The Choice is Clear, Even if the Progs Don't Want You to Think So.

By Cathy of Alex

Hi, I’m Cathy of Alex of The Recovering Dissident Catholic blog! I thank the Hadleybloggers for inviting me to their forum. You can read more about me on my blog but, just to let you know, I tend to compose blog posts that are informed by my beliefs as a Roman Catholic. For a long time I was Catholic in Name Only (CINO), hence my blog title. I have an insiders understanding of what makes dissenting and progressive Roman Catholics tick because I was one for a long time. I will probably blog about things that are not directly Catholic but in all things, I’m informed by my faith. Unlike most politicians, I make no effort or claims at divorcing my faith from my life. I can’t. Impossible. My Faith IS my life. Period.

Gentle Reader: If there is one thing you can always count on the so-called progressives among us for, it’s a distortion or a complete misrepresentation of the issues. In this post I am applying my lens to the progressive Roman Catholic folks but you can probably say much of the same about much of the liberal left these days.

I’ve ranted about the language of “common ground” and “common good” on my blog before. I believe we saw in the U.S. election just past the politics of common ground ascendant. My take on this push towards commonality is that it’s dangerous to folks like me who have principles that we live by that we’d be willing to die for to defend. I believe, wholeheartedly, that this current push toward commonality is an effort to water everything down that is too challenging, that’s too difficult, that stands in the way of the policies the liberal left would like to legislate.

In my humble opinion, you can see the push for commonality most easily and frequently these days in matters of sexual morality and life issues.

If you listened closely to President Obama’s Inaugural speech you may have heard him say, “On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.” Then, he found religion appropriate for proving his next point and talked about “the time has come to set aside childish things”

I could not help but read between the lines: “Those of you who hold to beliefs that are going to hinder me from enacting legislation that conflicts with dogmas you profess better forget about them and join me.” What did the President do in his first week? Overturn the ban on OUR tax dollars funding contraception and abortion overseas (the “Mexico City Legislation”), as well as removing the block on using embryonic stem cells for research. I’m shocked that he even bothered to wait until the day AFTER the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. I’m not sure what he thought he was accomplishing by even waiting a day: showing the pro-lifers that he wasn’t tactless enough to enact them on the 22nd of January, but kind enough to the anti-life crowd to enact what he promised them soon after election? In any case, I feel we just saw duplicity in action. Mr. President you can’t be everything to everyone. If the timing was an attempt at that, it will never work. What you just did is unacceptable-at any time. Maybe he’ll sign legislation for gay ‘marriage’ on the day after the Feast of the Holy Family.

The President would have us believe that he just acted for all of us, for the common good. I still fail to realize how, literally, killing our future in a nation that is already teetering on the edge of a demographic death spiral is supposed to help us. But he would not have us fear, because we have immigrants to help us make up the numbers of unborn dead and elderly and handicapped euthanized among us. Note how he did not open his speech with “My fellow Americans” but “My fellow citizens” which sounded like an attempt not to exclude those residing in our borders who are not, legally, Americans. After all, he won a large bloc of votes on his immigration policy pronouncements.

The President is not Roman Catholic but he is not a friend to many Catholic dogmas or beliefs.

The worse enemies however, and I always say this, are the ones within.

Which brings me to the progressive Catholic sets and their horrifying efforts to lessen the seriousness of FOCA, the Freedom of Choice Act. FOCA, which President Obama has vowed to make a top priority (and we know he has already made good on his campaign promises to be no friend to life), will allow our tax dollars to fund abortion, remove the conscious rights of healthcare providers, and allow partial birth abortion among other horrors.

The USCCB (United State Conference of Catholic Bishops) has called all Catholics to write their legislators beginning this weekend expressing their opposition to enactment of FOCA. In an article that had me believing the National Catholic Reporter has completely hit rock bottom and should rename themselves Protestants Pretending to Be Catholics Reporter, the publication has the audacity to not only claim FOCA will have no impact on closing Catholic hospitals but they also belittle what the FOCA law really does.

It’s ridiculous to seriously claim that FOCA will have no impact on Catholic healthcare, and that the bishops and online community are mass hysterics for even being concerned about its potential enactment. Of course its enactment will have an impact on Catholic healthcare. Even if FOCA itself is never enacted, what about the adverse impact of a similar piece of legislation? If Catholic healthcare is to maintain the core Roman Catholic principals it was founded under, bishops and Catholic healthcare systems will have no choice but to close their facilities, if by keeping them open they are forced to perform procedures (like abortion) that are contrary to their principles. Yes, we all know, unfortunately, some Catholic healthcare systems that have caved into pressure and done things that are contrary to Catholic beliefs but we are talking, with FOCA, national law here, not state law. If Obama has a vision of universal healthcare and enacts FOCA he will have his healthcare, but also a large gap in facilities to provide it because many of them will close.

NCRep misses another point. Frankly, who cares if all our hospitals close if abortion on demand is the-trying to hold the line on our principles in the face of brutal persecution will be. Honestly, there probably won’t be enough people left alive to even use any hospitals or clinics still open: ½ being aborted and the other ½ euthanized. (I have not addressed euthanasia much in this post, but I can already see that coming as legislation on a national level.)

The progs are making an attempt to try and get Catholics not to participate in the anti-FOCA postcard campaign by making it sound like yet another "ridiculous" demand by the "out of touch" USCCB and not worth our time getting excited about or participating in because it’s just not that critical. Now that we are all one big common family we need to quit believing in what sets us apart and just forget our individual principles in the name of “getting along”. They are wrong. Dead wrong. I find it curious that the only “common principles” are the ones liberals favor and the ones conservatives favor are “individual”; as if we are a nation of common believers with just a few rogue individuals who can’t get with the liberal program mucking things up. The commonality proponents don’t want the anti-FOCA postcard campaign either because they’d have us believe that by sacrificing others our lives can be better. How can a society that kills the weak, the defenseless and the aged to feed itself be anything but corrupt?

Some of our best science fiction has dealt with this very issue: Logan’s Run, Soylent Green, The Matrix. The best science fiction usually has a basis in reality. Somedays it seems like horror, not sci fi.