The Gospel Truth

A Catholic Scandal

I am not going to write about homosexual priests in the Catholic Church.

For the record please do not continue to accept the false conventional wisdom that this has something to do with paedefilia.

Both the media and the church have hidden the true nature of the church scandal.

I want to write about the other scandal with regard to abortion.

When I was studying religion in high school the Jesuits taught me about the nature of giving scandal to other Catholics or even those who did not share my religious beliefs.

Giving bad example was deemed a very serious sin and it is something I have scrupulously guarded against my whole life.

Is this another teaching that the Church does not seem to care about in today’s modern world?

If this is not bad example or scandal, I have no idea what is!

The left will have rendered another Catholic teaching null and void.

It is common knowledge that the vast majority of Senators and Representatives in Congress, who are Catholic, pay no attention to the Church’s teaching on abortion, euthanasia or same-sex marriage.

They march to the inner drum beat of their political conscience and not their moral conscience.

Their duplicity in the culture of death is an affront to their voters and especially to their fellow Catholics.

It is not just their participation in these abject evils but it is the temerity with which they publicly beat their breasts and tout how loyal and faithful they are to their Catholic faith.

These self-professed good Catholics are reminiscent of the good Germans during the war, who considered themselves good and loving husbands and wives, and maybe kind and generous to a fault.

These were the Germans who thought of themselves as good people as to convince themselves that their participation gassing the Jews or euthanizing the elderly and the so-called useless eaters did not reflect on the state of their characters or of their souls.

I have more respect for Adolph Hitler who was a lapsed Catholic…a very lapsed Catholic but never uttered a word about how loyal he was to the Church.

The Church was always regarded as his enemy…an enemy he would deal with when the time arrived.

Every time someone of dubious reputation would say to me, I am good person I think about what guilt, sin or crime are they stowing down deep in the darkest recesses of their souls.

So is it with Senators Dick Durbin, Illinois,Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont; Claire McCaskill, Missouri, and Barbara Mikulski, Maryland.

Former senators, Vice-President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry turn a deaf ear to their church on abortion.

These are just a few of the high-profile members of Congress who have faithfully and loyally supported abortion on demand and all the dictates of Planned parenthood through most of their political lives.

Yet church leaders just let them go on touting what great Catholics they are.

What effect does their moral effrontery have on others, especially Catholics in the pews?

Does not their support of abortion encourage others to either be silent about its abject evils or even support abortion on demand as well?

Is this not the sinful scandal I was taught in high school?

Does it not mean anything to our church leaders any more?

Are they so much a part of our pagan culture that they only complain when our religious freedom is at risk?

There is at least one Catholic priest who is screaming from the top of his lungs.

I know there are many others who have spoken out, such as good friend Joseph Naumann the Archbishop of Kansas City, Kansas.

Below is a letter Father Frank Pavone, the Director of Priests for Life has written has written to the most outrageous Catholic in Congress, former Speaker of the House nancy Pelosi.

Please read it and then if you are Catholic go to your pastor with it and ask him to put it in the bulletin.  One can easily get a copy on-line if necessary.

Or pass it on to anybody who will listen.

Dear Mrs. Pelosi,

Last Thursday, June 13, you were asked a question in a press briefing that you declined to answer. The question was, “What is the moral difference between what Dr. Gosnell did to a baby born alive at 23 weeks and aborting her moments before birth?”

Given the fact that the Gosnell case has been national news for months now, and that Congress, where you serve as House Democratic Leader, was about to have a vote on banning abortion after 20 weeks fetal age, this was a legitimate question.

Instead of even attempting to answer the question, you resorted to judgmental ad hominem attacks on the reporter who asked it, saying, You obviously have an agenda. You’re not interested in having an answer.”

Mrs. Pelosi, the problem is that you’re not interested in giving an answer.

Your refusal to answer this question is consistent with your failure to provide an answer to a similar question from me and the members of my Priests for Life staff. Several years ago, we visited your office with the diagrams of dismemberment abortion at 23 weeks, and asked the simple question, When you say the word ‘abortion,’ is this what you mean?  In response, nothing but silence has emanated from your office.

In what way is this refusal to address an issue of such national importance consistent with the leadership role you are supposed to be exercising?

Public servants are supposed to be able to tell the difference between serving the public and killing the public. Apparently, you can’t. Otherwise, you would have been able to explain the difference between a legal medical procedure that kills a baby inside the womb and an act of murder — for which Dr. Gosnell is now serving life sentences — for killing the same baby outside the womb.

Moreover, you stated at the press briefing on June 13, As a practicing and respectful Catholic, this is sacred ground to me when we talk about this. I don’t think it should have anything to do with politics.

With this statement, you make a mockery of the Catholic faith and of the tens of millions of Americans who consider themselves “practicing and respectful Catholics” and who find the killing of children — whether inside or outside the womb — reprehensible.

You speak here of Catholic faith as if it is supposed to hide us from reality instead of lead us to face reality, as if it is supposed to confuse basic moral truths instead of clarify them, and as if it is supposed to help us escape the hard moral questions of life rather than help us confront them.

Whatever Catholic faith you claim to respect and practice, it is not the faith that the Catholic Church teaches.

And I speak for countless Catholics when I say that it’s time for you to stop speaking as if it were.

Abortion is not sacred ground; it is sacrilegious ground. To imagine God giving the slightest approval to an act that dismembers a child he created is offensive to both faith and reason.

And to say that a question about the difference between a legal medical procedure and murder should not “have anything to do with politics” reveals a profound failure to understand your own political responsibilities, which start with the duty to secure the God-given right to life of every citizen.

Mrs. Pelosi, for decades you have gotten away with betraying and misrepresenting the Catholic faith as well as the responsibilities of public office.

We have had enough of it. Either exercise your duties as a public servant and a Catholic, or have the honesty to formally renounce them.

Sincerely,

Fr. Frank Pavone
National Director, Priests for Life

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