Pope Benedict XVI Blog

Election 2008 -- and the looming cultural crisis

RenewAmerica
January 22, 2009

By Joseph Pecar

The 2008 Election results portend monumental obstacles and setbacks to Catholics, evangelicals and other citizens working to preserve Judeo-Christian values within our culture — values such as respect for the dignity and sanctity of human life — values which are of such fundamental importance that they are guaranteed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. In truth, it is upon these very values that our Country has developed into the freest, fairest, most productive, wealthiest and most powerful nation the World has ever known.

From our Country's inception, history confirms this wholesome aspect of our nation's moral life to be the very foundation of its success and greatness. As Theodore Roosevelt once counseled, "In the last analysis the all-important factor in national greatness is national character." Even earlier George Washington expounded on this truism, saying in his farewell address that "Christianity would be essential if the nation was to have moral character."

It is for this reason that many citizens see an urgent need to discover and eradicate the pre-Election factors that prompted the majority of people — including many good pro-life people who thought other factors more important — to actually vote for candidates who rabidly support Infanticide, Abortion, Physician-assisted Suicide, Euthanasia, Human Embryo destruction, genocide, and other "culture of death" undertakings which directly contravene Judeo-Christian values.

In the same manner that history proves moral rectitude to be the foundation for our Country's greatness, history also records examples where moral decay proved the downfall of nations and civilizations once considered invincible. The Roman Empire is perhaps the prime example, but the Aztecs are another startling example where the abomination of human sacrifice they practiced led to the demise of a civilization which otherwise had reached astounding levels of power and social, artistic and economic prominence. It is the possibility of this type of demise occurring in our country that has so many Americans fearful.

During the campaign Barack Obama made his pro-Abortion stance and Abortion related "changes" he envisions clearer than those for any of his other platform issues. Because Barack Obama won the Election, and because of the explicit post-Election pledges he made to groups such as Planned Parenthood, many now see our Country in grave danger of being riven by a looming crisis between "culture of life" and "culture of death" proponents.

Both religious and lay writers contend that what precipitated this crisis is the fact that many citizens have developed improperly informed consciences — consciences that allow them to embrace and support culture of death trappings, without feeling pangs of guilt. Resolving the crisis depends crucially on whether or not this is true.

Although the responsibility of cultivating "properly informed" consciences ultimately rests with each individual, success is always a function of access to reliable and trustworthy information. Overall, it is the Church's appointed and authoritative teachers — the Bishops — who bear the brunt of the responsibility of ensuring that all of the faithful have access to easily understood explications of the Church's culture of life doctrine.

Yet, prior to the Election, among 433 U.S. Bishops only 150 spoke up and explicitly declared the moral imperative of "not voting for candidates supporting or promoting the culture of death whenever alternative life-affirming candidates are available." Because of this, the most probable reason why the majority of voters support Obama may very well be laid at the feet of the majority of Bishops, who by remaining silent with regard to the practice of Infanticide, Abortion and other abominations, may have led voters to wrongly conclude that "such practices could not truly be evil, because if they were, surely most Bishops would not have remained silent."

What follows is an in-depth review and analysis of why the Election turned out as it did, the consequences of the outcome, an evaluation of factors that could have changed the results, and the urgent need for actions to stem the erosion of the moral fabric of the nation — those related to and not related to the Election.

As a first step let's examine the role the Bishops and its impact on culture of life issues. To begin with, it is right and just to recognize and pay homage to the long line of the successors to the Apostle's — Bishops who over centuries, and often at great peril, courageously obeyed Jesus' command to preach and teach the Word of God to all men. As a layman, to establish a verifiable notion of the teaching role of all Bishops, I'll quote what two early, canonized Saints had to say.

Echoing the Old Testament teaching of the prophet Jeremiah, in a commentary on the Gospel of John, Saint Cyril, a fourth century Bishop of Alexandria and a Doctor of the Church wrote, "Our Lord Jesus Christ has appointed certain men to be guides and teachers of the world and stewards of his divine mysteries . . . to save the world by their teaching." In a homily on the Gospels, Saint Gregory the Great, Pope from 590-604, makes the plea, "Pray for us . . . that after we have taken up the office of preaching our silence may not bring us condemnation from the just judge."

It would be hard to find issues with a greater need for explicit instruction from our Bishops than the insidious and pervasive practice of Abortion and Infanticide in the United States. Abortion statistics produced by the Guttmacher Institute reveal that over one million abortions take place each year, nearly half of which involve women who have had at least one previous abortion — numbers too large to be attributed to saving a mother's life, not once, but twice or more times.

Beyond Abortion, Barack Obama is a rabid supporter and promoter of what can only be described as Infanticide. In 2001 Obama was the only member of the Illinois Senate to speak against SB1094 and 1095 — bills to provided mandatory medical care for Abortion survivors. Mournfully, it has become common and accepted practice to deny medical care to infants born-alive during an abortion, or even the comfort of being held and kept warm. Instead, they are often, heartlessly, simply abandoned and left lying on tables, or worse . . . . until they die.

Worthy of note is the fact that identical Born-Alive Infant Protection legislation was introduced as H.R. 2175 and passed in the United States House of Representatives by a voice vote on March 12, 2002, passed unanimously in the U.S. Senate 98-to-0, and signed into law by President Bush on August 5, 2005 — all of which puts Obama far to the left of even the most radical pro-abortion lawmakers in Congress.

Assuming all Bishops comport with the Catholic Church's denunciation of Infanticide and Abortion, then Gregory the Great's "warning of condemnation" for remaining silent in a time of egregious societal moral turpitude, is an excellent segue to a discussion of whether today's Bishops have "spoken out." By that is meant whether they have made manifestly clear statements as to the morality and consequences of voting for a candidate who is so blatantly anti-life . . . . , or, by issuing only vague or conditional guidance, they have — in essence — remained silent.

What if the Bishops had "spoken out" clearly before the Election?

Prior to discussing the pros and cons of the Bishops making an explicit statement about voting for Obama, lets first hypothesize what would have happened if Francis Cardinal George, (president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops [USCCB]), speaking for all the Bishops, had delivered to Catholic voters an unmistakably clear teaching that one commits a serious moral transgression by intentionally voting for a candidate supporting or promoting the "culture of death," when the option of voting for another candidate not supporting or promoting the culture of death exists — and used Barack Obama and John McCain as examples.

With nearly continuous, minute-by-minute election media exposure, following such a public pronouncement, it would be hard to imagine the magnitude of the ensuing reporting frenzy — but surely it would have dwarfed what happened after the ravings of Reverends Wright and Phleger were made public. Recall those news blitzes went on for weeks and weeks, completely dominating media coverage, and overshadowing issues with far greater voting-decision significance — like National security, economic policy, candidate qualifications and other crucial factors.

If the bishops had made the above teaching public and clear, Cardinal George would certainly have been besieged for appearances on an uncountable number of both liberal and conservative television news and talk-radio shows. Looking back, should this have happened, our Catholic Bishops would have had an unprecedented, perhaps a singular opportunity to "go public" and explain, defend and promote the Church's long-standing "culture of life doctrine." Importantly that message would have gotten through to nearly every American, and to everyone around the world who tracked the election's progress on TV, the radio or the Internet. It would have literally been an opportunity to Evangelize on a scale never before possible in the history of Christianity.

Beyond teaching doctrine, our Catholic Bishops could also have provided timely and explicit explanations and examples of how existing U. S. laws and the actions of government officials and politicians allow and even promote Infanticide, Abortion, Physician-assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, Experimentation that destroys Human Embryos and other "culture of death" actions — and yes, as addressed below, even genocide.

Should all of this have happened, then to the extent the Catholic Bishops were convincing and successful in their arguments, the staggering loss of human life in years to come could have been reduced, and the majority of voters with informed and good consciences would have rejected, not elected, Barack Obama — and many anti-life candidates running for other offices as well.
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posted by Dr. Denice Hanley, DPM, M.Div. @ 2:26 PM