Democratic Platform Includes Free Abortions, Official ‘Gay Marriage’ Support

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Posted on September 6, 2012 by Fr Gregory Jensen

(Source: Catholics For The Common Good).

By Michelle Bauman

Charlotte, NC, Sep 5, 2012 (CNA/EWTN News)– For the first time in American history, a major U.S. political party has incorporated support for a redefinition of marriage into its official statement of beliefs.

The Democratic Party’s platform, formally adopted at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. on Sept. 4, supports “marriage equality,” a phrase used by those who wish to redefine marriage to include homosexual couples.

The platform, which outlines the party’s official views on a variety of subjects, called for the full repeal of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act that defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman for federal purposes and protects states from being forced to recognize the gay unions of other states.

It also called for the passage of the so-called Respect for Marriage Act, which would require the federal government to recognize same-sex “marriages.”

While the document voiced support for the freedom of “churches and religious entities” to determine how “marriage as a religious sacrament” should be administered, it did not include any mention of individuals or groups that hold religious objections to recognizing and supporting civil marriage.

It also noted that the administration has redefined the word “family” in immigration regulations to include homosexual relationships.

Affirming its support of abortion with no restrictions, a redefinition of marriage and free birth control for all women, the Democratic Party said in its official statement of positions that it is committed to “pursuing policies that truly value families.”

The platform also recognized the importance of good fathers and noted President Obama’s initiatives to support and encourage fatherhood.

“We all have a stake in forging stronger bonds between fathers and their children,” it said.

The president has drawn criticism for acknowledging the irreplaceable role of fathers while at the same time undermining this important role by supporting “same-sex marriage,” which renders fathers unnecessary and optional.

The Democratic platform also removed references to “God” but noted that faith-based organizations have played a “central” role throughout American history. It called for “constitutionally sound, evidence-based partnerships with faith-based and other non-profit organizations to serve those in need and advance our shared interests.”

“There is no conflict between supporting faith-based institutions and respecting our Constitution,” the document said, “and a full commitment to both principles is essential for the continued flourishing of both faith and country.”

At the same time, the party voiced its support for the controversial federal mandate that requires employers to offer health care plans that include free contraception, sterilization and early abortion-inducing drugs, even if doing so violates their consciences.

Widely criticized for its infringement upon conscience rights and freedom of religion, the mandate has drawn the opposition of individuals and organizations from across the religious and political spectrum, including objections from bishops in every Catholic diocese in the U.S.

However, the Democratic Party’s official statement of beliefs argued that the president “has respected the principle of religious liberty” in promoting “affordable family planning services.”

The party reiterated its commitment to “safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay” and opposed any restrictions or attempts to “weaken or undermine that right.”

In addition, it observed that Obama issued an executive order to repeal restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research and voiced support for “evidence-based and age-appropriate sex education,” although it did not elaborate on which types of sex education it considers to meet these criteria.

The platform also said that America must advance its “core set of universal values” around the world.

“President Obama and the Democratic Party are committed to supporting family planning around the globe,” it said, highlighting the president’s decision to overturn the Mexico City Policy, which bans U.S. funds from supporting foreign family planning groups that promote or perform abortions.

Insisting that “gay rights are human rights,” the party also said that the State Department is currently “funding a program that finances gay rights organizations” and vowed to “actively combat” the actions of other nations that it believes are engaged in “discrimination.”

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Metropolitan Hilarion: The Eucharist and Culture

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Fr Gregory Jensen

Recently, his Eminence Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, Head of the DECR, spoke to Roman Catholic bishops, clergy and laity participating in the 50th International Eucharistic Congress that took place in Dublin, Ireland from 10–17 June 2012. You can find the complete text of the presentation on Dom Mark Daniel Kirby’s blog Vultus Christi. An American, Dom Kirby is the Prior of Silverstream Priory in Stamullen, County Meath, Ireland.

In his own introduction to Metropolitan Hilarion’s presentation, Fr Mark writes that in his view “no speaker at the IEC delivered a message more reflective of the thinking of Pope Benedict XVI on the current crisis in faith and culture.” Having not attended I can’t attest to the accuracy of Father’s comparison of Pope Benedict and Metropolitan Hilarion’s thinking. What I can say, however, is that the Metropolitan has accurately diagnosed the spiritual problem we face in America and in his teaching on the centrality of the Eucharist offered us a way past our current situation. If this is the thinking of the current pope as well, then thank God!

I have posted the conclusion of Metropolitan Hilarion’s talk after the break. The subheadings are Fr Mark’s.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory Continue reading →

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The Sons of Caesar, Still Pulling Peter Down

Posted on June 26, 2012 by Fr Gregory Jensen

The children of Caesar are assured of their own expertise, and overly invested in the social validation that comes from being compassionate in precisely the correct ways; they are too smart to have ever bothered learning what the Church actually teaches, why she teaches it and what possible intent lies behind those teachings besides oppression” and control” over peoples feelings, chromosomes, and orgasms. Just leave,” runs their evangelistic message, because your church is clearly unwilling to surrender to the authority of the times and the latest moral trends. The sons and daughters of Caesar have always found the church to be disorienting: It does not perform the expected oblations at their printing presses and editorial boards; it does not acquiesce to tantrums or feet-stamping; it does not recognize the celestial language of people so highly credentialed by earthly entities that they feel empowered to birth prophetic new modalities of being.

The Church cannot recognize everything that is humanly ordained because it has been divinely ordained. Its charge is not to simply echo the zeitgeist but to deliver us from it; to free us from the rigid rootedness of right now,” where ideas become bronzed and erected and proclaimed as the new eternal rightness, until they are tumbled and replaced by the next generation claiming its idolatrous moment.

Read the whole essay here.

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Catholic & Orthodox Can Work Together

Posted on June 14, 2012 by Fr Gregory Jensen

Metropolitan Hilarion, responsible for the external relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, pointed out the joint tasks of members of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches in a world characterized by materialism and consumerism at a meeting on Pentecost with the Executive President of the Pontifical Foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). “We must not wait for unity of the churches to take action,” stated Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev of Volokolamsk, who is Chairman of the Department of External Church Relations of the Patriarchate of Moscow. “The Eucharistic union will not come about within a few years.” Today, however, there is already a “strategic alliance in fields of common interest,” said Hilarion at the meeting in Moscow. According to ACN’s Executive President, Johannes von Heereman, it is possible “to act jointly” in these fields. For Hilarion and Heereman these fields include assistance for the persecuted Christians in Arab and Islamic countries, where “the situation for Christians has deteriorated dramatically,” as well as the common Christian values regarding protection of life and with respect to marriage and family, which suffer to an exceptional extent from secularization, and finally theological training. They also saw specific fields in the exchange between students and intensification of spirituality. Both agreed that it was necessary to “pursue new approaches and cast off the burdens of the past.” In the view of Hilarion, who is considered number two in the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church, meetings and joint activities are needed to this end. In this context he referred to his encounter with Curial Cardinal Kurt Koch, the Prefect of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, at the conference held by Aid to the Church in Need in Würzburg in March 2011. He stated that there was interest in projects “that bring us closer together.” The Russian Orthodox has been working together with Aid to the Church in Need for a long time now, he added, and people are grateful for the assistance received in recent decades. In view of the challenges facing the churches, as Hilarion and Heereman emphasized, it is now important to “to look into the future together.”

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Islam, Orthodox Christianity and Post-Modernism

Posted on June 11, 2012 by Fr Gregory Jensen

Russian Orthodox Church, Petropavlovsk (Photo credit: GlobalCitizen01)

Off this morning to teach at Acton University. I’m presenting a lecture on asceticism and consumerism. My thesis is that consumerism is not the fruit of a particular economic system but of human sinfulness. Yes, a given system might very well be more (or less) fertile ground for consumerism, but from my own perspective as an Orthodox Christian and social scientists, consumerism as such requires first and foremost an ascetical response. Anyway, for those who are interested, I’ll post at least my notes later this week.

What I wanted to offer today are a few brief thoughts about the recent scholarly debate about whether or not Muhammad actually existed (you can read an excellent summary of the discussion here). Let me say up front, the scholarship that underlines the historical debate is well beyond my area of familiarity much less competency. My own scholarly frailties aside however, the discussion does raise an interesting question for the pastoral life of the Orthodox Church. Continue reading →

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Religious freedom, freedom of conscience

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Fr Gregory Jensen

Let’s keep something clear. My role as a priest, and the bishops’ role as bishops, is to form and support the laity for their proper role in the public square. It is the role of lay people to shape the world around them according to their vocations. I (or, even more, the bishops) will teach, give you the sacraments, and support you. The work of the public square is really your work, lay people, not mine. Remember that when you think bishops aren’t being strong enough in the public square. We clerics know that you lay people often face in your daily lives challenges that would make many of us roll up in a ball and hide under the covers. On the other hand, the Enemy of your soul hates priests and bishops with surpassing malice. We live every day knowing that we go to our judgment with Holy Orders upon our souls and to those to whom God has given much, more will be expected. As Augustine said, “I am a bishop for you, but I am a Christian with you.” Neither portion of God’s poor little servants should fall into the trap of thinking that the other has anything easy in life.

***

For years now we have been subject to the pro-abortion mantra, “it is my body and my choice” (and of course we believe that is incorrect as there are other lives — other bodies — at stake), but now it seems the mantra must be, “it is my body, my choice, on your dollar.”

Read the rest of Bishop Robert Morlino’s essay here.

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It Is the Person, Not Just the Principle

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Fr Gregory Jensen

Catholics for the Common Good
From: Catholics For The Common Good

Full text of address given by William B. May to the Stand Up For Religious Freedom Rally in front of the HHS Region Nine Headquarters in San Francisco, March 23, 2012. Over 1,000 people attended.

by William B May

A few years ago, Father Michael Sweeney, president of the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley told a group of us, “If you are going to die for something, never die for a principle, only die for another person.” We have been pondering this every since as we reflect on the causes we fight for.

Now, Fr. Sweeney wasn’t saying that principles are not important – they guide society and guide government. But the reason we fight for principles is the good of the human person – each having infinite value and dignity.

The First Amendment is supposed to protect us from the tyranny of government forcing us to violate our consciences formed by our faiths. But it is important to remember, the reason we don’t want to violate our consciences is not just a matter of principle, but a matter of not wanting to do what we know will cause harm to other people. The harm could be physical, emotional, or spiritual – it does not matter.

Archbishop designate William Lori recently used the analogy for the HHS mandate of the government forcing Jewish delis to violate Jewish dietary laws because customers want a pork sandwiches. To someone not familiar with or having respect for the Halakah they may not think that is a big deal, but for an observant Jew keeping kosher is a response – a participation in a covenant with Almighty God. It is beautiful. It has a deep spiritual significance and value. To force someone to violate that covenant, is to do harm to the person.

Religions provide a moral voice in society to help us resist the temptation to make laws to merely suit ourselves. By helping us know right from wrong and what causes spiritual, physical or emotional harm to another, our faith teaches us to fight for a just society.

Not everyone agrees on what is right or wrong, and today we have too many laws that provide people with the freedom to do harm to other people. Many believe the value of the person is determined by their ability –a disabled person has no right to live if the disability is detected before they are born. People are free to create children with the intention of depriving them of their fundamental human right to know and, as far as possible, be cared for by their mothers and fathers.

But we are not here today to debate what is right or wrong. The question is whether anyone should be compelled by the power of government, by the President of the United States to promote and pay for what we know will cause harm to our brothers and sisters. While medical schools have long since taken this phrase out to the Hippocratic oath, no matter what, based on what we know to be true and good, “we will do no harm.”

Turning to the HHS Mandate, some of us know, when chemicals are given to healthy women to make them unhealthy to the point that they cannot sustain and support the human life growing within them, this causes harm. People can disagree and debate whether ending a human life is harmful, but for those who know it, don’t force us to do it, don’t force us to promote it, don’t force us to pay for it. We will do no harm!

We know that mutilating healthy persons to make their reproductive systems unhealthy for no medical reason does harm. People can disagree and debate whether human mutilation causes harm, but for those who know it causes harm, don’t force us to do it, don’t force us to promote it, don’t force us to pay for it. We will do no harm!

While we Christians are commanded to love our neighbors, our brothers and sisters, President Obama commands us to do what we know will cause harm. We will cause no harm!

All we are seeking, Mr. President, is the freedom to do no harm. You can fine our institutions – our hospitals and schools – you can send your marshals to shut them down, but when you do, you will find us standing in the doorway, arm and arm. Why? Because we will do no harm!

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Levin and Douthat on Religious Institutional Decline

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Fr Gregory Jensen

From Michael Moreland at Mirror of Justice comes this:

The proximate purpose is a review of Charles Murray‘s new book Coming Apart, but my friend and former colleague Yuval Levin and Ross Douthat offer perceptive comments about the role of religious institutions and the problem of their decline in American life here and here. From Yuval:

[T]he cultural disaster Murray describes seems to be a failing of America’s moral (and therefore largely its religious) institutions. And although he does not put it this way, Coming Apart is a scathing indictment of American social conservatism.

Social conservatism serves two kinds of purposes in a liberal society: We might call them justice and order. In the cause of justice, it speaks up for the weak and the oppressed, defending them from abuse by the powerful, and vindicating basic human dignity. In the cause of order, it helps us combat our human failings and vices, and argues for self-discipline and responsibility. Think of abolition on the one hand and temperance on the other.

In our time, American social conservatism has much to be proud of as a movement for justice: Social conservatives devote themselves to the pro-life cause, to human rights, and to the plight of the poor abroad. But American social conservatism has almost entirely lost interest in the cause of order—in standing up for clean living, for self-discipline and restraint, for resisting temptation and meeting basic responsibilities. The institutions of American Christianity—some of which would actually stand a chance of being taken seriously by the emerging lower class—are falling down on the job, as their attention is directed to more exciting causes, in no small part because the welfare state has overtaken some of their key social functions.

The cultural revival essential to addressing the crisis Murray describes is barely imaginable as long as this remains the case. Indeed, whether such a revival is imaginable under any circumstances is by no means clear in Murray’s telling. Surely an all-out return to the condition from which he says we have fallen seems far out of reach. But this may have as much to do with the particular cultural high-point against which Murray has chosen to measure our current state as with the potential for a moral revival in American life.

And then from Douthat, with a particular lesson for Catholic colleges and universities:

[R]eligious belief offers one of the most few motivators that might be potent enough to persuade a high-achiever to choose a life outside the SuperZips. (Just ask Ignatius of Loyola, or Francis of Assisi, or …) And even in their weakened state, our religious institutions — with their flar-flung networks of parishes and ministries and schools in need of leadership — offer a more plausible mechanism than most other professions for seeding middle America with the talented and energetic. What’s more, faith itself can have a leveling effect in a stratified society, and supply a common ground for people from very different walks of life: Under some circumstances, at least, a young Princeton-educated pastor might be better equipped to minister to a blue-collar community than a Princeton-educated social worker or Teach For America participant. To the extent that the kind of upper class civic reawakening that Murray calls for is even a remotely plausible answer to the current social crisis, then, it would probably have to be a religious awakening as well

Moreland’s essay raises, or should raise, questions for Orthodox Christians as well. This is especially so for Orthodox Christians living in America. Continue reading →

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Marxism, Libertarianism or Asceticism?

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Fr Gregory Jensen

In light of Metropolitan Jonah‘s recent take at the American Enterprise Institute (see here and here), I thought this from The American Conservative essay on libertarianism of interest:

Free spirits, the ambitious, ex-socialists, drug users, and sexual eccentrics often find an attractive political philosophy in libertarianism, the idea that individual freedom should be the sole rule of ethics and government. Libertarianism offers its believers a clear conscience to do things society presently restrains, like make more money, have more sex, or take more drugs. It promises a consistent formula for ethics, a rigorous framework for policy analysis, a foundation in American history, and the application of capitalist efficiencies to the whole of society. But while it contains substantial grains of truth, as a whole it is a seductive mistake.

There are many varieties of libertarianism, from natural-law libertarianism (the least crazy) to anarcho-capitalism (the most), and some varieties avoid some of the criticisms below. But many are still subject to most of them, and some of the more successful varieties—I recently heard a respected pundit insist that classical liberalism is libertarianism—enter a gray area where it is not really clear that they are libertarians at all. But because 95 percent of the libertarianism one encounters at cocktail parties, on editorial pages, and on Capitol Hill is a kind of commonplace “street” libertarianism, I decline to allow libertarians the sophistical trick of using a vulgar libertarianism to agitate for what they want by defending a refined version of their doctrine when challenged philosophically. We’ve seen Marxists pull that before.

This is no surprise, as libertarianism is basically the Marxism of the Right. If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism. Society in fact requires both individualism and collectivism, both selfishness and altruism, to function. Like Marxism, libertarianism offers the fraudulent intellectual security of a complete a priori account of the political good without the effort of empirical investigation. Like Marxism, it aspires, overtly or covertly, to reduce social life to economics. And like Marxism, it has its historical myths and a genius for making its followers feel like an elect unbound by the moral rules of their society.

Read the rest: Marxism of the Right.

A just economic order, to say nothing of a just civil society, requires not only good laws but a virtuous citizenry. Good laws in the hands of bad men, as Plato reminds us, makes us worse than slaves, they make us fools. Continue reading →

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