Archbishop Charles Chaput’s hard-hitting column concerning the monstrosities occurring at Planned Parenthood — which have been given a wink and a nod by our “elites” — deserves greater play.
The column makes a searing rebuttal to Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich who, on Aug. 3, condemned Planned Parenthood but basically said what they were doing was no different than being against open borders and gun control.
Archbishop Chaput’s column, written Aug. 10, can be found at this link or read below.
Here’s a simple exercise in basic reasoning. On a spectrum of bad things to do, theft is bad, assault is worse and murder is worst. There’s a similar texture of ill will connecting all three crimes, but only a very confused conscience would equate thieving and homicide. Both are serious matters. But there is no equivalence. The deliberate killing of innocent life is a uniquely wicked act. No amount of contextualizing or deflecting our attention to other issues can obscure that.
This is precisely why Cardinal John O’Connor, Bishop James McHugh and others pressed so hard for the passage of the U.S. bishops’ 1998 pastoral letter, Living the Gospel of Life. As Cardinal Joseph Bernardin once wisely noted, Catholic social teaching is a seamless garment of respect for human life, from conception to natural death. It makes no sense to champion the cause of unborn children if we ignore their basic needs once they’re born. Thus it’s no surprise that – year in and year out – nearly all Catholic dioceses in the United States, including Philadelphia, devote far more time, personnel and material resources to providing social services to the poor and education to young people than to opposing abortion.
But of course, children need to survive the womb before they can have needs like food, shelter, immigration counseling and good health care. Humanity’s priority right – the one that undergirds all other rights – is the right to life. As the American bishops wrote in 1998:
“Opposition to abortion and euthanasia does not excuse indifference to those who suffer from poverty, violence and injustice. Any politics of human life must work to resist the violence of war and the scandal of capital punishment. Any politics of human dignity must seriously address issues of racism, poverty, hunger, employment, education, housing, and health care . . . But being ‘right’ in such matters can never excuse a wrong choice regarding direct attacks on innocent human life. Indeed, the failure to protect and defend life in its most vulnerable stages renders suspect any claims to the ‘rightness’ of positions in other matters affecting the poorest and least powerful of the human community. If we understand the human person as the ‘temple of the Holy Spirit’ — the living house of God — then these latter issues fall logically into place as the crossbeams and walls of that house. All direct attacks on innocent human life, such as abortion and euthanasia, strike at the house’s foundation. These directly and immediately violate the human person’s most fundamental right — the right to life. Neglect of these issues is the equivalent of building our house on sand. Such attacks cannot help but lull the social conscience in ways ultimately destructive of other human rights” (22).
A case is sometimes made that abortion is mainly a cultural and moral issue, and politics is a poor solution to the problem. The curious thing is that some of the same voices that argue against political action on the abortion issue seem quite comfortable urging vigorous political engagement on issues like health care, homelessness and the environment. In practice, politics is the application of moral conviction to public discourse and the process of lawmaking. Law not only constrains and defends; it also teaches and forms. Law not only reflects culture; it shapes and reshapes it. That’s why Christians can’t avoid political engagement. Politics is never the main content of Christian faith. It can never provide perfect solutions. But no Christian can avoid the duty to work for more justice and charity in our life as a nation, a task that inescapably involves politics. Thus the recent Senate vote to defund Planned Parenthood was not only right and timely, but necessary. And the failure of that measure involves a public failure of character by every Catholic senator who voted against it.
Memory is important: Two years ago Kermit Gosnell was stripped of his medical license and convicted of murdering three infants born alive from abortion procedures. He operated a Philadelphia abortion center that more closely resembled a butcher shop than a medical clinic. His clinic environment was uglier than the pleasant restaurants and offices captured on recent Center for Medical Progress (CMP) undercover videos. Those videos show a face of Planned Parenthood – senior staffers chatting blithely about the dismemberment and sale of fetal body parts – that can only be called repugnant. But it’s not surprising: If aborted children are simply lumps of potentially useful (and profitable) tissue, what’s the problem?
Again, memory is important: Thirty years ago “pro-choice” groups tried a strategy of using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act to shut down certain forms of prolife witness. The strategy ultimately failed but – maybe it’s God’s sense of irony — the word “racket” very quickly comes to mind in watching Planned Parenthood staff on the CMP videos.
I’ll close with a word of thanks to Ruben Navarette, Jr. Navarette is a veteran “pro-choice” voice, but his August 10 column at the Daily Beast is worth reading and sharing for its honest revulsion at the whole, ugly, system-wide barbarism of Planned Parenthood’s fetal trafficking. And his column’s best lines come in quoting his prolife wife:
“Those are babies that are being killed. Millions of them. And you need to use your voice to protect them. That’s what a man does. He protects children – his own children, and other children. That’s what it means to be a man.”
William Penn’s neighbor as a child in England was the famed diarist Samuel Pepys. Pepys didn’t like the Penns. He had tried to seduce William’s mother and sister and couldn’t.
Today, Aug. 14, 2015 is being called the 70th Anniversary of the end of World War II as that was when Americans heard that Japan, inspired by the atomic bombings of two of its cities, announced it would surrender.
That the war ended without an invasion of the islands spared the lives of millions, mostly Japanese and other Asians, but many young Americans, British, Australians and New Zealanders as well.
It should be noted that the United States commemorates the war’s end — as does China — on Sept. 2 when Emperor Hirohito signed the surrender papers on the USS Missouri but this was the day Japan announced it would quit.
The Brits celebrate it Aug. 15 as that was the date upon which they heard the announcement due to time zone differences.
It should be further noted that the Soviets did not end their assaults on Japanese occupied Manchuria and Korea until Sept. 2.
The Egyptians drank a lot of beer. The first recorded strike in history occurred when ancient Egyptian tomb workers failed to receive their beer rations.
It’s hip, supports Obama, and is used and trusted by millennials. The problem is that it makes its obscene profits selling ads. The documentary claims that it withholds good reviews from businesses that don’t advertise while giving the bad reviews high exposure.
Patrick Howley of Brietbart.com notes that BuzzFeed has been unremittingly hard on Donald Trump whose hotels compete with Marriott. We kind of think that might be stretching the point. How is BuzzFeed any different than Fox News in that regard?
Still Howley points out that BuzzFeed also pulled a piece criticizing the Monopoly board game, which is produced by BuzzFeed advertiser Hasbro, and also pulled an article that criticized ads for Dove soap, the subsidiary of a site advertiser.
The anti-corporate types sure seem to like corporate money.
Anyway, here is the trailer to Billion Dollar Bully:
The first book ever sold on Amazon was Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought by Douglas R. Hofstadter. The purchase date was April 3, 1995. The customer was John Wainwright. He still has the book and the packing slip. He says he was an employee at Kaleida Labs and ordered it from work over a T-1 connection.
Judge Paul Panepinto, who sits on the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia, has acquired enough signatures to run as a independent for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court this Nov. 3. The 29,000 names are more than twice the number necessary to get on the ballot.
There are three open seats. On the Republican ballot are Judith Olson, Michael George and Anne Covey. On the Democrat side are David Wecht, Christine Donohue and Kevin Dougherty.
This is the first time in 20 years there will be an independent on the ballot notes PoliticsPa.com.
If you need a fast, easy and definitely non-vegetarian chili Chef Bill Sr suggests this:
1 lb chopped or ground lean beef
2 tbl salad oil
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped celery
1/4 cup chopped green pepper
1 cup raw rice
2 chopped fresh tomatoes (1 can of stewed tomatoes works as well)
1 cup pitted whole black olives (don’t chop)
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 cup of water
Brown the beef in heavy skillet then remove it to drain. Heat oil in same skillet then add the onions, celery, pepper and rice. Stir until slightly brown then add tomotoes, olives, salt, pepper, chili powder and 1 cup of water. Add Worcestershire sauce. Put in Dutch oven and cook at medium heat for 30 minutes–lower heat to simmer and cook until ready to serve.
Bad legislation never dies in Harrisburg, and it doesn’t even slowly fade away.
So the Tobash plan for changing the design of pensions for certain classes of new employees is getting another push. The Tobash plan, HB 1499, is sponsored by Rep. Mike Tobash (R-Schuylkill), but it was originally the idea of folks at the Public Employees Retirement Commission (PERC). It is their duty with respect to the state pensions systems “to assure their actuarial viability through a review of any proposed legislative changes in those plans.”
When reviewing HB 900 this past June, which really does “stop the bleeding” and would eliminate the unfunded liabilities of SERS and PSERS over 20 years, PERC decided that it was more important for legislators to consider other budget priorities. In other words, the institution, whose sole purpose is to assure the soundness of public employee pensions, instructed legislators in PERC’s review of HB 900 to continue their dreadful and harmful 12 year policy of diverting funds from pensions to other purposes.
Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that four of the nine members of PERC’s board are legislators, and one of them is Rep. Tobash. The other five members are gubernatorial appointees. What incentive do they have to assure that pensions will be adequately funded when the last three governors, including the current one, wanted no such thing?
The Tobash plan was introduced last year as an amendment to HB 1353. At that time, it set up a “stacked” retirement benefit system. The first $50,000 in state employee pay is eligible for a traditional pension; beyond that there is a 401(k) style plan. It is worth noting that the average state employee salary was $52,655 for 2014. In other words, the Tobash plan as introduced last year would have had impacted very few future employees. According to actuarial analysis done last year, 98.8% of the “savings” projected under the Tobash plan is 15 years or farther into the future, which is a pretty big problem since SERS and PSERS are on course to be bankrupt in 15 years.
While some of these same criticisms certainly apply to SB1, the Senate’s pension reform plan, Tobash’s plan goes completely in the wrong direction. Rather than addressing the unfunded liabilities and pension costs of current employees, the Tobash plan would merely provide lawmakers the ability to say they passed pension reform without actually addressing anything.
Politicians are very sensitive to current and near-term costs because the next election is less than 2 to 4 years away. But the massive harm heading toward the commonwealth in less than a generation-well, that’s someone else’s problem apparently.
And so, another Rube Goldberg device will be trotted out, debated, lobbied, perhaps even voted on (and if passed, vetoed) and all the while the unfunded liability which impends doom for the future of the commonwealth remains unaddressed. It’s simply the politicians’ usual play: bait and switch-promise changes later and call that savings. Then use the phony savings to justify continuing to underfund the pensions and divert monies to other places in the budget.
The priority is always less pension funding today, and when tomorrow comes, the priority will be less funding then too. It might get politicians re-elected, but it’s not exactly anyone’s definition of statesmanship.
