Friday, March 29, AD 2024 10:03am

Priorities

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Steve Skojec at One Peter Five reminds us that the Pope has his priorities and that the unborn are apparently far down on his list:

 

Did you see Pope Francis’s remarks about the protection of the unborn at the White House this morning?

Mr. President, I want to take this opportunity to encourage you to foster a culture of life in this great nation.  Accepting the urgency, it seems clear to me also that this unconscionable taking of innocent human life is a problem which can no longer be left to a future generation.  When it comes to the care of our own children, we are living at a critical moment of history.  We still have time to make the changes needed, but we must act. We must understand — as we’ve been forced to confront in a recent series of investigative videos seen around the world — that those involved in the abortion industry “justify even infanticide, following the same arguments used to justify the right to abortion. In this way, we revert to a state of barbarism which one hoped had been left behind forever.” (Evangelium Vitae, 14).  Such change demands on our part a serious and responsible recognition not only of the kind of world we have created where we can so cruelly destroy our own children, but also of the millions of people who have already fallen victim to this barbarism.  Our common humanity should motivate us to end, once and for all, the legalized eradication of this voiceless group which suffers the most brutal form of exclusion, and in so suffering cries out to heaven, the results of which today powerfully strikes our homes, our cities and our societies.  To use a telling phrase of the Reverend Martin Luther King, we cannot win if we are willing to sacrifice the futures of our children for immediate personal comfort and safety. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

We know by faith that our Creator has said, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you…” (Jer. 1:5).  As Christians inspired by this certainty, we wish to commit ourselves to the conscious and responsible care and protection of our most vulnerable, our future generations.

You didn’t? Me neither. The answer to the question posed by the title of this post is, unfortunately: nothing. He didn’t make any comments about the unborn at the White House. What you just read is what I wished was in his speech instead of what I found there.

This is what he really said in that section:

Mr. President, I find it encouraging that you are proposing an initiative for reducing air pollution.  Accepting the urgency, it seems clear to me also that climate change is a problem which can no longer be left to a future generation.  When it comes to the care of our “common home”, we are living at a critical moment of history.  We still have time to make the changes needed to bring about “a sustainable and integral development, for we know that things can change” (Laudato Si’, 13).  Such change demands on our part a serious and responsible recognition not only of the kind of world we may be leaving to our children, but also to the millions of people living under a system which has overlooked them.  Our common home has been part of this group of the excluded which cries out to heaven and which today powerfully strikes our homes, our cities and our societies.  To use a telling phrase of the Reverend Martin Luther King, we can say that we have defaulted on a promissory note and now is the time to honor it.

We know by faith that “the Creator does not abandon us; he never forsakes his loving plan or repents of having created us.  Humanity still has the ability to work together in building our common home” (Laudato Si’, 13).  As Christians inspired by this certainty, we wish to commit ourselves to the conscious and responsible care of our common home.

There was also something about being “committed to building a society which is truly tolerant and inclusive, to safeguarding the rights of individuals and communities, and to rejecting every form of unjust discrimination”. A brief mention of religious liberty made it in, too. But a statement about protecting the unborn in the presence of the most pro-abortion president in US history — especially as Congress is attempting to defund Planned Parenthood — didn’t make the cut.

 

 

Go here to read the rest.  Where your heart is there is your treasure also.  The unborn can take cold comfort from the priorities of the current pontiff.

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Penguin Fan
Penguin Fan
Wednesday, September 23, AD 2015 5:22pm

We know who this man is that occupies the See of Peter. I recall a line from the TV series MASH: “I won’t let you down, Sir.” “There’s no way you can.”

Enviornment, capitalism, self-absorbed neo-Pelagians, the FFI, Cupich, Kasper, Marx, Daneels…..My opinion of this pontificate ranks with the current Administration. He can’t go back to Argentina soon enough.

Greg Mockeridge
Greg Mockeridge
Wednesday, September 23, AD 2015 5:35pm

Al Gore’s ghostwriter just called and said he is anxiously awaiting his royalty check.

Dale Price
Dale Price
Wednesday, September 23, AD 2015 7:28pm

Shh! You’re bogarting his ecumenism of encounter!

Greg Mockeridge
Greg Mockeridge
Wednesday, September 23, AD 2015 7:53pm

“Shh! You’re bogarting his ecumenism of encounter!”

This reminds me of this:

bill bannon
bill bannon
Wednesday, September 23, AD 2015 8:47pm

I’m just thankful he’s not denouncing the death penalty…and life sentences in his case. Brazil, where the largest number of Catholics live, solves 8% of their murders and has over five times the US murder rate with no death penalty.
Popes need to admonish substantially Catholic ( for 450 years Catholic) countries first…the two elephants in the living room…Brazil and Mexico. ..fist and second largest Catholic countries…Phillipines is third. Which Catholic country embodies Catholic social thought? Point us to it Pope Francis….or clean thine own house before cleaning thy less Catholic but safer and more stable neighbors’ house.

Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Thursday, September 24, AD 2015 3:05am

Pope Francis is a tragedy of lost opportunity of not speaking to a national audience about the truly serious spiritual matters of our time especially the culture of death of which President Obama is it’s main supporter.

Instead Pope Francis, as George Will says, with his “fact free flamboyance”, postures at the altar of environmentalism where his credibility is near zero making himself neither a friend of man or of God.

Hopefully, his reign will end soon as he is an embarrassment to himself and the Church.

DonL
DonL
Thursday, September 24, AD 2015 3:13am

I read the first report written above and thought WOW, how cunning (just as Christ commanded his shepherds to be) the man was-hiding his agenda of pro-life so well, and then I continued only to find that he hadn’t “evolved” from pushing that politically generated eco-nonsense of climate change as stewardship and apparently his biggest priority in the face of a morally crumbling Church.
The UN and the one-world order will be pleased.
The “sustainability” of innocent life–from the womb to the grave can just wait until we get rid of all that evil CO2 and air-conditioning.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Thursday, September 24, AD 2015 4:08am

Michael Dowd wrote, “Pope Francis is a tragedy of lost opportunity of not speaking to a national audience about the truly serious spiritual matters of our time…”

If we examine Acts, we find that the Apostles in their public speeches concentrated on five topics:

(1) the age of fulfilment has dawned, the “latter days” foretold by the prophets (Acts 2:16; 3:18, 24); (2) by virtue of His resurrection Jesus has been exalted at the right hand of God as Messianic head of the new Israel (Acts 2:33-36; 4:11; 5:31);
(3) the Holy Spirit in the Church is the sign of Christ’s present power and glory (Acts 2:17-21, 33; 5:32);
(4) the Messianic Age will reach its consummation in the return of Christ (Acts 3:20; 10:42);
(5) an appeal for repentance, the offer of forgiveness and of the Holy Spirit, and the promise of salvation (Acts 2:38; 3:19, 25; 4:12; 5:31; 10:43).

When they heard St Paul preaching in Athens, a group of Stoic and Epicurean philosophers thought he was proclaiming two foreign gods – Jesus and Resurrection (Acts 17:18)

In other words, their preaching was categorical, not argumentative; concrete, not abstract; concerned with facts and actions and, above all, with a Person; not with ideas or notions or reflections.

Perhaps, we should learn from them.

Father of seven
Father of seven
Thursday, September 24, AD 2015 4:37am

No time to mention the ongoing holocaust? Well, by their fruit you shall know them. What you “allow” to the least of these you “allow” to me. No wonder Catholics are leaving their faith. Such poor shepherds.

bill bannon
bill bannon
Thursday, September 24, AD 2015 5:46am

Michael PS,
Then Pope Francis errs in discussing climate change etc. instead of discussing Christ by the standard you gave. Your Acts 5:32 says of the Holy Spirit….” whom God gives to those who obey Him.” That means the Holy Spirit can move through non hierarchy as Newman contended happened in the Arian mess when largely laity led the Church in a ” suspense” of the ecclesia docens….the Teaching Church.

Art Deco
Thursday, September 24, AD 2015 7:58am

In other words, the Pope resembles a cagier and less parochial version of the editorial staff of Commonweal. A few pro-forma remarks about the abortion holocaust (to which complaints about anti-abortion groups are generally appended) followed by some feature of the Democratic Party platform (to which a mess of blather about the ‘hypocrisy’ of Catholic Republicans will generally be appended or the vulgarity of someone actually engaged in serious advocacy or pastoral work will be appended).

Patricia
Patricia
Thursday, September 24, AD 2015 7:58am

The buyers, and their purposes, would be a fact and action to complete the picture of the why the sellers profit from trade in infant organs. Grisly. The laity has been informed by silence of hierarchy that anything beyond generalities is not forthcoming. Is it about medical treatment of the elite?

cthemfly25
cthemfly25
Thursday, September 24, AD 2015 8:07am

It appears that the Pope’s remarks were forecasted by Cardinal Wuerl this past Sunday. Let’s pray that today the Pope is more engaging on the truly existential and moral issues of our times. Here is the excerpt from Cardinal Wuerl

WALLACE: Cardinal, there’s also a battle going on, I don’t have to tell you right now about Planned Parenthood and whether that should be defunded. And you have said that you believe the harvesting and use of fetal tissue is, in your word, heinous. Do you expect that to come up during the pope’s visit?
WUERL: I expect that the Holy Father will probably focus, as he has done consistently in his pontificate on issues such as the dignity of every human person, the value and sanctity of life, but also on the development — the social development that allows a life to fully develop. He will also speak, I would expect, to our common home. I see this thread running through his comments, whether they are his homilies, his talks, whether it is in the encyclical, that you have to start with human person, respect and care for every single human person, see that person in the context of a society that allows that person to develop and flower, and then care for the good earth that allows all of that to take place.

bill bannon
bill bannon
Thursday, September 24, AD 2015 9:25am

I spoke too soon. At roughly 10:34 before Congress, he advocated for the global abolition of the death penalty. Apparently he knows more by infused knowledge than our 1976 Supreme Court after four years of their research in comparing deterrence studies and who found that the death penalty saves lives. Perhaps the new papal goal is for all countries who have many poor people to be more like Brazil and Mexico who without the death penalty have roughly over 20 times the murder rate of largely poor China by UN figures.

Art Deco
Thursday, September 24, AD 2015 9:36am

I spoke too soon. At roughly 10:34 before Congress, he advocated for the global abolition of the death penalty. Apparently he knows more by infused knowledge than our 1976 Supreme Court after four years of their research in comparing deterrence studies and who found that the death penalty saves lives.

I’ll wager capital sentences would make a small dent in the problem in Latin America, which wants for patient institution building – police, courts, prisons – an institutional deficit manifest in other realms as well (e.g. their land registries, such as they are). Still, it’s an indicator of the Pope’s basic attitude, which is rampant in the occidental world, that no one be held truly accountable (except for devotees of the 1962 missal, of course).

bill bannon
bill bannon
Thursday, September 24, AD 2015 10:28am

Art,
A dent made against police corruption through killing corrupt police along with cartel leaders would further the very institutions you wish patient blessings on. Chicken and the egg. Can you patiently produce non corrupt police in Mexico through exhortation etc. or would execution of those feeding raid times to cartels work quicker. I was in a corporation when a tough president entered and fired ? three key people and then toured all locations from then on in. The culture changed overnight because the man had severity as part of his makeup and you knew it wasn’t sporadic over time.. We have a married gay in Fordham’s theology chair because Popes since the Council are afraid of their own severity when they in fact have it. Few notice that Benedict fired five Bishops but he left perhaps when he saw that there were droves of people in Rome who needed firing and he was too old to cope with all of them. Firing is a symbol of execution. Most of my clan now are Chinese and I know Chinese here, in Taiwan, and several on mainland. They like the Japanese can be sweet without losing the severe side which is totally affirmed in Romans 13:4 which went unmentioned for decades now even by our most masculine Popes two of whom became less masculine with advanced age.

Art Deco
Thursday, September 24, AD 2015 1:09pm

Sir, I’d refer you to the work of James Q Wilson. Celerity of punishment is much more effective than severity of punishment in influencing the level of law and order. If they’re only catching 8% of their murderers in Rio, celerity of punishment is not a feature of their social order.

bill bannon
bill bannon
Thursday, September 24, AD 2015 1:40pm

Art,
I agree that celerity is key as does the Mosaic law and China which by the way has cut back on executions with its high court nullfying 15% of death penalties in recent years.

paul coffey
paul coffey
Thursday, September 24, AD 2015 4:28pm

i’m just confused and free falling- no witty observations – just bewilderment!? – this is the vicar of Christ ?…. he’s being played like a fiddle by the prince of darkness and his Democrat allies. ………….. While some folks question the Catholicism of Marcel L. and the SSPX??? I am at a loss………. something is very very wrong here….. this does not pass the smell test

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