiums they would pay to purchase health insurance—which under Obamacare they are mandated to do. The backgrounder was titled, “The New Federal Regulation on Coerced Abortion Payments.”

Additionally, the bishops object to the so-called “religious” exemption to the mandate that requires all health-care plans cover sterilizations, contraceptives and abortifacients. That exemption only applies to “religious” organizations that are primarily focused on inculcating religious tenets and that serve and employ primarily members of their own denomination. This “religious” exemption would not extend to Catholic schools, universities, hospitals, and charitable organizations—and, the bishops argue, it violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by empowering federal bureaucrats to determine which religious institutions are truly “religious” and which ones are not.

In their bulletin insert, the bishops unequivocally state that the administration’s sterilization-contraception-abortifacient mandate would force people to act against their consciences.

“This is a matter of whether religious people and institutions may be forced by the government to provide such coverage even when it violates our consciences,” say the bishops.

“What we ask is nothing more than the right to follow our consciences as we live out our teaching,” they say.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius first announced the sterilization-contraception-abortifacient regulation last August. At that time, the bishops submitted formal comments to HHS, calling the regulation an "unprecedented attack on religious liberty" and asking the administration to rescind it in its entirety.

After Sebelius finalized the regulation in January, many Catholic bishops around the country asked their priests to read a letter from the pulpit at Sunday Masses that said: "We cannot--we will not--comply with this unjust law."

Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who leads the Catholic Archdiocese for the Military Services wrote a letter that he asked all Catholic chaplains to read at Sunday masses at U.S. military facilities across the globe. Broglio's letter not only said "we will not" comply with the law, it also said: "It is a blow to a freedom that you have fought to defend and for which you have seen your buddies fall in battle."

As reported by CNSNews.com, the Army told Army chaplains not to read this letter in Mass, a move that Archdiocese for the Military Services described as a violation of the First Amendment rights of Archbishop Broglio and Catholic chaplains.

In the April backgrounder, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishop said that another regulation issued by the Obama administration in March of this year confirmed what the bishops had said about Obamacare when it was up for a vote in 2010 and they opposed its passage.

“While some have misunderstood or misrepresented the Act’s role in funding abortions, the new rule confirms that analyses by the Catholic bishops’ conference were accurate on this point,” said the backgrounder.

“Under this Act," it says, "millions of American taxpayers will be forced to help support abortion coverage, in two ways: (1) Through their tax dollars all taxpayers will be forced to subsidize overall health plans that cover elective abortions, contrary to the policy of the Hyde amendment and every other major federal program, and (2) Many of these Americans will also be forced to pay directly for other people’s abortions. Some will say this is technically not ‘tax funding of abortions,’ because the required surcharge will be a premium payment rather than a tax payment as such. But what the payment is called is less important than what it actually does.”

The day after releasing this analysis, the bishops issued “A Statement on Religious Liberty,” that explained the Catholic belief that “an unjust law cannot be obeyed” and called for Catholics to join in what the bishops called “A Fortnight of Freedom” that will run from June 21 to July 4.

Hey Obama, If You Had It To Do Over Again....Would You Piss Off the Catholics In America?

From Family Security Matters.

Bishop Says Obama on Hitlerian Path


Comparing Obama to Hitler is something that the liberal/left used to blame on the Tea Party. However, posters and signs showing Obama with a Hitler moustache were inevitably traced to followers of Lyndon LaRouche. They sometimes tried to portray themselves as conservatives, but in reality LaRouche is a former Marxist who ran for president as a Democrat. They like to cause deliberate political confusion.

Now that an educated Catholic Bishop with knowledge of history and a commitment to religious freedom has made the comparison, however, the national media cannot decide on how to respond.

When I saw the headline, “Bishop Compares Obama Policies to Hitler, Stalin,” over an article on Newsmax.com, the conservative website, I thought at first it must be an error or exaggeration. Was a Catholic Bishop actually being this harsh? I have reported on the reaction of the Catholic Church to the Obama Administration’s birth control mandate affecting religious institutions. My local priest called it evil and demonic and has suggested the church will be persecuted and ministers jailed for resisting the federal onslaught. But comparing the President personally to Hitler and Stalin?

The Newsmax headline about the charge concerned a story from LifeSiteNews.com. The Daily Caller titled it: “Illinois Bishop: Obama ‘intent on following a similar path’ as Hitler, Stalin.”

I went to the www.LifeSiteNews.com and the headline over its story was only slightly different: “Obama taking ‘similar path’ as Hitler and Stalin: Illinois bishop.” The question then became—were these stories somehow exaggerating what the Catholic Bishop said?

The Catholic Post ran the full text of the homily of Bishop Daniel R. Jenky at the Mass during the April 14 “A Call to Catholic Men of Faith” in Peoria. The homily is also available on podcast. The headlines did indeed capture the essence of what he said. The Bishop goes by the title “Most Reverend Daniel R. Jenky, C.S.C., D.D.” CSC stands for the Congregation of the Holy Cross, the order that runs Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana. D.D. stands for Doctor of Divinity. He is an educated man. His education includes:

· College: University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana
· Novitiate: Holy Cross Fathers’ Novitiate, Bennington, Vermont.
· Seminary: Moreau Seminary, Notre Dame, Indiana
· Theology: Moreau Seminary, Notre Dame, Indiana

Taking aim at Obama, Hollywood and the media, the Bishop said:

“For 2,000 years the enemies of Christ have certainly tried their best. But think about it. The Church survived and even flourished during centuries of terrible persecution, during the days of the Roman Empire.

“The Church survived barbarian invasions. The Church survived wave after wave of Jihads. The Church survived the age of revolution. The Church survived Nazism and Communism.

“And in the power of the resurrection, the Church will survive the hatred of Hollywood, the malice of the media, and the mendacious wickedness of the abortion industry.

“The Church will survive the entrenched corruption and sheer incompetence of our Illinois state government, and even the calculated disdain of the President of the United States, his appointed bureaucrats in HHS [Health and Human Services], and of the current majority of the federal Senate.” (Applause)

It turns out that the Bishop was just getting warmed up.

He went on:

“Remember that in past history other governments have tried to force Christians to huddle and hide only within the confines of their churches like the first disciples locked up in the Upper Room.

“In the late 19th century, Bismarck waged his ‘Kulturkampf,’ a Culture War, against the Roman Catholic Church, closing down every Catholic school and hospital, convent and monastery in Imperial Germany.

“Clemenceau, nicknamed ‘the priest eater,’ tried the same thing in France in the first decade of the 20th Century.

“Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care.

“In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, President Obama—with his radical, pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path.”

“This fall,” said Bishop Jenky, “every practicing Catholic must vote, and must vote their Catholic consciences, or by the following fall our Catholic schools, our Catholic hospitals, our Catholic Newman Centers, all our public ministries—only excepting our church buildings—could easily be shut down. Because no Catholic institution, under any circumstance, can ever cooperate with the intrinsic evil of killing innocent human life in the womb.”

Whether you agree or disagree, these were extraordinary comments and certainly worthy of national media attention. But the story remains mostly in the conservative media.

The Daily Caller noted, “Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York—considered the most powerful Roman Catholic cleric in the U.S.—has also had harsh words for the HHS mandate, charging that the administration is attempting to divide the Catholic Church.”

But charging that Obama is acting like Hitler or Stalin goes far beyond Dolan’s observation.

One group already taking note is the Soros-funded Think Progress, which said that Jenky’s homily “appears better suited to an episode of the Glenn Beck Show than to a celebration of religious faith.” According to Ian Millhiser, a Senior Constitutional Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Obama merely “wants all working women to have access to contraception, regardless of whether they work for a religious employer.” In fact, Obama wants to force religious employers to provide birth control pills and abortion drugs in violation of their religious beliefs.

This is a story that just won’t go away. And it has the potential to alert the public, Catholic and non-Catholic, to the grave constitutional crisis we find ourselves in.

The notion of Obama as an “extreme secularist,” if not a dictator wannabe, is widely shared within the Catholic Church. A Priest recently told me that the Catholic Bishops, who usually divide into liberal and conservative factions, are united against Obama in this controversy.

He said Obama is viewed as someone who believes in freedom of worship, not freedom of religion, an important distinction that Jenky was alluding to. In other words, Obama believes Christians should be free to worship within the confines of their church, but that when they exercise their freedom of religion in public life, they must conform to the secular dictates of the federal government. In this context, however, the ability to exercise freedom of religion, as the Constitution means it, becomes essentially meaningless.

It will be interesting to see whether the national media cover these sensational charges in a fair and balanced manner. Or will “the malice of the media,” to use the Bishop’s words, take over?

If Mitt Romney is correct that the media “are inclined” to do Obama’s bidding, then the Bishop can expect to be a major target in the near future.

African Archbishops Believe Barack Obama God's Divine Plan

by Maggie at Maggie's Notebook

African Bishops meeting in the Vatican believe Barack Obama is part of a "divine" plan, God's "divine" plan. Archbishop Gabriel Charles Palmer-Buckle of Ghana compares Obama to the Old Testament's Joseph. A question not asked: is abortion a part of God's divine plan?

Archbishop Gabriel Charles Palmer-Buckle

"It's like the biblical story repeating itself," he told reporters, citing the Old Testament figure, Joseph, who after being sold into slavery in Egypt ends up becoming a top official.

"God directs history," said Archbishop Gabriel Charles Palmer-Buckle. God did not, however, direct Palmer-Buckle to speak out against the Obama administration's support of abortion - or maybe He did, and the Archbishop didn't listen. Palmer-Buckle says he and his peers are aware of the controversy in the U.S. over the right-to-life issue, but nevertheless, (and I can hear him intone this):

But we feel it our duty to meet him and find out what are the things that unite us more than divide us."

How can leader in the Catholic church identify a divine mission in the efforts of Barack Obama? The answer is, it's all about being black.

A black president, a black pope in the future - it's all a:

"divine sign and a sign from the Holy Spirit for the reconciliation of races and ethnic groups for peaceful relations...," said Monsignor Laurnet Monsengwo Pasinya of the Congo.

I agree with that statement. I see America's election of a black man or woman as a wonderful step for our country...but not this particular black man.

How can abortion be viewed as a "divine sign?" How can abortion be viewed as a road to "peace?"

Archbishop John Onaiyekan of Nigeria had a different take on the importance of Barack Obama:

"Obama has the authority to talk straight to our bad leaders and tell them they are messing up our countries," he said. Besides, he added, "In Africa we are always happy when our brother is big."

High expectations, considering we know how tough Obama is not on the "bad leaders" around the world. 

Just like politicians, churches today see their mission as making it easy for themselves and those who follow. It has nothing to do with being "right" or "moral," but everything to do with power.

This is one of the more disgusting religious news stories I've ever read.

Muslims Outnumber The World's Catholics

For the first time in history, there are more muslims in the world than there are Catholics. Now as ominous as that sounds, we best realize that if you combine all Christian groups, then Christians still outnumber muslims. But this is significant and to emphasize this, see this quote from the Vatican:

"For the first time in history, we are no longer at the top: Muslims have overtaken us," Monsignor Vittorio Formenti said in an interview with the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. Formenti compiles the Vatican's yearbook.He said that Catholics accounted for 17.4 percent of the world population — a stable percentage — while Muslims were at 19.2 percent."It is true that while Muslim families, as is well known, continue to make a lot of children, Christian ones on the contrary tend to have fewer and fewer," the monsignor said.

Now, as some of you know, I have a real problem with this kind of reporting since I do not view islam as a religion. But, since that is my view, that makes this even more significant due to the fact that we've seen close to 20 percent of the world now fall under this political ideology. Think about it... what would be the headline if 20 percent of the world were Nazis? If WW2 hadn't been fought and won by the Allies, this is how the world might have looked.

Here's the full story from AOL.

Muslims Outnumber World's Catholics

VATICAN CITY (March 30) - Islam has surpassed Roman Catholicism as the world's largest religion, the Vatican newspaper said Sunday.

"For the first time in history, we are no longer at the top: Muslims have overtaken us," Monsignor Vittorio Formenti said in an interview with the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. Formenti compiles the Vatican's yearbook.He said that Catholics accounted for 17.4 percent of the world population — a stable percentage — while Muslims were at 19.2 percent."It is true that while Muslim families, as is well known, continue to make a lot of children, Christian ones on the contrary tend to have fewer and fewer," the monsignor said.Formenti said that the data refer to 2006.

The figures on Muslims were put together by Muslim countries and then provided to the United Nations, he said, adding that the Vatican could only vouch for its own data.When considering all Christians and not just Catholics, Christians make up 33 percent of the world population, Formenti said.Spokesmen for the Vatican and the United Nations did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment Sunday.