As a former Democrat I have listened and watched the Democratic conventions from 1988 to 2008 in a state of painful frustration. There are the leaders talking about the poor, the marginalized, the downtrodden and the disenfranchised. But I simmered over of one glaring omission: the unborn. Who is more poor, marginalized, downtrodden and disenfranchised than an aborted infant? The rhetoric turns to pure hypocrisy when they speak about the infant mortality rate, and the right of a baby to be born and grow up to a good life of equality in this country. How could they say those things while advocating abortion in their platform? It was embarrassing to watch. Back then I had not been a big fan of Ronald Reagan but I could not help but identify with him when he said, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me!” The Democratic Party is not Democratic enough. At the 1992 Democratic convention hostility to the pro-life cause was undisguised. In 2008 it was barely mentioned.

Lamentably, there is not, at present, a morally ideal political party in the United States. I suppose there never was or will be. From left and right a depressing and overwhelming array of moral dilemmas are presented to the weary citizen.  Whatever the good we vote for, it seems ten evils will come with it. One issue however, stands out as having the potential to divide this country as no other issue has since the Civil War: abortion.

Of all that is wrong with abortion, one hears very little in the public debate about an extremely important consideration. That is, what the continued legality of abortion is doing and will do to us as a people. The greatest curse an individual or a nation can pull down on its head is to kill its own conscience. The Old Testament is rife with stories about how God’s people sold themselves into bondage and exile by turning their backs on the True God who saved them, and on His protective Law, in an effort to blend in with the pagan societies around them. Not insignificantly, the customs of these societies often required child sacrifice to the pagan gods. It is often said that the United States is no longer a Christian nation but a pagan one.

Our gods include convenience, expediency, wealth, status, how others perceive us, but above all, the self. We Americans have been sacrificing our children to the modern day version of these vain idols. The Prophets of old were wracked with agony and frustration because their people would not listen to the warnings that they were courting disaster if they did not turn back from their ways and return to Yahweh.

What befell the unrepentant and hard of heart was called the Wrath of God, or God’s punishment. Of course that language today is almost universally laughed at (as it was then). But let us try to define “the Wrath of God” in terms that can be understood (if not accepted) in a contemporary setting. Above I used an expression about “pulling a curse down upon one’s head”. That is a rewording of a maxim I heard throughout my childhood: “The worst punishment God can give is to take away your conscience.” A spiritually mature Christian often experiences, during periods of suffering and conversion, that most of his or her sufferings are the perfectly natural, obvious, and direct consequences of specific sinful ways accepted in defiance of God. It is not that God is inflicting arbitrary punishment on us, He is merely allowing us to reap the fruit we have sown, and taste its bitterness. What has traditionally been called God’s wrath is actually a wake-up call. But with this insight comes the chilling knowledge that grace and mercy can be shunned. Perhaps a good voting guide for our country would be Ezekiel 22.

We are a nation that is killing its young by sacrificing them to vain idols. If this continues, what can our future hold? If the children are our future, the legacy of the unborn is an un-future. Some will argue that abortion is the law of the land, but so was slavery once the law of the land. It proved to be an illegitimate law. One human being does not have a “right” to “own” another human being. A woman’s “rights” over her own body do not extend over the body of the other human being in her womb. The question over whether it is, or when, it becomes a human being flies in the face of common sense.

Human beings give birth to human beings, not pineapples or giraffes, although it would be interesting to hear the outcry from certain circles if women gave birth to baby seals. While baby seals deserve not to be killed for mercenary reasons, they hold (or ought to hold) a somewhat different place in the scale of values than baby people.

As to when the child becomes a human being, any expectant couple in love can tell you how and when that life began and would have it no other way. They don’t affectionately pat Mom’s tummy and refer to a fetus. It’s their baby. The loving heart knows. It is the abortion mentality that must live in denial or risk going mad, but living in denial also does untold psychological damage. The only safe option is the acknowledgement of truth and the repentance which leads to healing.

So why is this the issue above all the other legitimate pro-life concerns? Even the Late Cardinal Bernardin before his death 14 years ago, was been quoted as saying that his “seamless garment” teaching should not be used to downplay the importance of abortion. The threat of nuclear war is a very legitimate concern—less so now thank God than just a few years ago—but the concern for all the millions who might be killed in a nuclear war cannot match the urgency of concern for the millions of people who are being killed, and have already been killed by abortion. Besides, to an unborn child what is the difference between a nuclear war and abortion? It is serial holocaust, but not the work of one madman pushing a button, but of thousands of cool, calm professionals who drink their morning coffee and go to work and destroy children all day, every day, across the nation in violation of the Hippocratic oath. Which makes it all the more chilling in its very routiness. What must this do to the national psyche?

It is argued that homeless people are dying on our streets because money that could be spent helping them has gone for defense. But then, homeless people can be helped in the private sector, if we have love enough to try — even if we have to take someone into our own home to keep them from freezing. As bad as the situation is, it is still not the direct, deliberate, and premeditated killing of someone as abortion is. But private citizens can get thrown in jail for trying to rescue those little ones.

It is astonishing that feminists are not at the forefront of the anti-abortion movement. The abortion mentality has opened women up to evil male exploitation in untold ways, not to mention the psycho-spiritual, physical, and emotional consequences that abortion brings on a woman. Psychiatrists speak of something called Post-Abortion Syndrome, consisting of severe depression reaching suicidal proportions in women who have had abortions. It is said that the symptoms often don’t even begin to appear until about fifteen years after the abortion. We can begin to expect an onslaught of extremely troubled women any time now.

Our Constitution is supposed to guarantee certain inalienable rights with which we were endowed by our Creator, the first of which is the right to life. The right to choose another’s death for the sake of one’s own convenience, career, reputation, or what have you, is not a legitimate right. It is not a right at all, and the state does not have the authority to grant it. Slavery, mentioned above, is another example of an illegitimate right.

One may counter, “But I don’t subscribe to your religion, and we have separation of Church and state!” That may be, but abortion is not simply a religious issue, or just a women’s issue, any more than slavery was simply a Black issue, or the Nazi Holocaust was simply a Jewish issue. It is a humanitarian issue. It is a crime against humanity, and a crime against nature. It involves me. It involves everyone.

Some complain of being sick of others “imposing their morality on them.” Is it not just as legitimate a complaint to be sick of others imposing their immorality on the nation?

Some will say it is a private matter, but it is not just between a woman and her doctor because it affects the very fabric of society. It affects how we value human dignity. It is the first step towards infanticide, (actually, it is infanticide) and euthanasia (already taking place) human experimentation (explored by Hitler, and now taking place on aborted infants, whose bodies have been utilized in France, to make, of all things, perfume), eugenic engineering, selective breeding, and a thousand other Orwellian nightmares. Abortion, bad enough in itself, desensitizes us to these horrors and after a while they don’t seem so bad. In fact, we have already beat Hitler’s stats for numbers of innocents killed—and that’s genocide. Can we say, like the German people after the war, “But we didn’t know!” The German people were horrified when the allied soldiers forced them to look at the piles of bodies in the extermination camps. Today pro-abortion forces treat photographic proof of the mangled bodies of aborted babies found in dumpsters as if it were cheap propaganda. God help us. We are being dehumanized.

Abortion is sometimes defended in the name of compassion. This goes against the etymology of the very word: “to suffer with”. To suffer with someone means to enter into her difficulties with her, not throw her a quick fix so we don’t have to be bothered. Compassion loves at the expense of self. Compassion takes the troubled young woman into our homes if necessary, pays her bills if necessary, (as many diocesees have pledged to do) and welcomes the new child into the world as if it were one of our own—because it is. Compassion is what the Good Samaritan did, and it costs.

Christians know that “our bodies are not our own, we have been bought with a price” (See 1 Cor. 6: 19-20), and that our neighbors are part of us in the Body of Christ. Abortion is suicide. What else can be the future of a people which kills its young?

© 2010 by John Mallon

To see an archive of John’s 25 years of writing on the Catholic Faith go to johnmallon.net

The timing is coincidental, I’m sure.

In the last week before an election in which the pro-abortion-choice party will lose a lot of seats, Father Charles Curran delivered a lecture critical of the US Catholic bishops’ approach to abortion in law and in the voting booth.

He doesn’t dispute that abortion is a grave evil, just that the bishops have been approaching it the wrong way: putting too much emphasis on that one issue at the expense of others.

His first argument is over the “speculative uncertainty” about when, precisely, the new member of species homo sapiens is infused with its soul and thus becomes human. “Speculative” is a fancy theological word to mean “theoretical,” and “splitting hairs.” Bottom line: it’s a new, living, separate human being from the moment of conception and will not ever be any other thing. But this point plays into argument number 2.

His next argument is on the issue of whether passing a ban on abortions is “feasible and possible” in our society. The bishops, he says, need to recognize that they risk getting nothing if they only will accept everything. For instance, he says that one could consider that since there is no consensus “in our society,” on when, exactly, life begins, then it is not feasible or possible to expect that this society will accept an outright ban on abortion. In that case, he says, a person is justified in erring on the side of the freedom of the mother rather than the life of the child.

Two problems with this approach:

1) It is unavailable to the Catholic citizen who is called never to make a deal with the devil. The zeitgeist might not recognize that the human person is a new, separate human being from the first moment of conception, but the Church does, and has.

2) It is unavailable to anyone who believes in the foundational principle of our system of justice, i.e., innocent until proven guilty. Even the consistent, honest secularist would recognize that, given the uncertainty about whether or not the contents of the womb are human, the defense of the fetus’s right to her own life trumps the mother’s right to her body.

His third argument flows from what he faultily concluded in his second argument and thus falls for lack of substantial premises.

His fourth argument is that “intrinsic evil” is a moral term and not a legal one, and since the Church isn’t pushing for laws against all “intrinsic evils” (e.g., adultery) she has less standing to call for the outright ban of abortion.

The problem there, of course, is that adultery, prostitution, and other intrinsic evils he may point to are evils one commits against oneself and another person, but they do not result in the death of the other person. So long as the person remains alive, they have the opportunity for repentance and salvation. An aborted child has no such chance, not even for baptism. The injustice done the child far exceeds that done to an illegitimate lover. As far as the grounds for abortion being a subject more worthy of legal attention, as pointed out above, the new human being, since she is a separate, living member of species homo sapiens, she has a right to her own body and her own life and a rightful demand on the mother to nurture her and carry her. And this right supercedes that of the mother to her own body.

In the end, with the Catholic vote swinging in historic proportions toward the party that far more consistently defends life at all stages, I don’t believe Father Curran’s “sophisticated and complex” argument will sway many. Sure, it’ll give more fireproofing to the consciences of some Catholyc politicians like Nan Pelosi, but no one who actually believes in the Catholic Church.

Bottom line: if we don’t have the right to life, no other rights matter. If a new human being cannot be guaranteed that she will be allowed to grow unmolested by her mother and her mother’s doctors, what other rights will ever matter?

Oh, and the cardinal-designate who runs the highest tribunal in Rome also recently weighed in on this, not in Father Currans favor.

Looks like the Democrats in my home state of Minnesota are trying to lose a very winnable election. Resisting a national trend, it had appeared that the DFL (Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party) were going to win the Governor’s mansion for the first time since 1986. (And you thought Minnesota was so blue it was navy!)

Thomas already reported on the anti-Catholic mailers sent out by the DFL.

Now, Mark Dayton, their candidate for Governor has slammed his own party, calling the mailers “inappropriate.” But his words struck me as peculiar.

“I believe the brochure’s picture showing a Man of the Cloth is inappropriate. I believe that it is inappropriate to bring religion into a campaign as this image and others do.”

Well, what’s inappropriate exactly? Is it “inappropriate” to insult religious ministers by suggesting that Catholic priests don’t care about the poor? Or, is Dayton suggesting that it’s inappropriate for the DFL (or anyone) to bring up religion in the public debate. What else explains him complaining about what “others do”?

Is Dayton trying to suggest that the DFL’s mailer was understandable (if not justified) given what others have done? If so, I think he should explain what exactly he finds objectionable from other quarters.

It seems quite clear that Dayton is referring to Archbishop John Nienstedt’s decision to send out DVDs on marriage to Catholics in Minnesota. This set off a firestorm among liberals in Minnesota.

Either way, the Democrats are proving again either their hostility or their ignorance of religious voters. And it might just cost them the election. Dayton has has a steady lead of approximately 5-7 points, but the most recent poll shows him tied with Republican Tom Emmer, who is Catholic.

And it seems other elected Democrats (especially many Catholics) are furious over the Party’s boneheaded move.

Ray at the Catholic blog called Stella Borealis (what a name!) got some an inside scoop on gaffe:

A well placed source (I’ve always wanted to be able to use that phrase) has admitted that many DFL elected officials, some holding legislative leadership positions, are extremely furious with the party’s paid headquarter staff in St. Paul.

Minnesota Democrats might just stay in the wilderness another four years.

Following up on Josh’s post, the picture that is worth a thousand words. It shows that Dems were +10 in 2008 and the GOP may now be +24 among Catholics:

Some thoughts:

• Every poll should be taken with a large grain of salt. Nevertheless, the swing is impressive: Catholics represent the widest switch from Democrat-to-Republican support of any group classified. I’ll be watching the exit polls next week to see if the claims made by this poll are substantiated.
• Individuals who identify themselves as Catholic tend to generally follow the overall trend of voting, year-by-year, so what we are seeing among Catholics is partially a subset of the widespread national disappointment in Democrats.
• What I am more interested in seeing is the polling for practicing Catholics, often defined in polls as Catholics who attend Mass at least once a week (as required). This group of active Catholics voted more against than for Obama in 2008.
• I find it fascinating that more Catholics supported Democrats in the last midterm elections (in 2006) than supported the Democrats + Obama-as-President more recently in 2008. Obama’s “Catholic problem” remains, and there may now be evidence it is getting worse. Much worse.

Of course, in the end, polls don’t matter. Votes do.

UPDATE – Josh called the reporter who wrote the original NYTimes story and published the findings of their polling (along with CBS):

The graphic above only shows the gap between the two parties, not the raw numbers. So I called New York Times reporter Megan Thee-Brennan. She told me the exact two-party support from Catholics in this poll. Among Catholics, she said, 62% said they were voting Republican in the upcoming midterm elections and 38% said they were voting Democratic, a gap of 24 points. She then noted that Barack Obama won the Catholic vote by ten points in 2008, winning it 54 to 44 over McCain.

A swing of 34 points? Holy moly.

Who will win the Catholic vote in this midterm election? A new poll by the New York Times and CBS, shows that Republicans are winning over Catholics, women and independents. If that holds on Tuesday, it’ll be Nancy Pelosi handing the Speaker’s gavel to John Boehner, a Catholic Republican from Ohio.

The New York Times doesn’t show the breakdowns of each demographic in their New York Times/CBS poll. In other words, 19% of those polled are Catholic, but the poll doesn’t say how this group (Catholics) answered on each of the poll questions.

Nonetheless, the New York Times declares:

“Republicans have wiped out the advantage held by Democrats in recent election cycles among women, Roman Catholics, less affluent Americans and independents. All of those groups broke for Mr. Obama in 2008 and for Congressional Democrats when they grabbed both chambers from the Republicans four years ago, according to exit polls.”

In addition to Catholics, the poll finds that independents and women are also moving rightward. In fact, this could be the first time that a majority of women support the GOP in a midterm election since this poll started in 1982.

Who do you think will win the Catholic vote? Who deserves it?

UPDATE: Thomas has found the graphic. Here is a link to the graphic.

UPDATE #2: The graphic above only shows the gap between the two parties, not the raw numbers. So I called New York Times reporter Megan Thee-Brennan. She told me the exact two-party support from Catholics in this poll. Among Catholics, she said, 62% said they were voting Republican in the upcoming midterm elections and 38% said they were voting Democratic, a gap of 24 points. She then noted that Barack Obama won the Catholic vote by ten points in 2008, winning it 54 to 44 over McCain.

So I said: This means that Republicans have gone from a 10 point deficit among Catholic voters to a 24 point advantage, a shift in 34 points in just two years. She confirmed that the shift was indeed 34 points.

Wow. We’ll see if that holds on Election Day, but that could just be the major story from this election.

As promised, here is the YouTube of my appearance last night on EWTN’s The World Over with Raymond Arroyo (jump to the 13:00 mark for my segment):

I was very happy with how this discussion turned out and would welcome your feedback and comments!

[POST UPDATED - SEE BELOW.]

What. the. H!

Cathy Lynn Grossman, who runs USA Today’s “Faith and Reason” blog, wrote today:

Burke kicked off the ‘wafer watch’ on whether abortion rights supporter and former Democractic presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004 should take Communion, is back with instructions for the mid-terms.

Excuse me – “wafer watch”?! As a faithful Catholic, I find that phrase incredibly offensive. Catholics believe the Eucharist is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ Himself. … “wafer watch”?! From a religion reporter?!

Next, look at the photo chosen of Cardinal-designate Burke:

Again – WHAT. THE. H!

They managed to find and crop the one photo that makes the Archbishop appear like he’s performing some sort of Nazi salute. If they had revealed his other arm it would be clear he is performing a blessing.

Third, Grossman attempts to make an argument that, because Pope Benedict appointed both Archbishops Burke and Wuerl to be Cardinals, this action somehow undermines the pope’s recent and clear teaching about the duty of bishops to counsel the faithful to use their vote in support of pro-life candidates.

Ecclesiology 101 time for Grossman: Pope > bishop.

This is three-strikes-you’re-out for Grossman’s column. Insultingly referring to the Eucharist as a “wafer”, posting a damagingly-cropped photo of Archbishop Burke, and confusing Catholics and her readers about what the Holy Father is trying to communicate.

Please join me in emailing Cathy Grossman at cgrossman@usatoday.com and let her know about your displeasure at her insulting and disrespectful column.

She can start by removing the offensive description of the Eucharist, posting a proper photo of the Archbishop, and noting that questions about denying the Eucharist are a red herring argument trumped by the clear teaching of the Holy Father about the moral duty of Catholics to support pro-life candidates.

UPDATE – Grossman has removed the offensive phrase “wafer watch” and added this disclaimer:

The photo of Archbishop Burke remains highly unfortunate, but I’m satisfied that the photo selection and cropping was not intentional.

I still believe the article does a very weak job of describing the controversy among Catholics, but not in so skewered a way as to merit further action. Readers are welcome to add their corrective comments over at Grossman’s original post.

“Psst! Have you seen my pike lying around? I can’t find it!”

Photo: Getty Images

The Planned Parenthood Facebook page proclaims: “It’s almost Halloween! Can you tell that we’re serious about our costumes (and birth control) here?” … it’s pretty scary:

I hope these women run into some pro-life pumpkins in their neighborhood.

And by offbeat I mean totally offbeat!

Encased in pinkish marble-like slabs supporting a balustrade, this dinosaur — or what’s left of it — has for centuries been the most faithful presence in the Cathedral of St. Ambrose in Vigevano, a town about 20 miles from Milan.

“The rock contains what appears to be a horizontal section of a dinosaur’s skull. The image looks like a CT scan, and clearly shows the cranium, the nasal cavities, and numerous teeth,” Andrea Tintori, the University of Milan paleontologist who spotted the fossil near the altar, told Discovery News.

Measuring about 30 cm (11.8 inches), the skull was cut in sections as slabs of the marble-like rock were used to build the Cathedral between 1532 and 1660. Indeed, Tintori found a second section of the same skull in another slab nearby.

The calcareous rock in which the dinosaur remains are embedded comes from the rich fossil-bearing site of Mount San Giorgio, which is on the Unesco World Heritage List.

“It is called Broccatello and was mined in Arzo, Switzerland. We know that this type of rock dates geologically to the Lower Jurassic, about 190 million years ago,” Tintori said.

It is not clear what animal the skull belonged to. Tintori hopes to solve the mystery with a three-dimensional reconstruction of the fossilized remains. [Discovery.com]

Talk about an unusual member of the congregation!