Thursday, October 11, 2012

THANKSGIVING TERROR


It was the Friday after Thanksgiving, 2010, and I was doing what most folks were doing: enjoying the extra holiday, relaxing with my family, and eating leftovers. Just as I was about to settle down for a “long winter’s nap” I got a call. “Tim. You have to come down here. You won’t believe what they’re doing.”

The caller continued in a mixture of panic and details. I replied, “Okay, I’ll be right there.”  I fumbled around for some presentable clothes and my flip-flops, still not quite sure what this was all about, and headed down the road...to the Legislature. The caller herself had also been at home. The Legislature was in session and she had been watching on TV.

It was already late when the Speaker called for a discussion on Bill 54 - the informed consent for abortion bill which had been at the heart of much controversy prior to the recent election. The words “Bill 54” caught my friend’s attention and within minutes it was obvious that something had gone terribly wrong.

The television feed showed the Speaker banging the gavel insisting that Senator Calvo - the author of the bill - proceed. Calvo, who had apparently just arrived, looked desperately around asking “Has this been accepted, has this been acc...(gavel pounds again).

The reason Senator Calvo was asking “Has this been accepted?” was because an entirely different bill had been substituted on the Floor. Such a thing is not unheard of but in order for a bill to be substituted or amended during a legislative session there must be a motion to accept and a vote. There was neither.

Calvo knew the requirement, but having arrived late, did not know if the procedure had occurred earlier; and, seeing his bill completely stripped of every important provision, rightly asked the Speaker if the substitute had been accepted. There was no answer, just the pounding of the Speaker’s gavel and her insistence that Calvo proceed. So Calvo proceeded.

My friend had also hurried down to the Legislature and was watching through the glass when I arrived. She looked at me and shook her head. It took me awhile to figure out what was going on. I didn’t know yet of the impostor bill and thought that Bill 54, as authored, was being debated.

Senator Calvo was arguing to place key information provisions back into the bill, provisions I knew were already in the bill. It didn’t make sense. One of the senators who co-sponsored the bill saw me through the glass and came out to explain.

The Chairman of the Rules Committee had rewritten the bill, gutting all the key information relative to abortion risks and left only information about the risks of carrying a child to term. So a bill, which would have required an abortionist to advise a patient of the risks of abortion would now, amazingly, only require the abortionist to advise the patient of the risks of keeping her child. In short, Bill 54 was now an abortionist’s dream come true.

Calvo tried to put back the key provisions but was roundly voted down by the majority on each occasion. I watched in sick amazement as I listened to senators, some of whom are prominent Catholics, stand and argue against providing information to a woman about her unborn child and the risks and even the alternatives to abortion.

But the low point of the session was a rant by one senator against the use of the words “unborn child”. The senator wanted the term stricken from the bill. I do not exaggerate when I call it a “rant”. You can watch it for yourself at Esperansa.org. It was nothing less than a vicious attack on the very idea that the fetus might be human. Simply staggering.

It has now been nearly 21 months since that Friday night. There is still no informed consent for abortion requirement for Guam. And at a rate of one abortion every 1.2 days, that means 525 more babies have been sucked, scraped, and yanked from their mother’s wombs and thrown in the trash along with the bill that might have saved at least some.

At the very least, Bill 54 would have required that pregnant mothers be advised of the availability of adoption. Child Protective Services recently advised that they have a waiting list of parents but haven’t had a child available for adoption in FIVE YEARS!

And now, some of those same lawmakers, who made sure those mothers would never know about the parents who would have loved to raise the children whose bodies were thrown into the abortionist’s garbage, are once again waving to you at intersections.

All of the above is a matter of public record and has been documented and substantiated at Esperansa.org and GuamOpenGovernment.org

Monday, October 08, 2012

CARDINAL DOLAN: MORE DANGEROUS THAN THE PRESIDENT


This is a response to just a few of the things Cardinal Dolan said in his interview on FACE THE NATION with Bob Schieffer on April 8, 2012.



Forgive me, but I find Archbishop Dolan absolutely frightening, in fact, because he dresses in red, a much more dangerous man that the President.

Allow me a few examples from just this interview (or please ignore if you prefer)

DOLAN: “I think religion is vibrant. It's growing, the stats show us...” 

ME: This is an example of why our Church is in trouble: this mad infatuation with the “positive” that just isn’t there instead of dealing with the very ugly reality that has been gnawing away the innards of our Church for the last five decades. A 2012 CARA poll shows Dolan’s “vibrant” growth is an increase of 1% of those who attend Mass at least once a week over the last 7 years: 2005 = 23%, 2012 = 24%. And 24% in itself is a scandal.

DOLAN: “...we got a slight increase in-- in vocations to the priesthood...”
ME: Yes we did, 34 more. In 2005 there were 454 vocations. In 2012, 480. While his statement is not untrue, the increase is so small that it should not be trumpeted - at least not to the secular press. (BTW, in 1965 there were 995.)

DOLAN: “...recent scholarship has shown that John Kennedy was very inspired by vision, by character, by virtue, let's call that faith, let's call that morals.”

ME: This one REALLY SCARES ME. Kennedy? Morals? WTH? And then he says that Kennedy didn’t mean to say what he did?? Is there anything in the history of any of the Kennedy’s, then or now, that shows that JFK did not mean precisely what he said. Then he goes on to throw Santorum - the only Catholic in the room - under the bus. ABSOLUTELY FRIGHTENING!

DOLAN: “...although I appreciate very much the Vice President. He has been helpful and I-- I-- I have benefitted from his counsel and I look forward to talking to him again.

ME: OMG! OMG! OMG! HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM - no further comment.

DOLAN: I am a little confused, because the President told me his convict--- his position, his conviction is that the government would do nothing to impede religion. And he-- he was very gracious, and especially complimenting the Catholic family.

ME: UMMMMMMMMMM. GEEZ! Can anyone say “Neville Chamberlain”?

SHIEFFER: “...new Pew poll out that says sixty percent of Catholics say that churches and other houses of worship should just totally steer clear of politics.
DOLAN: Yeah. I do worry about that, Bob.

ME: Total contradiction to his belief in a vibrant, growing Church. (BTW, a Kaiser Family poll shows that the same % of Catholics support Obama’s mandate.)

DOLAN: You've got a dramatic, radical intrusion of a government bureaucracy into the internal life of the church that bothers me. So hear me say, hey, I'd like to back away from this, I got other things to worry about and bigger fish to fry than this.

ME: Dolan says it “bothers me”. Two problems. It’s not about him, and NEWS FLASH, this is a little bit bigger than a “bother”! And he’d “like to back away”. Yes, Cardinal, the President knows that, which is why he is riding you out on this. And you have “bigger fish to fry”? Yes, that’s because you only see this as a religious freedom issue and not the result of the radical rejection of Humanae Vitae for the past 40 plus years, a rejection strategically designed by your predecessor Bernardin and dutifully carried forward over the decades by your colleagues (save for a few). 

DOLAN: “I said there-- there may be reasons not to vote for Mitt Romney as President of the United States that he is a Mormon cannot be one of them.”

ME: At first I thought that this comment was praiseworthy. But upon another look, it is consistent with his other dangerous statements. We have before us two candidates: one, imperfect, the other, perfect. Obama is perfect, perfectly aligned with the Culture of Death. There has never been a president or a candidate with as perfect a pro-abortion rating as Barack Obama. He has 100% across the board. He even beats Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy who at least supported the Born Alive Act (the only pro-life credits to their names). For a Catholic, especially Dolan, there are NO reasons not to vote for Mitt Romney given the alternative (of course that presupposes that you even know or care about the moral gravity of abortion - something the Cardinal seems loath to illustrate given the confused, meandering, squeamish, and vacuous documents - life Faithful Citizenship - that emanate from his office.) 

And BTW, Dolan says the contraception debate is not over. This an interview from April 2012. The mandate went into effect on August 1. Most groups have renewed their insurance coverage by now which means that most of America is now under the mandate and paying for abortifacients. Have you heard any protest from Dolan or anyone else since? Are any hospitals or schools closing as threatened? As far as I know, the Archdiocese of Guam is the only diocese in America that has told Obama to screw himself. We have claimed the religious exemption for all of our institutions and told the government to come and get us - prove that we do not exist to inculcate Catholic values, prove that we do not “primarily” employ and serve those who subscribe to our religious tenets. Of course we serve everyone of all faiths or no faith, but a religious test is unconstitutional and we know we would win if the government ever tried to administer one. BTW, guess whose idea it was?

Other articles on the Danger of Dolan:

NOT A PARTICULARLY WWJD MOMENT
DOLAN, CHAMBERLAIN, & CHURCHILL

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