It didn’t take long, but a caller to the Glenn Beck radio show reports that just a short time ago a CNN anchor asked an analyst, “How is Sarah Palin going to be able to handle parenting a special needs child with the workload of serving as Vice President?”

The implication?  She’d do a better job if she’d aborted the baby…….

Surprised?

Via American Papist who’s doing an amazing job keeping up with this whole mess, we have some new tidbits.

First of all, numerous Bishops and the USCCB have now spoken out specifically about Pelosi’s promulgations.

Leaked to various sources, Pelosi’s official response, to be delivered by a flunky rather than herself:

“While Catholic teaching is clear that life begins at conception, many Catholics do not ascribe to that view. The Speaker agrees with the Church that we should reduce the number of abortions. She believes that can be done by making family planning more available, as well as by increasing the number of comprehensive age-appropriate sex education and caring adoption programs.

There’s more there, but Thomas did all the work, so how’s about checking out his blog and all the various links he has.  To keep it all straight, start here with his Timeline for PelosiGate.

Attended Mass at St. Joseph’s of Nashville (Tennessee, USA) yesterday morning, and was interested in a letter Father Joseph read to the community at the end of Mass, straight from the Bishop.

An “ecumenical catholic church” has started in the Nashville area (apparently a few of them have) and the Bishop put out this letter to clarify for the faithful that they cannot receive valid sacraments at these churches.

Here’s an article from The Tennesseean about it.

And here’s the piece de resistance from the Bishop’s letter (just scroll down past the first story):

These groups are misleading people into thinking that they are Catholic and that they offer valid sacraments. Neither claim is true. They could call themselves a cantaloupe but the claim would not make them such.

Methinks the Bishop’s lunch included cantaloupe the day he wrote this letter.

Speaker of the House Pelosi, self described “ardent practicing Catholic,” decided to speak on behalf of the whole universal Church in an interview Sunday morning.  She explained in an interview with Tom Brokaw that she has studied a great deal and over the centuries, the doctors of the Church have not been able to define when life begins, but that regardless, it shouldn’t have an impact on a woman’s “right to choose” (read “right to kill.”)  Going on, she explained that the Church has been trying to figure this out for centuries.  Challenged by Brokaw that the Church today has a very clear position on the issue, she explained that this position has really only been in existence for the last 50 years or so.  Over the whole history of the Church this has been an issue of controversy.  (many commenters on the YouTube video decided to research the Church’s position.  The first statement made on the subject outside the Bible?  AD 70 by Tertullian.)

Here’s the video clip – you have to see and hear it to believe it.

And here’s Archbishop Chaput in yesterday evening’s homily:

“If you’re Catholic and you disagree with your Church. What do you do? You change your mind.”

What the Speaker has done here is essentially decided to speak on behalf of all Catholics and in fact for the hierarchy based on her alleged research.  The Great One made a great point on his talk show today – that a person’s historical frame of reference begins with their birth – hence the Speaker believes that this hardcore pro-life position on the part of the Church has only been around the last 50 years or so, when in fact even 2 minutes of googling will show you that the position has been completed unchanged for the entire history of Christianity.  She’s made herself an arbiter, and a doctor of the Church, by stating not only that the scholars of the Church have never taken a firm position on when life begins, but that since they haven’t she can (even though she still didn’t actually take a position.)  Her concern, and therefore the Church’s concern, is not when life begins, but rather that nothing should interefere with a woman’s “right to choose.”

Meet Nancy Pelosi, newest member of protestantism.  No, never mind, she’s been a protestant for decades.  Oh for her bishop to be as loving and concerned for her as Kansas City Bishop Naumann was toward Governor Sebelius.

The Bishops of the USA have agreed that in the new English translation of the Novus Ordo Mass, the word Yahweh (the attempted pronunciation of the tetragrammaton YHWH, the name of God from the Bible) is not to be uttered, for the same reason the Jews weren’t allowed to say it either.  As a result, a small handful of hymns, from what I can tell all Post Vatican II hymns, have to be either deleted or re-worked.  Dan Shutte, author of “You Are Near” speaks to this over at The Deacon’s Bench blog:

I wrote this piece in 1970, as a very young man. I’m afraid there’s no special story behind it. I do remember beginning it while on retreat and working on it for several months before I was satisfied. When I entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1966, the Jerusalem Bible had just been published. It was the long-awaited project of some of the world’s most respected scripture scholars. The translation was modern, in the best sense of that word, and attempted to be true to the poetic character of the Biblical songs, especially the Psalms. I first learned to pray the Psalms from the Jerusalem Bible. And, like you, I turned to the JB translation in considering Biblical texts my compositions.

The JB team of translators decided to use the name “Yahweh” whenever the tetragrammaton YHWH appeared in the original Hebrew text. It was certainly not a frivolous decision on their part. It might be interesting for your bloggers to read what the Editor’s Forward in the JB says about their decision:

It is in the Psalms especially that the use of the divine name Yahweh may seem unacceptable – though indeed the still stranger form Yah is in constant use in the acclamation Hallelu-Yah (Praise Yah!). It is not without hesitation that this accurate form has been used, and no doubt those who may care to use this translation of the Psalms can substitute the traditional “the Lord”. On the other hand, this would be to lose much of the flavor and meaning of the originals.

As our communal, and my own personal, sensitivity grew in the years after the writing of “You Are Near,” we came to understand that speaking the name “Yahweh” out loud was not in keeping with our long Christian tradition, and was, in fact, offensive to Jewish sisters and brothers. So after 1973 I’ve not used the name “Yahweh” in my compositions.

I’m presently working to revise the lyric of “You Are Near.” I suppose that won’t keep people from singing it the way they have for 37 years, but I feel I need to provide an “official” revised text for use at liturgy. Of course, those who make musical decisions for worship could simply choose not to sing it. There are many beautiful, well-crafted settings of Psalm 139.

Full post

Today the two US presidential candidates met for a conversation with Rick Warren.  If you haven’t heard of Rick Warren, he’s the post-modernist pastor described as a simple mega-church pastor, famous for his book on the “purpose driven” life (thank the Lord we can opt for a Eucharist-driven life, eh?)   Anyway, asked about what age a child begins to have human rights, The Annointed One said, “… whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question  with specificity … is above my pay grade.”

I suppose that’s a laugh line.  A laugh line at the expense of babies’ lives.  Brilliant.

Article

This must be my week for apologetics.  A classmate of mine from high school who’s now a minister in a protestant church asked me:

Please explain to this Protestant preacher the idea of Abstinence (name?) – as in not eating meat on Friday. It seems like a great tradition and one that I would like to know more about. Thanks in advance for the info!

The most encouraging thing about the email?  “it seems like a great tradition.”  I am floored by the fact that this guy came to me framing his question in the positive rather than the negative and if you’ve read the very first post in this blog, you understand a bit about why based on the spiritual climate of my high school.

I just spent 2 hours on this response…when I got done I pasted into Word and realized its length.  Never let it be said I was brief when I could have been detailed.  As with all my apologetics, they are written for the outsider…that’s how you have to do it – explain everything, repeatedly give proofs for your claims, especially give proofs whenever you claim that the Church does not teach works-based salvation.  Many times in typing this I made a statement and then had to go back and explain it because in my Catholic framework, the statement I made needed no further explanation, whereas in the Protestant framework it would make no sense at all, or even worse, be misconstrued.

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One of my favorite things is apologetics…I appreciate your tone…all too often I am responding to someone openly hostile. A word of warning though…one Catholic teaching making sense to you can result in another one making sense to you…and another…and well, look at me. I say that with tongue in cheek of course. For me the first teaching I looked deeply into is the one on artificial contraception, and it grew from there.

Now, analyzing a particular Catholic teaching can be difficult because of the integrated nature of Catholic teaching; often, in order for something to make sense, there’s background sitting there that you have to have a basic idea of in order for it to make sense. I will try to work such things in where I can without getting tangential, which is quite easy to do. For example, when I’ll be referencing Catholic teaching, and specifically the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC); the Catechism is essentially the 600 page book on Catholic teaching – it lists in a general level of detail all the teachings of the Church which are based both on Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Tradition as referred to here is the teaching authority of the Church, beginning with Jesus, passed to Peter and the apostles, to their students, and so on forward through the centuries to this day; Tradition is how we ended up with the Canon, which was of course not assembled as we know it until a couple hundred years after Christ – were it not for Tradition, that is the teaching authority of the Catholic Church guided by the Holy Spirit, we’d have no idea which books should be in the New Testament, because Scripture itself doesn’t tell us which books belong in the Canon. Coming from a Protestant background, I was raised as you were, with a sola scriptura background, so I totally understand you likely disagree with this framework. I can go into detail on this topic further, but I wanted to give you a sort of heads-up that the Catholic Church considers both Scripture and Tradition with any teaching, and I will reference both here (and try to show the place where the two meet as much as possible.)

You know I am a computer nerd by trade and an educator by training; I am not a theologian by any means. Thus I have a batch of apologetics websites run by people who are theologians which I regularly refer to in order to make sure I am on track in what I say.

So to the question of abstinence from meat on Fridays. What I am going to do first here is shoot from the hip and give you my basic lay explanation of the teaching without any references – this is just me talking, explaining in my own words what it’s all about; I will get into some references to the Scriptures and the CCC next, as well as early Church fathers if I can find some. To start with, it grows out of the concept of fasting which of course is not unique to any of the world’s religions. All the faiths and even the pseudo-faith belief systems seem to believe that there are times when not eating (or for that matter, fasting from anything one might enjoy) is beneficial to the spirit. Catholicism especially refers to this as self-mortification – placing yourself in a position of suffering for a greater good or greater spiritual growth opportunity. Catholics are specifically obligated to fast on two days (Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, the two ends of the season of Lent; and fasting here is defined as one full meal on the day, with one or two smaller meals to maintain strength which together would not equal another full meal) and to abstain from meat every Friday. Back when the second Vatican council (aka Vatican II) happened, the Cardinals adjusted the teaching on meatless Fridays a bit; during Lent, the Catholic is obligated to abstain from meat each Friday, but during the rest of the year, the Catholic is called to abstain from something – meat or some other something they enjoy doing, or to perform act of charity over and above what they normally do, all in an attitude of penitence…I will come back to the penitence thing in a minute. So you’ll hear folks say, “Ever since Vatican II we only have to abstain from meat Fridays during Lent.” As you can tell, not exactly true. In the Catholic faith, every Friday is a penitential day, thus we are obligated to abstain from meat OR something else in an attitude of penitence. And as you no doubt know from your own learning, the whole point of fasting from anything is that whenever you feel that yearning for whatever it is you’re fasting from, that’s your reminder to focus on whatever it is you’re fasting for, to pray for strength and to remember that need that is causing you to fast in the first place.

So why are Fridays penitential days in the Catholic faith? You can probably guess this one – because the greatest day of penitence in Christendom is Good Friday – the day when because we were altogether insufficiently able to make reparation for our sins, God in the flesh chose to take them on himself and pay the price for them. Thus on Fridays we are called to remember Christ’s suffering for us, which in and of itself makes us penitent people, truly sorry for our sins and committed to trying to be more Christlike. And that leads to the next point: suffering. In the Catholic faith we have a concept of redemptive suffering; that is, that we should pray and seek for help from the Spirit to unite our relatively small sufferings (that is, big to us but small in comparison with the sufferings He endured) with the sufferings of Christ. How do we do that? Hardest thing in the world – by not complaining and grumbling through our sufferings but instead offering them up to God and asking Him to use our sufferings to make us more like Christ (something like “consider it pure joy…” whenever we are hit with suffering.) Now of course none of us ARE Christ so our offering of our sufferings won’t be perfect and we’ll fall into the pattern of complaining, etc…but nonetheless we are to make an effort to unite our sufferings with those of Christ. Self-mortification through abstaining or fasting is likely to generate a very small suffering – a hunger pang, or a really strong desire to order the steak when you’re out with friends on Friday night, but going with the fish instead; this is the same reason we traditionally give something up during the Lent season – so that we will feel that desire for whatever that thing is that we gave up, and take that deprivation as an opportunity to grow in Christlikeness (is that a word?) The Catholic Church encourages elective fasting whenever one feels led to, but believes self-mortification is important enough to growth in one’s relationship with Christ to obligate her members to do it on specific occasions. A Catholic who intentionally does not follow such obligations is in a state of sin; not because the Church is legalistic, but because the Church wants her members to have the spiritual growth opportunity that comes from self-mortification.

What this does NOT mean: The Catholic Church does NOT believe that by self-mortification a man can merit salvation, that he can obtain forgiveness for his sins by his own works. I want to make sure this is crystal clear. We’re talking here about sanctification by the working of the Holy Spirit through our willingness to unite ourselves to Christ and His sufferings, not justification which you and I both know is only available because of Christ’s suffering. CCC 1430 says: Jesus’ call to conversion and penance, like that of the prophets before him, does not aim first at outward works, “sackcloth and ashes,” fasting and mortification, but at the conversion of the heart, interior conversion [my note: and that conversion is not by our own power but by the work of the Spirit in us]. Without this, such penances remain sterile and false; however, interior conversion urges expression in visible signs, gestures and works of penance.

Now after a long treatise on suffering and remembering Christ’s crucifixion, I should point out that the Church also spends a great deal of time on celebration and joy at Christ’s Resurrection; consider that Lent, the penitential season is 40 days, but that Easter, the celebratory season is 50 days (from the vigil of Easter late on Holy Saturday through Pentecost), and that outside these seasons, while we remember Good Friday every Friday, we also celebrate Easter every Sunday. To everything there is a season.

So now that we are past the basic lay-explanation of it, let’s get into a little more on the backgrounds for this practice. I’ll start with the Catechism, which is organized by paragraph numbers. You can access an online version here: http://www.kofc.org/publications/cis/catechism/index.cfm – in the search area you can input a paragraph number and it’ll take you straight to the text of that paragraph. I will cite a few paragraphs here, and give you excerpts, but by all means check out the full texts of them. You can also search by topic using the search area – so you could type in “fasting” for example and get even more than I am about to specifically talk about here.

CCC 1434 says: The interior penance of the Christian can be expressed in many and various ways. Scripture and the Fathers insist above all on three forms, fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, which express conversion in relation to oneself, to God, and to others. Alongside the radical purification brought about by Baptism or martyrdom they cite as means of obtaining forgiveness of sins: effort at reconciliation with one’s neighbor, tears of repentance, concern for the salvation of one’s neighbor, the intercession of the saints, and the practice of charity “which covers a multitude of sins.” – the footnote to this part in quotation marks is 1 Peter 4:8.

CCC 2015: The way of perfection passes by way of the Cross. There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle. (see 2 Tim 4 – he talks about being poured out like a libation – self-sacrifice – mortification) Spiritual progress entails the ascesis and mortification that gradually lead to living in the peace and joy of the Beatitudes:

He who climbs never stops going from beginning to beginning, through beginnings that have no end. He never stops desiring what he already knows. (this is a quote from St. Gregory.)

See – the idea here is that through suffering in a Christlike way we are made more like him – we are blessed as discussed in the beatitudes.

CCC 793 Christ unites us with his Passover: all his members must strive to resemble him, “until Christ be formed” [Gal 4:19] in them. “For this reason we . . . are taken up into the mysteries of his life, . . . associated with his sufferings as the body with its head, suffering with him, that with him we may be glorified.” [Phil 3:21 and Rom 8:17]

Phil 3:21 says who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

Rome 8:16-17 says: The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

You can see the Scriptural case for being united to God and Christ through suffering.

CCC1521 specifically relates to the administration of the Sacrament of the Sick (popularly called the last rites) but it makes a powerful statement about suffering: Suffering, a consequence of original sin, acquires a new meaning; it becomes a participation in the saving work of Jesus.

Don’t take the word “participation” there to mean that the suffering person is participating in ’saving’ anyone at all, but rather than whole idea of uniting oneself to Christ (again not of one’s own power, but only by the grace of God and the work of the Spirit) through suffering. What I like here is that through redemptive suffering we turn original sin on its ear – we take something negative resulting from the fall of man and make it a positive spiritual growth opportunity by following Christ’s example in suffering.

You can see that in a lot of cases the CCC includes Scriptural footnotes, pointing back to the Scripture from which the teaching is at least in part drawn, as well as in some cases writings of the Saints. The link I provided you includes all the footnotes that my hardcopy Catechism includes, all clickable for your convenience. What I have presented here I found by searching for “fasting” and “suffering.” To be sure, there’s more there than what I have cited.

Why meat? There’s nothing doctrinal about the specific practice of not eating meat on Friday (though there is plenty doctrinal about redemptive suffering as I have shown.) Abstaining from meat on Friday is classified as a discipline, rather than a doctrine. A doctrine would have to make some sort of definitive statement like “meat is evil” – and obviously we can’t do that because the Bible tells us there is no longer clean and unclean; the discipline rather reflects that we are refraining from something good, not something evil. It’s meat because traditionally, when the discipline came to be, fish was quite common and cheap, meat was a delicacy and quite expensive. Thus, the discipline came about to say, “let’s avoid this thing that is enjoyable but a bit extravagant and instead have a modest but healthy meal to commemorate what Christ did for us on Good Friday.” Were it our present day and age that this discipline was coming about, can you imagine what we’d abstain from? Seeing as, at least on our side of the globe, fresh, safe produce is readily available, I could see the discipline calling us to refrain from both the flesh of animals and of fish. But, that is where tradition (note, that’s little “t” tradition) comes in – the traditional discipline stands because of its meaning, not because fish is still way cheaper than meat. Or put another way, the Catholic family who eats at Red Lobster on a Friday during Lent is totally missing the point of the discipline, because they just spent 3 times what they would have if they had baked a chicken at home. Hard to be penitential when you are loosening the belt a notch from eating too many shrimp.

Now in this explanation I have left out Scriptural backing for fasting because I know you already know about that as you have theological training; but as you can see, the discipline of abstinence grows out of the same instructions we get from Christ and the Apostles to fast and do penance. Hopefully here I have shed some light on where it came from and why – and most importantly, what benefit there is to doing it.

The “other Catholic” at my place of work mentioned today that another of our coworkers had voiced a loud objection of the use of a crucifix as opposed to a simple empty cross.  I figured it had been a while since I had pulled together some apologetics resources on a particular topic, so, here goes.

First, the objection itself is simple.  Fundamentalists (remember, these are the people who think that if there’s an image of anything within the walls of the church building then we must be worshipping the image, which creates a logical problem if they have an empty cross displayed anywhere) say that Catholics are stuck on Good Friday while they’ve moved on to Easter.  That is, Catholics think Jesus is still on the cross, whereas Protestants don’t.

Karl Keating points out the fallacy to this contention.  And empty cross is not the symbol of anything, because every person who the Romans ever crucified was eventually taken down from the cross.  And empty cross means the ghastly business is done and the executioner is awaiting his next victim.  Keating suggests that a better symbol if the claim of “we’ve moved on to Easter” is to hold true would be a depiction of an empty tomb.  Have you ever seen a depiction of an empty tomb attached to a steeple or displayed within the walls of a church all year round?  Another point – the Mass is the re-presentation of Christ’s sacrifice (which the Catechism tells us was a one time thing, thus it’s an unbloody re-presentation) therefore the crucifix is a logical image of that event.

Apologist John Martignoni has a brief piece on this topic in his 2-minute apologetics repertoire, and I will just quote it directly here:

check out 1st Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 23. Paul says, “…but we preach Christ crucified…” Why does Paul preach Christ crucified? Doesn’t he know Jesus has been raised from the dead? Of course he does! But, he knows that it is through the power of the crucified Christ on the cross that the bonds of sin and death are broken. As Paul says in verse 24, Christ crucified is the “power of God”.

1 Cor 2:2, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” Again, didn’t Paul know that Jesus had risen from the dead? Of course, he did.

Paul preaches Christ crucified because an empty cross has no power. The cross that bears the beaten, battered, and bloodied body of Jesus Christ, however, that cross is the “power of God”. This is why, we “keep Jesus on the cross,” because we, too, preach Christ crucified. The Crucifix reminds us not only of God’s power, but also His love for us – giving His only begotten Son up for suffering and death.

Also, here in this life we do not share so much in the glory of the Resurrection, as we do in the suffering of Jesus on the cross; after all, we must take up our cross daily if we are to follow Jesus, as it says in Lk 9:23.

And, we must die with Christ in order to live with Him as Romans 6:8 tells us. Where did Christ die? On the cross. The Crucifix serves to remind us of these things.

I happen to really like Martignoni’s style.  He’s a little stinging and sarcastic.  It comes across as almost a bit “mean” in his writing, but if you hear him speak, his delivery style makes it so conversational and disarming.  And besides, you have to be careful not to take yourself too seriously when set upon by uninformed anti-Catholics…the humor he uses helps you maintain sanity.  The piece-de-resistance:

One other passage to keep in mind is Galatians 3:1, “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?” Did you catch that? Jesus was publicly portrayed, before their “eyes”, as being crucified. Sounds kind of like they may have been looking at a Crucifix, doesn’t it?

Phil Thompson is in the Orthodox Church, a Church which is united with Rome in her understanding of the Eucharist as well as Sacred Tradition.  He makes several good points.  He explains that the cross isn’t a symbol of the resurrection, because there are already icons of the ressurection in the Orthodox Church.  This applies to the Catholic church as well (at least the ones that haven’t been turned into stark, ugly bunkers by the likes of Vosko.)  At my local parish, the stained glass depicts Christ the King, for example (as well as the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the Good Shepherd.)  Christ couldn’t be king if we still thought he was stuck on the cross.  Another point made by Mr. Thompson is that we worship Christ, not the cross.  An empty cross is like an empty flagpole.  People don’t salute the flagpole, they salute the flag.  Kind of like Keating’s point about how an empty cross doesn’t tell a specific story, and Martignoni’s point about how an empty cross has no power (straight from the Bible!)

Mary Beth Kramski of Catholic Answers echoes several of the aforementioned points, but she also mentions that Protestant films graphically display the crucifixion.  She also says,

If the suffering and work of Calvary are, as some Protestants claim, past history, leaving nothing for us to do, then maybe using only a plain cross might make sense—maybe. But when we know that Jesus is inviting each of us to join him at Calvary, the value of the crucifix in helping us respond to him becomes obvious. This call to suffer with Christ is an invitation to transforming love. Through the experience of the cross, we touch the inner heart of God. The saints tell us that’s where joy and power reside.

Although not explicitly stated as a tenet of faith, in many Protestant denominations the work and suffering of the crucifixion are seen as being fixed in the past. Now is the time to reap the fruits—-salvation, healing, deliverance. The suffering is over; the work is done. (The “health and wealth” teachers take this idea to the extreme. No suffering for us—just the perks.)

And a “zinger” of sorts with which one can wow any non-liturgical Protestant:

The Catholic Church celebrates Easter for 50 days—not including each Sunday of the year, which are seen as “little” Easters. The Mass never fails to proclaim the resurrection of Christ. And the Church’s daily prayer, the Liturgy of the Hours, is filled with Scripture and prayers rejoicing in the resurrection.

I count at least 100 celebrations of Easter in the liturgical calendar…versus Protestantism’s celebration of Easter once a year.  As the kids on the ‘net say, Catholic Church FTW!

Seriously though, the whole point is that this is a pretty easy objection to debunk…a little bit of Scripture to show that there’s no power in an empty cross, and a logical look at the Catholic Church’s record when it comes to celebrating Easter.

Nonetheless, if you are hungry for more, you can’t miss with Steve Ray’s treatment of the issue…he looks at the history of crucifixes and crosses, and sets everything in proper order (and no, I didn’t drag myself through all 14 pages.)

Via the Curt Jester, there’s a great new Catholic Voting Guide.  For years, Catholic Answers has released one that has 5 key issues: Abortion, Euthanasia, Embryonic Stem-Cell Research, Human Cloning and Homosexual “Marriage.”  As you can see, they are all life and natural law issues – issues which common sense has the correct answers for even if you reject the Church as having teaching authority.

The Sisters have release their own guide.  Their issues? Militarism, Immigration, Global Climate Change (bet you knew that would be in there),  and Peace.  They actually believe that militarism is a threat to national security (ever heard of a country that had a good economy, plentiful natural resources, and no military NOT being invaded and taken over by another country?)  Best for you to check out the Jester’s whole post on this alleged voting guide.

Courtesy of HumanEvents.org and Pat Buchanan, a simple look at how it’s impossible to be a Catholic communicant and an Obama supporter at the same time.  Take a single issue: the survival of babies who are victims of abortion.

Thrice in the Illinois legislature, Obama helped block a bill that was designed solely to protect the life of infants already born, and outside the womb, who had miraculously survived the attempt to kill them during an abortion. Thrice, Obama voted to let doctors and nurses allow these tiny human beings die of neglect and be tossed out with the medical waste.

How can a man who purports to be a Christian justify this?

If, as its advocates contend, abortion has to remain legal to protect the life and health, mental and physical, of the mother, how is a mother’s life or health in the least threatened by a baby no longer inside her — but lying on a table or in a pan fighting for life and breath?

How is it essential for the life or health of a woman that her baby, who somehow survived the horrible ordeal of abortion, be left to die or put to death? Yet, that is what Obama voted for, thrice, in the Illinois Senate.

When a bill almost identical to the one Barack fought in Illinois, the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, came to the floor of the U.S. Senate in 2001, the vote was 98 to 0 in favor. Barbara Boxer, the most pro-abortion member of the Senate before Barack came, spoke out on its behalf:

“Of course, we believe everyone should deserve the protection of this bill. … Who could be more vulnerable than a newborn baby? So, of course, we agree with that. … We join with an ‘aye’ vote on this. I hope it will, in fact, be unanimous.”

Obama says he opposed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act because he feared it might imperil Roe v. Wade. But if Roe v. Wade did allow infanticide or murder, which is what letting a tiny baby die of neglect or killing it outright amounts to, why would he not want that court decision reviewed and amended to outlaw infanticide?

He’s an abortion absolutist – if an abortion is attempted, then it must be succesful even if it means killing a baby born alive.  How dark must a person’s heart be that they they put some mythical “right” to abortion above the right to the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of a newly-born baby.  Up to now, only the far left philosophical Peter Singer-esque nutjobs have advocated for parents having some period after birth (up to 6 months) during which they can choose to kill their baby…no one anywhere near the mainstream has advocated this.  Perhaps that shows the Obamessiah is not anywhere near the mainstream.

Buchanan closes his column with a question:

And which Catholic priests and prelates will it be who give invocations at Obama rallies, even as Mother Church fights to save the lives of unborn children whom Obama believes have no right to life and no rights at all?

And of course, tragically, the answer to this question is Father Michael Pfleger.