There’s a startling irony in the Bishop’s statement concerning Senator Joe Biden’s remarks on abortion on last week’s Meet The Press.
When asked when life begins or when rights are granted Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi all awkwardly dragged their religion into the debate. I think it’s safe to say that the reason they’re on the Sunday morning shows is because they’re politicians. The question of when life begins is put to them because they’re lawmakers, not because they’re great Christian thinkers. Yet oddly, they insist on answering the question solely on religious grounds.
But the funny thing is that while these lawmakers dragged their religions into the debate about abortion, the bishops have consistently pointed to the logic and the science concerning the life issue.
The bishops wrote in their statement published yesterday:
However, the Senator’s claim that the beginning of human life is a “personal and private” matter of religious faith, one which cannot be “imposed” on others, does not reflect Catholic teaching. The Church teaches that the obligation to protect unborn human life rests on the answer to two questions, neither of which is private or specifically religious.
The first is a biological question: When does a new human life begin? When is there a new living organism of the human species, distinct from mother and father and ready to develop and mature if given a nurturing environment? While ancient thinkers had little verifiable knowledge to help them answer this question, today embryology textbooks confirm that a new human life begins at conception (see www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/bioethic/fact298.shtml). The Catholic Church does not teach this as a matter of faith; it acknowledges it as a matter of objective fact…While in past centuries biological knowledge was often inaccurate, modern science leaves no excuse for anyone to deny the humanity of the unborn child. Protection of innocent human life is not an imposition of personal religious conviction but a demand of justice.
It’s almost an axiom that religion and science are at odds (see Galileo) but I’ve noticed that when it comes to the life issue, religious people keep pointing to science and the supposedly logical lawmakers insist on dragging scientific questions into the murkier realm of their religious convictions.
These politicians insist that they can’t impose their religion on others but they seem to be dragging it into the political sphere every chance they get. It seems to me that the pro-choicers are on shaky ground when they can’t or won’t speak to the logic of their cause.
September 10, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Ack! Next thing you know these Left-wing nuts will want to bring religion into the classroom!
September 10, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Ah, but they already HAVE brought it into the classroom – Atheism, of the militant stripe. Don’t forget, the Left has always felt it was a solemn religious obligation to impose their will on others, aka to “educate the stupid” (see Richard Owen, the Labadists, the Shakers, the violent abolitionists, the Populists, the Progressives, the Eugenicists, the Liberals, the Socialists, the Communists, the National Socialists, and our very own Democratic Party). Yet another battleground in the war that has raged since time began.
September 10, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Bravo, Peter. Well said.
September 10, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Keep up the pressure. No amount of propaganda can win the liberals the debate on abortion if they have to argue against both for and against the input of religion, while still refusing to acknowledge the recent developments in biology.
September 10, 2008 at 10:32 pm
I am giving Sen. Biden a small round of applause for at least stating that he believes that Life begins at contraception.
Having faith in a fact does not reduce the factuality of the matter. I have faith that 3+4=7, and it is conveniently also a fact.
I don’t think he knows the catechism with regard to the higher responsibilities of public officials on critical issues such as abortion, but that is another matter.
JBP
September 10, 2008 at 11:09 pm
“I don’t think he [Biden] knows the catechism with regard to the higher responsibilities of public officials on critical issues such as abortion, but that is another matter.”
Given the overwhelming attention given the matter of abortion, conception, and life issues, and the unremitting teachings of his/our Church over the course of forty years, that is like stating that Biden doesn’t know that Delaware is in North America.
But as his candidate for President thinks that the USA consists of 57 states, perhaps Biden needs to consult an atlas as well as a catechism. Or just consult a confessor.
September 11, 2008 at 2:13 am
I have a great confessor for Senator Biden in a Carmelite priest in my parish….