Listen up! They don't care about your religious liberty

Remember this post?

Catholics: Your misguided compassion will come back to bite you in the rear

Well, your rear is getting more exposed by the day.

Yes, Catholic charities have been forced, tragically, to close long-standing foster care and adoption agencies, and yes, Catholics have been told we must violate our consciences and provide free contraception, sterilization and abortifacients or face ruinous fines and jail -- but there's so much more coming down the pike.

For example, proposed laws like this are popping up, which would force churches to act against their own beliefs and missions, even on their own property:

Proposed Law Would Force Churches to Host Gay Weddings

Or for example, proposed federal mandates forcing Catholic hospitals to perform abortions (i.e., commit murder).

Yep, you read that right. Check out what's happening in the great State of Connecticut:

"On Sunday, some Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate said they'd favor the concept of a federal law requiring even Catholic hospitals to perform abortions."

Read more here.

And please note that from Kathleen Sebelius to Joe Biden to Nancy Pelosi to Connecticut's senatorial candidates, even self-professed Catholics are climbing all over each other to sell out Catholicism, happily calling in the power of the government for back-up.

"Force"
"Mandate"
"Law"
"Fines"
"Jail"

It's everywhere now, and if you don't see it, you're not paying attention.

While I should be used to this kind of incrementalism (really, nothing coming from the left and the Democrats should faze me at this point), it's all still kind of jarring. After all, I'm not that old, and when I was growing up in the M-TV generation and educated in public schools, everyone I knew loved God and country. There was nothing controversial or offensive about it. We clearly understood that this nation was founded on the principle of religious liberty. We cherished that fact, and we knew it's what made America different -- and great.

But in the last few years, something has changed. The left has fearlessly asserted its own narrative for this nation, one in which religious liberty is not foundational. In fact, it hit me like a ton of bricks one day recently that those on the left don't care if I, as a Catholic, have religious freedom! They really don't!

I want to be wrong, but I think I'm right on this.

If anyone out there can show me where the left (and/or the Democratic Party) is horrified by the erosion of the rights of Catholics to live our faith freely, and where the left (and/or the Democratic Party) is working hard to stop the outrages I've linked to above, I'm happy to hear it. Because until I see that, I must conclude and warn, again and again: Those on the left don't care one whit about religious liberty.

Not only is religious liberty not a value they hold, it's not even on their radar screen. I believe that many on the left would like to see religious freedom disappear entirely, especially for Catholics.


It's time for courage, folks. I think the U.S. Bishops have finally found some, and now it's our turn.

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One more IVF post (blame Fr. Tad, the brainiac!)

The blogs saw a flurry of emotional IVF posts and debates recently. Then, the inventor of IVF won the Nobel Prize last week. Then yesterday, my parish bulletin carried this article, by Fr. Tad Pacholczyk, Ph.D (who earned a doctorate in neuroscience from Yale University, did post-doctoral work at Harvard, has four undergraduate degrees -- in molecular and cellular biology, chemistry, biochemistry and philosophy -- and has two degrees in advanced theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. I note that so that no one jumps in to claim that he or the Church is anti-science.)

I think he says it all. Have a read:

Babies In Test Tubes

When I give talks about in vitro fertilization (IVF), I usually ask my audience the following question: "How many of you know a baby born by IVF, or know a couple who has tried to get pregnant this way?" Usually about half the hands in the room go up. Then I ask them to raise their hands if the couple was Catholic. Virtually all the same hands go up a second time. I have the sense that Catholics are making use of IVF at about the same rate as non-Catholics, and that most of them are only vaguely aware of the Church's position on making test tube babies.

When asked why IVF might be immoral, people will usually mention the extra embryos that are frozen or discarded. Such embryos are certainly a serious concern, but they are not the primary reason the Church insists the procedure is immoral. Even if IVF were done without making any extra embryos at all, this way of making babies would still be morally objectionable, because the procedure strikes at the very core and meaning of marital sexuality. It substitutes an act of laboratory manipulation for an act of bodily union between spouses. It turns procreation into production. IVF is really the flip-side of contraception: rather than trying to have sex without babies, we try to have babies without sex. Because many Americans have come to view sex largely in terms of recreation, ignoring its procreative orientation, they have lost touch with the grave violations that occur both in contraceptive sex and in making babies in test tubes.

Clearly, the moral violations that occur in IVF do not reflect upon the child, who is innocent. It is not the baby's fault in any way. The child has no control over how he or she got here. Regardless of how a baby comes into the world, whether by IVF, whether by adultery, by pre-marital sex, or even by cloning, that baby is always a gift and a blessing. The problem with IVF is not with the child, but with a decision made by the parents concerning how to pursue the satisfaction of their own desire for a child. In other words, babies, even when very much desired, should not be brought into the world by making use of disordered means such as adultery, pre-marital sex, IVF, or cloning. They should be brought into the world only within that intimate love-giving moment of the marital embrace. Children are entitled to come into being as the fruit of a singular parental love that is uniquely manifested in the spousal moment of bodily surrender to each other. Through the incredibly rich language of the parents' bodies, through their body to body contact, the new body of their child is engendered. In their one-flesh union, they enflesh new life. That intimate bodily embrace is a sacred action that only spouses may share, and it represents the unique and privileged locus, by God's design, in which human love is translated into new life. IVF violates this design by replacing that love-giving act with an act of production, whereby we manufacture our own children in petri dishes and test tubes, as if they were products or objects to be manhandled at will. In this way, IVF incidentalizes and adulterates sex, reducing it to another arena for manipulation according to our own desires. When we take this immoral step, others quickly follow, including the freezing or even the discarding of our own children, as if they were a form of medical waste. By making test tube babies, we first violate the sacred human act by which we hand on life. It is then but a short step to go further and violate the very life itself that we produce in the laboratory.

Is it not reasonable and right to insist, as the Church does, that new human life should be the fruit of married love, carried out through bodily self-giving between spouses, this act which allows each partner to enrich the other with the total gift of himself or herself? The marital act embodies spousal love directly, exclusively and authentically. Can we say the same for IVF, where the woman upsets her delicate hormonal cycles and subjects herself to repetitive injections with powerful drugs to make her body produce unnaturally large numbers of eggs, and where the man may be expected to go into a back room with salacious magazines and videos to "provide a sample"? Can we really say that IVF embodies spousal love in an authentic and exclusive way when a lab technician ends up being the causal agent of the pregnancy, instead of the spouses themselves through a sacred act proper to their married love? By any stretch, can we honestly believe that IVF is faithful to God's design for marriage?

We sometimes tend to brush the ungainly and unsightly parts of the procedure under the rug and instead try to focus on the result, the baby, so as to mitigate the disturbing reality of what we are really engaging in. Some couples also may rest their approval for IVF on a perfunctory assumption, namely: "We have a right to a child when we get married, so any means, even IVF, should be okay." But the deeper truth is that we never have a right to a baby. A child is not our property or our possession. Rather, a child is a gift, one we hope God will send us, one we stand ready and eager to receive, but certainly not an entitlement or a right for us. When we marry, we properly have a right to those beautiful, life-giving acts we call marital acts, which open us up to the mysterious divine spark at the heart of human love. Those remarkable marital acts are the only human acts appropriately ordered to engendering the incredible gift of new human life.

Catholics, we need to know this. And if you want to see a list of Fr. Tad's articles on every conceivable bioethics issue out there, click this icon and bookmark it. You won't be disappointed.

Why I cannot be a Catholic and a Democrat

Please notice that this post is not entitled "Why I Have Never Been a Democrat." In fact, I was a registered Democrat in 1992, and I voted for Bill Clinton. My dear husband (now a conservative Republican) has a long history of being a Democratic activist, starting with his work on Harry Reid's very first campaign, continuing with his internship at The Carter Center at Emory University under Jimmy Carter, and interning for Democratic Senator Wyche Fowler at the Capitol.

Weeks ago, Rebecca was kind enough to ask me to write a guest post on why I am a Catholic and a Republican. Or, perhaps more accurately from my perspective, why I am a Catholic and cannot be a Democrat. This is a slightly edited version of that post.

My reasons are pretty cut and dry.

The last two popes and the bishops have taught that there are certain “non-negotiable” issues for Catholics involved in politics, issues which trump all other considerations. The non-negotiables come down to these:

• Abortion is intrinsically evil and must never be promoted or condoned.
• Embryonic stem cell research and human cloning are intrinsically evil and must never be promoted or condoned.
• Euthanasia is intrinsically evil and must never be promoted or condoned. 
• The traditional understanding of marriage as the union of one man and one woman must always be upheld.
• The right of parents to educate their children must always be upheld.

All other issues (for example, immigration, education, affordable housing, health and welfare, etc.) are considered policy issues, about which Catholics are free to disagree. As Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix has clarified in a guide for Catholics called, Catholics in the Public Square: 

On each of these [policy] issues, we should do our best to be informed and to support those proposed solutions that seem most likely to be effective. However, when it comes to direct attacks on innocent human life, being right on all the other issues can never justify a wrong choice on this most serious matter.

Indeed, Pope John Paul II wrote:

Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights -- for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture -- is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with the maximum determination.  (Christifideles Laici, 38)

In his letter, “Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion,” Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) wrote:

Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.

In a 2006 speech to European politicians, Pope Benedict XVI said the following:

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable. Among these the following emerge clearly today:

• Protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death;
• Recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family as a union between a man and a woman based on marriage and its defense from attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different forms of union which in reality harm it and contribute to its destabilization, obscuring its particular character and its irreplaceable social role;
• The protection of the rights of parents to educate their children.

In light of that crystal clear teaching, consider the following:

On Abortion

Today’s Democratic Party supports abortion unequivocally, to the point that even the word “rare” (as in “we believe abortion should be safe, legal and rare”) was finally and purposefully removed from the 2008 Democratic Platform. By contrast, the 2008 Republican Platform affirms that the “unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed.”

On Embryonic Stem Cell Research and Human Cloning

The Democratic Platform champions taxpayer funding for the destruction of human embryos to be used as research material, denouncing those who oppose it as putting “ideology” (i.e., their Catholic Faith) above “science.”

Compare that to the Republican Platform: “We call for a ban on human cloning and a ban on the creation of or experimentation on human embryos for research purposes" and a "ban on all embryonic stem-cell research, public or private.”

On Euthanasia

The growing push for the legalization of euthanasia at both the state and federal levels also comes from Democrats (who often refer to this type of killing as “death with dignity”).  The Republican Platform, however, explicitly condemns this intrinsic moral evil: “[W]e oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide, which endanger especially those on the margins of society.”

On Defense of Traditional Marriage*

Today’s Democrats are much more likely to promote homosexual rights and push for “gay marriage” than Republicans, whose Platform calls for protection of traditional marriage, in the form of a Constitutional Amendment.

On the Right of Parents to Educate Their Children


Democrats (and the liberal teachers’ unions to which they are beholden) go to great lengths to deny parents a choice in their children’s education, not only opposing school vouchers for private schools, but also opposing secular public charter schools, which often deviate from the leftist model. Laws that seek to limit the rights of homeschooling parents also come overwhelmingly from Democrats. By contrast, the Republican Platform states: “Parents should be able to decide the learning environment that is best for their child.” 

On every non-negotiable point for Catholics, the Democratic Party takes the wrong side. It is no wonder that it has become known as the Party of Abortion or the Party of Death. 

Catholics should take note that it is also the Party that is most hostile to traditional religion, and becoming more so. 

I want to make one thing clear: I am a Catholic before I am a Republican. In fact, I am not overly thrilled with the Republican Party these days and may become an Independent if the Republicans ever change course. But the one thing I cannot do is align myself with the Democrats. Catholics must evaluate candidates and vote based on the non-negotiable issues. (I have heard tell of a mythical creature called a “pro-life Democrat politician” but I have never actually seen a voting record that would confirm its existence). 

It’s a sad truth that the Democratic Party of today is nothing like the Democratic Party of our grandparents, which still had a moral grounding. We must not confuse the present with the past, and yet many Catholics do. They are either unaware or unwilling to admit that the Democratic Party (once supported overwhelmingly by Catholics) has become little more than a mouthpiece for secular materialism, an extremely anti-Catholic ideology. 

Finally, to the Catholics who have not left the Democratic Party: Please consider that the Democratic Party has long ago left you.

*Update: In 2012, the Democrats made acceptance of gay "marriage" a part of their Party platform. They considered the move "non-controversial."







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