Imagine the Potential

Here's a great video I wish the MSM would run, but I think we know that would never happen...

Bishops Address Opportunities, Challenges for New President, Congress

January 13, 2009

The Honorable Barack Obama
President-elect
Presidential Transition Team
Washington, D.C. 20270

Dear Mr. President-elect,

As our nation begins a new year, a new Administration and a new Congress, I write to outline principles and priorities that guide the public policy efforts of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). As President of the Bishops' Conference, I assure you of our prayers, hopes and commitment to make this period of national change a time to advance the common good and defend the life and dignity of all, especially the vulnerable and poor. We continue to seek ways to work constructively with the new Administration and Congress and others of good will to pursue policies which respect the dignity of all human life and bring greater justice to our nation and peace to our world.

As Bishops, we approach public policy as pastors and teachers. Our moral principles have always guided our everyday experience in caring for the hungry and homeless, offering health care and housing, educating children and reaching out to those in need. We lead the largest community of faith in the United States, one that serves every part of our nation and is present in almost every place on earth. From our experience and our tradition, we offer a distinctive, constructive and principled contribution to the national dialogue on how to act together on issues of economic turmoil and suffering, war and violence, moral decency and human dignity.

Our nation now faces economic challenges with potentially tragic human consequences and serious moral dimensions. We will work with the new Administration and Congress to support strong, prudent and effective measures to address the terrible impacts and injustices of the economic crisis. In particular, we will advocate a clear priority for poor families and vulnerable workers in the development and implementation of economic recovery measures, including new investments while strengthening the national safety net. We also support greater accountability and oversight to address irresponsible abuses of the system that contributed to the financial crisis.

The Catholic Bishops of the United States have worked for decades to assure health care for all, insisting that access to decent health care is a basic human right and a requirement of human dignity. We urge comprehensive action to ensure truly universal health care coverage which protects all human life including pre-natal life, and provides access for all, with a special concern for the poor. Any such legislation ought to respect freedom to choose by offering a variety of options and ensuring respect for the moral and religious convictions of patients and providers. Such an approach should seek to restrain costs while sharing them equitably.

On international affairs, we will work with our leaders to seek a responsible transition in an Iraq free of religious persecution. We especially urge early, focused and persistent leadership to bring an end to violent conflict and a just peace in the Holy Land. We will continue to support essential U.S. investments to overcome poverty, hunger and disease through increased and reformed foreign assistance. Continued U.S. leadership in the fight against HIV-AIDS and other diseases in ways that are both effectively and morally appropriate have our enthusiastic backing. Recognizing the complexity of climate change, we wish to be a voice for the poor and vulnerable in our country and around the world who will be the most adversely affected by any dramatic threats to the environment.

We will work with the new Administration and Congress to fix a broken immigration system which harms both our nation and immigrants. Comprehensive reform is needed to deal with the economic and human realities of millions of immigrants in our midst. It must be based on respect for and implementation of the law. Equally it must defend the rights and dignity of all peoples, recognizing that human dignity comes from God and does not depend on where people were born or how they came to our nation. Truly comprehensive immigration reform will include a path to earned citizenship with attention to the fact that international trade and development policies influence economic opportunities in the countries from which immigrants come.

We stand firm in our support for marriage which is a faithful, exclusive, lifelong union of a man and a woman and must remain such in law. In a manner unlike any other relationship, marriage makes a unique and irreplaceable contribution to the common good of society, especially through the procreation and education of children. No other kinds of personal relationships can be justly made equivalent to the commitment of a man and a woman in marriage.

With regard to the education of children, we will continue to support initiatives which provide resources for all parents, especially those of modest means, to choose education which best address the needs of their children.

We welcome continuing commitments to empower faith-based groups as effective partners in overcoming poverty and other threats to human dignity. We will work with the Administration and Congress to strengthen these partnerships in ways that do not encourage government to abandon its responsibilities, and do not require religious groups to abandon their identity and mission.

Most fundamentally, we will work to protect the lives of the most vulnerable and voiceless members of the human family, especially unborn children and those who are disabled or terminally ill. We will consistently defend the fundamental right to life from conception to natural death. Opposed to abortion as the direct killing of innocent human life, we will encourage one and all to seek common ground that will reduce the number of abortions in morally sound ways that affirm the dignity of pregnant women and their unborn children. We will oppose legislative and other measures to expand abortion. We will work to retain essential, widely supported policies which show respect for unborn life, protect the conscience rights of health care providers and other Americans, and prevent government funding and promotion of abortion. The Hyde amendment and other provisions which for many years have prevented federal funding of abortion have a proven record of reducing abortions. Efforts to force Americans to fund abortions with their tax dollars would pose a serious moral challenge and jeopardize the passage of essential health care reform.

This outline of USCCB policies and priorities is not complete. There are many other areas of concern and advocacy for the Church and the USCCB especially: religious freedom and other civil and human rights, news media and communications, and issues of war and peace. For a more detailed description of our concerns please see Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship (USCCB 2008), pages 19-30.

Nonetheless, we offer this outline as an agenda for dialogue and action. We hope to offer a constructive and principled contribution to national discussion over the values and policies that will shape our nation's future. We seek to work together with our nation's leaders to advance the common good of our society, while disagreeing respectfully and civilly where necessary for preserving that same common good.

In closing, I renew our expression of hope and our offer of cooperation as you begin this new period of service to our nation in these challenging times. We promise our prayers for you, that the days ahead will be a time of renewal and progress for our nation and that we can work together to defend human life and dignity and build a nation of greater justice and a world at peace.

Sincerely yours,

Francis Cardinal George, OMI
Archbishop of Chicago
President

When the Law's Not the Limit

The mainstream media are trying to cast pro-lifers as the big losers in the 2008 election.

Granted, the most pro-abortion Presidential candidate in history won the White House. Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion operation, boosted its support in Congress. And pro-life ballot issues in three different states went down to defeat.

In fact, you can even find reference in cyberspace to the pro-life movement being dead.

Some media "experts" are suggesting that the pro-life movement has to give up the goal of making abortion illegal. Outlawing abortion "can't be done" is the media rallying cry.

But the fact that abortions are legal in the U.S. is not inconsequential. In his book, "Friendship: The Art of Happiness," Dr. John Cuddeback writes, "One of the most serious ways in which the flaws of a civil society are manifested is in its laws." He adds that, "Since it speaks of the judgment of the community regarding right and wrong in action, it has a formative effect on the judgment of citizens regarding right and wrong."

Cuddeback points out that philosophers have long spoken of the teaching value of the law. In a society with a bad law, youth, in particular, can become corrupted.

Abortion-on-demand teaches young people that they should strive for convenience at all costs. It instills the frightening idea that killing is an acceptable solution to both personal and social problems. It teaches them that a child's value is less than dirt and that women are to be used, discarded, and their offspring are to be eliminated. It shatters the heart, darkens the soul, and coarsens society.

As the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops states in its brochure, "A People of Life," "The Supreme Court decisions legalizing abortion--Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton--must be reversed."

No matter how long it takes.

But, I hope, sooner than we could ever expect.

By Maria Vitale, Education Director PA Pro-Life Federation

vitale@paprolife.org

Warning From the Past

A friend of mine sent me this article....

WHAT is this strange spell which seems to have bewitched America? What is this enchantment which has befallen the mainstream media? What is this strong infatuation which has inebriated a large portion of the electorate? Yet, for many others, there are enormous and very loud alarm bells ringing this eve over the next likely President of the United States: Barack Obama. I am a Canadian, and so I am usually reluctant to express my thoughts on another country’s politics. However, I feel more and more that what is happening is setting the stage, in part, for many things I have written about of the trials which are coming upon the Church and the world.

A STRANGE SPELL

As always with the internet, there are the wild and extreme opinions, the conspiracy theorists, the bizarre extrapolators. CONTINUE READING...

Election Day 2008

Tomorrow is Election Day.

Most think it's a "defining day" in our country's history, because the economy's at stake. I think it's a defining day in our history, because at stake are the lives of those without a voice: the unborn, the elderly, and the sick.

No matter the outcome tomorrow, all will not be tip-top. Suffering is temporary. Heaven is eternal...


Our Lady of Victory...

...PRAY FOR US!

Miracles can happen...

"Vote for Real Hope..."

“Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed on this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder.”

–Dietrich Bonhoeffer

As we head toward November, Catholics might profit from recalling a few simple facts.

First, surrounding a bad social policy or party platform plank—for example, permissive abortion—with religious people doesn’t redeem the bad policy or plank. It merely compromises the religious people who try to excuse it. One of the more miraculous, or suspicious, side-effects of the 2004 election was the number of candidates in both political parties who suddenly began talking about their religious faith. There’s no doubt that many public officials, regardless of party, do take their religious beliefs very seriously and do try to live by them. That’s a good thing. So maybe this latest trend implies a new Great Awakening. Or maybe, as one of my skeptical friends says, “it’s just another charm offensive to get the shamans off their backs.” Time will tell. Words are important. Actions are more important. The religious choreography of a campaign doesn’t matter. The content of its ideas does. The religious vocabulary of a candidate doesn’t matter. The content of his record, plans, and promises does.

Second, there’s no way for Catholics to finesse their way around the abortion issue, and if we’re serious about being “Catholic,” we need to stop trying. No such thing as a “right” to kill an unborn child exists. And wriggling past that simple truth by redefining the unborn child as an unperson, a pre-human lump of cells, is the worst sort of Orwellian hypocrisy—especially for Christians. Abortion always involves the deliberate killing of an innocent human life, and it is always, inexcusably, grievously wrong. This fact in no way releases us from the duty to provide ample and compassionate support for unwed or abandoned mothers, women facing unwanted pregnancies, and women struggling with the aftermath of an abortion. But the inadequacy of that support demands that we work to improve it. It does not justify killing the child.

Obviously, we have other important issues facing us this fall: the economy, the war in Iraq, immigration justice. But we can’t build a healthy society while ignoring the routine and very profitable legalized homicide that goes on every day against America’s unborn children. The right to life is foundational. Every other right depends on it. Efforts to reduce abortions, or to create alternatives to abortion, or to foster an environment where more women will choose to keep their unborn child, can have great merit—but not if they serve to cover over or distract from the brutality and fundamental injustice of abortion itself. We should remember that one of the crucial things that set early Christians apart from the pagan culture around them was their rejection of abortion and infanticide. Yet for thirty-five years I’ve watched prominent “pro-choice” Catholics justify themselves with the kind of moral and verbal gymnastics that should qualify as an Olympic event. All they’ve really done is capitulate to Roe v. Wade.

Third and finally, national campaigns—of every political party—always run on the language of hope, change, and the American Dream. This makes sense. Our leaders should inspire us; they should stir our hearts and call us to live the ideals that make America great. But sometimes the answer to the realities we face is not “yes, we can,” but “no, we can’t.” No, we can’t spend money like hedonists and outrun our debts forever. No, we can’t ignore the poor of the Third World and expect to be loved abroad. No, we can’t allow the killing of roughly one million unborn children a year and then posture ourselves as a moral society. No, we can’t make wicked things right by spinning them in a clever way.

Robert D. Kaplan once wrote that “Americans can afford optimism partly because their institutions, including the Constitution, were conceived by men who thought tragically.” The American Founders, most of them Christians, had a hard and unsentimental understanding of the limits of human reason and virtue. The last thing we need in 2008 is the kind of bogus hope rooted in mystical good feeling.

The real world involves hard conflicts and intractable issues that can’t be talked away or smothered under evasive language. Plenty of very good Catholics inhabit both major political parties. It’s our job as Catholic citizens to press our parties and our political leaders to respect the sanctity of human life—all of it, from conception to grave—whether our leaders and party elites like us or not.

Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.

*ELECTION 2008*

If you want to vote for the best Presidential Candidate possible, why not do it? That's what our Bishops want from you. Afterall, aren't we looking for a candidate with similar principles as Our Lord?

This is what I intend to do, with the help of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship and Priests For Life's "Five Non-Negotiables," and I plan to help you do the same. The purpose of the USCCBs Voter's Guide is to outline what we should be looking for in a candidate based upon the teachings of Jesus Christ.

For instance, the Bishops have 8 major issues that are of the greatest importance (the greatest of "intrinsic" evils). They are:

Abortion
Embryonic Stem-Cell Destruction
Euthanasia
Genocide
Human Cloning
Racism
Targeting of Non-Combatants
Torture

Priests for Life have Five "Non-Negotiables":

Abortion
Embryonic Stem-Cell Destruction
Euthanasia
Human Cloning
Same-Sex Marriage


With this information, I've created a scoring system to rate the candidates on these 9 issues. Let me point out that the Bishops list 20+ additional less-major issues, but I think if we find a candidate solid on these 9 issues, their conscience is probably sound enough to make decent decisions for our country on foreign policy, immigration, health care, etc.

In determining scoring, I had to weight the issues where the direct targeting of the innocent and defenseless were the greatest. That results in the following:

20 Points
Abortion
Embryonic Stem-Cell Destruction
Euthanasia
Genocide

15 Points
Targeting of Non-Combatants (Weighted slightly less than the above 4, mainly because a nuclear weapon targets the "enemy," even though the imminent death of the innocent cannot be avoided)

10 Points
Human Cloning
Racism
Same-Sex Marriage
Torture


If you decide to not even consider voting for a pro-abortion candidate, I cannot fault you and no one should consider you a "single issue voter." If there was a pro-slavery candidate, I think we could all agree that declining to vote for him/her based on that "single issue" is completely acceptable and warranted. I must warn you though: Of the 6 Presidential Candidates, only 1 of them can be considered pro-life. The other 5 either have questionable past voting records or pro-abortion platforms.


And here are the 6 Presidential Candidates for the November 4th Election:



Chuck Baldwin








Bob Barr








John McCain








Cynthia McKinney








Ralph Nader







Barrack Obama








If your mind is already made up, at least continue reading to see the outcome...and keep in mind this is an unbiased study.


"Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost."

John Quincy Adams

ABORTION (20)
20 - Baldwin
0 - Barr
10 - McCain
-20 - McKinney
-20 - Nader
-20 - Obama

EMBRYONIC STEM-CELL DESTRUCTION (20)
20 - Baldwin
20 - Barr
-20 - McCain
-20 - McKinney
-20 - Nader
-20 - Obama

EUTHANASIA (20)
20 - Baldwin
20 - Barr
20 - McCain
-20 - McKinney
20 - Nader
-20 - Obama

GENOCIDE (20)
20 - All Candidates

TARGETING OF NON-COMBATANTS (15)
10 - Baldwin
0 - Barr
-15 - McCain
15 - McKinney
15 - Nader
15 - Obama

TORTURE (10)
10 - Baldwin
10 - Barr
10 - McCain
10 - McKinney
10 - Nader
10 - Obama

RACISM (10)
10 - All Candidates

HUMAN CLONING (10)
10 - Baldwin
10 - Barr
10 - McCain
-10 - McKinney
5 - Nader
-10 - Obama

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE (10)
10 - Baldwin
5 - Barr
10 - McCain
-10 - McKinney
-10 - Nader
-10 - Obama

RESULTS:
130 - Chuck Baldwin
95 - Bob Barr
55 - John McCain
30 - Ralph Nader
-25 - Cynthia McKinney
-25 - Barrack Obama

That is pretty clear that per the Bishops, the best candidate for us Catholics to vote for would be Chuck Baldwin. Even if you factored in the minor issues - which Joe Healy did (Thanks, Joe!) - Chuck Baldwin would still be the clear-cut "winner."
So now what are you going to do?

For some perspective, I'm going to unveil the results of some of the pre-Primary candidates and a couple Veeps:


135 - Ron Paul (R)

130 - Chuck Baldwin (Constitution)

115 - Sarah Palin (R)
115 - Alan Keyes (R)

105 - Mike Huckabee (R)

95 - Bob Barr (Libertarian)

55 - John McCain (R)

30 - Ralph Nader (I)

25 - Fred Thompson (R)

15 - Joe Biden (D)

5 - Mitt Romney (R)

-25 - Hillary Clinton (D)
-25 - Cynthia McKinney (Green)
-25 - Barrack Obama (D)

-55 - Rudy Giuliani (R)

HAPPY VOTING!

Election Day 2007

The Pro Life Union of Southeastern PA now has their voter's guide up on their site. Make sure you take it with you to the polls!

It shows the following:

Judges on the Pa. Supreme Court & the Pa. Superior Court make decisions that have significant impact on the sanctity of human life & marriage. Two of the seven seats on the Pa. Supreme Court and three of the 15 seats on the Pa. Superior Court judges face a yes or no vote on retention for another ten year term.

PA Supreme Court (vote for two)

Maureen Lally-Green -prolife

Mike Krancer -prolife

Debra Todd- pro-abortion

Seamus McCaffrey - pro-abortion

PA. Superior Court (vote for three)

Cheryl Lynn Allen -prolife

Bruce Bratton-prolife

Jacqueline Shogun-prolife

Christine Donnohue-pro-abortion

Ron Foling -pro-abortion

John Younge-pro-abortion

Retention Votes(vote yes or no)

Pa. Supreme Court ~ Thomas G. Saylor voted to overturn existing state law & created a 'legal right' for homosexual couples to adopt children

Pa. Superior Court

Joan Orie Melvin -pro-life

John L. Musmanno -prolife

Correale Stevens -prolife

Commonwealth Court

Bernard L. McGinley -prolife

Bonnie L. Leadbetter/proabortion Doris Smith-Ribner/proabortion

Philadelphia

Al Taubenberger-prolife

Michael Nutter - pro-abortion

Delaware County - The following candidates have pro-life positions

City Council: Tom McGarrigle, Christine Fizzano Cannon

District Attorney: Michael Green

Common Pleas Court: Mary Alice Brenan, Greg Mallon

Common Pleas Court Retention: Ann Osborne, George Pagano, James Proud

Haverford Township Commissioner

Jim McGarrity, Jeff Heilmann, Cathy Kovach, Bill Wechsler

Bucks County

County Commissioner (vote for two)

Jim Cawley -prolife, Jay Russell - prolife, Charles Martin -unknown

Daine Marseglia: pro-abortion, Steve Santarsiero: pro-abortion

Common Pleas Court: Diane Gibbons - prolife

Common Pleas Court Retention (vote yes or no)

David Heckler: pro-abortion

Warminster Township Supervisor: Donna Marie Davis: pro-life

Montgomery County

County Commissioner (vote for two)

Bruce Castor -prolife, Jim Matthews -prolife

Ruth Damsker: pro-abortion, Joseph Hoeffel: pro-abortion

The following other countywide candidates have a pro-life position or record.

District Attorney - Risa Vetri Ferman

Clerk of Courts - Marcy Toepel

Recorder of Deeds - Nancy Becker

Sheriff - John Durante

Treasurer - Garrett Page

Retention Votes for Montgomery County Common Pleas Court

Thomas M. Del Ricci: prolife, Stanley R. Ott: prolife

Calvin S. Drayer - In July 2002, he issued a decision that allowed Steven Brighams abortion chamber to continue to commit abortions even though the Upper Merion Township Zoning Board had operated in violation of existing law. This chamber later closed.