Mixed message from Bishops on Obamacare? January 21, 2011
Posted by Tantumblogo in Abortion, Basics, disaster, foolishness, General Catholic, scandals, sickness, Society.comments closed
In the run up to the passage of the disastrous socialist health care scheme known as Obamacare, the Bishops of the United States, represented by their (unnecessary) national conference, the USCCB, and the statements of numerous individual bishops themselves, were opposed to Obamacare because of its pro-abort provisions. Specifically, they related, clearly, that Obamacare provided numerous mechanisms for federal funding of abortion.
Now, however, something has changed. When the new, Republican controlled House of Representatives voted to repeal Obamacare, the bishops, in the form of the USCCB and the statements of a few, individual bishops, opposed this repeal. Why? Obamacare still contains many mechanisms to fund abortion. Let’s look:
Every major national pro-life organization was on board with the vote by House Republicans to repeal the Obamacare law because they worry about the abortion funding and rationing the law promotes. But the national’s Catholic bishops are not on the same page, this time.
Although they strongly opposed passage of Obamacare last year after pro-life advocates were not successful in getting an amendment added to the final version of the bill to mitigate the abortion-funding and conscience concerns for medical workers, the head of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops says the bishops will move in a new direction on repeal efforts.In a letters sent to lawmakers on Tuesday, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, the new pro-life president of the USCCB, and Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, head of the bishop’s pro-life outreach, outlined the agenda of the bishops and indicated they will pursue changes to the Obamacare law, such as a bill to remove abortion funding from it, rather than a wholesale repeal [this is troubling on a number of fronts – the Catholic opposition to health care was not related to the single issue of abortion, but numerous problems with the bill – it violated the principle of subsidiarity, it is widely recognized as the “foot in the door” towards a far more top-down, government directed economy in this country, and it will cause the already unsustainable debt in this country to explode even further, thus being a bad prudential decision. The opposition from Catholics was already about far more than abortion, although opposition tended to crystallize around that one prominent issue – ED].
“Rather than joining efforts to support or oppose the repeal of the recently enacted health care law, we will continue to devote our efforts to correcting serious moral problems in the current law, so health care reform can truly be life-affirming for all,” DiNardo wrote. [Again, this ignores the other very substantial problems with this bill, a sort of reductio ad absurdum that I know a fair number of bishops do not share – ED].
Dolan said he “hopes that this newly elected Congress will advance the common good and defend the life and dignity of all, especially vulnerable and poor persons whose needs are critical in this time of difficult economic and policy choices.”
“We offer this outline as an agenda for dialogue and action,” the archbishop said. “We hope to offer a constructive and principled contribution to national discussion about the values and policies that will shape our nation’s future. We seek to work together with our nation’s leaders to advance the common good of our society.”
The letter outlined the goals the bishops will continue pursuing on health care: renewed opposition to public funding of abortion and support for pregnant women to carry out their pregnancies, health care for all Americans, and responding to the serious human consequences and significant moral dimensions of the economic challenges the nation faces.
I think there are some serious misconceptions, here. The bishops are pretending, as are many Obamacare supporters, that’s it’s enaction into law means 1) medical insurance will now be available to all Americans (demonstrably false), 2) health care is not now available to some Americans (there is not a single American who cannot receive health care that would be the envy of a large majority of the world’s population, regardless of whether or not they have insurance), and 3) standards of medical care in this country will not plummet if Obamacare is enacted (contrary to the evidence available from Britain, Canada, and every other country that has implemented top-down, command economy type health insurance schemes). A further delusion is that Obamacare will not cause the already unsustainable, nay, catastrophic federal debt to explode.
Some or all of the above arguments were touted by some bishops, such as Bishop Finn of Kansas City, as valid reasons to oppose Obamacare. It appears they have lost the debate within the USCCB, which now appears to recommend “fixing” the unfixable, by removing the pro-abort provisions. I believe they will find that if they do so, democrat support for Obamacare will evaporate, and that they are literally arguing for the impossible – a mandatory federal health insurance program that will not provide coverage for abortion, unlike most private plans today.
Good luck with that.
What do they mean by choice? January 21, 2011
Posted by Tantumblogo in Abortion, Basics, General Catholic, sadness, sickness, Society.comments closed
So, today is supposed to be some pro-abort free for all, national “blog for choice day.” Over 100 pro-life blogs are responding, asking what they mean by “choice?”
I know what they mean, and its brutal, barbaric, and soul-destroying. As Fr. Euteneuer’s recent book, Demonic Abortion, demonstrates, most, if not all, pro-aborts (like the crazed feminists at feministing) readily admit they KNOW the baby is a living creature distinct from it’s mother, and not a blob of cell, and they don’t care. To them, nothing trumps a mother’s right to have her child killed, because that right is so “liberating” and “empowering.” I totally disagree, but even if you grant the “empowerment,” the power they are drawing on is the power of darkness, the same evil that has led people into horrific sin since Adam. We are sons and daughters of death, the only way to life is through the Grace that flows from God through Jesus Christ. Reject that, and the darkness becomes all pervasive. A darkness that leads to pain, misery, and death.
So, yes, I am proud to be “anti-choice.” That supposed perjorative does not bother me in the least.
The Horror….. January 21, 2011
Posted by Tantumblogo in Basics, General Catholic, sadness, sickness, Society.comments closed
….I hate it when we find this kind of stuff out about the people we are supposed to be helping.
Lt. Colin McCormack, the Navy doctor who runs the clinic at Patrol Base Jaker, looked closely under the big light at the girl’s tiny, ruined feet. Third-degree burns on both soles glowed bright red. All 10 toes were gone.
“What happened?” McCormack asked through an interpreter.
“She just dropped into the cooking fire,” her father replied. It had happened three months ago, he said, and he’d sought medical help then. She’d been in a hospital for two weeks in Lashkar Gah, he said. Then they sent her home, and her toes fell off.
There was no sign of infection, McCormack said, and so there was little more that could be done for the child than to clean her feet, apply a thick coating of antibiotic cream, bandage her up and hand her back to her father.
But McCormack and his medics weren’t happy about it.
“Once again, the mechanism of injury and the explanation doesn’t make sense,” the doctor said. “I suspect something else happened.”
He noted that the burn went all the way around one ankle, like a sock — a “circumferential” burn strongly indicating someone had held her leg in boiling liquid and that the child had not been able to recoil from the pain.
“More likely than not,” McCormack said, “this was punishment.”
According to a 2009 U.S. State Department human rights report on Afghanistan, child abuse is “endemic” in the country, based on “cultural beliefs about child-rearing.”
“In extreme examples of child abuse,” the report said, “observers reported several instances of deliberately burned children in Paktia; the children sustained burns after their parents submerged them in boiling water.”
In the space of just three months, McCormack and his medics have treated a dozen Afghan children under 5 suffering from burns that they suspect were caused intentionally, by scalding.
“It’s a disturbing thing to see a 3- to 5-year-old that’s been abused,” McCormack said. “It’s heartbreaking.”
“I despise these people,” said a medic who declined to be named
In Francis Ford Coppolla’s brilliant take on Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now, Col. Walter Kurtz, USA, loses his mind after seeing the brutality of the VietCong. It sends him into his own horrific spiral of violence and barbarism, in his desperate attempt to defeat people who were capable of such savagery – and he became completely savage himself, in the process.
I pray this is not happening to the wonderful men and women in our armed forces who have to see this horror.
Perhaps, in your charity, you would consider saying prayers for all those who must experience horror in the daily occupations – police, firefighters, military, emergency room staff, etc. I pray that they may be strengthened in their great giving vocations and that they may unite their sufferings with those of Christ to bring great Graces into their lives.
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