Sunday, August 24, 2008

Yes Virginia, There is a Conscience Clause.


In an interview with Thomas J. McKenna from the San Diego based group Catholic Action for Faith and Family Archbishop Raymond L. Burke, newly appointed Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura discussed how the respect for the Holy Eucharist has eroded and his commitment through Cannon law to the policy of denying those who are publicly engaged in grave sins from partaking in the Eucharist. He turns our attention to Cannons 915 and 916 of Church law. He also discusses the misappropriation of civil liberties philosophy that declares access to the Eucharist a 'right' that cannot be denied.
All of this is well and good it still remains to see how the Church will enforce this policy if implemented. It is often the case that these kind of hard lines are made amongst the strong adherent of such policies, strictly between preacher and choir, rather than amongst those that might challenge such a untenable position be they members of the Church or not. However, this is an impractical stragety at disciplining the lay Catholics for the practical reason that it is only en forcible and probably will only be enforced upon prominent members of the Church, those in the public eye.

Of course that is no doubt the intention of the Cannon in the first place but what about those Catholics both lay and clergy who privately and often not so privately support abortion? Presumably the Church will not have to subject these people to the same act of excommunication because they are not public figures. However, in today's world where it is easier to propel oneself into the public arena via video, overnight celebrity or ... blogging the question arise whether the Church will take steps to identify these people and then deny them the Eucharist as well. Then there are all the divorcees who are by Church law excommunicated and are not to take communion. These people are publicly known to be divorced as a statement of such a fact must be published. Will the Church try to have them identified and deny them the Eucharist as well. What about the pedophile priest and the homosexuals who are dispensing the Eucharist, can they also be denied the Host? All these people will have to made known to the the Priest and lay people administering the Eucharist in order for them to take action. What will the Church do, have them wear a scarlet letter "A" for Pro-choice advocate, a scarlet letter "D" for divorcee or a scarlet let "P" and "H" for pedophile and homosexual? While one can respect the Archbishops ire over those who form a misalliance between liberal philosophy of atheists like Thomas Paine and Catholic theology, denying nominal Catholics the Holy Eucharist is a misstep.

The Archbishops uses Cannon law 915 and 916 to deny those from taking Communion if they are unworthy out of a deference to their own welfare, 1 Corinthians 27, "Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. (29)For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgement to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. The passage continues however, (31) "But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. (32) But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world." Thus in all actuality the Archbishop is only fore bearing their discipline. The Archbishop enters into erroneous theological territory when he attempts to use the Eucharist as an embargoed commodity exported from the Vatican subject to doctrinal compliance.
On the other hand, the left that is, reason is applied to to take exception to the truth. In a letter I recently wrote to a Pro-Choice Internet publication I challenged the the use of their euphemism in order to put their defense of abortion, a civil liberties issue, in an amicable light.

"It is often the case that naturally subordinated social groups like women tend to exhibit the exact traits that relegated them to the secondary social status they culturally and traditionally inhabit. In this instance your unscrupulous and disingenuous employment of euphemism such as “family planning clinics”,” Reproductive rights advocates” and certainly “Pro-choice advocates” incriminate women as being either blindly selfish hedonist or ideological invalids for the sole purpose of preserving their secular independent lifestyles over the actual life of even their own children. It lends the impression that personal autonomy is more important than the child they conceive but isn’t that to be expected of women? It is interesting to note as stated in the Roe.v.Wade decision that the AMA Committee on Criminal Abortion appointed in May 1857 called “the attention of the clergy of all denominations to the perverted views of morality entertained by a large class of females—aye, and men also, on this important question.”

It seems that organizations like yours are perfectly Pro-choice as long as the choice is yours alone. When a health care provider wants to make a choice based on his values, belief and conscience you are against it, how can you justify Pro-choice for a few? For myself the reason why abortion should be illegal is not just that it is a herodian act against the will of God but that as a matter of private choice those who want to have an abortion ought to do so without the endorsement of the citizens of the State who do not agree with this procedure. All people like myself is asking for is the Pro-choice to say “No!” to abortion, rather than falsely implying to the world that we here in the State of New York or elsewhere agree with this lie. The etymological root to the word abortion is aboriri, a miscarriage, women are not having a miscarriage, they are forcing a miscarriage. "

The Church and Secular Liberals seem to be taking their combat to the wide open front of the human conscience. The underlying premise, spoken correctly by both atheist Austin Dacey author of The Secular Conscience and the Archbishop response in the Catholic Action for Faith and Family interview to Catholics who appeal to their conscience in mitigating their Pro-abortion stance and 'right' to take communion. "Conscience is not some sort of subjective reality" says the Archbishop, "where I make up for myself what is right and good. Rather, it is an objective reality where I conform my own thinking to what is true."

This willing to "dance within the shadows" of objective reality is a continuance of the post modernist deconstruction era, a retort to the promises of The Enlightenment, that permits an anti-intellectual or pseudo intellectual air where thoughts, words, education and human knowledge are deployed for the sole intent of defending or attempting to legitimize ones demands and preferences. Homosexuality, abortion, the prevailing attitude that "I can believe thus and at the same time act contrarily..." , the persuasion of the masses that it is the Church that is antagonist against human life and Pro-abortion crowd that are "people-persons" or pro-people, for the crowd. When in fact our Christian freedoms are rest on the basis of one death, while their 'freedom to choose', right to privacy is propped upon a thousand deaths of innocents a day. What is true is that the religion, the binding to God or binding of ones actions to adhere to the wisdom, i.e. the discipline of the Catholic faith is deceptively depicted as an oppressive power grab by an egomaniacal heierchial administration. Your friends on the other hand are the ones who permit you to do whatever you want... so long as it does not affect them. Drunks on the Bowery pile up and are stepped over until their wives or the in fact the drunks themselves decided to make a change, consolidate and admit that they have a problem and when I say 'they' I mean 'we'. The recently deceased great comedic actor Bernie Mac would in his weekly television series face the camera and directly talk to his television viewers. Invariably he start off with the address, "Amearica" in a comedic southern drawl, but he hit a note and quite frankly many of us were happy to be address and brought into counsel about the dilemmas he faced and by extension we as his 'neighbors' faced as well. It was Terrance that said "I am human, nothing human is alien to me." The plight with the homosexual position is that it tries to assert that homosexuals are a different species, a variant form of human beings. When in fact there are no alternative life styles, there are no alternatives to life. As a man you get a job, get a a wife and have kids. What are the alternatives? No, certainly we do not all have that or have yet obtained that but certainly as Americans we have been misguided by nihilist liberal ideology that we do not need it.

Thus for instance my trouble with homosexuality as a legitimized norm stems from the very premise that it is an acceptable form of being, that these are a people, like the drunks on the Bowery, who do not have a problem but the fallacy is that this train of thought is their exact overwrought psychological defense, they are 'gay' never venturing into the convoluted bowels of the subconscious mind that requires us all to address the reality not of what we think but of what we feel. I call on homosexual to accept themselves for who they are not to token their exclusive other directness towards the goal of having others accept them. If you are a man outwardly, inwardly act accordingly, if you are a woman outwardly, inwardly act accordingly, jihad until you get it 'straighten out'.


The celebrity Star Jones, surgically had her stomach staple, left the television show she co-hosted because she would have preferred to deny the fact and married a homosexual man who soon left her. Star Jones story is an example of the "do-it-yourself", put together from the 'outside', self assembled life of the modern secularist.We staple our stomaches because we are too spiritually weak to control our consumption by the same measure homosexual men in the fall after the pride in a cyclical and natural tendency towards equilibrium subject themselves to abuse by others in order to rectify the imbalance, we are out of our minds, beside ourselves. We have been unable to be poor in spirit, to humble our hearts and contend with life's frustrations, the differences between reality and the fanciful 'alternative lifestyle'. It would make sense that the psychologically immature would be sexually disoriented as their command of an object related readiness can come into question, the mind needs objects in order to operate. There is a natural mind- body relationship which makes the opposite sex important. Men akin to the maneges of the brain are the mind and the wife the 'ol ball and chain' the body that keeps us grounded. The live wires that we have become, ungrounded, moving in migratory economic patterns with no social cohesiveness have made it difficult to satiate our emotional and psychological needs. This in my opinion has lead some men to construe an economically adaptive lifestyle by conforming themselves into becoming the automatons corporate elitist would prefer over flesh and blood God fearing human beings. The labor of undocumented aliens are welcomed for instance but separating them from their American born children was perhaps an unforeseen dilemma, if only they were drones. Many of us undocumented or otherwise have no medical coverage but all the while we are asked to 'donate' blood, blood is free but health care is not. It could be argued that since we 'give' blood we should be be able to see a physician, yet that is to venture into my own embargo. He who has given His blood and not only His blood but His body did not ask to be repaid because He cannot be repaid for what He gave, it was a gift.

The Eucharist is the body of Christ given to us, his own flesh sacrificed for us to help us 'soften our hearts', we soften our hearts so we can change them, maneuver them, grow. How is it that we surgically alter our physical bodies to suit our 'inner selves' but can not do the opposite, alter our inner selves to suit the body that God gave us? It is because there are those amongst us who would try to live their lives without God, subsequently that is how they end up, homosexuality is a consequence of trying to live without God.

The legitimization of homosexuality abandons those who like depressives and schizophrenics are left in the mire of the maladaptive psychological medicines. The homosexuals in claiming that they do not have a problem in a dissociative clamoring for social acceptance have abandoned these people and they have abandoned America by refusing to be counted amongst the disturbed and disordered as evidence of the psychological malady that is the natural result of our obedience to economic primacy. If the American Psychiatric Association reversed its position on the health status of homosexuals tommorrow there would be a huge camp of people who would have to be openly declared psychological aberrants, along with the huge number of people in psychactric care who are taking medication for their depression and the schizoid disorders. We would have to admit that their is a nation wide psychological epidemic in America and the cause of it like global warming has to be the way that we are living, it would have to be attributed to the idolatrous pursuit of money.

None the less it would appear that we will now be called on to defend our choices and stances openly once we ratified that the conscience is an can be objectively scrutinized. In liberal California, Ecuador and Spain where they are engaging in a deCatholicization of the State, Catholic values are being marginalized. It will be interesting to see if where the dividing line will stand when it comes to the exercise of ones conscience. This will be a real challenge for law in America.

Recently President Bush tried to push through a law that would allow health care providers to refuse to service those people they felt opposed their conscience. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt stated, "People should not be forced to say or do things they believe are morally wrong. Health-care workers should not be forced to provide services that violate their own conscience."

In his previous draft abortion would have been extended even to contraceptive devised that prevent the fertilized egg from implanting on the uterine wall, these contraceptives are known are abortifacients, which work by causing early term abortions. (http://www.goodmorals.org/smith4.htm)

Whether this conscience clause will compel people to thrash out sound reasons for their actions comes into question since the motives for their actions are often quite distinct from political stances, such as the case of abortion, a matter of privacy and woman's political Independence from men. Now the case has been made that the conscience is an open arena that operates on objective principals not closeted or 'private' beliefs. So how can abortion remain a privacy issue if the legitimacy of what is deemed private comes into question?

According Cecile Richards, president of the New York-based Planned Parenthood Federation of America, "Women's ability to manage their own health care is at risk of being compromised by politics and ideology." Exactly what she means by 'health care" when it comes to contraceptives is not clear.



Margaret Sanger, atheist, anti-Catholic and negative eugenics support or who thought it was best to eliminate the unfit, including minorities is the founder of Planned Parenthood as early as 1921 under the title The American Birth Control League. That this woman's movement and Pro-abortion position is a continence of negative eugenics philosophy where by the unfit are euthanized or the numbers reduced is questionable. It is ironic that whatever Mrs. Sangers goal was it probably did not included the 'browning" of America that has taken place with the anticipated increase of non-whites in America over that of Caucasians by 2050.







































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