Pope Benedict XVI Blog

Opinion: Speaker Pelosi’s Bishop Corrects Her Once Again. Call to Catholic Action.

By Deacon Keith Fournier
1/14/2010
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

Do not let Speaker Nancy Pelosi continue to confuse you. Pray for the Speaker but resist her lies and oppose evil.


Archbishop George H. Niederauer in a well written piece entitled “Free Will, Conscience and Moral Choice: What Catholics believe” has once again corrected the Speaker, a member of his flock.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Catholic Online) - One of the great scandals of our age is the leadership of some of our fellow Catholics in public life who are unfaithful to the teaching of our Church and betray their public trust. Sadly, they demonstrate the danger warned of in the last great ecumenical council of our Church, Vatican II.

The Council Fathers in their document on the Christian mission - Lumen Gentium, “Light to the Nations - used a phrase which has been repeated many times since then in numerous teachings from the contemporary Popes and is a favorite of our own U.S. Bishops. They warned of the “separation between faith and life.” They called it one of the “greatest errors of our age”. And, so it truly is... advanced with the help of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and some other Catholics in public life.

In his prophetic Encyclical Letter entitled “The Gospel of Life" John Paul II wrote concerning a “perverse idea of freedom" as a raw power over others. He reaffirmed the "essential link" between freedom and truth. This connection is the beating heart of morality and common sense. In "The Splendor of Truth" he proclaimed that "freedom itself needs to be set free" from the lie of the current age. He exposed the counterfeit notions of freedom, the rotted fruit of the new paganism, materialism and nihilism which calls itself “progressivism” when it it is actually regressivism.

Authentic faithful Christians - and especially Catholic Christians who have the wealth of the teaching office of the “Social Magisterium” of the Church - must now become the champions of freedom in this age. Millions are depending upon our courage to resist the lies of this current deluded age and rebuild the Western vision of a free society.

We must insist upon the essential connection between freedom, truth and responsibility to prevent the continued descent of the West into a new paganism masquerading as “freedom.” The horrors which will be unleashed in the name of a “freedom” which is a lie are evident in the blood of all those killed through procured abortions since Roe. Let’s cut to the chase, killing our first neighbors in the womb in the name of “choice” is evil, sick and unlawful.

It also violates the Natural Law even if the current positive law allows it. It is barbarism. As Christians we agree that humans are “free” to choose. However we insist that some choices are always wrong. Perhaps the most obvious example is the lie that a nation can treat an entire class of human persons as property to be used – and killed- rather than a gift to be received and recognized as our neighbors, and still claim to be free and just.

As Catholic Christians who are citizens in this experiment in ordered liberty called the United States of America, we have been able to flourish. That is because the founding documents of this Nation, (even if it took centuries to understand their implications in certain areas), articulated truths derived from the classical Natural Law thinking of Western Christendom.

These truths were set forth in the great philosophical tradition of the Latin Church in St. Thomas Aquinas, but they find their origin in the teachings of the early Fathers of the “Patristic” age of the Church. They are the fruit of the tree of real liberty whose roots are sunk deeply in the Biblical texts, Old and New Testament.

For example, the American founders insistence upon the existence of “unalienable rights” which are “endowed by a Creator” on every human person was inspired. The Declaration is the Birth Certificate of the American Republic. Our acceptance of the existence of universally recognized rights, truths and obligations has informed the foundation for the Western understanding of the Rule of Law. It is also the source of of our true liberties.

The insistence that fundamental human rights are not conferred by Civil Government but endowed by God is what made Western Civilization flourish. It still serves as a beacon of hope for the entire world. There is a “Natural Law” which is written on our conscience. That Natural Law is a participation in God’s law. It is knowable through the exercise of reason by all men and women, whether they acknowledge God's existence or not. It is that Natural Law which is the measuring stick for any truly just “positive” or “civil” law. When we fail to recognize this we lose our way and we lose our freedom. Our history attests to this.

The substitution of license for liberty is what John Paul II had in mind when he warned of "a notion of freedom, which exalts the isolated individual in an absolute way, and gives no place to solidarity, to openness to others and service of them." As he prophetically cautioned, it results from the "eclipse of the sense of God and of man typical of a social and cultural climate dominated by secularism." That is what has infected our beloved Nation.
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See also:

Archbishop Corrects Pelosi on Moral Choice

Pelosi Defends Abortion and Catholic Faith?

Contend for the Future by Setting Freedom Free

posted by Dr. Denice Hanley, DPM, M.Div. @ 6:53 AM