Pro-Aborts Disrupt March for Life Meeting in Washington, DC

Here's the face of the pro-abortion movement in America -- fascist Brown Shirts invading and disrupting a March for Life meeting earlier today.

Like most Obamunist liberals, they have no respect for the rights of those with whom they disagree, no respect for life at any stage, and no interest in dialogue. They've promoted a culture of death for nearly 40 years and now they recognize they are losing -- their sad, doomed and bitter culture is being eclipsed by all those large, joyful, homeschooling Christian families who descend on Washington each year in ever larger numbers.

The good news is that those who make the trek to Washington each January pray for their persecutors.  Among the intolerant fascists seen below, will be a few souls who will eventually be converted by prayer and will repent for what they did today.

Obama: Angel of Death

In 2010, Colorado will mark the beginning of the end of the culture of death. The first state to legalize abortion, will fittingly be the first state to banish it.

Despite Dismissive Media, Palin's 'Death Panels' Resurface in White House Rationing Schemes

From NewsBusters
By Lachlan Markay

PolitiFact called it the Lie of the Year, and journalists left and right (but mostly left) dismissed the claim as hyperbole at best, and fear-mongering propaganda at worst.

But Sarah Palin's "death panel" comment may not be as off the mark as so many have claimed. Don't take her word for it. White House budget director Peter Orszag apparently agrees.

Well, Orszag didn't specifically address Palin's claim, but his description of Medicare's new Independent Payment Advisory Board tried to cast health care rationing in nice rosy terms.

Speaking at the Economic Club of Washington, Orszag stated:

The only real solution to our long-term fiscal imbalance, because it's driven disproportionately by the rate at which health care costs grow, is to move towards a health care system that is based on quality and efficiency, rather than quantity…

Everyone agrees that we can no longer afford to just pay for quantity. That is a fee for service system where doctors and hospitals are reimbursed based on volume. I think folks have not really focused on the Medicare commission, the Independent Payment Advisory Board that's created. This institution could prove to be far more important to the future of our fiscal health than for example the Congressional Budget Office. It has an enormous amount of potential power…

So this Independent Payment Advisory Board has the power and the responsibility to put forward proposals to hit a pretty aggressive set of targets over the long term. And furthermore, the proposals take effect automatically, unless Congress not only specifically votes them down but the President signs that bill. So the default is now switched in a very important way on the biggest driver over long-term cost, which is the Medicare program…

Again, a lot will depend on whether it realizes its potential, and how the culture develops, but it has statutory power to put forward proposals to reduce health care cost growth overtime and improve quality, and those proposals take effect automatically if Congress ignores them, or if Congress votes them down and the President vetoes that bill. So in other words, inertia now plays to the side of this independent board.

So health care costs disproportionately drive our fiscal train wreck of a federal budget into the red, and this panel -- made up of unelected non-doctor bureaucrats -- has been charged with meeting "a pretty aggressive set" of financial targets by reducing the quantity of medical care Americans receive.

Boy, that sounds a lot like rationing. In fact, that's pretty much the definition of the word: to "restrict the consumption of a relatively scarce commodity." It doesn't matter if care is being rationed "for the public good" or who the bureaucrats are that populate the panel, or what they do (unless they are doctors, but in this case they aren't). Care will be rationed.

Now, the bill claims otherwise. It states that the Medicare panel "shall not include any recommendation to ration health care ... or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria." Phew. Disaster averted. Palin marginalized. But wait, just a couple paragraphs further, the bill demands that the panel "give priority to recommendations that extend Medicare solvency."

Well Orszag just informed us that the federal budget is plummeting towards fiscal catastrophe, and Medicare is the primary driver. So if Medicare itself is to remain solvent, deep, deep cuts need to be made. Orszag seems to realize this fact -- hence the "pretty aggressive" targets.

Reducing Medicare costs is the only way to keep the system solvent, and Orszag has just informed us that reducing the quantity of care is the way to do that. He is not the first administration official to say so. Reducing costs takes precedence over the legislation's "rationing" restrictions, so as long as Medicare is up to its eyes in red ink, rationing will be a cause for concern.

The bill also requires the panel "include recommendations that target reductions in Medicare program spending to sources of excess cost growth." As you may have expected, the panel, not Medicare patients and their doctors, determines what constitutes "excess cost growth."

Now, there is the question of whether or not the Medicare board can or should be called a "death panel," but that is a question of style, not substance.

Palin wrote in her recent book "Going Rogue,"

Since health care would have to be rationed if it were promised to everyone, it would therefore lead to harm for many individuals not able to receive the government care. That leads, of course, to death…

The term I used to describe the panel making these decisions should not be taken literally.

In other words, there is no euthanasia involved, but by limiting the options available to American health care consumers with the explicit goal of saving on costs, the panel -- again, not populated by doctors -- is necessarily hindering the quality of care patients can receive. For the patient who is denied treatment in the name of Medicare's solvency, it is indeed a "death panel."

PolitiFact did not return a request for comment regarding its Lie of the Year. But the watchdog site was far from the only outlet to disregard Palin's concerns.

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell gleefully proclaimed the former Alaska Governor "Palinocchio." The Washington Post's Ceci Connolly called the "death panel" debate a "sideshow … from a very serious debate." The Nation's Richard Kim claimed the entire issue was bred from "hysteria."

But with Orszag's statement, it seems well within reason that the new bill -- though we're still in the process of deciphering its contents -- will create a Palinian death panel, not to "euthanize granny," but simply to ration care. Of course he is not the first administration official -- nor the first journalist -- to laud the necessity of health care rationing.

This panel will decide which treatments will be offered or covered by insurance companies. If you relied on a treatment that is no longer covered, well, best of luck to you.

Lachlan Markay is an associate with Dialog New Media.

Reflections on the Kennedy Funeral

From LifeSiteNews
Commentary by Steve Jalsevac

I am not dismayed or downhearted, just amazed at the depth of human weakness and self delusion revealed by the Kennedy funeral. Let me explain, and also urge what should be the response of pro-life people be to this event.

It was a fascinating funeral with many touching moments and fine speeches. Ted Kennedy was shown to have presented in many ways a very attractive image - an exceptionally generous person, a good father, a faithful friend to many, an accomplished man of the world despite many personal setbacks and hardships.

For Kennedy, Obama, and many of the pro-abortion politicians at the funeral - image is crucial. They rely upon it to influence the public to trust them and to support their political goals. They know that the public can be lulled away from critical thinking and attention to facts if political image is well cultivated and presented.

As we have repeated a number of times in our coverage of Ted Kennedy's illness and then death, we do not judge his relationship with God. No one can do that. But his public record is another thing. We can and must judge that. He profoundly helped to advance the Culture of Death and other developments harmful to life, family and faith in America.

As for the grandiose funeral broadcast around the world - the Mass, the Church, the priests and Cardinal O'Malley - all appeared to be merely useful props for the liberal establishment to exploit. That establishment was given the keys to do whatever they wanted.

This was not a funeral to beseech God on behalf of the dead and to remind the living of what God expects from them in this life and that they too will meet their maker. That is the purpose of a Catholic funeral. Nothing is taken for granted. We beseech God's mercy at a Catholic funeral. A Catholic funeral reminds all that there is eternal reward for the faithful but also, a price for sin, a need for repentance, and a need to pray for the dead - since there is indeed a Heaven, a Purgatory and a Hell.

However, the Catholic Church in Boston and Cardinal O'Malley totally capitulated. I felt embarrassment and shame for the good Cardinal.

Saint Kennedy was canonized with not even one appropriate reference from anyone during the entire proceedings addressing his extreme pro-abortion record. By implication, everything that the senator from Massachusetts did in his political life was affirmed during that Catholic Church event.

The tyranny of moral relativism triumphed. The false, very selective, "spirit of Vatican II" social justice version of Catholicism dominated. The beatitudes taken out of context from the gospel can give false assuance and soothingly warp consciences for those who live personal lives in serious violation of that real gospel.

The message from the Boston Catholic Basilica to all Catholic politicians, to all Catholics in positions of authority and to the world was clear. In the end, abortion doesn't really matter. Same-sex marriage is not really an important issue. Church moral teachings in general are just talking points for consideration. And finally, the central teaching authority of the Church is an outdated concept. It does not matter what Christ, the Ten Commandments, the Pope's and the saints have said. Image, worldly respect, your local bishop or priest friend or theologian trump all the other universal things of the faith.

Much of what took place in the Basilica, regarding Kennedy's political legacy, was missing real love and real charity. Christ showed what true love was and they crucified him for it.

Despite all this, we at LifeSiteNews will continue to do what we must. Pro-life, pro-family leaders will soldier on.

A few years ago in Toronto, the late Fr. Richard Neuhaus addressed the issue of what our response should be to disappointments in the pro-life struggle. He stated,

"There are many who do not understand that this is the great civil rights movement of our time, that this is the great human rights movement of our time… and the future will vindicate that we are the avant guard - we are the vanguard.

There are those in the pro-abortion camp who view their position as the progressive position. They are wrong. It is not progressive but barbaric.

This cause will not let you go. Will the Gospel of Life prevail? Oh, yes. The Gospel of Life will prevail. When and in what way we do not know. I am sure some of you know the lines of T.S. Elliot…"For us, there is only trying, the rest is not our business." I understand Elliot to be saying, "the rest is not our business, the rest is God's business."

In the First Things article, Scandal Time, regarding the clergy sexual abuse scandals, Neuhaus made some comments that would also seem pertinent to Church tolerance of pro-abortion Catholic politicians. Neuhaus wrote,

"What is this crisis about? The answer is that this crisis is about three things: fidelity, fidelity, and fidelity. The fidelity of bishops and priests to the teaching of the Church and to their solemn vows; the fidelity of bishops in exercising oversight in ensuring obedience to that teaching and to those vows; and the fidelity of the lay faithful in holding bishops and priests accountable.

I have been told that the proposition is "controversial," but I suggest it is almost embarrassingly self-evident: if bishops and priests had been faithful to the teaching of the Church and their sacred vows, there would be no scandal. Those who would confuse the subject reflexively reach for complexity. No, I am sorry, it is as simple as that. We are reaping the whirlwind of widespread infidelity."

And finally, a LifeSiteNews reader sent us this excerpt from an address by Archbishop Fulton Sheen to the Supreme Convention of the Knights of Columbus in June 1972,

"Who is going to save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, and the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops, and your religious act like religious."

ObamaCare Is Anti-Life and Compromise Will Not Make It Acceptable

A coalition of pro-life leaders has announced what is being billed as the largest ever conference call and webcast to oppose abortion provisions contained in the Obama health care legislation. The live webcast will be held this coming Thursday, July 23.

It is good to see Americans uniting against the culture of death. ObamaCare is morally reprehensible because it will increase the number of abortions in the United States, force every taxpayer to fund them, and coerce medical professionals to perform the grisly procedures in violation of their consciences. But this coalition should vigorously oppose the legislation even if all provisions pertaining to abortion were eliminated.

The fundamental concept of ObamaCare is anti-life in that it will ration health care at every stage of life, and particularly threatens the weak, the disabled, the elderly, and all those who may be deemed by government as less than useful, contributing members of society. This utilitarian philosophy is inherent wherever socialized medicine has been implemented. Can we expect a political regime facing the most staggering debt ever known to mankind to operate the system in a compassionate and humane way? Do we really want to entrust to bureaucrats life and death decisions involving our parents, grandparents and children?

Finally, it is incomprehensible how the American Catholic bishops could support such a plan were all references to abortion stricken. Catholic social teaching has not only opposed the fundamental errors of socialism, it upholds the principle of subsidiarity, the idea that nothing should be done by a higher, more complex organization that can be done at a lower, smaller, more personal level. In his landmark 1991 encyclical, Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II said that the welfare state “leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.” To take health care out of the hands of consumers and providers and turn it over to massive government bureaucracy violates the principle of subsidiarity, the Catholic natural law tradition, and will ultimately be seen as an enormous loss for the "culture of life."

So many political battles are lost because Christians elect to do the pragmatic thing and fight on the enemy's terms, with the enemy's tools. ObamaCare needs to be opposed in its totality. This is not a time for small compromises, but for a radical, counter-cultural commitment to the truth. Certainly the Obama administration is not one of incrementalism and compromise. If this evil is to be defeated, Christians need to be equally bold and uncompromising in promoting a culture of life.

Bishops React to Priest who Told Obama-Supporting Catholics to Confess before Receiving Communion

From LifeSiteNews.com

A South Carolina Catholic priest who advised Obama supporters in his flock not to receive Communion before going to confession elicited polarized responses from the Catholic community - ranging from outrage at a misuse of authority to warm praise for championing Church teaching on abortion. Today LifeSiteNews.com spoke with bishops Gracida, Vasa, and Chaput, all known for their outspokenness on political issues, about the priest’s actions.

Following Obama's election, Fr. Jay Scott Newman wrote a letter to parishioners stating, "Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exits constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil."

Therefore, as Fr. Newman writes, "Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation."

Fr. Newman, pastor of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville, explained to local news that he will not refuse Communion to individual parishioners, as Church law would require in the case of a pro-abortion Catholic politician or other well-known public figure. Instead the priest is simply exhorting all Catholics who supported Obama's pro-abortion ticket not to approach the altar. (To see Fr. Newman's full letter, go to: http://www.stmarysgvl.org/ourparish/2008-dedication-of-the-l...)

St. Mary's is considered the mother church for upstate South Carolina Roman Catholics, with 7,500 registered members.

“Personally, I think it is valuable to have this discussion in the secular media because, many times, many Catholics don’t go to Mass, and so they come at this issue from a secular viewpoint,” said diocesan spokesman Steve Gajdosik to the Greenville News.

“I think to Father Newman’s credit, he isn’t afraid to tackle tough issues. And sometimes there is a lot of pressure to conform and just be nice and go along.”

Fr. Newman's sentiments aligned with those of Msgr. Martin Laughlin, the diocese's administrator.

"We must not be guided by the so called 'lesser of two evils' or attempt to justify the acceptance of intrinsic evil for some greater good. We may never embrace evil," Msgr. Laughlin had written in an October letter, in which he called abortion "an affront to human dignity."

Archbishop Burke, formerly archbishop of St. Louis, MO and the current Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, had said in an interview just before election day that for a citizen to not "support and vote for the candidate who most supports the inalienable dignity of innocent and defenseless life" is "to participate, in some way, in the culture of death which pervades the life of the nation and has led to so much violence.”

Bishop Emeritus Rene Henry Gracida of Corpus Christi, TX, told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) his reaction to Fr. Newman's letter "is one of admiration and awe. I find nothing in what he has written that is at variance with the Magisterium of the Church. He is to be congratulated."

Bishop Vasa of Baker, OR told LSN that, while Fr. Newman was correct to say that voting for Obama constitutes a material offense against moral teaching, it would nonetheless be impossible to "to ascertain with any degree of certainty the sinfulness of the action of any particular voter" as many voters may or may not have been aware of Obama’s extreme stance on abortion.

In a further statement, Fr. Newman appears to agree with Bishop Vasa. Newman said his statement on the "enormously complex subject" could be easily distorted when taken out of the context of his fidelity to normative Church doctrine. Within this context, he said, "no one could conclude that a vote for Senator Obama is in itself or by itself a mortal sin.

"But from that same teaching, though, we must conclude that a vote for a pro-abortion candidate can be a mortal sin if the intent is to support abortion, that abortion is not merely one issue among other important issues, and that no Catholic should endorse a pro-abortion politician if a plausible pro-life alternative is available." (http://www.stmarysgvl.org/ourparish/2008-dear-friends-in-chr...)

Bishop Chaput, one of the most outspoken bishops on political matters, declined to comment on Fr. Newman's letter, stating only that Charleston diocesan administration had authority to speak on the matter.

"Praise God for priests with mettle enough to put what's right and good for their flocks before what is politically expedient," said Jim Sedlack, Vice President of the American Life League. "We pray more men like Fr. Newman will stand up and enforce Canon 915." Canon 915 deals with the subject of the distribution of Communion to those who are obstinately persisting in grave sin.

Numerous U.S. bishops issued a sustained volley of statements throughout the months prior to the presidential election condemning Catholics who supported pro-abortion candidates; these statements often contained thinly veiled references to Obama, considered by many to be poised to become the most pro-abortion president in history.

Prior to his election to the pontificate, Cardinal Ratzinger had written to U.S. bishops saying that Catholics indiscriminately receiving communion without discerning their worthiness "is an abuse that must be corrected," and that voting for a pro-abortion candidate without proportionate reason incurred moral guilt that disqualified a Catholic from receiving communion (See: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/apr/050419a.html).