Posted on 05/29/2003 2:39:25 PM PDT by marshmallow
Cardinal Ambrozic "Sorry, Disappointed And Upset" With PM's Abortion Stand
ATHENS, May 28, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In widely reported comments, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, said "I am a Catholic and for abortion." The Prime Minister's remarks were made en route to Athens yesterday during a frank discussion with reporters in which he boasted that he was superior to U.S. President Bush on fiscal and social matters.
Through a spokesman, Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic commented to LifeSite on the Prime Ministers statement. Moreover, Chretien's bishop, Ottawa Archbishop Marcel Gervais communicated to LifeSite he will also be addressing the matter.
Suzanne Scorsone, the Director of Communications for the Archdiocese of Toronto told LifeSite, "The Cardinal is sorry, disappointed, and upset at what he has seen some newspapers today quoting the prime minister as having said on the subject of abortion." Gabrielle Tasse, Director of Communications for the Archdiocese of Ottawa told LifeSite "The Archbishop will be dealing with the matter in a private manner and will be in touch with the Prime Ministers Office today."
After slamming Bush on financial matters saying, "We still have surpluses. The Americans will have a $500-billion deficit this year and it is a right-wing government. If we were to equal that we would have to have a $75-billion deficit. Imagine!," Chretien took aim at Bush's social policy emphasizing where he differs with the U.S. President. "I am a Catholic and for abortion and he is not," Chretien said.
As LifeSite reported last week, Chretien has become increasingly more brazen in his pro-abortion comments. On May 14 in a speech in Montreal, he was reported as saying that Canada is better than the U.S. since we have abortion rights. During his speech Chretien said, "We don't have big debates on the rights of abortion because we decided a long time ago in Canada it is the choice of women, which is not the case in a lot of U.S. states."
Chretien has even gone so far as to spout his pro-abortion rhetoric at a Catholic school and for which he received condemnation from Ottawa Bishop Marcel Gervais.
Since the reign of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Canadian Catholic politicians have been notorious for imposing radical social changes on the country and even abroad which violate serious Church moral teaching. So far, they have not been subject to any removal of Catholic sacramental privileges and have often been able to find some liberal theologian or other church authority to condone their actions. There are increasing signs that this decades long trend may soon change.
To express concerns to the PM:
Rt. Hon. Jean Chretien Prime Minister Government of Canada Parliament Hill Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6 Canada Fax: (613) 941-6900 E-mail: pm@pm.gc.ca
Incorrect. The teaching of the Church is that capital punishment should be rare. Many people, like Helen Prejean, have twisted what the Pope wrote in Evangelium vitae 56 into a claim that the Church absolutely opposes the death penalty.
2266 The State's effort to contain the spread of behaviors injurious to human rights and the fundamental rules of civil coexistence corresponds to the requirement of watching over the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime. The primary scope of the penalty is to redress the disorder caused by the offense. When his punishment is voluntarily accepted by the offender, it takes on the value of expiation. Moreover, punishment, in addition to preserving public order and the safety of persons, has a medicinal scope: as far as possible it should contribute to the correction of the offender.[67]
2267 The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor.
"If, instead, bloodless means are sufficient to defend against the aggressor and to protect the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.
"Today, in fact, given the means at the State's disposal to effectively repress crime by rendering inoffensive the one who has committed it, without depriving him definitively of the possibility of redeeming himself, cases of absolute necessity for suppression of the offender 'today ... are very rare, if not practically non-existent.' [68]
Another Catholic who cannot wait to defend killing! And I'm "wrong" to say that the teaching against capital punishment is expressed in a papal encyclical and included in the Catechism? Nope, I'm right. And I'm also right about right-wing cafeteria Catholics, of whom you are most evidently numbered.
. . . the CCC states that is no other way can be found to protect society, then the death penalty can be used as a option.
The Holy Father has made it abundantly clear that such conditions do not apply in the United States, as you very well know.
The Catholics who state pro death penalty Catholics are cafateria Catholics are either "seamless garment" Catholics who are liberal on social matters other than abortion . . .
Guilty as charged. I believe in the teachings of the Church to the letter, including the Church's teachings on "social matters," which I'm sure you consider every bit as abhorrent as the teachings of the Gospel to care for the poor and renounce revenge.
A few years back a comedy spoof was done on Cretien and the burgler .
Cretien is Golfing in the U.S. with Bill Clinton.
Clinton: "Heard ya attacked a Cripple Jean"
Cretien: " Not a cripple..a Criminal"!
Clinton: "I'm the President of the United States and I can't attack Cripples"
It means that the pope's opinion about capital punishment is not a matter of personal taste--as in, "The pope prefers chocolate to vanilla ice cream." This pope has taught his ever-so-reluctant-to-listen Church that human life is always and everywhere to be respected and protected. He has focused his attention on abortion, but in the very document where he most clearly defended the life of the unborn (Evangelium Vitae), he also spoke about other forms of violence:
Among the signs of hope we should also count the spread, at many levels of public opinion, of a new sensitivity ever more opposed to war as an instrument for the resolution of conflicts between peoples, and increasingly oriented to finding effective but "non-violent" means to counter the armed aggressor. In the same perspective there is evidence of a growing public opposition to the death penalty, even when such a penalty is seen as a kind of "legitimate defence" on the part of society. Modern society in fact has the means of effectively suppressing crime by rendering criminals harmless without definitively denying them the chance to reform.Conservative Americans who happen to be Catholic (deliberately chosen phrasing) reacted with indifference to the message, even when it was included in a revivsed version of the Catechism. Indeed, they make every effort (illustrated in this thread) to deny or diminish the plain sense of Catholic teaching on the subjects of both war and execution. In this, they are simply following the lead of other conservatives, the group with whom they primarily identify. Of course, they react with outrage when liberal Catholics, whose primary identity is with other liberals, follow the lead of their friends in advocating abortion.
It is very true that the Church sees abortion as different in character from execution, and it is also true that Catholic teaching against abortion has been far more consistent over time than opposition to other forms of violence. But these facts do not excuse the hostility conservative Catholics show to teachings of the Church they find distasteful.
I blame the vatican as much as I blame these local bishops and politicians.
BTW, have you noticed that all these countries that support abortion are now having to import workers because they don't have enough people to do the jobs?
The phrase was coined by an early Quebec nationalist intellectual, Fr. Lionel-Joseph Groulx sometime around World War I.
The French Canadians would revenge themselves against the English for the conquest of 1759, so Fr. Groulx opined, by breeding themselves into an ethnic majority.
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