Pro-life Republican Ticket

+JMJ+
It is not my intent to change this blog into a political blog, but since not many feast days are occurring right now, and this issue is on every one's mind, I decided to post the following article:

GOP-PALIN Aug-29-2008 (570 words) With photos. xxxn

McCain selects Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as running mate
By Carol Zimmermann
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, selected by Sen. John McCain Aug. 28 as his vice-presidential running mate, won the praise of Catholic leaders earlier this year for embracing the arrival of her fifth child, born with Down syndrome in April.

The Republican governor, who is a nondenominational Protestant, knew from early testing that her son Trig "would face special challenges," according to a family statement, but she and her husband Todd felt "privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives."

The family's decision stands in contrast to statistics showing that more than 90 percent of women who receive a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome choose to abort the child.

Recent polls had indicated that if McCain picked a running mate who supported keeping abortion legal it would have cost him a significant number of votes.

Although Palin, Alaska's youngest and first woman governor, has been a strong supporter of pro-life issues, the 44-year-old governor's name had not been widely mentioned on the list of potential vice-presidential candidates that included former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge.

Palin accepted her selection as McCain's running mate during a rally in Dayton, Ohio, calling the role the "privilege of a lifetime."

McCain described her as someone with "grit, integrity and fierce devotion to the common good ... exactly what we need in Washington today."

Palin, who took office in 2006, came to the governor's job after a stint in local politics as the mayor and council member of the small town of Wasilla and as chairman of the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which regulates Alaska's oil and gas resources.

Although she has pushed for ethics reform and has a reputation for standing up to special-interest groups, Palin also described herself plainly as a "hockey mom." She likes to fish and hunt and is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association. In 1984 she was named Miss Wasilla and was a runner-up for Miss Alaska.

Born in Sandpoint, Idaho, Palin moved with her family to Alaska when she was an infant. She graduated from Wasilla High School in 1982 where she was a point guard and captain of the basketball team and earned the nickname "Sarah Barracuda" for her tough style.

She received a bachelor's degree in communications-journalism from the University of Idaho in 1987. Her husband is an oil production operator on Alaska's North Slope. Their oldest son, Track, enlisted in the Army last year.

Palin introduced her husband and four younger children -- Bristol, 17; Willow, 14; Piper, 7; and Trig -- at the Dayton rally.

After Trig's birth, Anchorage Archbishop Roger L. Schwietz told the Catholic Anchor, the archdiocesan newspaper, that Palin's "actions are a public witness to the fact that every child is a gift. This is what the pro-abortion people don't want to admit to."

Mercy Sister Kathleen O'Hara who assists people with disabilities at the Joy Community of Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, likewise praised Palin's decision, saying "people who had Down syndrome births were so thrilled."

"It says a great deal for their deep and abiding faith that they knew they were going to have a hard road ahead and they were willing to do this," she added.

Denver Bishops on Church's Stance Against Abortion

+JMJ+

This may not have anything to do with the liturgical year, but I felt it neccessary to post anyway!

"It's Always Important to Know What Our Faith Actually Teaches"

DENVER, Colorado, AUG. 26, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Here is the online letter Archbishop Charles Chaput and Auxiliary Bishop James Conley addressed to the Archdiocese of Denver on the stance of the Church against abortion. The letter, released Monday, is titled, "On the Separation of Sense and State: a Clarification for the People of the Church in Northern Colorado."

* * *

To Catholics of the Archdiocese of Denver:

Catholic public leaders inconvenienced by the abortion debate tend to take a hard line in talking about the "separation of Church and state." But their idea of separation often seems to work one way. In fact, some officials also seem comfortable in the role of theologian. And that warrants some interest, not as a "political" issue, but as a matter of accuracy and justice.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is a gifted public servant of strong convictions and many professional skills. Regrettably, knowledge of Catholic history and teaching does not seem to be one of them. Interviewed on Meet the Press August 24, Speaker Pelosi was asked when human life begins. She said the following: "I would say that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time. And what I know is over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition. ... St. Augustine said at three months. We don't know. The point is, is that it shouldn't have an impact on the woman's right to choose."

Since Speaker Pelosi has, in her words, studied the issue "for a long time," she must know very well one of the premier works on the subject, Jesuit John Connery's "Abortion: The Development of the Roman Catholic Perspective" (Loyola, 1977). Here's how Connery concludes his study:
"The Christian tradition from the earliest days reveals a firm antiabortion attitude. ... The condemnation of abortion did not depend on and was not limited in any way by theories regarding the time of fetal animation. Even during the many centuries when Church penal and penitential practice was based on the theory of delayed animation, the condemnation of abortion was never affected by it. Whatever one would want to hold about the time of animation, or when the fetus became a human being in the strict sense of the term, abortion from the time of conception was considered wrong, and the time of animation was never looked on as a moral dividing line between permissible and impermissible abortion."
Or to put it in the blunter words of the great Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "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."

Ardent, practicing Catholics will quickly learn from the historical record that from apostolic times, the Christian tradition overwhelmingly held that abortion was grievously evil. In the absence of modern medical knowledge, some of the Early Fathers held that abortion was homicide; others that it was tantamount to homicide; and various scholars theorized about when and how the unborn child might be animated or "ensouled." But none diminished the unique evil of abortion as an attack on life itself, and the early Church closely associated abortion with infanticide. In short, from the beginning, the believing Christian community held that abortion was always, gravely wrong.

Of course, we now know with biological certainty exactly when human life begins. Thus, today's religious alibis for abortion and a so-called "right to choose" are nothing more than that -- alibis that break radically with historic Christian and Catholic belief.

Abortion kills an unborn, developing human life. It is always gravely evil, and so are the evasions employed to justify it. Catholics who make excuses for it -- whether they're famous or not -- fool only themselves and abuse the fidelity of those Catholics who do sincerely seek to follow the Gospel and live their Catholic faith.

The duty of the Church and other religious communities is moral witness. The duty of the state and its officials is to serve the common good, which is always rooted in moral truth. A proper understanding of the "separation of Church and state" does not imply a separation of faith from political life.

But of course, it's always important to know what our faith actually teaches.

+Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
Archbishop of Denver

+James D. Conley
Auxiliary Bishop of Denver