Pope John Paul II

Thus the Church condemns as a grave offense against human dignity and justice all those activities of governments or other public authorities which attempt to limit in any way the freedom of couples in deciding about children. Consequently, any violence applied by such authorities in favor of contraception or, still worse, of sterilization and procured abortion, must be altogether condemned and forcefully rejected. Likewise to be denounced as gravely unjust are cases where, in international relations, economic help given for the advancement of peoples is made conditional on programs of contraception, sterilization and procured abortion.

Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio of Pope John Paul II
To the Episcopate
To the Clergy and to the Faithful of the Whole Catholic Church

Second Vatican Council

Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.

Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Nebraska

All Catholics in and of the Diocese of Lincoln are forbidden to be members of the organizations and groups listed below. Membership in these organizations or groups is always perilous to the Catholic Faith and most often is totally incompatible with the Catholic Faith.

Planned Parenthood
Call to Action
Call to Action Nebraska
Catholics for a Free Choice

Any Catholics in and of the Diocese of Lincoln who attain or retain membership in any of the above listed organizations or groups after April 15, 1996, are by that very fact (ipso facto latae sententiae) under interdict and are absolutely forbidden to receive Holy Communion. Contumacious persistence in such membership for one month following the interdict on part of any such Catholics will by that very fact (ipso facto latae sententiae) cause them to be excommunicated. Absolution from these ecclesial censures is "reserved to the Bishop."

This notice, when published in the Southern Nebraska Register, is a formal canonical warning.

By mandate of the Most Reverend Bishop of Lincoln.

Statement issued by Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz (published in Southern Nebraska Register, March 22, 1996)

Archbishop Chaput of Denver

Catholics have an obligation to work for the common good and the dignity of every person. We see abortion as a matter of civil rights and human dignity, not simply as a matter of religious teaching. We are doubly unfaithful - both to our religious convictions and to our democratic responsibilities - if we fail to support the right to life of the unborn child. Our duties to social justice by no means end there. But they do always begin there, because the right to life is foundational.

For Catholics to take a "pro-choice" view toward abortion contradicts our identity and makes us complicit in how the choice plays out. The "choice" in abortion always involves the choice to end the life of an unborn human being. For anyone who sees this fact clearly, neutrality, silence or private disapproval are not options. They are evils almost as grave as abortion itself. If religious believers do not advance their convictions about public morality in public debate, they are demonstrating not tolerance but cowardice.

Most Rev. Charles J. Chaput Archbishop of Denver
New York Times Op Ed

Catechism of the Catholic Church

Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law:

You shall not kill the embryo by abortion and shall not cause the newborn to perish. God, the Lord of life, has entrusted to men the noble mission of safeguarding life, and men must carry it out in a manner worthy of themselves. Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.

Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life. "A person who procures a completed abortion incurs excommunication latae sententiae," "by the very commission of the offense," and subject to the conditions provided by Canon Law. The Church does not thereby intend to restrict the scope of mercy. Rather, she makes clear the gravity of the crime committed, the irreparable harm done to the innocent who is put to death, as well as to the parents and the whole of society.

Since it must be treated from conception as a person, the embryo must be defended in its integrity, cared for, and healed, as far as possible, like any other human being.

Prenatal diagnosis is morally licit, "if it respects the life and integrity of the embryo and the human fetus and is directed toward its safe guarding or healing as an individual.... It is gravely opposed to the moral law when this is done with the thought of possibly inducing an abortion, depending upon the results: a diagnosis must not be the equivalent of a death sentence."

From its conception, the child has the right to life. Direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, is a "criminal" practice, gravely contrary to the moral law. The Church imposes the canonical penalty of excommunication for this crime against human life.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta

We are talking of peace. These are things that break peace, but I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing - direct murder by the mother herself. And we read in the Scripture, for God says very clearly: Even if a mother could forget her child - I will not forget you - I have carved you in the palm of my hand. We are carved in the palm of His hand, so close to Him that unborn child has been carved in the hand of God. And that is what strikes me most, the beginning of that sentence, that even if a mother could forget something impossible - but even if she could forget - I will not forget you. And today the greatest means - the greatest destroyer of peace is abortion. And we who are standing here - our parents wanted us. We would not be here if our parents would do that to us. Our children, we want them, we love them, but what of the millions. Many people are very, very concerned with the children in India, with the children in Africa where quite a number die, maybe of malnutrition, of hunger and so on, but millions are dying deliberately by the will of the mother. And this is what is the greatest destroyer of peace today. Because if a mother can kill her own child - what is left for me to kill you and you kill me - there is nothing between.

Mother Teresa
Nobel Lecture 12/11/1979

Catholics for Obama

In the online magazine Slate – aka The Orthodox bastion of Catholic thought. Douglas W. Kmiec justifies his personal views by placing opinion polls before 2,000 years of Catholic teaching. Not long ago I would have done the same. Doug and his polls are right about one thing - about half of Catholics in the United States are going to vote for the Democratic candidate this November whether that be Obama or Clinton.

Scandal!

“While no papal instruction will ever condone the "right to choose," the church does ask for a consistent and realistic defense of life that actually takes steps to reduce the incidence of the practice, not just condemns it. Catholics will note that McCain and Huckabee's pro-life postures collapse when it comes to the death penalty.”

Before Doug or anyone else for that matter can begin to compare the death penalty in America to abortion we’ll need to afford each unborn baby equal rights before the law as any other accused. Start with an afternoon in court with a sleepy judge, a bad lawyer, and a jury of twelve angry men. Finish by determining the child’s guilt prior to the sentence of execution.

You see abortion is the death penalty without even the chance of justice.
Abortion is unjust war.
Abortion is the single issue.

I wish that Doug would spend less time speaking for the Catholic Church and more time listening to...

Mother Teresa
Archbishop Chaput of Denver
The Catechism of the Catholic Church
Pope John Paul II
Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Nebraska
The Second Vatican Council
Horton the Elephant

Perhaps then he’d be less likely to vote for someone like this.

If a quote were a vote what would you say?

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“I call heaven and earth to witness this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Choose therefore life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”
– God

“Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me.”
– Jesus (see above)

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
– Declaration of Independence. (Rights sworn to be upheld by the President)

“Abortion is an ugly thing, a debasing thing, a thing which inevitably brings remorse and sorrow and regret.”
– LDS President Gordon B Hinckley

“In the last forty-plus years, 15 million black people have been denied their most basic civil right, the right to life. Roughly one quarter of the black population is now missing.”
- Dr. Alveda King, the niece of human rights campaigner, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

“Guilty? Yes. No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; But oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime!”
– Susan B. Anthony (A true feminist)

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“…a concerted effort to steadily roll back [access to abortions]”
– Barack Obama (Speaking at the Planned Parenthood conference in DC rejecting the Gonzales v. Carhart decision -- which upheld a ban on partial-birth abortion. Explained in section I paragraph four of the dissenting opinion)

"Our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying... demonstrates our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism ...[Philanthropists] encourage the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a deadweight of human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant ... We are paying for, and even submitting to, the dictates of an ever-increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all."
– Margaret Sanger. The Pivot of Civilization , Chapter on "The Cruelty of Charity," (Founder of Planned Parenthood and The Negro Project)

“...a subordinate and inferior class of beings...”
– in [Dred] Scott v. Sandford.

“the word 'person,' as used in the [Constitution], does not include the unborn.”
– Roe v. Wade.

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So what say you Christian brethren?