Just Curious: Habits. (To lighten things up!!)

Do you need a break?  I need a break. Ha ha! I will get back to the deep stuff soon, but let's all breathe and talk about our bad habits! Doesn't that sound light and fun?

What habit do you have that you just can't seem to break?

I chew my fingernails. I have done so since before I can remember. I have stopped a few times (to beautiful results), but I keep going back to it. It's crazy! I'm toying with the idea of acrylic nails, but I don't like the yearly expense (I added it up!). So there you have it. It's an ugly habit, and I hope you will not exit the Bubble screaming in horror now that you know. I still dream of kicking this habit some day.... sigh....

Okay, your turn.

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.

Suffering, Catholic style! Part Two of the suffering posts.

A few days ago, I presented a secular view of suffering. I posited that, for the secular left, suffering is seen as worse than sin or death. Suffering has no meaning, and the goal becomes maximizing pleasure and avoiding pain.

There is a very different view of suffering on the Catholic side o' town.

The late, great John Cardinal O'Connor of New York once told a suffering woman, "Christ could have saved the world by His miracles, but He chose to save the world by His suffering."

This great truth is the basis of our understanding of redemptive suffering.

Let me back up a bit...

When Adam and Eve sinned and fell from grace, suffering and death entered the world. Because of this Original Sin, we are separated from God and stuck in a disordered, fallen world. Nothing comes easy for us, and suffering is our lot. Anyone who says this world is not a vale of tears is smoking something funny, or is actually a pod person. (While most Americans are bred to believe that life should be mostly joyful with moments of difficulty, life is actually mostly difficult, with moments of incredible joy.)

So Adam and Eve blew it, and for generations (long before Jesus came), God's people tried to "make it right" with God by offering animal sacrifices to the Lord. But none of those sacrifices were good enough. Then one day Jesus came to meet us in this vale of tears. Jesus (the God-Man) bridged the chasm between God and man, and by His great suffering and death on the Cross, He offered Himself as a perfect sacrifice to the Father. Jesus' sacrifice of love was so pleasing to the Father that it merited grace in abundance, enough to redeem all the world! The gates of Heaven were now open again, to all men of good will.

Jesus' suffering was redemptive.

What does that have to do with our suffering? Well, when we were baptized, we were baptized into the Body of Christ. We are the Body of Christ. When we "offer up" our sufferings in union with Christ's suffering on the Cross, we, as His Body, are participating in His atoning work! When God the Father looks upon our offering, He sees His Son's offering, and He is pleased... and graces come flowing down in abundance!

Do you get how amazing this is??

When we unite our suffering with Christ's suffering, we participate in the redemption of the world! 

It is as dramatic as it sounds! 

When offered to God, no suffering is meaningless. No suffering is wasted. No suffering is worse than death. Suffering offered in union with Christ's Cross has explosive power, including the power to sanctify not only our own souls, but to call down grace upon others as well. The saints knew this. The saints had an abundance of grace in their own souls already, but yet the suffering they endured was profound. What was it for? What was it worth? It was offered for souls. The saints offered their sufferings for the sins of the world, for the souls of others, and it was redemptive, because it was offered in union with Christ's suffering. This is how the Body of Christ works!

Now, this doesn't mean we go looking for suffering (suffering will find us without us having to look for it), and it doesn't mean that we stand by while others suffer (we are called to ease the sufferings of others). But when suffering comes, it is not meaningless; it is of great value to ourselves and to the world.

Many Protestants object to the concept of redemptive suffering, saying, "But Jesus didn't need our help in redeeming the world. His sacrifice was sufficient. We can add nothing to it!"

They are certainly right that Jesus did not need our help. In fact, God doesn't need us at all; He is God! But if you think God wouldn't receive and use our offering, read this reflection by Jewish convert Rosiland Moss*, as she struggled with the idea of redemptive suffering when she was leaving evangelicalism for Catholicism:

I thought immediately of a mother baking a cake, and her little child in the kitchen with her. The mother has everything there sufficient for the cake; but here comes the daughter and says, 'Mommy, I want to help.' So the mother receives the daughter because that love receives. She lets the daughter put the eggs in. Is the mother sufficient? Yes. Does she need the daughter? No. Does she allow the daughter to add? Yes. The daughter's addition is not needed, but it's received and it's a true addition. And I thought, 'That's love.'

Let's look to Scripture and see what St. Paul says on the subject:

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church...  -- Colossians 1:24

What?! Something was "lacking" in Christ's afflictions? Something that St. Paul "completed" in his very flesh, rejoicing in his sufferings? What was lacking? What is lacking? Our part is lacking. Our part, where we offer our own sufferings for the sake of the Body of Christ, the Church.


Redemptive suffering. Praise God, it's a beautiful thing.

_____


*Edited in 2019 to add that Moss is now known as Mother Miriam! A holy and wonderful woman.
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Clarifying, and a PSA

Hi all! I just want to clarify a couple of things.


First, bear with me if my posts are simple and short, and if my responses in the comments are even simpler and shorter. I think I must have A.D.D! I always need to get right to the heart of it, in as few words as possible. And, I can't handle the "multiplication of words" that seems to come when I try to address every single point that is brought up (which is a battle for me, because I always want to address every single point that is brought up!). So, forgive me. It's not you, it's me. That's why I love when other commenters jump in and address whatever points I may have missed or can't get to. Thank you all, on both sides of the spectrum!


Second, I am so sorry I didn't clarify this earlier. I am not writing this blog to find "consensus." The idea that "consensus" can be found on every issue is a liberal model. I don't subscribe to the consensus model when it comes to issues of objective truth, life or death, etc. We cannot find "consensus" between truth and error. Now, that is not popular to say in this culture, but I just said it. :) 


Still.... that does not mean that I don't strive to understand the other side. As I've said many times, I am interested in understanding why liberals think as they do. My oft-repeated line from Dennis Prager: I prefer clarity to agreement. We don't have to agree, and we don't have to find "consensus." But we do need to be clear on what we believe and what others believe. At least then no one is misrepresenting the other side, and we can begin to understand each other. Clarity is good.


So, I was disappointed when Gwen and Mai decided not to even touch the issue of suffering in my last post, but bowed out immediately. I presented what I thought was a fair representation of the liberal view of suffering. If I was wrong, tell me. Show me how I misrepresented things, and set me straight with the correct view. Tell me where I am not understanding. It's really not a trap.


Finally, a little Public Service Announcement:


If you love EWTN, Mother Angelica and Raymond Arroyo, and if you live in the Phoenix area, please join us on November 12, for the Bioethics Defense Fund's "Passion for Life" benefit!  Both Mother Angelica and Raymond Arroyo will be receiving the Witness for Life Award (better than a Bubble Award!!). Mother cannot be in attendance due to her fragile health, but Mr. Arroyo will be accepting the award on her behalf. I personally cannot wait! Register here, if interested!


And, for more information about Bioethics Defense Fund, go here. BDF was founded by my dear friends, Nik Nikas and Dorinda Bordlee, two of the nation's very few full-time pro-life attorneys. Nik and Dorinda speak at law schools all over the country, they draft pro-life legislation nationally and internationally, and they are two of the greatest people I know. I love, love, love them, and they are definitely Bubble Buddies! They are heroes in the trenches, fighting the Culture of Death on the legal and legislative front every single day, and they are worthy of our support!


Here is the BDF Mission Statement:


Bioethics Defense Fund is a public-interest law firm whose mission is to advocate for the human right to life through litigation, legislation and public education, on the issues of healthcare rights of conscience, abortion, human cloning/destructive human embryo research, and end of life issues including physician-assisted suicide and healthcare rationing.


I hope to see you there! I would love to finally meet some bloggers.... :)




PS: I will get to the post on the Christian meaning of suffering just as soon as I can.

Is suffering worse than death? Part One.

In my quest to understand modern liberalism, I have discovered that for the secular left, the worst thing in life is suffering or potential suffering. Not sin, not evil, not even death. It is suffering that must be avoided at all costs. 

Here’s what I have seen recently that backs up my theory:

1) Peter Singer, the esteemed bioethicist at Princeton (whom I blogged about here), believes that if bearing and raising a disabled child will cause his parents to suffer, the child should be put to death, even long after birth. As he and his many supporters see it, this killing is a way to end the suffering and potential suffering of both the child and the parents:

When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed. The loss of happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the second. Therefore, if killing the haemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others, it would, according to the total view, be right to kill him.

2) We have heard from liberal bloggers again and again (commenting on this blog and their own) that it is often better for an unborn child to die by abortion than to live, due to the potential for suffering. For example, Mai said: 

Religious Right policies on abortion sound good in theory, but are a disaster when applied to real life. Take for example children born to parent(s) (often the father is absent) who are poor or unwilling to care for a child, let alone be healthy enough to maintain a healthy pregnancy.

Presumably, the "disaster" is that the child or the mother might suffer. 


And Sophie recently stated: 

I believe that abortion is the right choice in some situations, such as certain cases of teen pregnancy. Don't you agree it is better for both mother and embryo to lose the fetus and continue living as a teenager than it is to be possibly disowned, homeless, and susceptible to disease? 

The very possibility of suffering, of being disowned, homeless and susceptible to disease (a possibility in any life, mine and yours included) is enough to justify an abortion. 


3) Then there are the accusations against Mother Teresa. Until I did a little research, I had no idea that hating on Mother T. was a cottage industry among those on the secular left! The attacks echo a remark I saw this week, written by a proud abortion supporter:

I would most definitely have said [f*** you] to Mother Theresa. She was a fanatic. A marketing tool for the church, and simply a fraud. She never opposed poverty, but thought the suffering of the poor was something noble, a god-given blessing that humanity should be thankful for. She never treated the suffering patients she had in Calcutta with the millions she made, she kept them there suffering, reading fairy tales, and receiving non-professional medical assistance to keep them in their state. 

(Emphasis mine, and yes, this person went on and on some more, but I think you get the gist....)

4) Finally, many of us saw the shocking video a couple of days ago of a British advice columnist being interviewed for a TV segment called, “Can abortion be a kindness?” Be sure to watch the clip (your jaw will drop), but here’s an excerpt:  

Miss Ironside said: ‘If a baby’s going to be born severely disabled or totally unwanted, surely an abortion is the act of a loving mother.’

She added: ‘If I were the mother of a suffering child – I mean a deeply suffering child – I would be the first to want to put a pillow over its face… If it was a child I really loved, who was in agony, I think any good mother would.’

I was consoled to see that the two other ladies on the set were as appalled as I was. However, Miss Ironside seemed thoroughly confused to learn that most good mothers would not smother their own suffering children.

(By the way, does anyone else see a contradiction in her assertion that a "totally unwanted" baby could have a "loving mother"? How does that work, exactly? It's sort of like if I said to my husband, "You are totally unwanted! Aren't I a loving wife?" But I digress...)

These are just a few recent examples I found with little effort. If you are skeptical that liberals really feel this way, keep your eyes and ears open. Read what those on the secular left are saying every day. Watch their news shows, read their articles and blogs. Pay special attention when they start talking about "quality of life." You will find the same theme again and again: Evil isn't the biggest evil, suffering is. Death isn't the biggest evil, suffering is. Suffering is the one thing we must not tolerate, even if it means we (or others) must die (or be killed) to avoid it.

Liberals, if I am misrepresenting you, please show me where I am wrong. You know you will be uncensored here.

And, stay tuned, because soon I will present a very different view of human suffering -- the Christian view.

A perk of having a blog!

A while back I posted about the three stages of holiness, and I referenced "the book that changed my life," namely, The Ordinary Path to Holiness, by R. Thomas Richard.

Lo and behold, I received this wonderful email just a short time later! I thought I would share it with all of you:

Hello Leila,

I was very happy to come across your blog, and the encouraging review you gave of my book, The Ordinary Path to Holiness. Your surprise and delight -- deep delight -- in discovering the treasure of traditional Catholic spiritual theology reminded me so much of my own surprise, and joy, and gratitude when I first discovered that same wonderful gift! Like you, I was deeply blessed in the beautiful precision and profundity and penetrating expanse of Catholic doctrine -- but for a long time I thought that prayer, spirituality, was a different sort of thing entirely. When I was introduced to this treasure, and when I found the great spiritual wealth entrusted to our Church, I was overwhelmed by the beauty of it, and I overflowed with joy.

I want to pass on to you a second and similar treasure that I found, that I was led to (or into) by the first. In my first book, as you know, there is a chapter on the Our Father, and a comparison with the Interior Castle of St. Teresa of Avila. After writing the Ordinary Path, I continued to ponder and to pray the Our Father, probing and seeking to understand how it could be "parallel" to her picture and experience of the spiritual life and indeed to the journey of prayer. The result of this exploration was my second book, The Interior Liturgy of the Our Father. I hope that you will read that second book -- I think it might be a help to you also.

I'd like also to invite you to visit my humble blog -- http://renewthechurch.wordpress.com/. That blog links to my larger website, www.renewthechurch.com, on which are pages for each of those two books.  The page on The Interior Liturgy gives a link to the EWTN store where that book can be purchased. I hope it can help you more deeply appreciate the surprising order and development of the spiritual life that is within that great prayer -- as I also was surprised and awed to discover it.

Blessings and grace to you and to your family.

Thomas Richard

Talk about a perk of the blog! To think that I would hear from the man whose book had such an impact on my life, well, I am so very grateful. I haven't yet read the second book, but I hope to be back here to talk about it when I do.

Pilate said to him, "What is truth?"

Remember when I said that my blog had two purposes? That I want it to be a teaching blog and a learning blog? Well, this post covers both.

First, the teaching part:

One of the most dramatic moments in the Gospels is the exchange between Jesus Christ (who is on trial for his life) and Pontius Pilate (who ultimately orders Jesus' execution). Here is John 18:37-38:

Jesus [said]...."For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice."

Pilate said to him, "What is truth?"

Thus we see the two main worldviews regarding truth: One is Jesus' and one is Pilate's. The two views are irreconcilable. Choose a side.

If you want to be a Christian, you must choose Jesus' side. The secular world increasingly chooses Pilate's side.

Now, let's be clear: I am not talking about subjective truth, such as whether you prefer red wine to white, or what you think of grandma's new hairdo.

I am talking objective truth. Truths that are true no matter what you or I think. Truths about who we are and who God is. Truths of "faith and morals".... back to that Deposit of Faith I was talking about here.

Truth cannot contradict itself. So, it's either true that killing innocents is wrong, or it's not. It's either true that rape is wrong, or it's not. It's either true that God exists, or it's not. It can't be "your truth" or "my truth" -- objective truth exists outside of ourselves and will remain true even if the whole world doesn't believe it. Truth is not ours to determine, it is ours to seek and find.

Think about it:

The whole world once believed the earth to be flat. That belief didn't make the world flat. The earth was as round as ever back then, despite public opinion to the contrary.

Believing doesn't make something true. But, if something is true, it is right to believe it. I remember a great line from a Peter Kreeft book: "The only reason to believe something is because it's true." If I have cancer, what good is it for me to believe that I don't have cancer? If it's snowing outside, what good is it for me to believe it's scorching hot? If the light is red, what good is it for me to believe that it's green? We should believe what is true, not what we wish to be true.

Truth is what is real.

Truth would exist even if we didn't. We don't decide what is true or not, we receive what is true (this is known as revelation). We are not the arbiters of Truth, but we hand down what we have received (this is known as catechesis).

We live in a world that increasingly rejects the idea of objective truth. Instead, we are surrounded by Pilate's worldview: "What is truth?" You have your "truth" and I have mine, and it doesn't matter if these "truths" contradict. In fact (and ironically), the only "truth" is that there is no Truth! Pilate's words are conventional wisdom today, but we Christians must understand that Pilate's worldview -- the worldview that all truth is subjective -- is incompatible with Christianity.


Now, on to the learning part of the post, because I really want to know:

To those of you who hold a worldview of "you have your truth and I have mine," please explain the difference between your truth and your opinion.

Thanks, and I look forward to learning how you reconcile the two concepts.

Comments on comments

I have soooooo enjoyed all the interesting comments in the Bubble lately!

I've been pondering comments in general, and I have some comments on comments:

1) I don't think I have ever censored a comment, and I hope I never have to. When visitors have been truly rude (I think there have only been two), I actually prefer to keep their comments visible, to expose their bad manners. Serious verbal abuse against another commenter would be the only deletable offense that I can imagine. Or something obscene, of course. I'm thankful that most liberal, secular and/or Protestant visitors have been respectful and thoughtful. A real asset to the Bubble. Please keep coming around! This Bubble wouldn't be "catholic" (universal) without you!

2) I absolutely LOVE that my peeps in the Bubble are answering commenters' questions and providing their own wisdom and understanding. It's comforting to have a whole army of Bubble Buddies (reminds me of a great SpongeBob episode!) who've got my back. When one of you beats me to the punch and provides an answer or clarifying comment, it's often a relief to me; I am trying to find some "balance" in my life now that I am, without doubt, a blog addict. I like to know that I can walk away from the computer to do something crazy like feed my baby, knowing that someone I've never met, in some other part of the country or world, is minding the shop... er, Bubble. Keep it up!

3) There have been so many great comments, and I wish I could take the time to acknowledge and address every single one of them! Please forgive me for not doing so.... If I don't say anything about a comment that you put a lot of thought and research into, I assure you it's not because I don't love and appreciate it! I am always blown away by the intelligence and wisdom displayed, even if I don't mention it.

4) Which leads me to my last point. I have been thrilled with the uptick of readers in the Bubble lately. It's really more fun than one girl should have. There's also been a wonderful increase in questions posed, not only in the comment box, but via private emails. I am trying to keep up with it all and still have a happy husband and children, ha ha! So, here's the tough part for me: I must beg your forgiveness if I don't comment on all your blogs as much as I used to. I have always tried to put a comment on every blog post of every blog I read regularly, but now I am feeling overwhelmed! I still read every single post, but I might not comment as often. Have mercy? Know that I still love you? Pretty please?

:)

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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