Lawyers and Media Shills will toss more manure than a mad cow and generally they get away with it - barrels of ink and a litigious impulse.
Most people have solid convictions and good sense. Lawyers and Media Shills will talk until it seems that they win - consequences be damned. This morning two clear examples glare at us from the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun Times over abortion and the election. McCain/Palin oppose Abortion and Obama/Biden is committed to Abortion. A lawyer and a Media Shill tell Catholic readers how to ignore the teachings of their Church, their Cardinal Archbishop, and their convictions and do what too many Catholic politicians do . . .what ever they feel like.
I'll stick with my beliefs and listen to Cardinal George - OK, pinheads! Start whining about scandal and war and anything but the issue of abortion - no wait, the lawyer andthe Media Shill are on it. Go back to your Pop Tarts.
Carol Marin, who had absolutely no moral compass when the chance of a hot story led her to help destroy the lives of an immigrant couple*, uffishly opines that Cardinal George of Chicago** is morally skewed:
Why has abortion become the principal litmus test of devout Catholicism? Or of a candidate's fitness? And why is a woman's womb always the first and foremost rallying cry of the culture wars?
I went back to read the bishops' own 12-page treatise, issued in 2004, called "Faithful Citizenship: A Catholic Call to Political Responsibility."
It is a long and thoughtful document.
"We face fundamental questions of life and death, war and peace, who moves ahead and who is left behind," it reads.
Amen.
Amen? '. . .And Blessed is the Fruit of Thy Womb, Jesus' - when? That's from the
Hail Mary. For Catholics it seems to me that it extends to the womb, Carol. Carol Marin is all about the story and the story is all about Obama getting swept into the White House. Like the Fogartys and Carols need to get National Buzz - that's all that matters. They can be charged, imprisoned falsely, bankrupted and nearly destroyed, but Carol gets what she wants. That's the Media. Especially the
Sun
Times.
And the there is the Medill Ayers Dodgers at the Chicago Tribune who have trotted out a lawyer. There's lawyers and then there's lawyers - Doug Kmiec was a lead anti- Abortion lawyer and now he is a hair-splitter:
For the last several months, conservative bloggers have been lampooning me for endorsing Sen. Barack Obama for president—admittedly, a somewhat unusual thing for a Republican to do—so some political paddling is fair. What is unfair has been those Republican partisans who have tried to close the door on Obama in the name of the Catholic faith.
Obama does not advocate the reversal of Roe vs. Wade, and orthodox Catholics do. We do for the very clear reason given by George in a Sept. 2 letter—namely, "one cannot favor the legal status quo on abortion and also be working for the common good."
That's exactly right, but what's wrong is for Republican partisans to claim this to be Obama's position. It's not. Rather, Obama believes there are alternative ways to promote the "culture of life," even given the law's sanction of abortion.
The central hope of the Obama campaign is to find common ground—not by "favoring" that which can never be acceptable, the taking of innocent unborn life, but by dealing with the legal reality in a way that at least reduces the likelihood of abortion. Chicago is only Obama's adopted home, but in this he represents the best of her "I will/city of big shoulders/let's get something practically done" spirit.
Unlike Obama, I regret to say the current Republican Party thrives on demonizing its opposition to win elections. Without ideas, there is only name-calling. That's too bad because additional avenues for strengthening a culture of life open up when we avoid demonizing those who disagree with our Catholic view that life begins at conception. Talking strongly pro-life, Republicans often do little, promising that some judge not yet appointed is the answer or advocating leaving it all up to the states to decide, seldom acknowledging that many, perhaps most, states would end embedding the "legal status" of abortion—exactly contrary to the cardinal's thoughtful instruction.
Obama seeks to extend a helping hand (increased funding for prenatal care, maternity leave and less cumbersome and expensive adoption) with an astute understanding of how closely economic circumstances and abortion are related. Both reasonable extrapolations from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics and a recent Catholic in Alliance for the Common Good study find that improving the economic well-being of the average family in general, and of the women facing the abortion decision in particular, can save unborn lives.
From 1979 to 1990, during a difficult inflationary economy, the annual rate of abortion increased by 14.2 percent, resulting in an additional 740,000 abortions. In the more economically stable decade following, the annual rate decreased by 34 percent, meaning that approximately 2.3 million children who would have been aborted are alive to-day.
The pretense that the GOP is now an agent for change for what it, itself, instituted is far too Orwellian to be accepted. The Obama-Biden team says to the average working person in America: Your work matters, and it will be compensated at a family wage; your retirement will be safeguarded from corporate fraud and manipulation—be it by cooking the books a la Enron Corp. or the legal abuses of a shadow banking system that by profligate lending practice has precipitated massive government bailouts and the takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
Sen. John McCain is an honorable man caught between a failed presidency and the tired ideas of his party that only invite repetition of that failure. There's no reason that failure should be extended in a way that blocks the greater protection of unborn life.
Douglas W. Kmiec is the author of "Can a Catholic Support Him?—Asking the Big Question About Barack Obama" and former constitutional legal counsel to President Ronald Reagan.
Mr. Pettifogger talks eleven to the dollar on a ten - Obama and Biden extend helping hands and McCain/Palin are Orwellian - got it dummies?
Conscience does not matter. Life does not matter. All that matters is that Obama gets in for Lawyers and Ink-Slingers.
It is not gonna happen.
Hey, Carol!
Amen!*Instead, I will post an interesting passage from The Blanket a website dedicated to a united Ireland. Two Chicagoans, Mary and Chris Fogarty, had their life's savings depleted in an attempt to defend themselves from the FBI, IRS, MI-5, and other acronymic agencies with the complicity of NBC 5's Carol Marin.
I remembered the case, because one of the murdered people was related to a girl who taught at Bishop McNamara in Kankakee ( funny how that town dovetails ( George & Lura Lynn & etc.), and I remembered how much storm the story had around the time of the Good Friday Peace Accords and the horrific Omagh bombings.
There should be a 'Follow-up' story to this - but the News media rarely do that when a story goes south on them. Carol Marin, how about some answers?
http://hickeysite.blogspot.com/2006_02_01_archive.html** Cardinal George's Statement:
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
In the midst of a lengthy political campaign, matters of public policy that are also moral issues sometimes are misrepresented or are presented in a partial or manipulative fashion. While everyone could be expected to know the Church's position on the immorality of abortion and the role of law in protecting unborn children, it seems some profess not to know it and others, even in the Church, dispute it. Since this teaching has recently been falsely presented, the following clarification may be helpful.
The Catholic Church,
from its first days, condemned the aborting of unborn children as gravely sinful. Not only Scripture's teaching about God's protection of life in the womb (consider the prophets and the psalms and the Gospel stories about John the Baptist and Jesus himself in Mary's womb) but also the first century catechism (the Didache or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) said: "You shall not slay the child by abortions. You shall not kill what is generated." The teaching of the Church was clear in a Roman Empire that permitted abortion. This same teaching has been constantly reiterated in every place and time up to Vatican II, which condemned abortion as a "heinous crime." This is true today and will be so tomorrow. Any other comments, by politicians, professors, pundits or the occasional priest, are erroneous and cannot be proposed in good faith.This teaching has consequences for those charged with caring for the common good, those who hold public office. The unborn child, who is alive and is a member of the human family, cannot defend himself or herself. Good law defends the defenseless. Our present laws permit unborn children to be privately killed. Laws that place unborn children outside the protection of law destroy both the children killed and the common good, which is the controlling principle of Catholic social teaching. One cannot favor the legal status quo on abortion and also be working for the common good.This explains why the abortion issue will not disappear and why it is central to the Church's teaching on a just social order. The Church does not endorse candidates for office, but she does teach the principles according to which Catholics should form their social consciences. The teaching, which covers intrinsic evils such as abortion and many other issues that are matters of prudential judgment, could not be clearer; the practice often falls short because we are all sinners. There is no room for self-righteousness in Catholic moral teaching.
The Conference of Bishops in this country and the Bishops of Illinois have issued statements about Catholic social teaching and political life. They are available in our parishes. All of us should keep our country and all the candidates for office in the next election in our prayers. God bless you and your families.
