Archbishop Chaput Weighs In...

Archbishop Chaput of Denver wrote a column in his diocesan newspaper yesterday clarifying the position of the U.S. Bishops with respect to the current Obamacare baby-killing governmental power grab:


The Church in America opposes it, unambiguously and for several reasons.  Read all about it.

State Nullification is Back

For those of you who are unaware, there is a constitutional law concept called "state nullification."  What it is, in a nutshell, is the theory that a state has the right, as the source of authority and the basic unit of governance in the United States, to void a federal law within its boundaries.  Nullification was a big deal before the Civil War, especially in the 1830s.  The question was settled by the Civil War.  The federal government's in charge.  That's it.

Until now.

Different theories of nullification have existed from the beginning.  The most plausible one says basically, "Hey, we've got this Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that says:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

So therefore, if a power is not delegated to the federal government, but reserved to the respective states, then if the federal government tries to use that power, a state should have override within its boundaries, because the power is reserved to the state."

Now, with the healthcare reform effort becoming more and more divisive and partisan, and more and more expensive (remember when it was supposed to be budget neutral?), states are fighting back to protect their citizens from this economic trainwreck-in-the-making as best they can.  Read this New York Times article to see how Virginia is leading the way.

So why is this appearing on a blog dedicated to the spiritual life?  Well, simply, because I believe that we are being lied to.  We are (were) being told it will cost nothing, when in reality it will add to the mounting debt that is literally going to enslave our children and grandchildren to foreigners who do not live near them or care about them.  We are being told it will not damage the private sector, but "rein it in."  In reality, it will destroy the insurance industry that has served most of us reasonably well for decades, leaving only government programs to help us - DMV-style and at massive expense.  Further government involvement in private life will further replace family and community bonds of charity, and seemingly absolve those who neglect the need of their family and neighbors.  Lastly, and perhaps most deviously, I believe that the American people is being deliberated manipulated emotionally to make this government expansion possible - they are playing to our real hard feelings about people we've known who've needed treatment and - many times for reasons not actually related to lack of coverage - been unable to get it.  They are offering us a health-panacea.  For materialists, who believe there is nothing beyond this life, health is the highest good, and a panacea is the key to happiness.  They are essentially promising, in so many words, heaven - or a piece of it - on earth.  They are doing so without reference to Christ, our only real hope of real salvation.  The government is proposing itself as a provider, as a caretaker, as a father.  It is setting itself up increasingly over and against Christ.  That's not good.

We need to pray very hard for our country.  We Christians need to lead the way in depoliticizing this issue so that we can look for creative ways to extend our society's immense resources to those who go without basic needs met - ways that will not further empower a massive, inefficient, power-hungry government bureaucracy - ways that will actually address the real problems of real people.

The Slaughter of the Innocents Goes On...

Today, Monday 28 December 2009, is the feast of the Holy Innocents, those children slaughtered by Herod (Mt 2:16) in his demented plot to destroy the Christ Child, thereby winning the notorious distinction of being the first manifestation of anti-Christ in history.  The Church recognizes his little victims as something like martyrs, even donning red on their feast day in honor of their blood.  They did not voluntarily give their lives rather than deny Christ, yet their innocence poured out still bears witness to His.

In our times, anti-Christ has been powerfully active in many modern regimes.  The Nazis and the Soviets were both explicitly anti-Christian.  They were defeated, but we must not lull ourselves into thinking that anti-Christ was, or even that his plan was delayed.  The Evil One is crafty beyond our reckoning.  I believe that part of his plan was to discredit evil itself - he has done this by psychologizing sins into mere neuroses on the one hand, and by making us think that a plan or idea cannot be evil unless it is proposed by a short man with a funny mustachio and a German accent.  We are mistaken if we believe either of those two lies.  Sin is sin, and we are all guilty of it.  Some sins are small, and others are immense.  We must use our meager powers and whatever grace God gives us to resist it all.  We cannot compromise with it, and must realize that the Enemy always tries to sell us sin by bundling it with genuine goods, because only a lunatic would pick sin otherwise.  So intimacy and pleasure, both good, are used to sell adultery; adventure and profit, both good, are used to convince people to burgle or rob.

Now health care is being used to push abortion.  Make no mistake - unless the law specifically forbids the funding of abortion, it will be slipped in as one more entitlement.  If the developers of the health care proposals under consideration did not want abortions to be funded directly or with subsidies, they would include prohibitive provisions in their bills.  And I can think of no better way - nor can Uncle Sam - to encourage something, other than to pay for it.
Please pray for Bart Stupak (D-MI) and the group he is rousing to resist this atrocity, this holocaust to Moloch. Rumor has it that he and his group are already being brought under tremendous pressure from the highest levels.

Fellow Americans, we are capable of helping each other out without paying to kill each other's babies.  America, we can do better than abortion!

Bishop Tobin Lays the Smackdown

The Most Reverend Thomas Tobin, by the Grace of God bishop of Providence, has just given Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) a beat-down like he has perhaps never before received. The two have been quarreling about what it means to be Catholic. Apparently, Congressman Kennedy thinks that having a famous uncle or grandfather, or having been baptized as an infant, means that nothing one can do can make one "less of a Catholic." His shepherd disagrees and is unafraid to go at it with him.

Good for you, Bishop Tobin! God bless you for your charitable forthrightness, clear shepherding, and defense of the flock and its faith. May God bless you a hundredfold for ever curse hurled at you by enemies of Holy Church and our holy religion.

There's no need to go picking fights with people, but this bozo congressman picked a fight with the Church for saying that hey, maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't be eagerly supporting health care reform that funds the butchering of children.

Read the most reverend bishop's letter by clicking here. It is available online now, and will appear in print in Thursday's edition of the local Catholic paper. Between Bishop Tobin's stern (and sometimes eye-popping, to be frank) words to the congressman under his care and the words Archbishop Dolan (of New York City) to the New York Times, we are starting to see some bishops unafraid to brawl in public.

Triumph of Democracy

In a breathtaking change of tack, Congressional Democratic leadership has decided to behave democratically. They are going to allow the House to vote on the overwhelmingly popular position to exclude federal funding from federal health care spending. Rep. Bart Stupak (R-Mich) and a group of a few dozen Democrats should be applauded for putting principle above party loyalty. The Democrat machine might try to grind them out of politics, but God will reward them.

Now the Washington Post reports that the Stupak amendment has been inserted to the House Democrats' catastrophe on a vote of 240-194. Whether the plan is stupid and ruinous for our nation, at least now we can be reasonably sure that it will not fund, either directly or surreptitiously, the murder of unborn children.

Thank you, Congressman Stupak!

The blogosphere is filled with rants of people who feel women are somehow being abused by the Stupak Amendment. In reality, their own logic is being turned against them, as is the tide of American thinking generally, and they are bitter and frustrated.  The vote on the Stupak Amendment seems to more or less coincide with the majority of Americans, who believe they should not be compelled through taxation to pay for an act they believe to be morally ambiguous or worse.  Abortion supporters continue to speak out of both sides of their mouth.  On the one hand, as a normal medical/surgical treatment, they want abortion funded.  On the other hand, as a private choice, they do not want it regulated by government authority.  On the one hand, they say that abortion is a personal decision between a woman and her doctor.  On the other hand, they want it funded - apparently by everyone BUT the woman or her doctor.  The moral nonsense is compounded by legal nonsense.

It is heartening that Americans are starting to wake up.

Why Won't the President Rule Out Abortion Funding?

The White House is refusing to discuss the funding of elective abortions with federal money, instead insisting - against all reports - that the Hyde Amendment will apply and so the question is moot.  Don't trust them; read this instead.  What the White House is not telling the American people, who overwhelmingly disapprove of government funding for abortion, is that the House health care plan under consideration will do just that.

Open Letter of the CMA on Health Care Reform

You know that I try to avoid, though sometimes give myself into the purely political. The difficulty is that so much that is political is also moral, these days. I mean, face it, we are rarely arguing about where to put a highway or whether to enter a trade treaty on fishing with the Danish. Wouldn't it be nice if those were our major political concerns?

Now a number of our Catholic organizations have given us precious little guidance about health care reform. After simply noting that health care is a "right" (whatever that means) they say something to the extent that any reform is better than no reform, leaving the implication that we should support whatever the President proposes. These premises are all questionable.

The first is questionable if only because the idea of a "right" is now so vague in our society as to be almost meaningless. It is certainly becoming confused with "entitlement". Reading the Bill of Rights, one will note that all the rights enumerated can be rephrases as something like, "The government will stay the heck out of..." my house, my saying what I please, associating with whomever I please, owning the weapons that people me, etc., etc. Nowadays, though, many "rights" do not seem to be expressible in such formulas. Nowadays, they have to be reworded something more like, "The government will give me..." which is to say, "Everyone else will give me..." That shift strikes me as dangerous.

The second is questionable simply because change can always be change for the worse.

The last is questionable simply because our president has proposed in the past some questionable propositions.

The Catholic Medical Association, though, has put together an open letter explaining the parameters of discussion as they see it: health care reform in general, a Catholic's perspective on it, and how we should engage the broader society with our ideas. Click the picture, or here, to read it. Would that more of our Catholic organizations were helping us to question critically what is being presented to us for a rubber-stamping.