Abbey-Roads2

It’s an acronym for Freedom of Choice Act.

Never heard of it?  You are not alone.  It hasn’t been discussed much in the media - although at least two American Catholic Bishops have called urgent attention to the proposed bill.  Friends of mine, university educated, albeit non-practicing Catholics, told me they thought they had heard of FOCA, but they were not sure what it was about.  Most of them had no idea what partial birth abortion entails, or what is done with born-alive infants of a botched abortion either.  They told me I was making it up and that I had fallen for pro-life extremist scare tactics!

Infanticide happens.

Recently, Bishops have been comparing abortion legislation to the eugenics policies of Nazi Germany (Here and here).  Pro-life activists have been saying the same thing for years, while average Americans have chosen not to listen.  The information has been out there, yet people have willingly remained ignorant of what has been happening.  They focus upon “the right to choose” in the interest of women’s rights  - ignoring the consequences for innocent human life.

Vincible ignorance.

“The sin of ignorance is that which springs from voluntary and culpable ignorance, called vincible ignorance.” - Three Ages of the Interior Life.

It is the duty of every man to overcome ignorance by a continuous, deliberate, and systematic application to study, since we have been endowed with an intellect and understanding sufficient to bring us to know truth.  This is especially true in matters pertaining to our eternal salvation.  Nevertheless, we have a duty to study branches of knowledge related to the duties of our state in life.  Therefore to claim ignorance concerning the regulation of birth and abortion seems to me to come under the heading of vincible ignorance, and I would be very worried it could be a mortal sin of omission.  At best, it would be irrational to support a woman’s right to choose without knowing what FOCA stands for, or what partial-birth abortion and born-alive abortion procedures really are.

Important links:

Freedom of Choice Act:  What is it? 

The absolute right to choose prior to fetal viability.

“The bill flatly invalidates any “statute, ordinance, regulation, administrative order, decision, policy, practice, or other action” of any federal, state, or local government or governmental official (or any person acting under government authority) that would “deny or interfere with a woman’s right to choose” abortion, or that would “discriminate against the exercise of the right . . . in the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities, services, or information.” - Source

Cardinal Rigali’s warning.

Writing to all members of Congress on September 19, Cardinal Rigali warned that the enactment of the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) would “deprive the American people in all 50 states of the freedom they now have to enact modest restraints and regulations on the abortion industry.”

“Despite its deceptive title,” he wrote, “FOCA would coerce all Americans into subsidizing and promoting abortion with their tax dollars. And FOCA would counteract any and all sincere efforts by government to reduce abortions in our country.”  - Source

Archbishop Nienstedt’s warning on FOCA.

Archbishop John Nienstedt of St. Paul-Minneapolis affirmed this in a Wednesday article in the Catholic Spirit newspaper.

“If enacted, this would become the first time in our nation’s history that abortion is established as an ‘entitlement,’” the archbishop warned. “This, in effect, would move our country beyond even the Supreme Court’s decision of Roe v. Wade.

“Legal experts say it would likely invalidate informed consent laws, parental notification laws, laws promoting maternal health — if they result in an increased cost for abortions, abortion clinic regulations — even those designed to make abortion safer for women, laws prohibiting a particular abortion procedure — such as partial-birth abortion, and laws requiring that abortions only be performed by a licensed physician.” - Source

Students for Life Video

End Note:

Pope John Paul called abortion a “legal extermination” and compared its institution with the German laws which declared the Jews non-persons and allowed them to be murdered by the state. He wrote, “It was a legally elected parliament which allowed for the election of Hitler in Germany in the 1930s.” - Source

Obama set a precedent last night.

Yep.  I watched it - I kind of felt obligated to do so.  No candidate has ever done this before - that is, paid for a 1/2 hour in prime time to take his campaign right into our living rooms - in my case, the kitchen.  Obama set a precedent.  In some countries, such as Cuba, Castro would commandeer the media for hours to present his political agenda and ideology. 

I thought of that while watching Obama’s very slick presentation, which was a great deal more - or less - than a speech on definitive policy.  Motivational and emotional it was;  when Obama speaks - even about nothing - he is persuasive;  he makes you like him.

That said, I kept reminding myself of his abortion rights campaign, his support of FOCA, his position on born-alive infants (leave them to die), his support of the gay agenda, and so on and so forth.  He talked about “hope” for the future - nothing so substantive as killing babies or the recession and his plan for economic recovery.

Friends of mine were actually moved to tears by Obama’s presentation.  I think they would probably agree with Louis Farrakhan that he is almost messianic.  The last person in my living memory to have such an effect on the masses was John Paul II.  Nothing against our sainted Holy Father, but I don’t like celebrity cults - good guys or bad guys - I just don’t trust popular opinion, although with JPII he was clearly for all that is good.  Obama has captured the imagination of popular culture… and in this case, it is clearly identifiable as the  ”culture of death”.

Not good.

He was just a kid.

As Christians, as Roman Catholics, we cannot ever support hatred and violence against persons.  This little kid was savagely murdered - beaten and left to die - hanged on a fence.  It always disturbed me.  I painted him hanged on that fence.  (It is in the collection of a private party and I have no photos.)  Regular readers know where I stand on homosexual issues - but gay bashing can never, ever be tolerated or supported.  (Beat me up instead - but never do this to people who may not have an opportunity to prepare their soul for death.  Ever!)  

Please pray for this little kid’s soul - he was beaten on the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, and died on this night a few years ago.  I like the Russian story of Our Lady wandering the fields looking for souls - I pray she picked this little one up that night… he was just a kid!

Link:

Brief bio on Wikipedia

Photo: Thanks to Thom

They ate and they drank…

While our brothers and sisters are hacked to pieces in the provinces of India:  “They have entered the waters of the deep, and the waves overwhelm them!” - Ps. 68. 

The violence is spreading from Orissa: 

“No end to the attacks and violence against Christians. In Orissa, where for more than three weeks a pogrom against Catholics and Protestants has been underway, two more killings have been recorded. Iswar Digal and Purinder Pradhan were murdered and cut to pieces. Iswar Digal, was from the the village of Gatringia in the district of Kandhamal; he was stopped on September 20 by a group of Hindu extremists while he and his wife were trying to escape to a refugee camp. Their home was burned. The other victim was from Nilungia. His body was cut to pieces, put into a jute sack, and thrown into a pond.” - Asia News  

“Many bulls have surrounded me

fierce bulls of Bashan close me in.

Against me they open wide their jaws,

like lions rending and roaring.” - Ps. 21

The Baroness on putting people with dementia to sleep.

“Elderly people suffering from dementia should consider ending their lives because they are a burden on the NHS and their families, according to the influential medical ethics expert Baroness Warnock.” - Telegraph

It is so going to happen here - sooner than we think.

Charismatic… fearless leader.

The Obama proposal for a Civilian National Security Force.  I heard that - yet I simply thought Obama was pulling out the Kennedy charm, proposing something as innocent as the Peace Corps, never thinking it could possibly be a sinister plan…  I’ve always worried in the back of my mind that Obama could turn into a Nation of Islam - Louis Farrakhan  type of guy - but I’m sure that is just a latent racist fear on my part.

“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the military.”  - Obama

The priests who know too much…

While reading another priest’s blog today, I once again came across the CNSF proposal by Obama.  Father noted that he had been discussing the matter with another priest-historian, who reminded him that such a security force had been famously organized once before in history.  Neither priest is an alarmist or conspiracy theorist, to be sure, yet Father notes:

“The paramilitary nature of such a “security force”, has the ring of the Sturmabteilung, the SA, of 1930’s Germany.  Brownshirts.  They were unleashed on those who opposed the goals of the political party the NSDAP… which is known usually by a different name these days.” - Anonymous priest blog.

Reactionaries to change?  Is that all?

Why are many of us so suspicious of Obama, a man who came out of nowhere to address the DNC four years ago and has been climbing the political popularity charts ever since, until his nomination a few weeks ago - leaving the shoe-in, Hillary Clinton in the dust?  Rumors of his earlier association with Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, and his membership in a black-racist church in Chicago just adds to the intrigue.  And then, the guy who favors the legalization of every sin from abortion/infanticide, to homosexual marriage and gay adoption, proposes a Civilian National Security Force?

To enforce what?  Sharia law?

And then:  The Obama Youth Movement. 

Training the nation’s youth appears to be vitally important to Mr. and Mrs. Obama - if they get elected - and they maybe have a goose-step plan to prove it.  (Play on words from “The Boss”.)

“It promises to place young adults (18-30) in paid one-year “community leadership” positions with nonprofit or government agencies. They’ll also be required to attend weekly training workshops and three retreats.

In exchange, they’ll get a monthly stipend of up to $1,800, plus paid health and child care. They also get a post-service education award of $4,725 that can be used to pay off past student loans or fund future education.

The Obamas discourage work in the private sector. “Don’t go into corporate America,” Michelle has exhorted youth. “Work for the community. Be social workers.” Shun the “money culture,” Barack added. “Individual salvation depends on collective salvation.”

“If you commit to serving your community,” he pledged in his Denver acceptance speech, “we will make sure you can afford a college education.” So, go through government to go to college, and then go back into government.”  - Source

It could happen. 

Links:

About the CNSF

The Obama Plan

Obama’s CNSF

Mussolini’s Black Shirts

Hitler Youth Movement

Note: I have kept the Priest’s blog anonymous to spare him from being associated with my post.

(If a politician supports laws that kill babies and go against natural law and the common good, then he will never get my vote.  That’s all.)

“Get behind me Satan!” - Matthew 16: 21-27

Photo:  20 Year Old Rajni Majhi Burnt to Death by the Mob
[See Separate Story: How 20 Year Old Rajni Was Burnt to Death]

Orissa Burning.  A blog documenting the Hindu “religious cleansing” escalating in India these days.  And very few in the Western press seem to notice.  Yet the concern of the day in the United States is - well, do I even need to repeat it?

“I must cry out, violence and outrage is my message!”  - Jeremiah 20 

By 2015 deaths will out number births in Europe.

Whenever I read news stories concerning the rapid decline in European population, I cannot help but wonder if Our Lady of Fatima may have been referring to de-population as a form of annhilation.  She obviously said “nations will be annihilated” and the recent study from Eurostat is concerned with the various nationalities of peoples.  As everyone knows, the influx of Muslims into Europe is growing, and will be capable of replacing not only people of European descent, but religion as well.

London, Aug 29, 2008 / 01:36 am (CNA).- Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical service, has released a report indicating that by the year 2015, deaths in the region will outnumber births, and that by the year 2060, for every person above the age of 65 there will only be two people of working age.

According to the BBC, this severe demographic winter, the result of the drop in the birth rate and the increase in abortions in many countries of the European Union, will lead to a continual decrease in Europe’s population starting in the year 2035. - CNA

“The Lord brings to naught the plans of the nations;  he foils the designs of the peoples.” - Psalm 33

And detraction and calumny.

While reading an article defending the chastity and reputation of the Servant of God Cardinal Newman, the author referred to the accusations by contemporary gay activist, Peter Tatchill, as “coarse talk”.  Indeed such coarse talk is very common today, and as I mentioned in an earlier post, any talk about homosexuality in Newman’s day would rarely be mentioned in polite society, or outside a confessional.  It was a vice widely regarded with revulsion, in fact the term homosexual was invented in the mid 19th century, when medical science initially began to investigate its causes and courts were convicting people because of anti-sodomy laws.

Regarding Newman.

… the sense of a brutish 21st-century mentality being violently thrust upon a 19th-century individual of a very different cast of mind, the posthumous rape of a particularly delicate sensibility by a particularly coarse one…

Obviously the term “partner” he wouldn’t have understood at all - but then the words “gay” and indeed “homosexual” didn’t mean anything at the time. Homosexual acts were familiar to even the most sheltered soul in Oxford and Newman would have rejected the suggestion that he engaged in them with revulsion. - Timesonline

Now onto political mud-slinging.

As everyone in the United States knows, coarse talk is no longer restricted to the lower classes - it has become mainstream.  It is everywhere in media and entertainment, and never more obviously employed than in an election year, when opposing candidates are liberally defamed and calumniated by one another and their respective supporters - and us. 

The Obamanations.

The Obamas are perfect examples.  No, not what the mainstream media is doing, or what the Republicans are doing - but what we are doing - average Americans.  Because they are an affluent, professionally successful,  black couple - albeit recast as the “black Kennedy’s” - they are prime targets for racial stereo-typical humor.  If you surf the net, work in an office, or are on someones joke email circuit - you have seen the jokes and the photo-shopped images.  And yes - some are hysterical, simply because they are so opposite of who and what the Obama’s are and what they have achieved - and yet something deep down in white people still won’t let them get by with that without putting them in their place.  That said, it is akin to coarse talk, detraction, and calumny - somehow justified because the killing of unborn infants is an atrocity beneath contempt…

Pelosi-tics.

Then there is Nancy.  It is one thing to offer fraternal correction - especially when it is judiciously provided by the USCCB - yet it is quite another to rip her to shreds like the old hags of Paris (Les tricoteuses) did during the French Revolution, as the victims were goaded on their way to the guillotine.  The same with Sen. Biden - perhaps out of fear of death he once asked the doctors if he could keep his rosary under his pillow before going into surgery.  And now he is mocked for such a personal act of piety - by Catholics who should know better.

Mea culpa.  

I’m as guilty of coarse talk as the next blogger - and yes indeed - I laugh too.  But as Catholics we still need to respect the dignity of the human person and their faith - no matter how disordered, distorted or convoluted.  And yes - we need to point out errors when we see them, especially when those promoting error claim to speak for the Church, or when the proper authorities (bishops) do not defend the faith - but we should leave the mocking and sneering and coarse talk to the devil who inspires such antagonism.