“Empowerment” with respect to abortion is a mild way of expressing what the laws have enabled: self-deification, women playing god with their unborn babies. If they decide it’s entitled to humanhood, than its life is protected by the civil rights enshrined in our legal codes and constitution. If they decide it is not human, the child can be killed, and in a painful manner by dismemberment. This was also the privilege of slave-owners and NAZIs.
When the mother-god makes the determination that the child is not human, supporters of her decision abound: abortion counselors, nurses, doctors, and of course, politicians, some Catholic, all of whom benefit financially or otherwise from the sacrifice.
Psalm 106 recalls Israel’s apostasy in shedding the innocent blood of their own children:
They served their idols and were ensnared by them. They sacrificed to demons their own sons and daughters, shedding innocent blood, the blood of their own sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, desecrating the land with bloodshed. They defiled themselves by their actions, became adulterers by their conduct. So the LORD grew angry with his people (vss. 36-40).
There are four takeaways from this text:
- Child sacrifice is idolatry.
- Idolatry is demon-worship.
- The murdered children are innocent; they do not go to hell.
- God is angered and regards it as adultery.
It was adultery because in the Old Testament Israel was viewed as God’s bride. In the New Testament era the Church represents the bride of Christ.
St. Mark records an angry clash between Jesus and the Pharisees. On the Sabbath, while group of Pharisees hang around hoping to catch Jesus violating the holy day, a man with a withered hand encounters Jesus in a synagogue:
…[Jesus] said to them [Pharisees], “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to kill it?” But they remained silent. Looking around at them with anger and grieved at their hardness of heart, he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out and his hand was restored (Mark 3:1-6).
The pharisees constituted the moral authority of the Jewish people yet remained silent, infuriating Jesus by refusing to affirm in public that it was wrong to kill. We see this same silence today among our own moral authorities.
San Diego Cardinal McElroy is well-known for supporting giving communion to pro-abortion Catholic politicians. To him, the killing of unborn children is a neutral political issue which should be ignored by Church authorities:
…[T]he Eucharist must never be instrumentalized for a political end, no matter how important. But that is precisely what is being done in the effort to exclude Catholic political leaders who oppose the church’s teaching on abortion. Link
Other cardinals, like Blaise Cupich offer the same sort of sophistry regarding the Eucharist:
I would not use the Eucharist or as they call it the communion rail as the place to have those discussions or way in which people would be either excluded from the life of the church. Link
Cardinal Wilton Gregory’s defense of giving Holy Communion to Biden is absurd:
I hope it’s a real dialogue, because I think that’s the mantra of Pope Francis. …[T]he capacity to have civil disagreements — serious disagreements, you know, really pointed disagreements — but done in such a way that the focus is on the argument, not on the demonization of the people with whom we disagree. Link
Does withholding the Sacrament, in accordance with canon law (§915), constitute the “demonization” of a person, or the proper course of correction? These Catholic politicians are not just to be regarded as supporters of abortion, but enablers; it’s not about a point of disagreement.
These prelates were all appointed by Pope Francis.
As the USCCB was preparing to meet to discuss formulating a policy on communion for pro-abortion politicians, the president, Archbishop Gomez, received a harsh warning from the Vatican’s Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith’s prefect, Cardinal Ladaria:
[T]he Congregation advises that any statement of the Conference regarding Catholic political leaders would best be framed within the broad context of worthiness for the reception of Holy Communion on the part of all the faithful, rather than only one category of Catholics. …It would be misleading if such a statement were to give the impression that abortion and euthanasia alone constitute the only grave matters of Catholic moral and social teaching that demand the fullest level of accountability on the part of Catholics.
This is the old “seamless garment” approach which Cardinal Mueller called “intellectually dishonest”, adding that it justifies
…turning a blind eye to instances of abortion, contraception, or public funding for embryonic stem cell research, as long as these were simultaneously accompanied by opposition to the death penalty or promotion of economic development for the poor. (Link)
Bishop Robert Vasa warned,
We have lived with abortion in our country for nearly 50 years. Perhaps our hearts have grown calloused to the moral and physical evil of this denial of humanity. …[W]hen our culture encourages the violation of life at its youngest and most vulnerable condition, other ethical norms cannot stand for long. (Link)
…rjt
The Five Beasts 