Often the American sense of how others view our politics is one of finally moving left to a more liberal position. One cornerstone of that agenda is the perversion of maternal health into the unrestricted, encouraged and taxpayer funded slaughter of the innocent. We remember, for example, when more than 200,000 Germans rallied in front of Berlin’s Victory Column to support presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008. Not everyone fits this stereotype of foreign hopes for America.
Msgr. Ignacio Barreiro-Carámbula is a Doctor of Dogmatic Theology and head of Human Life International’s Rome office. He recently shared his outsider perspective on Catholic Exchange.
For example, almost two years ago a majority of American voters elected a man because he breezily promised “Hope” and “Change,” and too few thought to ask such basic questions as: Hope in whom? Or Change to what, precisely, and from what? A religious fervor seemed to overtake masses of people for whom actual religion has obviously become an afterthought, and they suspended all critical thought in order to float away on a sea of make believe hope and liberal change.
Yet such seas can be much rockier than the salesman leads us to believe. This man elected by Americans seems to be on an economic kamikaze mission, he acts as if he is embarrassed to represent your nation abroad, he spurns historical American allies while indicating to the scoundrels of the world that they belong among the elite, he does not attend services on Sunday, then seems surprised that some question his commitment to his faith” truly one could go on and on about the many problems that this man presents to the nation that elected him.
But the most troubling thing one notices when paying close attention to the president’s actions is his utter disregard for the human person. It appears that every initiative he is enthusiastic about is designed to diminish the person, and increase his dependency on government to live his life for him.
That is, for those persons who are actually allowed to live their lives. We already know the staggering toll taken by legalized abortion, and we know that the current president has without qualification supported every expansion of the murderous procedure he has ever had the opportunity to support. Not that he would agree that killing these tiny human beings is murder: Like many, he thinks that some human beings are persons worthy of life, and some human beings are not persons, and thus may be destroyed for any reason whatsoever.
The historical, philosophical and moral problems are ones that the president, and most other proponents of abortion refuse to confront, at least openly. If we agree that all persons should be protected and allowed to live until their natural death, then to make abortion and euthanasia legal, we have to find ways to deny the personhood of those who are not wanted.
The problem for those who buy into this bifurcation between humanity and personhood is first historical: this is exactly the formula employed by every mass murderer in history. It is the semantic of oppression, a procedure through which the groups that are targeted to be destroyed or exploited are described with traits that go from having human deficiencies to even denying their humanity. Once this semantic takes hold, those in power go about destroying the newly-depersonalized.
The second problem is philosophical: What exactly determines why this human being should live, and this other one should not? Those who claim that the difference is one of an ability to demonstrate conscience and will or some other more or less measurable trait always ignore the fact that such traits are often transitory. I can be sentient one minute, non-sentient the next, then back to my old self. A baby starts life with very limited conscience and will and all of us run the risk of ending our lives with a diminished state of consciousness. These criteria are also notoriously subjective and subject to revision.
The undeniable fact is that those who defend the destruction of innocent human life in the form of abortion and euthanasia cannot confront the moral issues, nor can they confront the history that proves beyond a doubt the similarity between their reasoning and that of the most heinous murderers of history.
Read the whole article entitled Politics and the American Person.
Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person — among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.
CCC 2270
My hope and change – that Americans recognize their complicity in the murder of 1.37 million babies every year. This is the termination of life itself. No faithful Catholic can possibly vote for a pro-abortion candidate over a pro-life one, regardless of ANY other consideration.
In the time it took you to read this post, a dozen more babies were killed.
Share Your Thoughts