America Magazine Goes After Me for My Response to Sr. Maureen Fiedler

August 27, 2009 by  
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Well, I feel as if I’ve finally “arrived.”

True, over the years, my name has been mentioned disparagingly a few times in the pages of America, but what appeared in its online edition today has reached a whole new level of invective (even by America’s standards of invective).

I responded yesterday to Sr. Maureen Fiedler’s obit piece on Senator Ted Kennedy in NCR (“He Made Me Proud to Be Catholic”), and my comments obviously hit a raw nerve among that community of disciples over at America, as evidenced by my being roundly chastised by one of their writers today.

Honestly, I don’t think my remarks were in any way untoward, but clearly, that interlocutor disagrees. In just six irrate paragraphs, he manages to brand me me a “boor,” a “loudmouth,” “ignorant of history,” “callous,” “inhumane,” “indecent,” and “hateful” — all the while insinuating that my comments on this issue (and those of other pro-life people) are simply a “rant.”

Kettle, meet Pot. Pot, meet Kettle.


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Do Not Text While Driving PSA

August 26, 2009 by  
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This is grim. But brace yourself and watch it anyway, because it might just save your life and the lives of those you love. If you have teenage children, sit down with them and make them watch this. Have them share it with their friends.


(courtesy of Colleen Hammond)
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The further adventures of "Jaime Alberto Gonzales"

August 26, 2009 by  
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Although you probably know him as Fr. Marcial Maciel, “Jaime Alberto Gonzales” was allegedly one of the aliases he went by during his assignations with young Mexican women (queue to 7:00 for that). More details are available here and here, and for those who understand Spanish, these CNN videos provide fuller details, straight from a lawyer who’s working this case. Start with this one:


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My Response to Sr. Maureen Fiedler's Comments About Ted Kennedy's Passing

August 26, 2009 by  
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I just posted a response to Sr. Maureen Fiedler’s NCR column about Ted Kennedy titled “He Made Me Proud to Be a Catholic”

Hopefully, my comment will be approved by the censors and will show up there soon. Just in case, though, I post it for you here.


Maureen, with all due respect, I can appreciate your nostalgia for the Kennedys, but I cannot understand why you would insist that Senator Edward Kennedy was a “champion of the welfare of ‘the least of these'” among us. He was not.

At best, Mr. Kennedy was highly selective as to which of “the least among us” he would deign to defend. Case in point: Abortion. The senator established his record squarely on the extremist position of defending the legality of abortion.

Many are not aware that he was originally publicly pro-life (I comment on the details of his transformation from pro-life to pro-abortion here).

As a result of Ted Kennedy’s indefatigable championing of the pro-abortion movement, tens of millions of the “least among us” — unborn girls and boys — were killed through abortion under his senatorial auspices.

Whatever his positive qualities may have been, and no doubt he had some, the tragic reality is that Senator Kennedy’s long political career was squandered by his vociferous, relentless promotion of abortion. And that, sadly, will be his enduring legacy.

I agree with you that tears are appropriate upon hearing the news of this man’s death, but not for the reasons you are crying them.

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My Response to Sr. Maureen Fiedler’s Comments About Ted Kennedy’s Passing

August 26, 2009 by  
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I just posted a response to Sr. Maureen Fiedler’s NCR column about Ted Kennedy titled “He Made Me Proud to Be a Catholic”

Hopefully, my comment will be approved by the censors and will show up there soon. Just in case, though, I post it for you here.


Maureen, with all due respect, I can appreciate your nostalgia for the Kennedys, but I cannot understand why you would insist that Senator Edward Kennedy was a “champion of the welfare of ‘the least of these'” among us. He was not.

At best, Mr. Kennedy was highly selective as to which of “the least among us” he would deign to defend. Case in point: Abortion. The senator established his record squarely on the extremist position of defending the legality of abortion.

Many are not aware that he was originally publicly pro-life (I comment on the details of his transformation from pro-life to pro-abortion here).

As a result of Ted Kennedy’s indefatigable championing of the pro-abortion movement, tens of millions of the “least among us” — unborn girls and boys — were killed through abortion under his senatorial auspices.

Whatever his positive qualities may have been, and no doubt he had some, the tragic reality is that Senator Kennedy’s long political career was squandered by his vociferous, relentless promotion of abortion. And that, sadly, will be his enduring legacy.

I agree with you that tears are appropriate upon hearing the news of this man’s death, but not for the reasons you are crying them.

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"Our goal was 3 to 5 abortions for every girl between the ages of 13 and 18"

August 26, 2009 by  
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This new documentary, “Bloodmoney,” exposes in detail how the abortion industry extremists systematically “had a plan that sold abortion, and it was called ‘sex education.’ [We would] break down their natural modesty, separate them from their parents and values and become the sex experts in their lives so they would turn to us. When we could give them a logos birth control pill they would get pregnant on it or on a defective condom. . . .”

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Draw Your Own Conclusions

August 26, 2009 by  
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Sons of Perdition: How Certain Catholic Priests Turned the Kennedys Pro-Abortion

August 26, 2009 by  
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The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating and deeply saddening article exploring the reasons behind the Kennedy Family’s staunch pro-abortion position. Believe it or not, Ted Kennedy used to be pro-life. So how did he and all the other prominent Kennedys swing so far in the opposite direction? For that matter, what about some of the other Catholic pro-abortion zealots in (or recently in) high public office, such as Nancy Pelosi, Mario Cuomo, and Tom Daschle? What happened to them?

(NB: I originally posted this blog entry on January 2, 2009. In view of Ted Kennedy’s death today,
I run it again because of its pertinence to his life and legacy, such as it was.)

This article reveals that it was was an intentional, systematic, concerted effort on the part of a group of dissenting Catholic theologians (including Fr. Richard McCormick, Fr. Charles Curran, Fr. Joseph Fuchs, Fr. Robert Drinan, and Fr. John Courtney Murray), who spent a good deal of of time with the Kennedys in the mid 1960s employing bogus moral theology arguments to convince them they could “accept and promote abortion with a clear conscience.” Once this was accomplished, these same Judas priests undertook to literally coach the Kennedy’s on what to say and how to vote in favor of abortion in their public lives.

Given the Kennedys’ enormous influence over American politics, it’s diabolically logical for those dissenting Catholic theologians to have targeted this renowned and respected Catholic family for “conversion.” They were in the perfect position to persuade other Catholics, and even many Protestants, that it’s okay to be pro-abortion.
And this strategy worked so well that, today, it is virtually impossible to find a Catholic politician holding national public office who is pro-life. Thanks to these dissenters and those Catholics they duped, “Catholic” is synonymous with “pro-abortion” in politics.

Read here how this hideous transformation was accomplished:

Ms. [Caroline] Kennedy’s commitment to abortion rights is shared by other prominent family members, including Kerry Kennedy Cuomo and Maryland’s former Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. Some may recall the 2000 Democratic Convention when Caroline and her uncle, Sen. Ted Kennedy, addressed the convention to reassure all those gathered that the Democratic Party would continue to provide women with the right to choose abortion — even into the ninth month. At that convention, the party’s nominee, Al Gore, formerly a pro-life advocate, pledged his opposition to parental notification and embraced partial-birth abortion. Several of those in attendance, including former President Bill Clinton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, had been pro-life at one time. But by 2000 nearly every delegate in the convention hall was on the pro-choice side — and those who weren’t simply kept quiet about it.


Caroline Kennedy knows that any Kennedy desiring higher office in the Democratic Party must now carry the torch of abortion rights throughout any race. But this was not always the case. Despite Ms. Kennedy’s description of Barack Obama, in a New York Times op-ed, as a “man like my father,” there is no evidence that JFK was pro-choice like Mr. Obama. Abortion-rights issues were in the fledgling stage at the state level in New York and California in the early 1960s. They were not a national concern.
Even Ted Kennedy, who gets a 100% pro-choice rating from the abortion-rights group Naral, was at one time pro-life. In fact, in 1971, a full year after New York had legalized abortion, the Massachusetts senator was still championing the rights of the unborn. In a letter to a constituent dated Aug. 3, 1971, he wrote: “When history looks back to this era it should recognize this generation as one which cared about human beings enough to halt the practice of war, to provide a decent living for every family, and to fulfill its responsibility to its children from the very moment of conception.”
But that all changed in the early ’70s, when Democratic politicians first figured out that the powerful abortion lobby could fill their campaign coffers (and attract new liberal voters). Politicians also began to realize that, despite the Catholic Church’s teachings to the contrary, its bishops and priests had ended their public role of responding negatively to those who promoted a pro-choice agenda.
In some cases, church leaders actually started providing “cover” for Catholic pro-choice politicians who wanted to vote in favor of abortion rights. At a meeting at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, Mass., on a hot summer day in 1964, the Kennedy family and its advisers and allies were coached by leading theologians and Catholic college professors on how to accept and promote abortion with a “clear conscience.”
The former Jesuit priest Albert Jonsen, emeritus professor of ethics at the University of Washington, recalls the meeting in his book “The Birth of Bioethics” (Oxford, 2003). He writes about how he joined with the Rev. Joseph Fuchs, a Catholic moral theologian; the Rev. Robert Drinan, then dean of Boston College Law School; and three academic theologians, the Revs. Giles Milhaven, Richard McCormick and Charles Curran, to enable the Kennedy family to redefine support for abortion.
Mr. Jonsen writes that the Hyannisport colloquium was influenced by the position of another Jesuit, the Rev. John Courtney Murray, a position that “distinguished between the moral aspects of an issue and the feasibility of enacting legislation about that issue.” It was the consensus at the Hyannisport conclave that Catholic politicians “might tolerate legislation that would permit abortion under certain circumstances if political efforts to repress this moral error led to greater perils to social peace and order.”
Father Milhaven later recalled the Hyannisport meeting during a 1984 breakfast briefing of Catholics for a Free Choice: “The theologians worked for a day and a half among ourselves at a nearby hotel. In the evening we answered questions from the Kennedys and the Shrivers. Though the theologians disagreed on many a point, they all concurred on certain basics . . . and that was that a Catholic politician could in good conscience vote in favor of abortion.”
But can they now? There are signs today that some of the bishops are beginning to confront the Catholic politicians who consistently vote in favor of legislation to support abortion. Charles J. Chaput, the archbishop of Denver, has been on the front lines in encouraging Catholics to live their faith without compromise in the public square. Most recently in his book “Render Unto Caesar,” Archbishop Chaput has reminded Catholic politicians of their obligation to protect life.
The archbishop is not alone. The agenda at November’s assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops included a public discussion of abortion and politics. The bishops’ final statement focused on concern about the possible passage of the “Freedom of Choice Act,” and referred to it as “an evil law that would further divide our country.” The bishops referenced their 2007 document, “Faithful Citizenship,” which maintains that the right to life is the foundation of every other human right. In it, they promised to “persist in the duty to counsel, in the hope that the scandal of their [Catholic congregants’] cooperating in evil can be resolved by the proper formation of their consciences.”

(continue reading)
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Introducing Father Mitch Pacwa’s "Reformation Project"

August 25, 2009 by  
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For more info on this groundbreaking new project exploring the historical and theological facts surrounding the Protestant rebellion against the Catholic Church, go here.


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Introducing Father Mitch Pacwa's "Reformation Project"

August 25, 2009 by  
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For more info on this groundbreaking new project exploring the historical and theological facts surrounding the Protestant rebellion against the Catholic Church, go here.


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