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"for roughly 3,000 years in Western civilization, until 1973, it was the unanimous position of medical ethicists throughout Western civilization that abortion was immoral and unethical" - Mike Pence

"The sanctity of human life" by Rep. Mike Pence    

"For that one reason among many, the United States will suffer unless there is placed into your government a group that fears the Lord if they cannot love the Lord. They will fear Him and find measures to stop the slaughter of the unborn." - Our Lady of the Roses, April 14, 1984

 

Rep. Mike Pence presented this address on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives on September 25, 2003:

Representative Mike PenceMr. Speaker, I rise at the end of a week of activity here on Capitol Hill to do nothing less than to begin a process and an effort that I hope will be a part of the fabric of my career for however long I have the privilege of serving in the United States House of Representatives.

I rise very simply, Mr. Speaker, to make the case for life; to make the arguments, philosophical, intellectual, moral and historical, on this blue and gold carpet, on a regular basis, for the sanctity of human life.

My inspiration, oddly enough, Mr. Speaker, for this series, was just mentioned by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) in his remarks immediately preceding mine. It is almost uncanny to me to have heard it. For my inspiration in rising today on the House floor is none other than a former member of this body who served as a member of Congress from 1827 until his death in 1848.

Prior to being a member of the House of Representatives, John Quincy Adams was President of the United States, and his father President before him. But, remarkably, after one term in Congress, John Quincy Adams felt compelled, Mr. Speaker, to be elected to Congress from the state of Massachusetts and to come to this place. And more than any other purpose, it is clear as one studies his speeches and pronouncements on this floor, that he was a man deeply committed to the abolition of slavery in America.

Just as the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) reflected, it is reported that oftentimes on a weekly basis or more throughout the nearly 20 years that John Quincy Adams served as a member of this Congress, in a Chamber, as you know, Mr. Speaker, just down the hall. The great, grand old man and former President would come, history records, and bring his papers with him and make the moral and the intellectual and the historical and even the Biblical case against slavery in America.

We are even told that some of his colleagues at the time during the course of those two decades actually tried to change the procedural rules of the House, because they thought it rather impolitic to have old Mr. Adams coming down and bringing up that difficult issue again. But he did it, and he did it well, and he did it without apology. And as I rise today to begin what I hope for however many years I serve in Congress to be a series on the case for life, I am inspired and magnetized by John Quincy Adams.

Now, many may say that John Quincy Adams, who perished, we are told, in the midst of a session of Congress, fell over backwards in his chair, was carried into a waiting room where he died the next day, some may say that his death in 1848, long before slavery would vanish from this continent, proved that he had failed in his endeavor.

But God works in mysterious ways, Mr. Speaker, and I cannot help but feel to this day that at sometime from heaven John Quincy Adams smiled down when he realized that on the back row of the Congress in which he gave those lectures arrived in the year 1847 a tall, lanky man from the state of Illinois who served for one term in Congress, and Abraham Lincoln would later reflect that the speeches on the abolition of slavery that he heard from the great man John Quincy Adams deeply impacted his thinking and his life. And when Abraham Lincoln would then run for the Senate in Illinois and lose, and then be propelled on that same issue to the Presidency, he, no doubt, as is all of our posterity, was in debt to the ranting of that old man.

And here is hoping that my ranting may cast seeds, somewhere, Mr. Speaker, whether in this chamber or through the means whereby people observe what we do here; that some might reflect on the principles that we share over the course of this series on the case for life and be inspired by it, because it matters.

Despite the fact that ever since Roe v. Wade became law in 1973 America has looked across the street to the U.S. Supreme Court to define this business of the rightness and the legality of abortion, and despite the fact that, frankly, even in this Congress we pay scant attention to the issue, it, nevertheless, is a colossal issue about which our Nation must attend, for one reason and one reason only: 1.6 million abortions are performed in the United States each year. Ninety-one percent are performed during the first trimester, 12 or fewer weeks gestation. Nine percent are performed in the second trimester.

Approximately 1.5 million U.S. women with unwanted pregnancies choose abortion every year, and most are under the age of 25 years and unmarried. And as psychologists across America now reflect, post-abortion stress syndrome, which seems to viciously take hold of women at or around the age of menopause, where in many cases women are led into therapy because of a deep sense of remorse about decisions they made decades before, it is a decision that those 1.5 million women make not just for that day, but for many, Mr. Speaker, a decision that colors much of the rest of their life.

Approximately 6 million women in the United States become pregnant every year. About half of those pregnancies are unintended, and 1.5 million elect to terminate them with legal abortion.

Each year, more than 1 million U.S. teenagers become pregnant, and the teen pregnancy rate has moved in the last 30 years to truly startling statistics. Eighty percent of women having abortions are single, 60 percent are white, 35 percent are black. Eighty-two percent of women having abortions are unmarried or separated, and almost half, this is almost incomprehensible to me, but statistics from Planned Parenthood´s National Center for Health Statistics suggest that almost half of American women, 43 percent, will have an abortion sometime in their life. Yet, we rarely talk about it here. A procedure of deep physical and emotional and moral and perhaps even spiritual consequences reflected on through the millennia is scarcely talked about in the center of the most powerful government on Earth.

 

 "for roughly 3,000 years in Western civilization, until 1973, it was the unanimous position of medical ethicists throughout Western civilization that abortion was immoral and unethical"

 

Today I would like to speak, if I may, about a few of the historical aspects of the case for life. Oftentimes, when I am standing before groups of young people, I will say, rather obliquely, that for roughly 3,000 years in Western civilization, until 1973, it was the unanimous position of medical ethicists throughout Western civilization that abortion was immoral and unethical. And I am always amazed at the startled look on children´s faces. Because, of course, every student that I see in a classroom was born in the post Roe v. Wade America where abortion is a settled fact. It is a settled legal reality. But to begin with the realization that for three millennia through, if I can use the word, through the gestation of Western civilization, there was, as Mother Teresa often reflected, that core principle that human life is sacred. Often rejected, even by nations and peoples in the midst of our civilization, nevertheless, the sanctity of human life rises out of the march of our civilization, almost like no other.

We all are familiar with the founding documents of this nation that speak of certain unalienable rights endowed by our Creator, and among them are life. It is an astounding thing to consider. But what did our Founders think of when they thought of life? They were men who reflected on the ancients; they reflected on history. The Founders of this nation, some of whom are remembered on the walls and carved in stone throughout this building, were truly learned men. So it is important when we think about a reference to the unalienable right to life, what did our Founders think about when they said life? What did they think of as human life? In the context of our common law and in the context of the history of the ancients or the Middle Ages, or even the early church fathers who so deeply influenced the Founders of this country, it is a consistent, one-after-another element of the law in history that argues beyond a doubt that abortion was considered a deep moral offense.

In the Lex Cornelia 81 B.C., the jurist Iulius Paulus applied a text of this law that applied to poisoners and those who dispensed drugs specifically intended to cause abortion, saying that whoever dispenses an abortion pill, regardless of its intention, the law read, set a bad example and was condemned to work in the mines in 81 B.C. One thinks of that story of a young girl who may have had medical complications just last week from having taken the pill RU-486 and died. And one thinks of the wisdom of Lex Cornelia from 81 B.C., the dispensing of a pill and a poison that causes an abortion and its harm. Cicero actually placed it beyond doubt that the offense of abortion was a capital offense punishable even by death. In the Persian Empire, criminal abortions were severely punished. And so it goes.

In fact, the Ephesian, Soranos, often described as the greatest ancient gynecologist from whom we obtain the word and the practice of gynecology was, as history records, deeply opposed to Rome´s prevailing free abortion practice. Soranos found it necessary to think first of the life of the mother and resorted to an abortion when he thought the life of the mother was in danger, but it was otherwise unacceptable. At the time of Soranos, Greek and Roman law afforded little protection to the unborn until Christianity took root in the Roman Empire, and then it changed. And from that point forward, after the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire, infanticide and abortion were treated as equally criminal acts, alongside murder.

Throughout the Middle Ages, the severe penalty for abortion remained in force in all countries of Europe well into the Middle Ages, and it was reflected in many of the writings. I think of John Calvin, one of the early church fathers and someone who deeply influenced the development of common law and Christian theological thinking. He said, John Calvin now, "The fetus, though enclosed in the womb of his mother, is already a human being, and it is a monstrous crime to rob it of life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man´s house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light," John Calvin wrote in the commentary on the Book of Exodus.

Truly astonishing words, but not at the time that he wrote them. To think of that time and to think of that context, John Calvin wrote that the ancients embraced common accepted law, and, of course, our own common law was given birth by those historical moorings.

 
"long before the settlement of the English colonies on this continent, the common law of England, that is, the law recognized as common to all Englishmen, defined abortion as a crime"
 

As James S. Cole wrote in an essay titled Abortion at Common Law, long before the settlement of the English colonies on this continent, the common law of England, that is, the law recognized as common to all Englishmen, defined abortion as a crime. In accord with the limits of biological knowledge of the day, it was believed that there was no life until what was known as "quickening," when the movements of the baby could be discerned. Abortion was therefore declared by the earliest authorities a lesser crime than criminal homicide until quickening, and then it was a felony after quickening. Much later, in the 1600s, there was some hesitation to prosecute abortions in which a child died in the womb as opposed to those in which the baby was expelled before dying, because of the problems of proving that the act of beating the mother´s abdomen or giving her a poison had caused the death of the child. However, there was no doubt that abortion of a woman who was either "quick or great with child" was unlawful.

In colonial America, abortions were prosecuted under the common law. After the Revolution, the new American states adopted the common law of England as the basis of their own law, including common law crimes. Within a generation, the independent states began to outgrow the English common law, and state legislatures increasingly defined crimes in their states. However, common law crimes survived until superseded by legislative enactment.

Although common law prohibitions on abortion were largely replaced over time with legislative enactments through the 19th century, there was never a gap in which the common law had anything other than a prohibition of abortion. Abortion was a crime during the hundreds of years before the founding of this nation, and it remained a crime in every state at the beginning of our nation and throughout the 19th century.

Until the advent of Roe v. Wade which, it is worth noting, struck down simultaneously those laws promulgated from the common law in all 50 States, abortion was considered a crime, a deep moral offense, and anathema to medical ethicists.

It is altogether appropriate to point out as well as we consider the ancients today, Mr. Speaker, that the Hippocratic Oath itself was carved, depending on who you believe of the historians, and doctors will argue the point, but somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago. The Hippocratic Oath was authored by the great physician Hippocrates and begins in many versions with the phrase, "First, do no harm." In its most classic versions it makes reference to abortion; it was altogether and always inappropriate for the healer ever to end human life, either born human life or unborn human life. It is contained in the Hippocratic Oath. It was what it meant to be a doctor, that you heal; your charge was to heal human beings. And so the bright line, to put it in modern terminology, Mr. Speaker, the eight-lane superhighway in Hippocrates´ mind, it seemed to me, was that the doctor does not kill human beings. Doctors do not end human life. And for 4,000 years, the advance of medical ethics, and every doctor in my state of Indiana and every doctor who takes an oath throughout the Western world raises their hand, in many cases, and takes the Hippocratic Oath.

Now, the edited version oftentimes does not include reference to abortion, but it still includes that line, "First, do no harm." And it is why today so many doctors in America refuse as a professional decision to perform abortions. They simply choose not to be a part of it. In fact, there seems to be some evidence in the medical community of a diminishing availability of abortion in America, because men and women who wear the white smocks and the green smocks of physicians are less and less interested in that fundamental compromise of their mission and their ministry as a healer, according to the Hippocratic Oath.

I spoke of the English common law, which specifically forbade abortion. It did, in some cases, as I mentioned, treat abortion as a felony and, in other cases, treated it as a misdemeanor; but in all cases it was immoral, wrong, and illegal. Blackstone wrote, as I learned in law school, the famous Blackstone Commentaries at the founding of the country; it can be accurately observed that practicing lawyers could literally consider themselves as having an entire legal library if they possessed one book, not counting the Bible, but Blackstone´s Commentaries on the Law. This book is taught even to this day in the most secular of law schools, and people understand that Blackstone was, for people practicing the law in the colonies and in the states and in the territories, the ultimate resource. Blackstone was clear on abortion, writing in one of his commentaries, "If a woman is quick with child and by poison or otherwise killeth it in her womb, or if anyone beat her whereby the child dieth in her body and she is delivered of a dead child, this, though not murder was, by the ancient law, homicide or manslaughter."

So whatever may have been the exact view taken by common law of any specific offense, in and around 1803, there was no question that abortion was a crime. And yet, in America today, by a judicial decision and by judicial fiat, that has fundamentally changed.

So why does all this matter? As I talked to some colleagues today, they said to me, now, why are you doing that? Is there some legislation coming to the floor that is going to change things in abortion? And I granted the point that ever since Roe v. Wade, we, in the people´s House, in the Congress, and in the state legislatures of all 50 states, have very little to say about this issue.

It comes down to nine men and women in black robes and the Presidents who appoint them. But it seems to me to be altogether fitting that something that so deeply troubles the heart of half of the American people ought to be something that resonates in the heart of our national government.

That is how I see this Chamber, Mr. Speaker. I said it shortly after 9/11 in a speech that I gave on this same floor, that I viewed the House of Representatives as the heart of the American government and that it ought to resonate with the hearts of the American people. When the hearts of the American people are troubled about an issue at home or abroad, this should be a troubled room. When the hearts of the American people are quiet and at rest, this should be a quiet and amicable place.

It may be over-literalizing it, trying to turn the government into some homotropic version of man, but I think it has merit. And the truth is that while there are millions of Americans who embrace the right to choose an abortion, who take to the street to defend it, who take to the polls to support it, there are, by any measure, a growing number of nearly half of this country who is deeply troubled to live in an America where innocent human life is so callously discarded. It was as Meghan Cox Gurdon called it in an article in The Wall Street Journal a number of years ago, it is, in my judgment, the mother of all rights.

Meghan Cox Gurdon, and I borrow from her essay now, wrote, "The Roe v. Wade anniversaries make me think of the last scene in Schindler´s List, the film about Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who saved a small number of Jews during World War II. The final scene," for those who haven't seen it, "features actual Schindler survivors with their children and grandchildren line up to place stones on his grave in Israel. What makes the scene so powerful is not just the surprising number of progeny already produced by the Holocaust escapees, but the staggering number of men, women and children who are not there, who never had a chance of life because the Nazis gassed those who would have been their parents and grandparents."

Meghan Gurdon goes on to write compellingly, "When Roe comes up, it has a Schindler-like reverberation in my own family. The fact is, my husband and I, our four children, his three siblings and their combined eight children all owe our lives to the fact that the famous Supreme Court decision did not come until 1973 (and its British equivalent until 1967). For all 17 of us, all descended from two unwanted pregnancies—two pregnancies that produced hasty marriages, some unhappiness, rather more sadness, and even actually two divorces. And I have to say, boy, am I glad that those pregnancies, dismaying and unexpected as they were, entailing the compromises that they did for those involved, were not tidied up in a clinic so that the young mothers in question could `get on with their lives.´ You, gentle reader, would have been deprived of nothing more than my editorial voice. I and 16 kinsfolk would have been robbed of everything."


"I think it is why our founders listed life first, that they knew from the spilled blood that had happened on our shores and would happen at the hands of a despotic king. They knew that if a man does not have an unalienable right to life, he has nothing"

 

It is in every sense, as Meghan Gurdon writes, "the mother of all rights." I think it is why our founders listed life first, that they knew from the spilled blood that had happened on our shores and would happen at the hands of a despotic king. They knew that if a man does not have an unalienable right to life, he has nothing. That if a man or a woman cannot anticipate that government cannot deprive them of their life without due process of law and cannot deprive any human person of their right to life without due process of law, then they are, in the words of John Calvin, like that man in his own home, most grievously offended to have been attacked in what is to be his safest place.

Alexander Hamilton cautioned us against forgetting the ancient parchments, the teachings of ancients, and cautioned those who believed that we could create a society that separated law from moral truth, saying, "The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of the Divinity and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power."

It is a truth, Mr. Speaker, I have tried humbly to advance today for your and my colleagues´ ears and for anyone else who is listening, and in the weeks and months and, if the Lord wills it, years ahead. I hope from time to time to come to this floor and do likewise. To begin to take a break from the arguments of the day at home and abroad and to take a longer-view perspective on this Nation and on the vitality of its legal and moral traditions. For it seems to me that abortion is the issue of our time.

I used to say to people when I was younger that I thought abortion was the most important moral issue of our time, and I have since abandoned the adjective because I really do believe that as the late Mother Teresa would say often, that it is the defining issue of our age. On some days, I believe in a hopeful view of the future, that our posterity will look back and say there was a time when America lost her way, but largely because of a broken heart, she came back. She came back to the truth of the ancient, not because she returned to a puritanical society that judged people in their hour of need, but because America again became a brokenhearted society that said, we want to be a place where there are no unwanted children. We want to be a society where crisis pregnancy centers come to replace entirely centers where innocent life is destroyed; where women know that there are better choices — not only for their unborn child, but for them than ever the choice of ending that life.

That is my hope and that is my dream, that they will look back on this time and they will say, Mr. Speaker, America got off the path, but she reflected on the truths of the ancients. She reflected on the unalienable rights that she had alienated for a while, of life, and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And by God´s grace, she found her way back, to be a compassionate society and a caring society, but a society that once again embraced the unalienable right to life.

"The sanctity of human life" by Rep. Mike Pence, Part 2...

"For that one reason among many, the United States will suffer unless there is placed into your government a group that fears the Lord if they cannot love the Lord. They will fear Him and find measures to stop the slaughter of the unborn." - Our Lady of the Roses, April 14, 1984

Rep. Mike Pence presented this address on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives on October 8, 2003:

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to rise again now for the second time in this chamber to address an issue that, while we passed significant legislation concerning partial-birth abortion recently, truthfully the Congress does very little to speak to what I believe is the defining issue of our time: namely, the questions and debates surrounding the sanctity of human life. So, Mr. Speaker, a few weeks ago I initiated on the floor of this Congress what I hope will become a series during my tenure here, a series of conversations between myself and other members of Congress who care deeply about this debate and where we might explore the historical and intellectual and moral foundations of the right to life.

It seems altogether fitting that we do it here, in this Congress and in this place. Because this is not only the House of the people, but it is the place throughout the history of this nation where not only have we come together to debate the urgent needs of the country but also we have come to this place and in this building for over 200 years to discuss those things which are, while not urgent to some, they are important to the fabric of the Nation. In my humble opinion, Mr. Speaker, restoring a fundamental understanding about the sanctity of human life and its central position in the development of notions of justice in Western civilization is without a doubt the most significant issue of our day.

I was inspired by none other than a former member of this body, John Quincy Adams, who, prior to being a 20-year member of Congress was, of course, President of the United States of America. But as he served in the chamber just adjacent to this one, where the Congress met for much of the 19th century, John Quincy Adams was known to be a man about one cause, and that was abolition. In fact, former President and then Congressman John Quincy Adams was a man who came to be known by his detractors as the hell hound of abolition, because congressman and former President John Quincy Adams would come into this place, history records, and week after week through his 20-year career in Congress he made the case against slavery.

As someone who believes in my heart that the decision that the United States Supreme Court rendered in 1973, a decision which has resulted in the legal abortion of nearly a million and a half children every year since, requires that we employ the same device of debate and discussion that John Quincy Adams employed, it is my hope, Mr. Speaker, to do as he did, to prick the conscience of the nation, or even our own colleagues, to think deeply in their hearts and in their minds about this notion of the sanctity of life.

To do that, I have called upon a variety of sources, some of which I will cite tonight. I begin tonight, as I hope to reflect on that historical debate that John Quincy Adams so notably brought to this floor, with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr., in his letter from the Birmingham jail.

Some may think, well, why is a lawmaker, why is the Chamber where laws are made, worried about something that is a moral issue? In fact, I received just a few days ago a letter from a constituent who voiced that often-repeated phrase that they did not want me to impose my moral views on them, believing that they were referring to my views on the right to life. Well, on that very issue the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, "A just law is man-made code that squares with the moral law of God. Unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law of God."

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor who was martyred for resisting Adolf Hitler, gave what may be the clearest expression of this principle when he said, "If government persistently and arbitrarily violates its assigned task, then the divine mandate lapses."

 

In fact, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor who was martyred for resisting Adolf Hitler, gave what may be the clearest expression of this principle when he said, "If government persistently and arbitrarily violates its assigned task, then the divine mandate lapses." In the case of Pastor Bonhoeffer and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. the principle is the same: It is the notion that there is a law higher than what we can conceive of here; and, dare I say it, Mr. Speaker, there is even a law higher than the contemporary decisions of the United States Supreme Court, that there is a law that rises unerringly out of history, and it is that moral law of which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., wrote from that Birmingham jail.

A rabbi said famously in my presence once, "No one ever breaks God's law, they just break themselves against it." And what is true of individuals can undoubtedly be true of nations. Nations that set themselves against the moral law and moral truth fail to break that law so much as they break themselves.

Certainly that was the case in 19th century America, was it not, Mr. Speaker? For in 19th century America, while the congressman and former President John Quincy Adams came to this floor week after week and argued the moral approbation of slavery, argued for the abolition of slavery, America slept, believing that it could break that moral law and still survive. And as we learned, following the elections of 1860 and the secession of southern states and 600,000 battle deaths later, the truth is, Mr. Speaker, America did not succeed in breaking the moral law, but America broke itself against that simple notion of human dignity, that one man ought not to be able, in a just society, to enslave another man, and to put him, as Abraham Lincoln would say in his second inaugural address, under the pain of the whip.

It was in that second inaugural address that he spoke of the Civil War. He spoke of the Civil War as a time when we were paying the debt that justice demanded of a nation. It is altogether fitting, I think, that tonight in this part of the case for life that we reflect on some of the similarities, eerie similarities between that debate over the personhood of men and women of African descent enslaved as they were in the nation and the contemporary debate over abortion today because there are, as the author Gary Henry wrote in Focus magazine in June 1997, "There are, most assuredly, parallels between the debate over abortion today and the intellectual and moral debate and arguments made against slavery." It is almost eerie at times how the parallels between the arguments of those 150 years ago advocating slavery rights match with the arguments of personal choice that support abortion today.

Most notably, of course, we had a Supreme Court case out of step with the truth. It was a case decided in 1857 known as the Dred Scott decision. In that case the Supreme Court ruled, and many will forget, that slaves, even freed slaves, and all their descendants had no rights protected by the Constitution and that states had no right to abolish slavery. The reasoning in Dred Scott is historically and intellectually almost identical to the reasoning that would be employed in 1973 in a decision known as Roe v. Wade.

It was a reasoning that was centered on the definition of a person. In the Dred Scott case, the Court stripped away all rights from a class of human beings and reduced them to nothing more than the property of others. We can compare the arguments that the Court used to justify slavery and abortion very clearly. In the Court's eyes, the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade and its predecessor cases and progeny, unborn children are now the same as, quote, "the beings of inferior order" that the justices wrote of in the Dred Scott decision in 1857.

There are other similarities. An African American was considered a nonperson under the Constitution as the case of an unborn child was considered a nonperson. In fact, an African American in slavery and any of their progeny were considered the property of the owner, and in Roe v. Wade the unborn child is simply considered the property of the mother in a legal sense.

 

"It is almost eerie at times how the parallels between the arguments of those 150 years ago advocating slavery rights match with the arguments of personal choice that support abortion today"

 

It is truly astonishing even to recall that the Dred Scott case was decided by a 7-2 decision in the Supreme Court, the exact same number of justices that voted for and against the right to an abortion in Roe v. Wade.

It is extraordinary to think that the words "citizens" or "persons" used in the Constitution, according to the Dred Scott decision, were never intended to include African Americans; and according to Roe v. Wade, the term "citizens" and "persons" as used in the Constitution were never intended to include unborn children.

Listen to these cryptic words from the Dred Scott case of 1857. The Supreme Court wrote: "A Negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, were not intended to be included under the word `citizen´ in the Constitution, and can, therefore, claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States."

Here are the words now from the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. The Supreme Court wrote: "The word `person,´ as used in the 14th amendment, does not include the unborn. The unborn have never been recognized in the law," Justice Blackmun wrote for the majority, "as persons in the whole sense."

So while there may be some looking in on our debate tonight who may think I cannot believe that conservative from Indiana is stretching to somehow connect the debate over slavery in 1857 before the Supreme Court in Dred Scott and the debate over a woman's right to choose an abortion which took place before the Supreme Court in 1973, the person might surmise there is no connection, but the truth is: I learned in my very first class in law school on this topic, not only are they analogous, they are almost one to one parallels. Listen to those words again. In the Dred Scott in 1857 the Supreme Court said: "A Negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, were not intended to be included under the word `citizen´ in the Constitution, and can, therefore, claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States."

And in Roe v. Wade, they wrote the word "person" does not include the unborn. The unborn have never been recognized in the law; it is "persons" in the whole sense.

There are other parallels between Roe v.Wade and the decision in the Dred Scott case. The Dred Scott case of 1857 essentially said a slave is the property of the master and the Constitution has provided "the protection of private property against the encroachments of government." Literally the Supreme Court in 1857 brought out the idea of private property rights. In a very real sense the idea of privacy and the right to privacy that ostensibly emerges, as Justice Blackmun would write, the Bill of Rights was the very foundation of the Dred Scott decision. In the Roe v. Wade case in 1973, the Supreme Court said of that right: "The right of privacy is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy."

It is truly astonishing to think of the parallels, and it seems to me to be altogether fitting that we would amplify those. As we think about coming upon the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, I am someone who believes in my heart that the steady advance of civil rights in this country to every American is the glory of this nation, that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the single greatest legislative accomplishment of the 20th century, and we as Americans ought to take enormous pride in the fact that our forebears were willing to confront and reject the ethos of their time of some Americans, and even a 7-2 decision by the Supreme Court, that certified that Negroes were never to be counted among the citizens protected in the Constitution. It is because of their courage, their willingness to confront both the awesome power of the Supreme Court and their own countrymen, that we arrive in a nation today of increasing justice for all.

In fact, one cannot help but wonder, as I have since the first days I studied American history at a small college on the Ohio River Valley, one cannot help but wonder if the 600,000 lives that were lost in the Civil War, the families that were sundered in the Civil War, the wounds that in some respects 150 years later we find ourselves as a nation still recovering from, might have been altogether avoided if America had done as England had done some 25 years earlier and recognized that a practice in their midst certified by the highest courts in the land, and through traditions of decades, was simply and flatly morally wrong. But we did not.

Different than the United Kingdom that not only denounced slavery because of the leadership and 40-year campaign of a member of Parliament named William Wilberforce, not only did England denounce slavery and make it illegal, but they also declared war on slavery on the seven seas. And the holocaust of the Civil War that struck our country never came to England. And anyone that has ever visited or spent time in England knows that the division between the races is fundamentally better and less defined than in this nation because England, before they were forced into the cataclysm that we met as a nation in 1861 in the Civil War, shuffled off that conflict between their law and what was legal and the moral law and moral truth.

In fact, it was John Quincy Adams who I opened with tonight who would go to the floor of Congress and argue the fundamental immorality of slavery, literally using his last breath, collapsing on the floor of Congress to argue against slavery in America. He was carried out and expired in the year 1848. He died in this very building. Some might look at John Quincy Adams, as some looking in tonight might look at me, and say speaking empty words, not making any change. John Quincy Adams died almost a decade before the Dred Scott decision. Some of his contemporaries might have said, what did he think he accomplished. But I submit very humbly that John Quincy Adams, on Earth and in heaven, accomplished a great deal because history does record that in 1848, the last year of his life, was the first year of a freshman congressman from Illinois, a gangly and, by his own definition, a homely man, named Abe Lincoln. Born in Kentucky, moved at the age of 2 to the state of Indiana where he grew up until he was 19 on a little farm on which I have walked in southwestern Indiana.

He came to the United States Congress in 1848, and history would record that Abraham Lincoln, sitting in the back row as a freshman member of Congress, listening to the great man John Quincy Adams speak, would be deeply moved by one who was then known as the "hell hound of abolition." One can only imagine the sallow cheeks of a young and beardless Abe Lincoln sitting in the back row wondering, what is the grand old man making all the fuss about, slavery being so deeply ensconced in the industrial and legal tradition of America at the time.

But he listened and he heard, and it would be just 10 years later after leaving Congress that same Abe Lincoln, who our children in grade school know as President Abraham Lincoln, would run again for public office; but this time he was in a very real sense a changed man. He would enter a race in Illinois against Stephen Douglas for the Senate, a race that he would lose, but it would capture the imagination of America because of a series of debates known as the Lincoln-Douglas debates. And in those debates, more than any other political exercise of the age, Abraham Lincoln defined the moral dimensions of the wrong of slavery in America.

The irony is among those who say you have to soften our position on abortion in contemporary debate because you could lose elections. Well, that same advice could have been given to Abraham Lincoln because he certainly lost that campaign for the Senate, being as focused as he was on that issue. But it was precisely his courage and his unapologetic moral case for the wrong and the injustice of denying personhood, denying the fundamental constitutional rights to an entire class of human beings that would propel him to his party's nomination for President of the United States.

And he would be elected, and upon his election the nation would divide and be torn by war.

 

"The latest statistics from the Alan Guttmacher Institute estimate 43,358,592 total abortions since 1973"

 

As we look at those Lincoln and Douglas debates, the arguments that candidate Abraham Lincoln made are extraordinary. He makes the case about the fundamental immorality of slavery; and for all the world, and I intend to do it during the course of these conversations about life, Mr. Speaker, we can take entire tracks of Abraham Lincoln's remarks in the Lincoln and Douglas debates and we can pull out the word "slavery" and put in the word "abortion," and the sentence makes perfect sense as he speaks about the denial of the fundamental right to life and liberty to a class of human beings in America. He spoke about it not in the context of established law, but as we know from history, as did the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his letter from the Birmingham jail, he spoke about it in the context of the moral law of God.

I close this installment, Mr. Speaker, of the case for life as I began it with those extraordinary reflections of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But I close it with recognition that it is not just high principle and history that call us in this place to an account to restore the fundamental notion that life is sacred. But rather there are lives, I offer humbly, not gratuitously, by the millions that cry out from someplace that they are and that we someday will be, and they call upon us as a nation to right what has gone so wrong.

The latest statistics from the Alan Guttmacher Institute estimate 43,358,592 total abortions since 1973. King David, when he lost his son, experiencing the justice of God, washed his face after a period of grief and said that his mourning was over. When his friends and colleagues asked him how he could move on, he said of his son, "I will go to him but he will not again come to me."

I believe in all my heart that those 43-plus million souls have gone to a place where by God's grace I hope someday to go, but I believe that they cry out to America and to their own generation, not a word of condemnation because I expect that when we are done here, when we know ourselves even as we are known, our natural tendency to judge others will fade significantly.

I rise today, Mr. Speaker, in that same spirit, that it is my fondest hope that, as I have the privilege of serving in this body, I from time to time come to this floor even with other colleagues and make the case for life in a way that is truly brokenhearted, in a way that is brokenhearted not just about the 43 million who are not here but about the 43 million who were led into making that choice and the broken hearts in their lives that they feel, because I truly do believe, Mr. Speaker, that whether it is individuals or nations that we do not break God's law, we break ourselves against it.

As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in the letter from the Birmingham jail, and we should heed this as we consider someday the ideal of restoring the sanctity of human life, "A just law is man-made code that squares with the moral law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law."

Martin Luther King was right. Abortion is wrong, and it is my deepest and fondest hope that through peaceful means, as Dr. King led America through debate, through engagement, through compassion, that we will lead our nation back to where the man-made code will again square with the moral law of God, and we will someday restore the sanctity of human life.

"The sanctity of human life" by Rep. Mike Pence, Part 3

"For that one reason among many, the United States will suffer unless there is placed into your government a group that fears the Lord if they cannot love the Lord. They will fear Him and find measures to stop the slaughter of the unborn." - Our Lady of the Roses, April 14, 1984  

Rep. Mike Pence presented this address on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives on October 21, 2003:

It is a privilege to come before the House tonight in a continuous series that this member of Congress had the privilege of beginning scarcely a month ago, but a series of speeches that I hope will periodically and intermittently be a part of the fabric of my congressional career for howsoever long the Lord permits me to serve here.

I simply call it the Case for Life, and it is my ambition from time to time to come onto this blue and gold carpet of this Capitol and speak to my colleagues, and anyone else who may be listening, on the moral and intellectual and historical arguments for the sanctity of human life; and to, perhaps, in some small way enliven the moral sensibility of a nation and be a part of an ongoing debate in America on this topic.

This is a debate that continues at this very hour in the other body of this Congress. At this very moment, I am pleased to say, as a pro-life member of Congress, that the United States Senate is at this very moment passing a conference report on the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. That legislation, as of today, will have three times passed the Congress since 1995 and will be delivered for the first time to the willing desk of President George W. Bush.

Unlike the veto stamp of President Clinton, which met the ban of partial-birth abortion not once but twice, President George W. Bush, upon returning from his tour of the Asia-Pacific Rim will, no doubt, in an emotional ceremony put his pen to this legislation and end a practice that has no place in civilized society.

So it is especially poignant for me, just a few steps down the hallway from that chamber, to rise tonight and continue my discussion of the case for life. And particularly tonight, Mr. Speaker, I feel prompted to speak about abortion and American women. You see, it has always been my belief, since first having my conscience enlivened on this issue, that there is not one victim of abortion, but there are two. There is undoubtedly the nascent human life that is ended abruptly and in darkness, but there is the other life that goes on, that pays a price that psychologists are talking about today, but many Americans simply choose to ignore.

 

"You see, it has always been my belief, since first having my conscience enlivened on this issue, that there is not one victim of abortion, but there are two. There is undoubtedly the nascent human life that is ended abruptly and in darkness, but there is the other life that goes on, that pays a price that psychologists are talking about today, but many Americans simply choose to ignore"

 

There are also other voices that I want to reflect on tonight as well, chiefly from our own history. As we think about the great American women who led this nation in increasing measure toward equal status for women in voting rights and in property and in station in our society, women like Susan B. Anthony, Emma Goldman and Elizabeth Cady Stanton come to mind.

I just came from a stroll in the Rotunda, Mr. Speaker, where I grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled the names of a few of those heroic women that actually appear on a statue at the very center of our Capitol. In the Rotunda, there is a statue that bears the likeness of the three great heroes of the suffrage movement. Two of them I would like to speak about tonight as we talk about great American women and abortion, but then also [I would like to] talk about what women of America today face in the struggle over the sanctity of human life.

One of the faces on that statue is Susan B. Anthony, a name that is almost like mom and apple pie for most Americans. Susan B. Anthony was born February 15, 1820, in Adams, Massachusetts. She was brought up in a Quaker family that had long activist traditions. Early in life, she developed a deep sense, historians tell us, of justice and what could only be described as moral zeal.

After teaching for 15 years, Susan B. Anthony became active in the temperance movement. Because she was a woman, she was not allowed to speak at rallies, and this experience, as well as her acquaintance with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, led her to help form what became the Women's Movement in 1852. Soon afterwards, she would dedicate her entire life to winning women not only the right to vote, Mr. Speaker, but Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were about winning women a seat at the civic table; the opportunity not to be viewed, as women were in some aspects of common law, as the property of their husbands, but rather to be seen as coequal heirs of everything that freedom offers.

Ignoring opposition and abuse, Susan B. Anthony traveled, lectured, and canvassed across the nation for the vote. She also campaigned for the abolition of slavery, women's rights to their own property and earnings, and even women's labor organizations. In 1900, she achieved a major victory in convincing the University of Rochester to admit women for the first time in their storied history.

Susan B. Anthony, who never married and was remembered as an aggressive and compassionate person with a keen mind and the ability to inspire, remained active in the movement that she began until her death in March of 1906.

Susan B. Anthony was pro-life. Let me read, if I may, from her publication, The Revolution, on this topic, published July 8, 1869. Susan B. Anthony wrote, "No matter what the motive, love or ease or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed"-referring to abortion. She went on, "It will burden her conscience in life; it will burden her soul in death. But, oh," she wrote, "oh thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime."

So wrote Susan B. Anthony, words that we will reflect on before I take my seat tonight. Brokenhearted words of the suffering of the unborn innocent and also of the suffering of the American woman who would burden her conscience in life and burden her soul in death, but of the guilt of the man who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to perform the abortion.

Susan B. Anthony, memorialized in marble in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol, a woman whose name is synonymous with the voting rights and the equal status that women of 21st century America enjoy, was pro-life. She understood the moral consequences of the act on an American woman and the deplorable position of a man who would force the outcome.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton also appears on the monument in the Rotunda. And she, like Susan B. Anthony, her friend and colleague and co-laborer for women's issues in America, was pro-life. Elizabeth Cady, the daughter of Daniel Cady, a lawyer and a politician, was born in Jonestown, NewYork, November 12, 1815. She studied law under her father, who became a New York Supreme Court judge, and during that period of time she became a very strong advocate for women's rights.

In 1840, Elizabeth married the lawyer Henry B. Stanton. The couple became active in the American antislavery movement, and later that year Stanton and Lucretia Mott traveled to London as delegates to the World Antislavery Convention. Both women, history records, were furious when they, like the British women at the convention, were refused the permission to speak at the meeting to denounce slavery.

Stanton later recalled, "We resolved to hold a convention as soon as we returned home and form a society to advocate the rights of women." And so she did. But it was not until 1848 that Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls. Stanton's resolution, that it was "the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves the sacred right to the elective franchise," was passed, and this became the focus of the group's campaign for years to come.

 

Susan B. Anthony was pro-life. Let me read, if I may, from her publication, The Revolution, on this topic, published July 8, 1869. Susan B. Anthony wrote, "No matter what the motive, love or ease or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed"-referring to abortion. She went on, "It will burden her conscience in life; it will burden her soul in death. But, oh," she wrote, "oh thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime."

 

In 1866, Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone established the American Equal Rights Association. The following year, the association became active in Kansas, where Negro suffrage and women's suffrage were to be decided in a popular vote, although both ideas were sadly rejected at the polls. Stanton was a historian, a scholar, and one of the founders of the American Woman Suffrage Association formed in the 1880s and from which the suffragette movement was born that ultimately resulted in the passage and adoption of the 19th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America.

This great American woman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, is by all definitions a hero of American women. Like Susan B. Anthony, her friend, who also appears on that extraordinary monument in the Rotunda, Elizabeth Cady Stanton was pro-life, and unapologetically so. Think about these two women who appear on a miniature version of Mount Rushmore right here in the Capitol. We have three women who essentially represent a life-size smaller version of Mount Rushmore for women's issues in America. They were women committed to equal rights, to the right to vote, and they were women committed to the right to life.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton classified abortion as a form of infanticide. She wrote in a letter to Julia Ward Howe, which is recorded in Howe's diary on October 16, 1873, [now] at the Harvard University library. Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote, "When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit."

Elizabeth Cady Stanton in essence saw a connection, Mr. Speaker, between that vile reality that was part of American life that the woman herself was property and the belief that an unborn child within the woman was property as well. She saw them as equal evils, related together; and so they are. On 12 March, 1868, Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote, "There must be a remedy even for such a crying evil as this," referring to abortion, "but where shall it be found, at least where it begin, if not in the complete enfranchisement and elevation of women."

Elizabeth Cady Stanton looked at abortion that was a reality in America in 1868 and said the antidote to end this evil is to raise women up. She saw abortion as a natural consequence of the subordination of women in our society. It is an astounding historical fact and a dark irony, Mr. Speaker, when one thinks of the extraordinary sacrifices and advancements of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the great American women who won women their equal status in our society, that that same momentum would be used in 1973 to rejustify the practice of abortion, which those same heroic American women loathed to the depths of their being.

Think about those words. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the three heroes of the women's movement in America who is memorialized in this Capitol building in stone. In the Rotunda where only Presidents, Alexander Hamilton, and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. are memorialized, there are also these three women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton saw a relationship between reducing women to property and reducing the unborn children growing within them to property.

Let me read these words again. She said, "There must be a remedy for even such a crying evil as this, but where shall it be found, at least where it begin, if not in the complete enfranchisement and elevation of women." A powerful thought that the heroes of the suffragette movement would look to future generations and say that the abortions that were taking place in the middle 19th century would some day go away, we would no longer treat unborn children as property if we could achieve the day when women were not viewed as property.

Alice Paul is credited as one of the leading figures responsible for the passage of the 19th Amendment, which is the women's suffragette amendment extending to women the right to vote in the Constitution of the United States of America. Alice Paul was raised as a Quaker, attended Swarthmore College and worked at the New York College Settlement while attending the New York School of Social Work. She left for England in 1906 to work in a settlement house movement there for three years. She was chair of a major committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association within a year, in her mid-20s.

In England she had taken part in the women's suffragette movement, even participating in hunger strikes to make her point. She brought back this sense, some would say, of militancy, I would say more generously of urgency, to the women's movement in America. It was that urgency that characterized the life of Alice Paul.

Her emphasis on a federal constitutional amendment for suffrage was at times at odds even with some within the women's movement; and after the 1920 victory for the federal amendment, Alice Paul became involved in the struggle to pass an Equal Rights Amendment, which actually passed this Congress in the year 1970, was sent to the states, and it failed. Paul died in 1977 in New Jersey with the heated battle of the Equal Rights Amendment having brought her international acclaim.

Like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton before her, Alice Paul was pro-life. Alice Paul said famously, and remember now, this is Alice Paul, born January 1885, died 1977, essentially the author of the Equal Rights Amendment, seen even as a young woman as one of the principal driving forces behind the constitutional amendment which won women the right to vote; Alice Paul was pro-life. It is an astonishing thing to think about, that the author of the Equal Rights Amendment, which I scarcely doubt I would have supported for a variety of cultural arguments, but someone who undoubtedly would be a hero of feminists to this day, and Alice Paul said, "Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women."

Let me say again, hoping that somewhere in America those words land with a thud in the conscience of a feminist, that these women who are rightly remembered as heroes of the women's movement in America, a woman in Alice Paul who even in her 20s was seen as a driving force behind the constitutional amendment that won women the right to vote, seen as instrumental in the passage of the 19th Amendment, and then would go on, however I might disagree with her, to be the author of the Equal Rights Amendment which passed this Congress in 1970, some 33 years ago.

Alice Paul would say, "Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women."

Like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul knew and spoke the truth. And so it ever was of women who achieved great distinction in the cause of women's rights in America from the 19th century through the 20th century, until 1973 when women's issues became simply another way of speaking about the right to have an abortion.

It is an extraordinary irony of history, Mr. Speaker, to think that a women's movement that was born on names like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, that was born on the moral consciousness of women, who said I am not property to be owned by a man, and who understood that an unborn child within them likewise should never be seen as property, that that same women's movement in 1973 would be hijacked by those whose moral view of the sanctity of human life is diametrically opposed to those who founded the women's movement in America.

Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women, so said Alice Paul, author of the Equal Rights Amendment, and I agree. It is an exploitation of women for physical and emotional reasons. Let me speak to those tonight as I conclude this portion of the Case for Life, abortion, and American women.

There are many who believe that abortion is safe in America. But truthfully, despite the use of local anesthesia, a full 97 percent of women that have abortions report experiencing pain during the procedure, which more than a third describe as intense, according to medical studies, severe or very severe. Compared to other pains, researchers have rated the pain from abortion as more painful than a bone fracture, about the same as a cancer pain, although not as painful as amputation, according to medical experts.

There are some, including former President Bill Clinton, who used to repeat the mantra that it was his goal that abortion would be safe, legal and rare; but abortion is not safe for women, Mr. Speaker. Complications are common. According to medical experts, bleeding, hemorrhaging, laceration of the cervix, menstrual disturbance, inflammation of reproductive organs, bowel and bladder perforation, and serious infection are commonplace in the aftermath of the most routine abortions in America. Even more harmful than the short-term pain, which women describe as severe, are the potential long-term physical complications that we never talk about in America.

And when I say "we," I mean those who support the right to an abortion and even those of us in the pro-life movement. I will never forget President Clinton's surgeon general saying, so thoughtfully, that one particular denomination of Christianity needed to get over [its] 'love affair with the fetus.' So said Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders. Despite the horrific aspects of her comment, the truth is that even we, in the pro-life movement, have not thought enough about the other victim of abortion as well, for there are, as I said at the opening of this Case for Life, two victims. We grieve the loss of unborn life, but we need to speak more boldly about the impact on American women, physical and emotional, that abortion extracts.

Among those long-term physical complications, Mr. Speaker, for example, overzealous curettage, a medical procedure, can damage the lining of the uterus and lead to permanent infertility. Overall, women who have abortions face an increased risk of tubal pregnancy and more than double the risk of future sterility.

Perhaps the most important are that all the risks of these sorts of complications, along with the risk of future miscarriage, increases with each subsequent abortion. I am not altogether sure that women who make their way into clinics know that with each abortion they risk infertility, sterility or when the time comes that they decide to say yes to life, that they may be greeted with the heartbreak of miscarriage in increasing measure.

More controversially, according to the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, there is strong evidence that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer. A study by the institute of more than 1,800 women in 1994, which was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, found that overall women having abortions increased their risk of getting breast cancer before the age of 45 by 50 percent. For women under 18 with no previous pregnancies, having an abortion after the eighth week increased the risk of breast cancer, according to this medical study, by 800 percent.

Women with a family history of breast cancer fared even worse. All 12 women participating in the study who had abortions before 18 and had a family history of breast cancer themselves contracted breast cancer before the age of 45. I say this as someone who has consistently supported research with the National Institutes of Health to confront breast cancer. I have had dear friends beset by this scourge and disease and I do not mean to speak in any way insensitively about it or in any way to associate breast cancer with abortion, that one fits the other, but rather simply to cite the research, that we can hear the truth echoing perhaps from this place tonight that according to the medical community and the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, there is strong evidence that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer and women should know that.

 

"Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women, so said Alice Paul, author of the Equal Rights Amendment, and I agree. It is an exploitation of women for physical and emotional reasons."

 

There are also psychological consequences to American women for abortion. It seems to me that this may have been in the mind of Alice Paul, the author of the Equal Rights Amendment, when she said, "Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women." Because it seems to me it is altogether convenient for men for a woman to have an abortion. Men have a rather unlimited capacity to compartmentalize and move on, but what the medical community is finding out is what most men have known throughout the eons, that women by and large have better hearts than we do, have a greater moral sensitivity than we do, and it is reflected in the research of what has come to be known as postabortion syndrome, which is rising to epidemic levels in America.

Clinical research provides a growing body of scientific evidence that having an abortion can cause psychological harm to some women. Psychologist Wanda Franz, Ph.D., in the March 1989 congressional hearings on the impact of abortion, said, "Women who report negative aftereffects from abortion know exactly what their problem is. They report horrible nightmares of children calling to them." When they are reminded of the abortion, Franz testified, the women re-experience it with terrible psychological pain. They feel worthless and victimized because they failed at the most natural of human activities, the role of being a mother.

I think in my own heart of conversations with women of my generation who have become active in the pro-life movement but who have found in their faith the grace and the healing to move beyond that choice. And I think of a woman who said in my presence once, some 20 years after having an abortion, that not a day went by that she did not think [about] how old that child would be. They do not tell you that in the lobby at the abortion clinic, Mr. Speaker, but they should. The exploding incidence of postabortion syndrome has even caused major medical associations in this country to recognize it. Women suffering postabortion stress may experience drug and alcohol abuse, personal relationship disorders, sexual dysfunction, communication difficulties and even in some cases attempt suicide. Postabortion syndrome appears to be a type of pattern of denial which may last for five to 10 years before emotional difficulties surface.

Now that clinicians have established that there is an identifiable pattern to PAS, postabortion syndrome, they face a new challenge. What is still unknown is how widespread psychological problems are among women who have had abortions. The Los Angeles Times did a survey in 1989 and found that 56 percent of women who had abortions felt guilty about it. And 26 percent, quote, mostly regretted the abortion, in a poll done by the Los Angeles Times. Clinicians' current goal now is to conduct extensive national research studies to obtain data on the size and scope of postabortion syndrome.

When one thinks, Mr. Speaker, of 1.5 million women undergoing abortions every year since 1973, it is almost overwhelming to think of the heartache that must grip the quiet moments of millions of women in our land. And because I am not standing in my home church, Mr. Speaker, I will not tonight explain to them that there is a way out under it, that there is grace and there is forgiveness and there is healing, and in a church near to them they can find it. It will always be my prayer as the Case for Life series goes forward in this chamber that any women who have experienced this under the sound of my voice would never in any way feel judged by this sinner, but that they would know that there is healing and there is grace in a God of mercy, and they would know there is a nation that urgently needs them to take a stand and to tell the truth to the next generation of women about the cost of an abortion, not just the ending of an innocent human life and every potential that it would ever have but, Mr. Speaker, about the breaking of a heart.

Oftentimes, as I stand before groups of young women in the prime of their life, I am asked about my position on abortion. My pro-life views are fairly widely known in Indiana. I always make the point to offer young women in the room a promise, and it is a good place for me to close this installment of the Case for Life tonight as I think about Alice Paul and Susan B. Anthony who believed that abortion was the ultimate exploitation of women. I will look at these young women, oftentimes in a high school classroom, sometimes in a small church group, and I will look around the room knowing just statistically speaking that there may be some young women in that room who are faced with an unwanted pregnancy and are faced with a choice between bringing that unborn baby to term or ending its life in the womb.

I always look at those young women and I say, "I want to make you a promise that the other side can never make." I say, "If you are faced with an unwanted pregnancy and you make the decision, however difficult, with your family's assistance or a crisis pregnancy center near you to take that baby to term, and even if you turn that baby over to another family for adoption, versus if you choose to end that life in the womb, if you choose life, I will promise you from the moment they hand you that wiggling little baby in the operating room, whether you raise it or you give it up, there will never be a day in your life but that you know that you did the right thing. And the other side cannot make that promise."

And if the statistics that we heard tonight, the physical cost and the emotional cost of abortion, are not jarring, perhaps that challenge would be, Mr. Speaker. My prayer is that as we think about the great women of American history, the great women of the suffragette movement [who] won women the right to vote, [who] wrestled equal status for women in our society, people like Susan B. Anthony and Alice Paul and others, when I think about the tender and wonderful women of my family and of America, I have hope for the cause of life. Because I cannot help but believe that women who could take American society from a medievalist view of women as property and have the moral courage to win the right to vote and to win equal standing in the public square because of their courage and their conscience, that those same American women and their daughters and their granddaughters will not someday lead us back to the truth that life is sacred, to the truth that echoes through history in those ancient words, "See, I set before you today life and death, blessings and destruction. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live."

It is my belief that it will be when that day comes, that abortion comes to an end in America, it will be the women of America who lead us home, just as it was the women of America who led us to a more just society and to an equal station in our culture for women.

With that, I would conclude my part of this Case for Life series, Mr. Speaker, and yield for whatever approach he would choose to make to this issue to a man who while he has served in Congress for over 20 years, his vibrancy and vitality is intimidating to most of us who serve with him.

The gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) has been an advocate of the cause of life since before Roe v. Wade, and he brings an energy and a commitment to this cause like no other, and I am deeply humbled that he would join me in this series of a Case for Life, and I yield gratefully to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey:

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence) for his leadership in realizing that we need to accelerate our efforts to inform, to enlighten, and hopefully to motivate America to stand up on behalf of life, to let women know that there are alternatives. We spoke the other day, actually the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence) and I and a few others, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Franks), and we cosponsored a forum on women who had had abortions. As a matter of fact it was called Women Deserve Better, and we were able to hear from four very brave women, including Jennifer O'Neil and Melba Moore and others, who told their stories of having had abortions and the horrific consequences to their emotions, to their bodies, to their psychological health as a direct result of that abortion.

And the abortion lobby would like to have us believe that this is something that is benign, and it is anything but. It is an ugly, very destructive act that is committed upon her unborn child, and women are the co-victims of every abortion. We know that the baby is either chemically poisoned, or he or she is dismembered as a result of the abortion; but we also know that the woman carries with her a terrible price that goes on year in and year out, and regrettably the abortion lobby enables that and somehow suggests that she ought to be happy with that decision.

What we are trying to say is that there is reconciliation. The Women Deserve Better campaign is trying to reach out to those women who are suffering in carrying the burden of that abortion and to say that there is hope, there is reconciliation, and there is life after an abortion; but they need to come to terms with it. And I would encourage all those women who are perhaps listening to be in contact with the Women Deserve Better organization or to talk to some others who have direct experience, have experienced an abortion themselves and can bring, like I said, some reconciliation to them because, again, there needs to be that, I think, individually and collectively in America, if we are to go forward.

Let me also point out, as my good friend and colleague I am sure pointed out, today is truly a historic day having seen the Senate pass by a very wide margin a ban on the gruesome act known as partial-birth abortion where a baby is partially delivered only to have his or her head punctured with scissors in the back of the head and the brains of that tiny innocent baby snuffed out, vacuumed out to complete this horrific procedure known as partial-birth abortion.

Partial-birth abortion, I would respectfully submit, is but the tip of an ugly and unseemly iceberg. Just below the surface, the surface appeal of choice, is a reality almost too horrific and cruel to contemplate, let alone face. Yet we persist in our allusions and denial as a country ever enabled by clever marketing, bias news reporting, and the cheap sophistry of choice. Let us be clear, and I do not think we can say this often enough, abortion is child abuse and it exploits women. Women deserve better than having their babies stabbed or cut or decapitated or poisoned. Women deserve nonviolent, life-affirming positive alternatives to abortion.

Thirty years after Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the companion decision, the national debate on partial-birth abortion has finally pierced the multiple layers of euphemisms and collective denial to reveal child battering in the extreme. The cover-up is over, and the dirty secret concerning abortion methods is finally getting the scrutiny that will usher in reform and protective statutes. I would say to my colleagues that there is nothing compassionate, there is absolutely nothing benign about stabbing babies in the head with scissors so that their brains can be sucked out. That is child abuse. And yet over on the Senate side today and previously here in the House, we had members for whom I have an enormous amount of respect defending the indefensible.

We reach out to them and say, look at what you are saying. If [someone] did this, if she were a young mother and [she] had a little baby girl, a young child who took her doll and took a pair of scissors and stuck those scissors into the back of the head of that baby, [she] would get counseling. [The mother] would say no, my daughter should not be play-acting that kind of activity. And yet there are members of this chamber who embrace, enable, facilitate, and defend that indefensible act on a tiny living baby girl or baby boy.

As the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence) knows and as my colleagues know, the loss of human life to abortion in this country has been staggering; 44.4 million babies have been killed by abortions since Roe v. Wade. And, yes, there were tens of thousands killed even prior to it in those states where abortion had been legalized like New York, like Hawaii, like Oregon, but 44.4 million kids. That is one out of every three of this generation missing. I say to my colleagues, the next time they are in a classroom, look around at the desks, count one, two, then the missing child; one, two, the missing child. This generation, perhaps more than any other in our own history, perhaps any other's history, is missing children who by ''choice'' have been destroyed by an abortionist.

Let me just conclude. On the WorldNetDaily site, there was an article on October 17, and I will just read part of it: "Attendees of a national conference for abortion providers watched and listened with rapt attention as the inventor of the partial-birth abortion procedure narrated a video of the grizzly procedure, and then they burst into applause when the act was over and the unborn child was destroyed.

The disturbing and eye-opening event featuring abortion doctor Martin Haskell, addressing members of the National Abortion Federation, was actually captured on audiotape, calmly and dispassionately describing each step of the process up to and including the insertion of the scissors into the base of the baby's head, followed by the sound of the suction machine sucking out the baby's brain. Dr. Haskell walks his audience through the procedure that opponents hope will finally be banned," that is us, "during this congressional session. At the end of the procedure," the article goes on to say, "after the late-term fully developed unborn child's life has been violently and painfully terminated, the audience breaks into applause."

That is sick, I say to my colleagues. These are the providers of abortion. These are the ones that our friends on the other side of this issue will defend passionately. They broke into applause as that baby met his death. That is what partial-birth abortion is all about. It is a horrific, grisly procedure. We are all about life, life affirmation. Thank God we have a President who respects the dignity and the value of each and every life and will sign this legislation into law, unlike his predecessor, Bill Clinton, who on two occasions vetoed this legislation.

I want to thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence), my friend, for having these times on the floor so that we can begin the process of educating America. Much work needs to be done, and for those people who watch C-SPAN, know this: We care about life, the unborn, the newly born, all of those who are weak and disenfranchised. Many of us are the leaders on human rights, religious freedom, Trafficking Victims Protection Act, and a whole host of other important legislation designed to protect the innocent from the strong, the weak, and the vulnerable from those who would do them harm. That is what it is all about. Government is for the weakest and the most at risk. The unborn in our society are the weakest and the most at risk. Again I thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence), and I yield back to my good friend and colleague.

Mr. PENCE:

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for his passion, for his generous remarks, and for his dogged determination in this issue.

We come to the close of this Case for Life much as we began, and it is always remarkable to me how sometimes God bookends things in ways that we could never have planned. Because we heard the gentleman from New Jersey begin his remarks by simply using a phrase I heard him use many times on floor, but I know he did not hear me use tonight. He said, "Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women," which were precisely the words of Alice Paul, who in her 20s was a driving force behind winning women the right to vote in America; a woman who was the driving force behind even another great signature item of the feminist movement in America, the Equal Rights Amendment. She said, "Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women."

I close with the words of Susan B. Anthony, who now every time I walk through the Rotunda and I look at those heroes of the suffrage movement carved in stone, I will think of it, if the Speaker will forgive me, as much a memorial to their moral courage as to their political accomplishment because these women were simultaneously about the elevation of women to equal political status, but they were also women committed to the sanctity of human life. Susan B. Anthony, and I close, said of abortion: "No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save the suffering of 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 deed."

Susan B. Anthony, without whom American women would have not a fraction of the status and the political power they have today, was a woman committed to the sanctity of human life. And as we go forward and as American women, in particular, listen in on our conversations on this Capitol floor, it is my hope that another generation of courageous and visionary American women of courage and conscience will lead us back to that profound moral truth echoed through the ages to choose life.

With that I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Ferguson), another of my colleagues in this series, a man who brings with him an enormous pedigree in the right-to-life movement.

Mr. FERGUSON:

Mr. Speaker, I am a little out of breath. I just got over here from my office. I was watching the debate and the conversation in my office, and I wanted to participate for a couple of different reasons. Number one, I wanted to pay tribute to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence), who really is showing tremendous leadership and vision in helping to use this forum and use this opportunity to refocus our nation's attention on an issue which is as fundamental to us and to our lives and to our society as any that we take up in this House and in these halls of Congress. I am proud to call him a friend, and I am so pleased and proud of his leadership on this issue.

I also want to pay tribute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), who has been fighting these battles for almost 25 years. He has brought passion and intelligence and commitment to an issue in trying to educate people around the country and around the world about the value of human life and this, unfortunately, very slippery slope which we have proceeded down in the years since Roe v. Wade and even since before that.

Earlier today I was here on the floor and we were debating Medicare and talking about health care and talking about innovation and talking about trying to provide new health opportunities for our seniors, for people around this country. So much of the Medicare debate has been about medicines, it has been about medical devices, it has been about providing care to people who we care about.

One of the thoughts that I had as my friend the gentleman from New Jersey was talking about the millions and millions and millions of people who have been lost over the years to the terrible tragedy of abortion, I am thinking about that one out of three desks in the classroom. I used to be a teacher, and I was thinking back to those classrooms, one out of three desks where a child has been lost to abortion.

But it got me thinking about those who have been lost in another way. Think about the cures and the innovations, all the good that could have come from these millions and millions of human beings, these people who would be with us today, who would be participating. Researchers and scientists. They would be teachers, they would be moms, they would be dads. Thinking about the enormous good that would come from these individuals, these human beings who would be here to grow their hearts in love, to show love to other people, and compassion; the incredible insights they would be able to share with us.

The philosophers, the theologians, the priests, the ministers, the rabbis, those who would seek to make our society better and stronger, more compassionate and loving. All that has been lost. So much of that has been lost. Of course, we are blessed with people today who are able to share these things with us.

But think of what has been lost by those who have not been able to be with us today and whom we have lost over the years to the terrible tragedy of abortion. It is sad, but I think it also should instill in us a new commitment, a new understanding and perhaps a new perspective as to how important this issue is.

It is not just important in the ways that we know it is, the fundamental values that we all stand for as Americans, that we are fighting for around the world, but it is important, too, because we could be so much better, were it not for those who have been lost.

With that, I yield back to my friend the gentleman from Indiana.

Mr. PENCE:

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Ferguson), who, along with his wife, Maurine, has been a champion for life in and out of the Congress for many years.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Aderholt), a moral leader in the United States House of Representatives.

Mr. ADERHOLT:

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

First of all, let me say it is a great day in the House, it is a great day in the United States Senate and it is a great day in the United States of America. I say to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence), as we have said and talked about on many occasions, a lot of times we hear the courts speak on different issues. Well, today we have had an opportunity to hear the people speak, that this is an issue that we should not put up with in this nation.

I believe we will be judged by how we treat those who are the most vulnerable in society. For that reason, it is especially exciting to be here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives in the United States Capitol when this legislation has passed.

Certainly, I was pleased to join 161 of my House colleagues in cosponsoring this legislation. This is the fifth Congress during which this debate has taken place. I am thankful we have done the right thing to outlaw this procedure once and for all, and look forward to President Bush having a signing ceremony and inviting all the members of Congress who are very interested in this issue to be there. Because I think this will be a great day for America and I think it will be a great day for not only this administration when he signs that, but also the United States Congress.

Mr. PENCE:

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Ferguson), the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) and the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Aderholt), for joining me in this case for life.
 

"How can a great country like the United States fall, you say, My child? You ask Me in your heart. I read your heart. I will tell you why. Because they have given themselves over to satan. When a country has lost its morality and seeks the pleasures of the flesh, giving over, themselves over, to all manner of abominations, like homosexuality, and condoning this up the highest courts of the land, then that country shall fall." - Our Lady of the Roses, November 1, 1985

 

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Pope Benedict XVIPope Benedict XVI says that refusing Holy Communion to pro-abortion politicians is a "doctrine of the Church"   

LifeSiteNews.com  reported on July 13, 2004:

The document which appeared in the pages of the Italian paper L'Espresso claiming to be Vatican Cardinal Ratzinger's paper giving direction to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on the question of pro-abortion Catholic politicians and communion has been confirmed as authentic. In a letter sent to Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Cardinal Ratzinger confirms he did compose the document "Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion."

In fact, Ratzinger, who heads the most important congregation in the Vatican, says in the letter that the document was to "clarify the doctrine of the Church on this specific issue." In the documents, the Vatican Cardinal noted clearly that pro-abortion politicians, who will not alter their stand or abstain from communion after being instructed by church leaders, "must" be refused communion.

 

Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion. General Principles by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, June 2004
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/apr/050419a.html

"For that one reason among many, the United States will suffer unless there is placed into your government a group that fears the Lord if they cannot love the Lord. They will fear Him and find measures to stop the slaughter of the unborn." - Our Lady of the Roses, April 14, 1984




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Vatican Archbishop Burke: Public Repentance is Required for Pro-Abort Politicians  

LifeSiteNews.com reported on October 12, 2010:

Speaking at the Human Life International World Prayer Congress Saturday, Archbishop Raymond Burke received sustained applause when he noted that Catholic politicians who support abortion are required to repent publicly. 

Speaking to pro-life leaders from 45 nations, the Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura (the highest Vatican court) also noted that those who recognize the scandal caused by such public, dissident Catholics assist the Church in repairing a serious breach, but are nevertheless often ridiculed for it.

(Read the complete talk - in PDF format - here)

Achibishop Burke stressed that “both bishops and the faithful” must be obedient to the Magisterium – which he described as the teaching of Christ as handed down through the successor of Peter and the bishops in union with him. “When the shepherds of the flock are obedient to the Magisterium, entrusted to their exercise, then surely the members of the flock grow in obedience and proceed with Christ along the way of salvation,” he said.  “If the shepherd is not obedient the flock easily gives way to confusion and error.”

Burke, who is also a member of the Congregation for Bishops added: “A most tragic example of the lack of obedience of faith, also on the part of certain Bishops, was the response of many to the Encyclical Letter Humanae vitae of Pope Paul VI, published on July 25, 1968.  The confusion which resulted has led many Catholics into habits of sin in what pertains to the procreation and education of human life.”

Humanae Vitae reiterated age-old Christian teaching on the immorality of the use of artificial contraception. However, after its publication the encyclical was repudiated by many within the Catholic Church, including priests and bishops, who had believed that the Church would changes its views on contraception.

Turning to the issue of scandal within the Church, the archbishop said, “We find self-professed Catholics, for example, who sustain and support the right of a woman to procure the death of the infant in her womb, or the right of two persons of the same sex to the recognition which the State gives to a man and a woman who have entered into marriage.  It is not possible to be a practicing Catholic and to conduct oneself publicly in this manner.”

To resounding applause Burke said, “When a person has publicly espoused and cooperated in gravely sinful acts, leading many into confusion and error about fundamental questions of respect for human life and the integrity of marriage and the family, his repentance of such actions must also be public.”

The Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura then voiced a concern that struck a deep chord with many of the Catholic pro-life activists present at the conference.  “One of the ironies of the present situation is that the person who experiences scandal at the gravely sinful public actions of a fellow Catholic is accused of a lack of charity and of causing division within the unity of the Church,” he said.  “One sees the hand of the Father of Lies at work in the disregard for the situation of scandal or in the ridicule and even censure of those who experience scandal.”

The Vatican prelate concluded the point stating:

Lying or failing to tell the truth, however, is never a sign of charity.  A unity which is not founded on the truth of the moral law is not the unity of the Church.  The Church’s unity is founded on speaking the truth with love.  The person who experiences scandal at public actions of Catholics, which are gravely contrary to the moral law, not only does not destroy unity but invites the Church to repair what is clearly a serious breach in Her life.  Were he not to experience scandal at the public support of attacks on human life and the family, his conscience would be uninformed or dulled about the most sacred realities.

 

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Manila Archbishop: "Grave Sin" of Abortion leads to Automatic Excommunication

"You will send out the traitors, excommunicate the wrongdoers who do not repent of their sin. What does it gain a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?" - Our Lady of the Roses, September 27, 1975

LifeSiteNews.com reported on September 17, 2010:

Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales has issued a pastoral letter, to be read at all Masses in the Archdiocese of Manila on Sunday, September 19, condemning abortion as a "crime against life" and a symptom of "abandoned values."

The archbishop addressed the recent spate of aborted babies that were left near churches this week.

News sources reported that human fetuses were found in the cities of Manila and Malabon, and a living newborn baby was rescued from a garbage bin inside a Gulf Air flight at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.

Police reported that a 5-to 7-month-old unborn child was found inside a green plastic bag at the Manila Cathedral, while another baby was found at the doorstep of the Church of the Black Nazarene in Quiapo district.

Malabon City police also reported that a fetus, wrapped in plastic and then stuffed into a sack, was found at the corner of Salmon and Pampano streets in the Catmon district of that city.

Archbishop Rosales said he considers the public exposure of aborted babies as either malicious, or a symptom of "grave moral decadence" that is threatening Philippine society.

"With possible malicious intent the ugly part of life is again gaining the limelight in our country as the frequency of aborted fetuses is publicly exposed. The placing and exhibiting of aborted human fetuses in public places is not favored in other cultures, and decent people refuse to do the same," Archbishop Rosales wrote in the pastoral letter.

"If the expositions of discarded human fetuses are not done with evil intent, then the practice alone of rampant abortion is symptomatic of a grave moral decadence and irresponsible behavior that now seriously threaten the country."

The archbishop condemned abortion as a "moral evil," and reminded the faithful that those who abort their children, as well as those who facilitate abortion, face excommunication.

"Thou shalt not kill! A deliberately procured abortion is a moral evil and the Catholic Church attaches the canonical penalty of Excommunication on those who procure it and on those who help obtain abortion," Archbishop Rosales said.

"Human lives are always precious to God and any violation of it will be dealt with by Him for He said, ‘Vengeance is mine . . . He will avenge the blood of his servants’ (Gene 4:15, Deut. 32:43). Abortion is a grave sin against a defenseless life; and for this the severe canonical penalty to perpetuators is Excommunication," the archbishop warned.

Urging the faithful to the virtues of selflessness, self control and self-sacrifice as the way to avoid unwanted pregnancies, the archbishop said, "Unwanted pregnancies could be avoided if only people are less selfish, are more disciplined and capable of self control, exercising a strong will, and capable of making sacrifices. These are virtues that are much needed in a country of disciplined people."

Archbishop Rosales also condemned the attempts to introduce laws allowing abortion in the country, saying, "Short cuts to progress even by way of new laws cannot compensate for abandoned values. Human life, created in the image of its Maker, the very source of the rights and dignity of the human person, must always be respected and defended."

The archbishop said that special prayers and acts of reparation will be made in churches where public exposure of aborted babies occurred and urges to the faithful to pray "for the perpetrators and instigators of this grievous sin against the life of the innocent."

The full text of Archbishop Rosales' pastoral letter "Abortion, A Crime Against Life" is available here. (http://www.rcam.org/Homilies/2010/cardinal_rosales/abortion_a_crime_against_life.html)

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New Archbishop of Seattle: “To be Catholic Means to be Pro-Life” 

 

"You will send out the traitors, excommunicate the wrongdoers who do not repent of their sin. What does it gain a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?" - Our Lady of the Roses, September 27, 1975

LifeSiteNews.com reported on September 16, 2010:

This morning Pope Benedict XVI announced the appointment of Bishop James Peter Sartain of Joliet in Illinois, as metropolitan archbishop of Seattle Washington, where nearly one-fifth of the over five million residents are Catholic.  In January, Bishop Sartain was one of the 45 U.S. Bishops in attendance at the March for Life Vigil Mass in Washington, DC. 

Bishop Sartain told LSN at the time that he was proud that over 225 youth from his diocese had come to the D.C. March for Life.

Asked about the example Nancy Pelosi gives of being in favor of abortion while calling herself Catholic, Bishop Sartain replied, “Any Catholic who is going to understand our faith and live by the faith seriously must be pro-life.”

The Joliet Bishop explained, “It’s at the very core of our understanding of living a moral life because all life comes from God. It’s a message that we have a responsibility to continue to get out.”

He concluded, “To be Catholic means to be pro-life.”

Born in Memphis Tennessee in 1952 and ordained to the priesthood in 1978, he became a bishop at the age of 47, shepherding the Church in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Joliet Illinois prior to being called to Seattle. 

Bishop Sartain inspired admiration in his diocese by taking decisive action in the face of scandal.  When the pastor of the second largest parish in the diocese of Joliet was found to have engaged in homosexual acts, Bishop Sartain removed him from priestly duties. 

Commenting on the action at the time, Catholic World News editor Phil Lawler told LSN that, based on his reporting on the scandal of homosexual priests in Catholic dioceses, he believed the action taken by Bishop Sartain was unique and “a hopeful sign.”

“It’s the first time I’ve ever heard of this before,” said Lawler. “There’ve been an awful lot of cases in which we’ve been told that a priest has engaged in consensual sexual activity with another male, and isn’t a problem. But it is a problem, and it is good that it is being taken seriously.”

Catholic News Service notes that archbishop-elect Sartain’s appointment marks the first in a string of pending U.S. episcopal appointments under the new leadership of Canada’s Marc Ouellet, who was recently appointed as head of the Vatican’s Congregation of Bishops.  Ten U.S. bishops are currently serving past retirement age of 75 and another five dioceses are currently without a bishop.

Bishop Sartain’s pro-life stance was backed by action. In addition to attending the March for Life, the bishop has led his flock in challenging abortion in the diocese of Joliet.  In 2007, when a Planned Parenthood abortion mill was to open locally he responded with a request for the faithful to join him in fasting and prayer.  He encouraged peaceful, prayerful demonstration, outreach and political lobbying.

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Honduran Cardinal: "A politician who publicly supports abortion, he excommunicates himself"

 

"You will send out the traitors, excommunicate the wrongdoers who do not repent of their sin. What does it gain a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?" - Our Lady of the Roses, September 27, 1975

LifeSiteNews.com reported on May 18, 2007:

Hours after LifeSiteNews.com contacted pro-life leaders in Latin America to alert them to troubling remarks made by Honduran Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, the Cardinal corrected his statements.  Carlos Polo, director for Latin America of the Population Research Institute approached the Cardinal about his remarks to Time magazine which conflicted with Pope Benedict over the issue of Communion for pro-abortion politicians.

As LifeSiteNews.com reported yesterday, in a recent interview with Time magazine, Cardinal Rodriguez was asked if he agreed with bishops who deny Holy Communion to pro-abortion politicians.  The Cardinal responded, ""Who am I to deny Holy Communion to a person? I cannot. It's in the tradition of moral theology that even if I know a person is living in grave sin, I cannot take a public action against him. It would be giving scandal to the person. Yes, he should not seek [Communion], but I cannot deny it from him."

In statements to Carlos Polo, which were reported late yesterday by the Catholic News Agency, Cardinal Rodriguez said his comments to Time magazine should be reformulated "in light of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith teaches in its document, 'Worthiness to Receive Communion'."

That document was written in 2004 by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was at the time the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  It was sent to the US Bishops to use as a guide in their deliberations over dealing with Catholic pro-abortion politicians. The letter pointed out that obstinately pro-abortion Catholic politicians, after being duly instructed and warned, "must" be denied Communion. 

"A politician who publicly supports abortion, he excommunicates himself.  It's not question of receiving Communion or not; he has already done serious harm to the communion of faith of the Church, to the communion of moral life, and therefore that person himself is doing an act that is inconsistent with what he says he believes," the Cardinal Rodriguez told Polo.

"That is, we're talking about a person who has become a broken-off branch of the tree of life of the Church, a dry branch that has lost its vital sap and is doing something that is a lie.  One who is against life and who is clearly opposed to the message of the Lord Jesus, as is an abortion supporter, cannot be in Communion with Holy Mother Church," he stated.

"Therefore, if one uses the desire to receive Communion as a justification, it is the worst manner of doing so, because one is doing an act that contradicts what one says he believes," the cardinal said.

"In addition," he continued, "a recent declaration of the Holy See clearly states that when all precautionary measures have not had their effect or in which they were not possible, and the person in question, with obstinate persistence, still presents himself to receive the Holy Eucharist, the minister of Holy Communion must refuse to distribute it."  

"This is the current law of the Church and it would be best if these people who know it do not try to receive Holy Communion because they are committing an act that is completely immoral and inconsistent with truth," he said in conclusion.

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage which includes links to the Time interview and the document by Cardinal Ratzinger:
Honduran Cardinal Contradicts Pope on Communion for Pro-Abortion Politicians
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/may/07051706.html

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Pro-Abortion Politicians - "No we cannot vote for these people because for us the Supreme Law of God is the Ten Commandments - which is the Law written into human nature." - Cardinal Dziwisz

Interview with Pope John Paul II's secretary: Catholics may not vote for pro-abortion politicians

 

LifeSiteNews.com reported on June 26, 2008:

Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz was personal secretary to Pope John Paul II.  After the Pope's death he was appointed Archbishop of Kraków in 2005, and in 2006 was made a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI.  LifeSiteNews.com spoke with Cardinal Dziwisz at the International Eucharistic Congress last week.

Asked if it was permissible for Catholics to vote for politicians who support abortion, Cardinal Dziwisz replied, "No we cannot vote for these people because for us the Supreme Law of God is the Ten Commandments - which is the Law written into human nature."

Asked about the European Union pressure on Poland to abandon its moral stands in favour of life, the Cardinal said: "Poland is the only country that, after years of abortion being practiced, abolished it when freedom arrived after the fall of communism.  We absolutely want to keep this law which defends life - but all the liberal and leftist forces from Europe are against Poland.

"They say there is no freedom in Poland and that women are oppressed.  However, we want to bring these (our) moral values to Europe because this is the richness of Europe. But they still don't understand.  We hope that in the future they will understand that the real and true richness that Poland gives to Europe is faith, life and the family - a healthy family."

The Cardinal also encouraged the pro-life movement all over the world to remain active.  "You can create a pro-life atmosphere.  If the 'movement for life' is present in the world - this helps us (referring to the Church in Poland) and we help you from our position," he said.

On the discouragement sometimes felt in the pro-life movement, the Archbishop of Krakow said, "To win we need to pray, to pray, and this Congress gives us the way - we can renew ourselves by returning to Mass, going to adoration and confession."

Cardinal Dziwisz also spoke about homosexuality and the efforts to alter the definition of marriage.  "Sin can never be a right or law. Herein is the ruin of a culture when sin is called 'normal'," he said.  "We can never accept bad for good. We cannot share in sin."

"For us the Ten Commandments are important because they saved many peoples throughout the centuries and they will save them in the future," he added. "We cannot therefore abandon the Ten Commandments for other laws made democratically.  We need to respect the laws of nature - respect the laws that the Lord gave us."

The former secretary to John Paul II was pleased to hear of LifeSiteNews.com editor John-Henry Westen's seven children.  "Seven children, seven children," he said smiling.  "You have a football (soccer) team - so your wife could be at one goalpost and you at the other and the children in between."

Concluding the interview, the Cardinal imparted his blessing on LifeSiteNews.com and handed the reporters a prayer card with the image of John Paul II and an embedded relic.

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France's Cardinal Babarin on how denial of the Eucharist can be an act of love

"When a man has stepped over the threshold and allowed himself to fall into mortal sin, he must be purified by trial, but he must also, My children, be purified by the rule of penance and confession. 
     "What manner of evil is being set now upon mankind that compels him to lose his soul by rejecting the Sacraments, by no longer confessing to his confessor, but coming to receive My Son in sacrifice, while his soul is degraded by sin of mortal nature!"
- Our Lady of the Roses, September 7, 1976 

LifeSiteNews.com reported on June 25, 2008:

Philippe Cardinal Barbarin is the Archbishop of Lyon, in France. Born in 1950, Barbarin is one of the youngest Cardinal's in the Catholic Church.  He also has a reputation for speaking plainly and openly.

In 2005, the Cardinal was in the public spotlight after publicly informing women who underwent fake ordinations to the priesthood that they had automatically excommunicated themselves. In light of such seemingly hard-line actions, LifeSiteNews.com asked the Cardinal how the recent controversy over denying pro-abortion politicians Holy Communion should be seen from a truly Catholic perspective.

Even such actions, he said in response, are acts of love - of charity.

"Normally every act of the Church is an act of charity," Cardinal Barbarin told LifeSiteNews.com last week. "Every word of Jesus is a word of charity. Yet, at times Jesus was angry.  He took cords and knocked down the change tables and chased the sellers from the temple - solely for His love for them."

The Archbishop of Lyons added that when Christ called the Pharisees "hypocrites" it was the same - an act of charity.  "Jesus spoke with them with much force to change their hearts," he said.

On his arrival as Archbishop in Lyon in 2002, Babarin issued a challenge to Catholics to "Turn off the TV and turn on the Gospel."  The Archbishop expressed hope that the Eucharistic Congress in Quebec City, where the interview took place, would launch a spiritual revival in Quebec.  "I wish with all my heart," said the Cardinal, "that this Congress will bring a new springtime for the Church in Quebec."

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Philadelphia Cardinal Rigali: One must believe what the Church teaches to receive Communion

LifeSiteNews.com reported on June 19, 2008:

Cardinal Justin Rigali, the Archbishop of Philadelphia is in Quebec City for the International Eucharistic Congress - a week-long event focusing on the Catholic belief that Christ Himself is present in Holy Communion.

Cardinal Rigali, who is also the President of the Pro-Life Committee of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, discussed with LifeSiteNews.com the issue of worthiness to receive Communion in the context of Catholics who support abortion and same-sex "marriage", contrary to Church teaching.

"We're talking about the very life of the church when we're talking about the Eucharist and participation in the Eucharist," said Cardinal Rigali.  "St. Paul tells us that anyone who receives the Eucharist must be prepared.  This is the apostolic catechesis."

"St. Justin in the second century tells us: 'The only people who are to go to Communion are people who believe everything we believe'. So it's a question of our faith."

The Cardinal referenced St. Paul warning that, "Anyone that approaches the body of Christ has to examine himself to see where he stands, because if you're not worthy then you're heaping condemnation on yourself."

The Cardinal noted that there are "many people who are confused on the faith, many people are confused on the issue of life."  That is why, he said, "the Church has been putting in so much effort to try to clarify the absolute necessity to support, to promote, to cherish human life, and not to do anything to destroy it."

"We invite people to come to the Eucharist," he said, "but we are constantly reminding them 'just a moment now' this belongs to our tradition - the Eucharist is not just something we just receive; it's the body of Christ."

"We have to accept the teachings on the body of Christ and we have to accept the teaching of the body of Christ, which is the Church, on other things to be fully worthy," he said.

While he said that the prime responsibility is that of the person to examine himself before God regarding his worthiness to receive Communion, Cardinal Rigali added that "obviously the Church has an obligation to safeguard the Eucharist against abuses."

"We teach children who prepare for first Holy Communion to be worthy, to be in the state of grace," he said.  "That's what we tell everybody - you have to be in the state of grace."

He concluded: "To be in the state of grace you must embrace what the Church embraces, you have to embrace the faith of the Church, and you're not free to receive the Eucharist if you don't embrace the faith of the Church. This is St. Paul, this is St. Justin, this is the whole history of the Church."

 

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"It is my intention . . . to have similar pastoral dialogues with other Catholics in elective office who support legalized abortion"

Archbishop Naumann defends his call for pro-abortion politicians to refrain from Communion

LifeSiteNews.com reported on May 27, 2008:

Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City on Friday published a question and answer explanation and defense of his May 9 public request to Governor Kathleen Sebelius to refrain from receiving Holy Communion until repenting of her political support for abortion. The Archbishop also confirmed plans to address other pro-abortion Catholic politicians.

"In this column, I want to provide you with my responses to some of the more common questions and misunderstandings regarding my pastoral action." wrote the Archbishop in the diocesan newspaper The Leaven.

"Governor Sebelius holds the highest elective office in the state of Kansas, making her the most prominent Catholic in public life," responded the archbishop to accusations of "singling out" Sebelius.

"It is a time-intensive process to enter into verbal and written dialogue, as is necessary, to insure a person is aware of the spiritual and moral consequences of their actions, as well as to understand the scandal their actions cause for others."

"It is my intention eventually, as much as the limitations of my own time permit, to have similar pastoral dialogues with other Catholics in elective office who support legalized abortion," added the Archbishop.

Naumann went on to explain why Sebelius' abortion support is particularly scandalous, i.e. capable of leading others to sin through bad example.

"Governor Sebelius' public support for legalized abortion, as a Catholic, naturally leads others to question the moral gravity of abortion. In effect, her actions and advocacy for legalized abortion, coupled with her reception of holy Communion, have said to other Catholics: 'I am a good Catholic and I support legalized abortion. You can be a good Catholic and support legalized abortion.'"

Sebelius is known as an aggressive supporter of radical abortion "rights" and has vetoed a number of pieces of common-sense legislation over the years that would have reigned in an out-of-control abortion industry in Kansas.  As a result, abortion mills remain uninspected in spite of documented substandard conditions, and abortion laws meant to protect women and viable babies remain unenforced.

Sebelius has close ties to abortionist George R. Tiller, who has funneled huge amounts of campaign contributions to Sebelius in the past. Tiller currently faces 19 criminal charges, a grand jury investigation, and two open investigations with the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts for criminal conduct and violations of the standard of care. Nevertheless, Sebelius remains supportive of Tiller and his notorious abortion business.

The Archbishop also refuted "pro-choice" rhetoric contending that a Catholic politician could be personally opposed to abortion while still supporting a woman's "right to choose."

"Freedom of choice is not an absolute value. All of our laws limit our choices. I am not free to drive while intoxicated or to take another's property or to assault someone else. My freedom ends when I infringe on the more basic rights of another."

Naumann also rejected accusations that bishops have been using the Eucharist in a political attack on the Democratic Party and approvingly cited the example of Cardinal Edward Egan's request for pro-abortion Republican Rudy Giuliani to refrain from Communion.

"I encourage Catholics who are Democrats to remain Democrats, but to change the extremist position of the party on abortion. If the majority of Catholic Democrats objected to the platform of the party supporting legalized abortion, it would change tomorrow," added the Archbishop.

While not yet requiring ministers of the Eucharist to deny Sebelius Holy Communion, the Archbishop left open the possibility of such a mandate in the future.

"I have, at this moment, not asked the ministers of the Eucharist not to give holy Communion to the governor."

In his letter titled "Worthiness to receive Holy Communion," then-Cardinal Ratzinger wrote that a Catholic politician who would vote for "permissive abortion and euthanasia laws" after being duly instructed and warned, "must" be denied Communion.  Ratzinger's letter explained that if such a politician "with obstinate persistence, still presents himself to receive the Holy Eucharist, the minister of Holy Communion must refuse to distribute it."

See the archbishop's full article on the issue:

Governor’s Veto Prompts Pastoral Action
http://www.theleaven.com/columnists/archbishop_naumann.htm

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Archbishop Publicly Tells Pro-Abortion Kansas Governor Not to Receive Communion
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/may/08051001.html

Bishop: Denying Communion to Obstinate Pro-Abortion Catholic Politicians "in many cases becomes the right decision and the only choice"
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jan/07013109.html

Abortion-Politician-Communion Scandal Shows Real Lack of Pastoral Concern - Editorial
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/may/08052102.html

Read the Archbishop's Q&A:
http://cjonline.com/stories/052308/bre_communion.shtml

Read the Ratzinger on denying Holy Communion:
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/apr/050419a.html

To contact the Archbishop for addressing pro-abortion politicians:

Archbishop Most Reverend Joseph F. Naumann
12615 Parallel Parkway
Kansas City, KS 66109
Phone: (913) 721-1570
FAX: (913) 721-1577
Email: archkck@archkck.org 

 

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Head of Vatican's highest court: Ministers have "obligation to deny" Communion to pro-abortion politicians

LifeSiteNews.com reported on August 19, 2008:

The head of the highest court in the Vatican has given an interview with a Roman magazine in which he notes that when dealing with pro-abortion Catholic politicians, "the minister of the Eucharist has the obligation to deny It (Communion) to him."

Last month, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Archbishop Raymond Burke, formerly the Archbishop of St. Louis, as the Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, which is the highest judicial authority of the Catholic Church besides the Pope himself.  In an interview published in the current edition of the Italian magazine Radici Cristiane, Archbishop Burke addresses the issue which has caused great controversy among the hierarchy in the West.

In the interview, parts of which were translated by Catholic News Agency, the Archbishop noted first that pro-abortion Catholic politicians should be publicly corrected and told not to receive: and, if they persist, they should be denied.   He spoke of dealing with "public officials" who contravene Divine and Eternal law such as "if they support abortion, which entails the taking of innocent and defenseless human lives." 

"A person who commits sin in this way should be publicly admonished in such a way as to not receive Communion until he or she has reformed his life," the archbishop said.  "If a person who has been admonished persists in public mortal sin and attempts to receive Communion, the minister of the Eucharist has the obligation to deny it to him. Why? Above all, for the salvation of that person, preventing him from committing a sacrilege," he added.

The Archbishop explained that the Church does this "not with the intention of interfering in public life but rather in the spiritual state of the politician or public official who, if Catholic, should follow the divine law in the public sphere as well," reported Catholic News Agency.

"We must avoid giving people the impression that one can be in a state of mortal sin and receive the Eucharist," the archbishop continued.  "Secondly, there could be another form of scandal, consisting of leading people to think that the public act that this person is doing, which until now everyone believed was a serious sin, is really not that serious - if the Church allows him or her to receive Communion."

"If we have a public figure who is openly and deliberately upholding abortion rights and receiving the Eucharist, what will the average person think? He or she could come to believe that it up to a certain point it is okay to do away with an innocent life in the mother's womb," he warned.

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Abortion-Politician-Communion Scandal Shows Real Lack of Pastoral Concern
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/may/08052102.html

Can Catholics Who Vote for BO
Still Receive Communion
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jun/08061208.html

********

 

 

Pro-abort politicians "must" be refused Communion: Philippines Archbishop

"When a man has stepped over the threshold and allowed himself to fall into mortal sin, he must be purified by trial, but he must also, My children, be purified by the rule of penance and confession. 
     "What manner of evil is being set now upon mankind that compels him to lose his soul by rejecting the Sacraments, by no longer confessing to his confessor, but coming to receive My Son in sacrifice, while his soul is degraded by sin of mortal nature!"
- Our Lady of the Roses, September 7, 1976 

LifeSiteNews.com reported on July 14, 2008:

A Philippine bishop has reiterated the teaching of the Catholic Church that politicians who support legal abortion "must" be refused Holy Communion at Mass.

Archbishop Jesus Dosado of Ozamiz archdiocese issued a pastoral letter this weekend saying priests should tell such politicians, "until they bring to an end the objective situation of sin" that they should not present themselves at Mass to receive Communion. Priests are to give pro-abortion politicians instructions in the Church's teaching, and if the politician persists in his error, he should be told not to present himself for Communion.

"The practice of indiscriminately presenting oneself to receive Holy Communion merely as a consequence of being present at Mass is an abuse that must be corrected," wrote Archbishop Dosado.

To support his instruction, the archbishop quoted an official 2000 Vatican instruction, "Holy Communion and Divorced, Civilly Remarried Catholics" that said that when "precautionary measures" had failed and the person remains in "obstinate persistence," and presents himself to receive the Eucharist, the minister "must refuse to distribute it."

"This decision, properly speaking, is not a sanction or a penalty," the archbishop said. "Nor is the minister of the Holy Communion passing judgment on the person's subjective guilt, but rather is reacting to the person's public unworthiness to receive Holy Communion due to an objective situation of sin."

Archbishop Dosado also cited the letter by then-Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger of 2004, written in response to the ongoing scandal of pro-abortion US Presidential candidate Senator John Kerry persisting in publicly receiving Communion. He said that the decision to present himself for Communion had to be the result of the person's "reasoned judgment" on his spiritual state.

The speaker of the Filipino parliament, Prospero Nograles, responded saying that Archbishop Dosado's pastoral letter violated the principle of "separation of church and state."

This argument was commonly presented during the 2004 US Presidential campaign after a small number of Catholic bishops issued statements enforcing the Church's teaching. Their defenders countered by saying that the demand that a bishop, who is instructing his flock in religious, not political matters, should remain silent, was itself a violation of the principle that the state should not interfere with the running of churches.

Archbishop Oscar Cruz of Linguyen-Dagupan, told local radio, "If a priest or bishop does not punish a public sinner, it is the priest or bishop who is wrong."

Archbishop Dosado also dispelled another commonly presented argument that said abortion was just one of many moral issues with which people "of good conscience" could disagree with the Church. He countered the widely held "seamless garment" opinion that abortion is just one part of a larger pro-life ethic and was on an equal moral footing with war, homelessness or poverty.

"If a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion," the archbishop said. "There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war, but not about abortion."

Read more:

Abortion-Politician-Communion Scandal Shows Real Lack of Pastoral Concern - Editorial
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/may/08052102.html

********

 

Exclusive interview: Ottawa Archbishop explains why pro-abortion politicians are denied Communion

LifeSiteNews.com reported on March 14, 2008:

The mainstream media has picked up on comments by Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast regarding reception of Holy Communion for pro-abortion politicians.  However, one part of the discussion which has received little discussion is the reason why the Church would deny politicians reception of Communion.

"The Code of Canon Law says in #915 that 'those whom the penalty of excommunication or interdict has been imposed or declared, and others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin," explains the religious leader of Canada's national capital,"are not to be admitted to Holy Communion'." 

"What is at issue is whether a politician who does not himself or herself participate in an abortion but supports 'a woman's right to choose' (or however else shows support for abortion) is guilty of grave sin and then obstinately persists in this state of grave sin."

Archbishop Prendergast stresses that denying Holy Communion is undertaken out of concern for the offending Catholic (politician in the case at hand).  "The Church's concern is for anyone who persists in grave sin, hoping that medicinal measures (which is how excommunication and interdict are to be understood) may draw them away from the wrong path to the truth of our faith."

The Ottawa prelate points out how Christians from the beginning were told of the need to be in good standing with the faith before receiving Communion.  "(St.) Paul said that before receiving communion a Christian should take part in self-examination and only then receive the Body of the Lord after necessary conversion (1 Cor 11:28)."

Prendergast has no dislike for politicians, in fact just the opposite. "I deeply admire politicians for their desire to serve the public good and to make the many sacrifices necessary to win public office and to give themselves to public service," he says, adding, "They ought to be motivated by a concern for justice, good order, the public good, etc."

He notes however that "One of the greatest areas for effecting justice is the support of life in the womb and through all stages of life.  Abortion goes against the Church's understanding, based on the teaching of Jesus, on the inviolability of innocent human life - including the unborn - and of the obligation of public servants to protect the weakest in society.  It is hard to see how the support of abortion is not a very grave evil."

The decision to take "medicinal" remedies, says the Archbishop, is not taken lightly, and is simply an attempt at direct intervention with the politicians.  "Perhaps politicians embrace the support of a woman's right to choose unthinkingly, following party policy; this is where the church with the help of its pastors and through fellow believers needs to come to the assistance of those who serve the public good," he said.    

"It may take time to work with political figures before one can conclude that they are obstinately persisting in manifest grave sin and that, therefore, denial of communion or of encouraging them not to present themselves for communion is reached as the medicinal remedy to draw them back to the way of Christ, Our Lord, the Way, the Truth and the Life."

One other consideration in addressing seriously such grave violations of Church teaching is scandal.  "If one were to allow Catholic political (or other public) figures to freely espouse abortion without drawing to their attention that this is a grave evil," explained Archbishop Prendergast, "other believers might be tended to accept this, not knowing any better and be led on the wrong path: that is what 'scandal' is.  One must do everything possible to prevent others from falling away from the path of Christ - i.e. from being scandalized."

See related LifeSiteNews articles:

Pope Supports Excommunication for Pro-Abortion Politicians - "Incompatible with Receiving Communion"
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/may/07050901.html

Second U.S. Bishop Says Vatican Letter on Pro-Abort Politicians Withheld from Bishops
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/aug/04080603.html

Cardinal McCarrick Continues to Conceal Rome's Insistence that Pro-Abort Politicians Be Denied Communion
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/oct/06102310.html

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Archbishop Burke says ministers are "held, under pain of mortal sin, to deny the sacraments to the unworthy"

Archbishop Burke preaches tough Communion rule:  Turn away abortion-rights backers under pain of mortal sin

The Columbus Dispatch reported on October 1, 2007:

St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke, a veteran of clashes between Catholic bishops and politicians, has attempted for years to enlist fellow bishops to deny Holy Communion to wayward politicians.

Now, the conservative cleric is invoking the church's highest punishment -- mortal sin -- to persuade the lay and ordained Catholics who distribute Communion at Mass to safeguard the sacrament.

Drawing on the works of the late Italian Jesuit scholar Felice Cappello, Burke says those ministers are "held, under pain of mortal sin, to deny the sacraments to the unworthy."

That argument could place Communion ministers on the frontlines of the "wafer wars" as the 2008 presidential race heats up, and as bishops debate a document on "faithful citizenship."

"It is clear that church discipline places an obligation on the minister of Holy Communion to refuse Holy Communion to persons known, by the public, to be in mortal sin," Burke writes in a new journal article.

Burke lays out his case like a legal brief in Periodica de re Canonica, a journal widely read in seminaries and published by Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University, an elite school for Catholic clergy.

"No matter how often a bishop or priest repeats the teaching of the church regarding procured abortion, if he stands by and does nothing to discipline a Catholic who publicly supports legislation permitting the gravest of injustices, and, at the same time, presents himself to receive Holy Communion, then his teachings ring hollow," Burke writes.

A former top official in the Signatura, the Vatican's high court, and a noted expert in canon law, Burke previously has kicked off public debates over policing the Communion rail. While bishop of La Crosse, Wis., he ordered clergy to refuse to offer the sacrament to certain pro-abortion-rights politicians.

In 2004, Burke and a handful of other bishops said they would refuse Communion to presidential hopeful Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. Burke also said Catholics who voted for pro-abortion-rights politicians, such as Kerry, should refrain from taking the sacrament until they confessed their "mortal sin."

In his new article, the archbishop explicitly criticizes his fellow bishops, the majority of whom voted in 2004 to leave the Communion decision up to individual bishops.

Burke retorts: "The question regarding the objective state of Catholic politicians who knowingly and willingly hold opinions contrary to natural moral law would hardly seem to change from place to place."

The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the influential conservative Catholic journal First Things, called Burke's article "a scholarly tour de force."

"The (archbishop's) concern is not a political concern," Neuhaus said. "The article is about, how does the church preserve the sanctity of the Holy Eucharist?"

But the article is ambiguous in some areas, said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Woodstock Theological Center in Washington.

If Burke is calling on Communion ministers to disobey their bishops and deny Communion to Catholic politicians, it would be "revolutionary" and "encourage anarchy," Reese said.

"Most bishops do not want ministers of Communion playing policeman at the Communion rail," he added. "This is a significant change in focus. Suddenly, you're going to have a few thousand decisionmakers in parishes across the country."

A spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of St. Louis said Burke was unavailable to comment on this article.

 

"The discipline and rules set down by My Son and those He chose to write the Book of life and love must be adhered to. We direct, in the name of the Trinity, that you bishops and cardinals of the world must use your full powers as hierarchy to excommunicate and defrock all who seek to dethrone My Son and destroy the Faith!" - Our Lady of the Roses, August 21, 1974

"The Eternal City of Rome must now take action by those in rule, the cardinals and the bishops, to restore this city to the light. Those who seek to build a church of man must be removed by the power of excommunication given to those who rule as representatives in My houses, churches upon your earth.
     "As it was in the time of Noe, as it was in the days of Sodom and Gomorrha, so shall it be upon your earth. Man shall be permitted to fall fast into the abyss. Why? Because he has hardened his heart and closed his ears to the truth. He has given himself to all manners of pleasures of the flesh. Sin has become a way of life in your country and in the countries throughout your earth.
     "The children of God, the candles upon earth, My child, shall suffer much persecution from the agents of darkness.
     "Man runs amiss, My child. He scatters the sheep. He seeks peace where there is no peace. He is going farther into darkness.
     "You shall not gather your flocks, My pastors, by compromising your Faith! You shall not gather the flocks for the Eternal Father in Heaven by giving yourselves to the world, by adopting humanism and modernism as your guide.
     "It is a simple lesson of faith that you must give to the children and to all in your care. As pastor you shall stand before Me and shall you say to Me that your teaching has been pure in My sight? Amen I say unto you, I shall cast you from Me and send you into the abyss. As you sow, so shall you reap." - Jesus, December 31, 1975
 

Directives


D23 - Abortion  PDF LogoPDF
D196 - Life Begins at Conception   PDF LogoPDF
 

Articles

For the Vatican it's Clear - Pro-Abortion Politicians 'Must' be Denied Communion
http://www.nuestrasenoradelasrosas.org/news1/VaticanProAbortionPoliticians'Must'BeDeniedCommunion.htm

 

Links

Bishops and bald eagles, Judie Brown, March 2, 2007
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/brown/070302

Cardinal Ratzinger said, "The minister of Holy Communion must refuse to distribute it." He did not say 'could,' or 'may,' but that he "must,"  Barbara Kralis, July 6, 2004
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/kralis/040706

Prohibition is worthless without enforcement, Barbara Kralis, June 24, 2004
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/kralis/040624

Is not murder just as evil as lust in the eyes of God? Barbara Kralis, June 8, 2004
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/kralis/040607

Ten questions regarding the denial of the Eucharist, Barbara Kralis, May 24, 2004
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/kralis/040524

 

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