For Republicans, Rape Is Still Rape

I am a proud Republican, and more than that, a proud Conservative, which I happily type with a capital 'C' in front.

I do not support every plank that the Republican Party puts forth, nor do I support every politician that takes up the 'Red' banner.

Those who get my vote, such as George W. Bush, sometimes only get it because they are better than lousy liberal alternatives.

I am also a proud father and grandfather of three beautiful daughters and a wonderful granddaughter, the husband of a loving wife, and a brother-in-law, cousin, uncle, nephew, co-worker, neighbor, and friend to many outstanding women.

All that prefaces my position now in full support of a bill (HR3) put forth by New Jersey's outstanding congressman Chris Smith that would essentially end any taxpayer funding of abortions, as well as any tax breaks for health insurance that covers the same.

The usual suspects in the liberal community, from the radical fringe such as MoveOn, to the agenda-driven Planned Parenthood, to supposedly mainstream Democrats looking to protect their political power, are predictably against this legislative initiative.

However, as usual, they don't stop at simply voicing common sense opposition in a debate of ideas. Instead they have stooped to tactics such as using code words, spreading divisiveness, and misinterpretation.

The tactic chosen to oppose the anti-abortion legislation, or as those of us firmly on the side of right and good choose to call it, the pro-life legislation, is incredibly and intentionally ugly. They have chosen to paint Republicans as somehow supporting, denying, or minimizing the crime of rape.

Thanks Mom?

My mother was a very good woman, of that I am as certain as anything I have ever known in this life.

She loved God, loved her family, and despite being overwhelmed by a debilitating illness that robbed her of much of her life's full enjoyment, she never ceased to express that love to either.

My mom mattered. She mattered in my life, the life of my brother, the lives of my children, and the lives of a great number of other friends and family members. She touched us all in a way that will always be with us.

But for as much as she was to everyone else, what she was to my brother Mike and I was extra special. But did she choose life for us? Roe did not exist then, should it have, should we have been her 'choice'?

This is an important idea to discuss, as yesterday was the awful anniversary of the 'Roe v Wade' court decision that made abortion a legal medical procedure here in the United States. What 'Roe' effectively did was lead to the mass slaughter of more than 50 million American babies over the next three and a half decades.

Supporters of that decision would argue that had 'Roe' been in effect in 1961, my birth would not have been the miracle from God that it was considered at that time, but instead it would have been a medical 'choice' made by my mom. And it would have been a 'choice' that she could make regardless of what my dad wanted.

Of course her 'choosing' to nurture and birth me out into the world should probably be something that would make me happy, right? What is better, to be considered just some random accident of nature, or something forced on her by God, or a conscious choice made by one's mother or parents together?

Christmas Thanks to a Young Mother

We began to celebrate the Christmas season over the past week, the celebration of the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Providing for humanity to be saved by God taking on a human role, however, required first a perfect vessel to deliver that physical birth to the earth.

In his gospel, Saint Luke tells us the story of how the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary saying "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee! Blessed art thou among women!" Gabriel was sent by God Himself to the teenage virgin who had been chosen as being worthy of body, mind, and spirit to bear the Lord in her womb, give birth to the infant, and be responsible for raising Him as a child.

At the point at which Mary is presented with the idea of becoming the Mother of God, she has a choice. Mary's body wasn't taken over by God, she was not forced to take on this responsibility. She was not herself bred for this sole purpose. She was a normal, young, human woman.

One thing that we know about human beings in their relationship to God is that we have been given a 'free will', the ability to make our own choices and decisions. We have the choice to accept or reject God and His plan for the world and for us as individuals. Mary was given this same choice, and she chose to say "Yes" to God.

This is not at all the same idea of 'choice' involving a pregnancy that has become a hot political and social topic in todays world. In todays arguments, the 'choice' is not between becoming pregnant or not, in having a child or not. Today the alleged 'choice' is between killing a baby that is already in a mothers womb, or of delivering that baby fully and allowing it a chance at a full life.

What a brief look at the difference between Mary's very real choice and that of women today in the abortion debate does highlight is the idea of consequence.

You Lie!

Congressman Joe Wilson had enough of the lies, and could no longer contain himself.

The Republican from South Carolina had sat patiently in his chair while trying to endure 45 minutes of President Barack Obama droning on about extending his Socialist vision of America into the health care industry.

But then Obama told one lie too many for Wilson during last night's nationally televised attempt at indoctrination and bullying.

The President let slip that his proposed government option would not cover illegal aliens. It was the proverbial straw that broke the camels back for the Congressman.

"You Lie!" shouted Wilson.

If you were watching on television, you heard it plain as day.

The uproar in response was immediate and boisterous as various members of Congress either gasped in astonishment, hollered their disapproval, or mildly cheered the outburst. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, seated immediately over Obama's left shoulder, shot an icy stare in Wilson's direction.

Obama was also stunned by the outburst and momentarily glanced away from his teleprompter, causing him to stumble and mumble a weak "That's not true" as a response.

Unfortunately for Obama, Pelosi and the Democrats, particularly the ultra-liberals on the far left who are pushing the President further and further towards that Socialist disaster, Joe Wilson was the only one actually speaking truth.

A Heart That Plots Wicked Schemes

On this Sunday morning we continue the discussion of Proverbs 6:16-19 in the Bible which lists those things which the Lord hates.

The fourth item in the list journeys deep into our hearts. Not our physical hearts, but those things which can be found at our very inner core - for each of us, the heart of the matter in all things that we consider in our lives.

Those whom the Lord hates in this item are plotters and schemers of sin. Those who plan to do someone else ill. Those who plan to take what is not theirs. Those who intentionally and with malice aforethought actually take the time to sit down and think about their sin and how to make it happen.

The man who sees a way to deceive his business partners of money, and then goes about the planning and execution of his embezzelment. A woman who feels the desire and sees an opportunity to steal the body and possibly even the heart of a man who is already married to another, and then begins to lay the bait for her seduction.

The first human schemes occurred way back in the beginning of man himself. Eve used her seductiveness to get Adam to take a bite of the apple, the very act of defiance of God's will that drove man from paradise. She knew they were different, man and woman, for God had made them that way on purpose in order that they might procreate and populate the earth.

Eve had been led into this plot by the whisperings of the great deceiver Satan, who had lied and manipulated her as only he can to pull man away from God. Eve knew that her feminine charms would be enough to coax Adam into the bite, and went about the task of using them for that very purpose.

Hands That Shed Innocent Blood

For the past couple of weeks this 'Sunday Sermon' series (each entry can be read by clicking on the label at the bottom of this post) has been focusing on Proverbs 6:16-19 which covers the six things that the Lord hates, and a 7th which is an abomination.

The 3rd item in this list would be "hands that shed innocent blood" which is sadly ironic considering Friday night's murder of Philadelphia police officer John Pawlowski.

Whether or not John's killer will end up spending an eternity in hell, whether anyone who takes an innocent human life will suffer that fate, is not for us to say or know. But one thing that Proverbs makes undeniably clear is that this murder of innocents is particularly detestable to God Himself.

On Friday night, John Pawlowski was an innocent man. Perhaps more than that, he was working actively to try and help keep peace and order in his community. He was a police officer in an increasingly violent major American city that is itself ironically nicknamed 'The City of Brotherly Love'. It is a moniker that is no longer appropriate.

John and his partner exited their police vehicle after being flagged down to handle a disturbance on the highway. While handling this dispute, one of the individuals involved reached into his own pocket and shot right through his jacket, killing John Pawlowski there and then. Innocent blood once again shed in one of the acts that God hates.

Each year, hundreds and hundreds of Philadelphians are murdered in cold blood by their fellow citizens.

Marching For Life

January 22nd, 1973 was one of the worst dates in the history of the United States of America. On that date 36 years ago today, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) delivered its opinion in the case of 'Roe vs. Wade'.

According to the SCOTUS decision, most laws restricting abortion in America violated a constitutional right to privacy under the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The ruling basically overturned all state and federal laws restricting abortions. It centrally held that a mother could abort her pregnancy for any reason up until the point at which the baby, referred to in the ruling by its scientific developmental stage name 'fetus', became 'viable'. It defined viability as the baby having the potential to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid, and placed this term at between 24-28 weeks.

The court also held that abortion after viability must also be available in order to protect a woman's health, and this 'health' was defined broadly in a companion case called 'Doe vs. Bolton'.

The court based its ruling on its desire to protect personal freedoms and privacy. A woman should be able to make medical decisions involving her health along with her doctor, and the government should in no way be interfering in this process.

Of course never anywhere in their ruling did the court recognize the very apparent fact that there is not just one life, not just one person's health, being affected by a decision to abort. There is a baby alive inside of the mother.

New Life in Death for a Moral Compass

"He has now been gathered by the Lord, in whom he trusted."

Those are the words of Fr. George Butler, who administered the last rites of the Church on Thursday to one Richard John Neuhaus.

At age 72, the former Lutheran clergyman turned Catholic priest died after a short battle against the cancer with which he had been diagnosed in late 2008.

If you moved on after having caught a blurb of his passing on the TV news, or having seen a headline in a newspaper the past couple days, wondering why the big deal about a priest's death from cancer, you moved on too quickly.

This was not simply the death of your Average Joe after one of life's most common end games. This was, as Philadelphia's great newspaper The Bulletin called it, the loss of a "moral compass."

Fr. Neuhaus was one of the leading voices in the Church and in the country in defense of the millions of innocent children butchered each year in abortion procedures.

He was said to be an articulate defender of Catholic orthodoxy, and perhaps the leading conservative Catholic voice in the country.

Fr. Neuhaus also had a vision, the dream of many of today's Catholics, to see the Lord's Church whole again.

Pulling Back the Curtain

I've been thinking about it for a couple of years now, but just never had the nerve. Either I was going to be too embarrassed, or I was fearful of exposing my face to someone that I might have to see on a regular basis.

So it was with a little bit of nervousness that this past Saturday I entered the confessional at church and finally pulled back the curtain for a face-to-face confession.

Penance is one of the seven Sacraments of the Catholic Church, instituted by Jesus Christ Himself "in which forgiveness of sins committed after Baptism is granted through the priest's absolution to those who with true sorrow confess their sins and promise to satisfy for the same."

We are all sinners, we all commit sins, some of us more frequently and heinously than others. We need to seek forgiveness in order to restore our full relationship with God, and He has provided us the means through the intervention of His Son.

When you enter into the Sacrament of Penance, what is known commonly in the Church as 'confession', the misconception is that you are telling your sins to a man, the priest, and that he forgives you. That is simply not the case.

The power to forgive sins rests with God alone. However, he utlizes his blessed priests to act as ministers or confessors in humanizing the process. It is wholly necessary that we come to confession prepared to honestly evaluate our thoughts and actions, and to confess those that have broken our relationship with the Lord.

Gianna Jessen Survived Modern Holocaust

Gianna Jessen is one of the few survivors of a holocaust that has raged in a war that has been waged across our country for more than 3 1/2 decades, and that continues to be waged around the world every single day.

It is a holocaust that has claimed over a billion human beings worldwide since 1980 alone, more than three times the number killed in any 'conventional' war.

Gianna Jessen, you see, is a survivor of the immoral Abortion Wars.

She is not a mother who had complications during an abortion and survived. No, Gianna Jessen is an aborted baby! One who survived, lived, and grew despite all prognostications to the contrary.

Her mother was 17 years old when she found out that she was pregnant and decided to have a saline abortion. In this abortion procedure, which is now only rarely practiced, a needle is inserted into the abdomen to remove amniotic fluid. A strong salt solution is then injected, poisoning the baby and badly burning its lungs and skin, and resulting in a birth within 24 hours.

Gianna was burned in the womb for over 18 hours, but somehow survived, albeit at around 2 pounds of weight, and was born in an L.A. abortion clinic. Doctors gave her little chance of living.

Fox's 'Choice'

This past Saturday night, the Fox News Channel aired a compelling one-hour program titled "Facing Reality: Choice". 

In the program, Fox followed a trio of women as they went through their own particular "choice" process after learning that they were pregnant.

The women, their circumstances, their attitudes, and finally their choices could not have been more heterogeneous.

Kayla is a beautiful woman in her low-20's, born and raised in a practicing Christian environment by her strongly pro-life mother. As a teenager, she took the "chastity pledge" and wore a "purity ring" to acknowledge her commitment to remain a virgin until marriage.

She herself was strongly anti-drug, and like her mom, thought of herself as strongly pro-life. Then she went to college, turned into a partier, experimented with drugs, met a guy, got pregnant.

Her unmarried roommate was also pregnant, and they had frequent girl-chats about how fun it was going to be having their kids at the same time, and raising them as friends.

Big problems popped up though (imagine that) when Kayla's "partner" (read: baby's daddy) didn't want to raise a child. Suddenly Kayla was preparing to become a single mother.

With her future on the line, she was after all trying to graduate from beauty school, Kayla made the "difficult" choice to have an abortion, against everything that she had previously believed in as a theory. She even was able to enlist her mom's support in the project, and mom attended the actual abortion procedure with her.