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Is today April Fools Day? Is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi citing the Bible in an effort for reforms that call for ‘the dignity and worth of every person’? Is she calling on Catholic bishops to speak loudly from the pulpit?

“I would hope that there’s one thing that we can do working together as we go forward that speaks to what the Bible tells us about the dignity and worth of every person — and that is on the subject of immigration,” Pelosi said in her remarks. “Because I think the Church is going to have to play a very major role in how we, in how people are treated…. The cardinals, the archbishops, the bishops that come to me and say, ‘We want you to pass immigration reform,’” disclosed Pelosi. “And I say, ‘But I want you to speak about it from the pulpit.’

Ah! It’s about the dignity of the immigrant. Well, that’s true. Legal immigrants and those even in our country illegally are persons who deserve human dignity. No dispute there.

But what about the unborn child? She has dignity and worth, too. If Pelosi thinks it’s harsh to just kick an immigrant out of the country, then what about the child who is not welcome in the womb?

Oh, and by the way, are we going to hear Barry Lynn from American United for the Separation of Church and State condemn Pelosi, a high-ranking elected official, for encouraging Church ministers to get more involved in politics?

What’s that I hear? Oh, yeah, nothing.

During the first mid-term elections, the president’s party traditionally loses seats in Congress. But every indication so far points not just to a modest gain for the GOP, but to a tidal wave.

Case in point, the surprise retirement of Rep. David Obey, marking the 18th House Democrat to call it quits. Politico said his retirement ‘adds to Democrats woes.’ That’s because by quitting he instantly makes the race for his seat a toss-up, according to the Cook Political Report:

“In the current political environment, any heavily working-class seat that falls close to the national partisan average … isn’t the type of open seat Congressional Democrats want to defend. President Bush came within one percent of carrying this seat in 2004…. [T]he current enthusiasm gap between the parties and the competitiveness of this district at the national level warrant moving WI-07 from the Likely Democratic column to the Toss Up column.”

Obey was first elected just months before the Moon Landing and earned a reputation for being a “die-hard liberal” in his 40 years in the House of Representatives.

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s lots of debate on all fronts about Arizona’s new law requiring police to sometimes inquire into a suspect’s immigration status.  Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles has particularly stinging words for the law.

But Catholic progressives apparently believe that Cardinal Mahony should shut up about this issue.  America Magazine, with Obama-endorser Prof. Nicholas Cafardi, said the Bishops should mind their own business: “The bishops must leave the political answers, the how of solving political problems, even when those problems have a moral component, to the informed consciences of the laity. Political strategy is not a question of faith . . . let the lay people do what they do best: work out the details.”

Chris Korzen, founder of the progressive group Catholics United, agrees: “‘It’s becoming clearer and clearer that the church needs to spend more time focused on its own internal problems, and less time trying to be a political player, particularly in our own country.’ Korzen points out that Catholic doctrine allows people the right to their own opinions in politics.”

It’s a strange thing for Catholic progressives to silence the very voices that have pioneered support for their positions, but there you have it.

Oh wait, Cafardi and Korzen were telling the Bishops to shut up about abortion, not immigration.

But their statements are broad sweeping—they don’t just apply to abortion, but to episcopal commentary on any specific political proposal.  In fact, if Bishops should keep quiet about political proposals affecting intrinsic evils like abortion, they necessarily would have to refrain from commentary on laws dealing with immigration, health care, poverty and the like.

Right?

I’m sure that Cafardi and Korzen, as well as their endorsers at America, Vox Nova, Commonweal and the whole progressive commentariat, are honest men and would stick by their positions, whether it helped their agendas or not.

So I expect to see progressives issue a round denunciation of Cardinal Mahony any time now.

Given that St. Joseph is the patron saint and protector of the Church itself, I too am praying to St. Joseph – that he may intercede on behalf of those legislators searching for the courage to vote down this legislation.

Chalk it up to a long week of health care lobbying, debating and maneuvering, but the clip of Pelosi comes across to me as so transparent, it can hardly be taken seriously. From the contrived words and facial expressions, to the claim that “every order [of sisters] you can think of…,” and the feigned sympathy of children and seniors…

St. Joseph, pray for us!

Catholics United is running sham ads in West Virginia and other locations calling the Senate bill a pro-life bill.

Bishop Michael Bransfield of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston put out a statement right on the Diocese’s homepage:

In the past several days, there has been significant public debate and pressure placed on certain members of Congress to support the Senate version of health care reform that is currently being considered in the U.S. House of Representatives.

There have been confusing messages sent from groups such the Catholic Health Association and Network, consisting of members of religious orders, which are not consistent with the position of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Furthermore, political action groups such as Catholics United—that are in no way affiliated with the diocese or Catholic Church—have started secular media campaigns that confuse Catholics with misleading images and messages that are not consistent with the position taught by the Bishops of the United States, including Bishop Michael Bransfield.

Based on the phone calls we have received at Diocesan offices in Wheeling, parishioners across West Virginia have grave concerns regarding deceptive political advertisements and public statements from Network and CHA that deviate from the USCCB’s stance on conscience rights and public funding of abortion. It is the clear and unchanged position of Bishop Bransfield and the USCCB that unless these flaws are addressed in the legislation, the Senate bill should not be passed in the House.

Another day, another Catholic organization calling for the House to pass the pro-abortion Senate bill.

Today, it’s NETWORK. It’s a group made up from the heads of religious communities that represent 59,000 Catholic Sisters in the United States. NETWORK is “working on all levels to promote passage” of the Senate bill.

They state:

“We join the Catholic Health Association of the United States (CHA), which represents 1,200 Catholic sponsors, systems, facilities and related organizations, in saying: the time is now for health reform AND the Senate bill is a good way forward.”

Interesting that they chose the word forward. Because the Bishops have stated clearly: “The current health care reform bill is ‘deficient’ and should not move forward without ‘essential changes.’”

At both Commonweal and PoliticsDaily, David Gibson is trying to fool us into thinking Rep. Tom Perriello is pro-life.

“One of the House’s most pro-life and politically vulnerable Democrats announced Tuesday that he had no concerns about the Senate health care bill’s safeguards against abortion financing and sent an important signal that he may back the final measure.”

One of the most pro-life Democrats?

How do you square that with Tom Perriello’s own words, stated during his election campaign in 2008?

“Confusion …[about] my position on abortion may stem either from my public association with Catholicism as co-founder of the progressive Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good or from being badly misquoted in a New York Times article following the 2004 election. I firmly believe that abortion should not be criminalized, nor can we allow any action that seeks to coerce women by reducing access to care or making the process less safe.” (emphasis mine.)

It’s of course possible to support legal abortion but oppose the federal funding of it. Many Democrats and a few Republicans are like this. But opposing federal funding of abortion alone doesn’t make you pro-life. It only means you won’t make me pay for abortions.

David Gibson needs to retract this article immediately. He’s already leading people to confusion. Note Bishop Lynch’s blog today.  (Note: I have left a comment on Bishop Lynch’s blog and contacted his office informing them that Perriello is not pro-life.)

Joining the chorus of allegedly pro-life Democrats who are trying to defeat Bart Stupak is the entire Commonweal editorial board.

The illustious board argues that Obamacare’s $11 Billion, with no restrictions whatsoever on its being spent on abortion, won’t really, likely, hopefully not go to abortion because: it will be spent by HHS (which is run by whom?).  The editors failed, however, to read beyond their own partisan talking points and consider what the USCCB already explained in detail:  that the Hyde amendment does not apply to everything spent by HHS, but only to funds that the Labor/HHS appropriations bill appropriates to HHS.  Since this Planned Parenthood bailout won’t be appropriated through the Hyde-attached bill, the Hyde amendment doesn’t restrict its usage.

Perhaps Commonweal’s editors relied on left-wing partisan law professor Timothy Jost’s arguments, which Commonweal blogger Matthew Boudway has been hocking as reliable.  But Jost’s position is no more convincing–he says basically the same thing: that since the money will go to HHS it will mingle with Hyde funds and fall under Hyde’s restriction.  Yet there’s no requirement that HHS mingle the Obama-abortion-CHC funds with the Hyde-appropriated-CHC funds.  Pro-abortion organizations regularly set up separate shell corporations to receive federally restricted funds.  Planned Parenthood explicitly and stridently bids to be a comprehensive CHC type organization.  Now that Obama created a fund to let it do so, it can seek these billions in tax money to build more 78,000 square foot killing facilities, only with the brand spanking new label of ”federal community health center”.

As for the National Association of Community Health Centers, they are in bed with Planned Parenthood already, and have said they oppose merely obeying existing laws which ban them as tax-funded entities from compelling their employees to assist activities such as abortion.  So when NACHC says “Trust us, we won’t use the money for abortion,” we can rely on that–the same way that Bart Stupak can rely on the “pro-life Democrats” at Commonweal.

In uniting to defeat Bart Stupak, liberal Catholic leaders are showing where their true treasure lies.

Catholic Vote Action has started StandwithStupak.com.  But have you heard the Catholics Against Stupak?

Since Obama’s candidacy, prominent liberal Catholic commentators at shops like America, Commonweal, “Catholics United,” and Vox Nova have given up even their reluctance to cooperate with pro-abortion policies of the party they champion.  Instead they have chosen to euphemistically call pro-abortion policies “pro-life” and to stump for them rather than oppose them.

This sad development is on full display in their united attacks this week on the pro-life Democrats led by Bart Stupak.  Liberal Catholic spokesmen once claimed to desire pro-life Democrats, but when Bart Stupak and the USCCB led the House to prohibit any component of health reform from supporting abortion, party loyalty trumped the self-described pro-life ideals of these left-wing Catholic advocates.  Rather than support Bart Stupak’s coalition, they are working to destroy his efforts and squelch the coalition’s chance at achieving real and lasting political influence.  The same goal sought by Nancy Pelosi.

Stupak’s coalition and the USCCB have made it clear that if a health bill promotes abortion, as the Senate bill does, it must be voted down.  But leaders at America, Commonweal, Vox-Nova and the rest are indefatiguable in urging the defeat of the Stupak coalition’s efforts to get House members to vote no.  Like David did to Uriah the Hittite, liberal Catholics called Pro-Life Democrats into battle and are now sounding the retreat to cause Stupak’s execution.

So Commonweal’s David Gibson, under the guise of journalism at Politics Daily, characteristically presents his one-sided anti-pro-life view by contending that Obama’s $11 Billion for community health centers won’t go for abortion despite any such restriction in the bill.  He misrepresents this point even though he admits read the USCCB’s memo, which explains that current CHCs don’t do abortions precisely because they have been subject to the Hyde amendment while the health reform bill won’t be, and that courts require any comprehensive women’s health coverage to include abortion unless it is explicitly excluded, and that Planned Parenthood is actively seeking to be considered a comprehensive medical provider to qualify for these kinds of funds (and I might add that abortion-movement officials who fill Obama’s administration will dole out the $11 Billion).  Gibson falsely denies the facts that the Senate bill fails to restrict government from forcing people to participate in abortions, and allows the Obama abortion partisans to define abortion as preventive mandatory care, and that in the so-called pro-life way to federally fund abortion insurance, insurance exchanges may end up offering only one (financially inadequate) non-abortion plan leaving everyone else to “choose” only abortion-covering plans.  Gibson even praises the Senate bill’s evisceration of abortion-saving regimes in 32 states whose laws prevent state administration of abortion insurance, callously suggesting that the states can just pass those laws again.

Another of Commonweal’s pundits, Matthew Boudway, dismisses as mere speculation Obama’s $11 Billion Planned Parenthood bailout, and spends the rest of his time arguing against Americans United for Life in an effort to defend a bill that funds abortion insurance plans for the first time and on the most massive scale in history.  Boudway papers over the fact that funding abortion insurance inevitably funds abortion despite the Senate bill’s accounting gimmicks, and he fails to consider that by providing this unprecedented federal subsidy to a comprehensive scheme, the hundreds of thousands of women who don’t get abortions due to lack of coverage will all of a sudden have federally subsidized coverage and therefore no obstacle to their abortion.  He calls pro-lifers money-grubbing liars while passing over the fact that the USCCB and the Stupak coalition are the real proponents of the points he feels the need to spend all his efforts attacking.

America’s Michael Sean Winters sings the same tune, continuing to speciously claim that the Senate bill is better than the Stupak amendment while denying that the Senate bill massively expands abortion.  Winters inexplicably believes it is “better” to explicitly fund abortion plans and then pretend to keep the funds separate by a variety of accounting tricks, than for the Stupak language to impose actual (and morally necessary) separation and an outright ban so that the subsidies don’t function to give abortion coverage to the multitudes of women who will have abortions as a result.  Winters previously and publicly promised to oppose accounting gimmicks, but when his party leaders chose abortion over health reform, he made his choice in favor of the abortion approach.  Winters joins the other commenters in ignoring the $11 Billion Planned Parenthood bailout, the direct threat to consceince rights, the preventive care mandate, etc. etc. etc.  Winters then sinks to his usual character assasination by criticizing individual pro-lifers and relying on liberal sources as gospel truth, to divert attention from the fact that his contempt is really of the position being promoted by Stupak and the Bishops.  Winters offers praise for Bart Stupak, even while he stabs Stupak in the back by trying to get House members to vote for the Senate abortion bill.

The list of other “Catholic” abortion-policy defenders goes on and on, and it expands back in time.  From supporting the late-term abortion-matron Kathleen Sebelius, to the abortionist-funding Mexico City Policy, to now abortion-expanding health reform, liberal Catholic commenters at these organizations are using their pulpits and their funding to say that abortion actually pro-life, and pro-life really promotes abortion; to call evil: good, and good: evil.

This coordinated attack on the goals of Bart Stupak and the pro-life Democrats shows that when liberal Catholic pundits at these groups talk of wanting pro-life Democrats, what they really mean is wanting Catholics to believe that pro-abortion means pro-life, so they’ll just vote for abortion-enthusiast candidates regardless of the abortion issue.  Now they’re willing to increase abortion by hundreds of thousands every year to help their partisan goals succeed.

Catholics need to Stand with Stupak.

Archbishop Chaput denounced the efforts of Catholic groups that were busy promoting the Senate healthcare bill, which Chaput said doesn’t meet minimum moral standards. From CNA:

“The Senate version of health-care reform currently being forced ahead by congressional leaders and the White House is a bad bill that will result in bad law,”  says the Archbishop in his column  titled “Catholics, health care  and the Senate’s bad bill,” published this Monday in the Archdiocese’s website

“As I write this column on March 14, the Senate bill remains gravely flawed.  It does not meet minimum moral standards in at least three important areas: the exclusion of abortion funding and services; adequate conscience protections for health-care professionals and institutions; and the inclusion of immigrants,” Chaput writes.

The Denver archbishop specifically called out those groups that were Catholic for claiming the bill was ‘pro-life.’

“[G]roups, trade associations and publications describing themselves as ‘Catholic’ or ‘prolife’ that endorse the Senate version – whatever their intentions – are doing a serious disservice to the nation and to the Church, undermining the witness of the Catholic community; and ensuring the failure of genuine, ethical health-care reform.”

Such groups, Archbishop Chaput explains “create confusion at exactly the moment Catholics need to think clearly about the remaining issues in the health-care debate.  They also provide the illusion of moral cover for an unethical piece of legislation.”

Archbishop Chaput has aided the Church with his clarity. Read the rest of the report from CNA.