Catholic teaching is very clear and unambiguous: Not in any way can abortion be condoned. “You shall not kill the child by obtaining an abortion. Nor, again, shall you destroy him after he is born.” St. Barnabas (“Epistle of St. Barnabas,” c. 70-100 A.D.) “ You shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill one who has been born.” “The Didache [The Teaching Of The Twelve Apostles]” (c. 80-140 A.D.) “A woman who deliberately destroys a fetus is answerable for murder. And any fine distinction as to its being completely formed or unformed is not admissible amongst us.” St. … Continue reading
Category Archives: Applied Moral Theology
Someone on a social media site made the irrational statement that guns were part of the culture of death. I object. Inanimate objects have no power to act on their own behalf; thus, as inanimate objects, they are incapable of making the moral decisions necessary to join either the culture of death or the Culture of Life. Guns are not culture of death because an inanimate tool is incapable of making a moral decision in the same way a scalpel is, also, not part of the culture of death. Both these tools can be used to defend innocent life and … Continue reading
Abortion is an objectively evil act. A Catholic can never approve of, have, participate in, pay for, or take any action that makes abortion more likely to occur without endangering their soul and receiving an automatic excommunication. A person claiming to be Catholic claimed to me that the Church recognizes that abortion is sometimes necessary. THIS IS A LIE FROM THE PIT OF HELL. What the Church teaches is that a miscarriage is not a sin. Therefore, if in the course of saving a woman’s life and attempting to preserve her pregnancy that pregnancy is lost there is no sin. … Continue reading
I was sent this article: Abortifacients–pharmakeia and sorcery by a friend and decided to share it with my readers. The footnotes about the Biblical take on birth control were great. I like this quote from the footnotes of the article: “Pharmakeia denotes the mixing of potions for secretive purposes, and from Soranos and others, evidence exists of artificial birth control potions. Interestingly, pharmakeia is oftentimes translated as ‘sorcery’ in English. In the three passages in which pharmakeia appears, other sexual sins are also condemned: lewd conduct, impurity, licentiousness, orgies, ‘and the like.’ (Confer Galatians 5:19-21.) This evidence highlights that the … Continue reading
Breed Specific laws are those that condemn dogs according to their breeds. The problem with this method is that it punishes what is essentially the RACE of the dog rather than the BEHAVIOR of the dog. A web site that makes my point: HERE There are a lot of dog breeds that look quite similar but are in actuality very different from each other in ways that do not show. Few people can identify the actual pit bull in the pictures. All these breeds are muscular, short haired breeds. A good dog law targets problem behaviors and does not care … Continue reading
The government is not commanded by the Lord to care for widows and orphans. It may very well have programs to do so, but the responsibility is not given to the government. Christians were given this commandment. The pattern is in the New Testament. Widows and Orphans were to be fed, clothed and cared for, but those able bodies who would not work, Paul wrote, should not eat either. How could that look today? Well, PARISH planners spend a lot of time on this and that but not a lot of time on fulfilling this commandment at the parish level. … Continue reading
This is an INCREDIBLE HOMILY. I love the witness to the Truth of our Catholic Faith with which he begins: The disciples never expected the resurrection. The unanimous testimony of all four Gospels is that the terrible death of Jesus on the cross entirely dashed all their hopes about Jesus and about his message. He was dead, and that was the end of it. They looked for nothing more, and they expected nothing more…. And they were clearly terrified that his awful fate, at the hands of the Sanhedrin and the Romans, could easily become their awful fate. So they … Continue reading
This fall, every practicing Catholic must vote, and must vote their Catholic consciences, or by the following fall our Catholic schools, our Catholic hospitals, our Catholic Newman Centers, all our public ministries — only excepting our church buildings – could easily be shut down. Because no Catholic institution, under any circumstance, can ever cooperate with the intrinsic evil of killing innocent human life in the womb. No Catholic ministry – and yes, Mr. President, for Catholics our schools and hospitals are ministries – can remain faithful to the Lordship of the Risen Christ and to his glorious Gospel of Life … Continue reading
Fr. Z over at WDTPRS brought this Time Magazine poll to my attention. Given what is going on in the USA right now, Timothy Card. Dolan, as President of the USCCB engaged on our behalf in a battle with the White House over the religious liberty and civil rights of all Americans… and making headway… is nothing if not “influential”. Card. Dolan should be on that list. If he is on that list, he’ll get some “street kred”, though the newsies will ignore it. Will it make huge difference? Perhaps not. But when pundits and talking heads prattle about this our battle … Continue reading
Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus’ health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled. source I began my morning over at A Woman’s Place… … Continue reading