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[Barf Alert] The moral voter: Bishop offers guidance to faithful Catholic voters Abandoning the Paris Climate Accords, the bishop said, “is a far greater moral evil” than federal health centers providing contraceptive devices “It does little good to elect a saint who echoes Catholic social teaching on every issue,” he said, “if that candidate does not have the competence to carry out his duties effectively and thereby enhance the common good.” ... And while he called contraception “intrinsically evil ... it is a far greater moral evil for our country to abandon the Paris Climate Accord than to provide...

[Barf Alert] Pope urges bishops to teach discernment, including on political issues Pope Francis meets with U.S. bishops from Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas during their "ad limina" visits to the Vatican Jan. 20, 2020. The bishops were making their "ad limina" visits to report on the status of their dioceses to the pope and Vatican officials. (Credit: CNS photo/Vatican Media.) ROME - Sometimes the political choices people face can seem like a choice between supporting a “snake” or supporting a “dragon,” but Pope Francis told a group of U.S. bishops their job is to step back from partisan politics and...

CHICAGO, Illinois, April 23, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy called last week for the U.S. bishops to shift from focusing on Catholic principles and moral issues in the political arena to a “deep-level conscience formation” inspired by Pope Francis. “As bishops, we tend to teach from principles and moral norms,” McElroy said. “Our approach is cognitive and exhortational, not affective and inspiring.” “There are, of course, moments and purposes for which cognitive and exhortational treatments are essential in expressing the Church's legacy of teaching that spring from Revelation and the tradition of reason,” he said. “But breaking through the hyper-partisan...

It seems like once a month well-informed Catholics need to mop up after Pope Francis. The latest spill? A long and undisciplined “Apostolic Exhortation” entitled Gaudete et Exsultate. It appears carefully timed, coming out the day after a conference of orthodox Catholics held in Rome to address the “crisis” Francis has caused inside the Church. Its contents? Mostly mixed wisdom about living the spiritual life.The Real Threat: Too Much Pro-Life Fervor One section in the document will afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable. It subtly jabs at pro-life activists, and gives handy talking points to pro-abortion politicians. Especially...

LOS ANGELES, June 7, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Archbishop José Gomez tore apart the “seamless garment” argument that intrinsic evils and social ills are morally equivalent in the Los Angeles archdiocesan newspaper June 3.  Advocates of the “seamless garment” approach to moral issues and social justice, promoted by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, often use it to suggest a moral equivalency between issues like abortion, poverty, and immigration.  “The hard truth is that not all injustices in the world are ‘equal,’” wrote Gomez. “We can understand this perhaps better about issues in the past than we can with issues in...

The [Center for Medical Progress investigative] tapes [about the collection and sale of fetal organs and parts] have generated a visceral reaction independent of how they were made or whether Planned Parenthood was making a profit. Rather, the widespread revulsion over the tapes arose because they unmasked the fact that, in our public conversation about abortion, we have so muted the humanity of the unborn child that some consider it quite acceptable to speak freely of crushing a child's skull to preserve valuable body parts and to have that discussion over lunch.... This newest evidence about the disregard for the...

The election of Pope Francis in March heralded a season of surprises for the Catholic Church, but perhaps none so unexpected – and unsettling for conservatives – as the re-emergence of the late Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin as a model for the American Catholic future.

I made a visit this past weekend to the University of California, Irvine to attend the Medjugorje Peace Conference, a gathering of very traditional, very conservative Catholics. The standout speaker during the two-day conference was Monsignor Jim Lisante, pastor of Our Lady Of Lourdes Parish in Massapequa, New York, whose homilies are available on ITunes (free of charge), and who often appears on FOX News to speak on matters of faith. The Monsignor offered the most scathing critique of President Obama’s social policies I’ve heard from any cleric in America – Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or other.. He began by recounting...

Top Election Concerns for Toronto Catholic Charities: Gov't Funding, Affordable Housing, Poverty Conspicuously absent from list are abortion and euthanasia By John-Henry Westen TORONTO, September 27, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - An "election guide" by Toronto Catholic Charities published on the website of the Archdiocese of Toronto directs Catholic voters in the upcoming October 10 election to see as their "primary concerns" government funding of programs, affordable housing, and poverty.  Conspicuously absent from the list are abortion and euthanasia, deemed by the Vatican to be priorities over other issues when voting. The document, "Counting on your vote" does mention life issues, not...

What is it about Michael Chertoff, President Bush's unqualified, unsuccessful, unrepentant and yet still unreplaced Homeland Security Secretary? After (1) bungling the federal response to Hurricane Katrina by treating FEMA as an unwanted step-child in a massive Homeland Security Department focused on the War on Terror and (2) hamstringing former FEMA Director Michael D. Brown by officially putting him in charge and then tethering him to Baton Rouge when he needed to be in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coat, it was Mr. Chertoff who should have resigned, but did not. For an encore, Mr. Chertoff ran Homeland Security...

The debate about neonatal circumcision is over. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), neonatal circumcision is the result of ignorance, bad medical practice and American social and cultural pressure. Regarding the three most commonly cited justifications for neonatal circumcision (penile cancer, venereal disease and penile hygiene), the AAP now states that the benefits are negligible, which means that the majority of American men are walking around without foreskins for no good reason. Yet, the barbaric practice shows no sign of abating, and for this reason I plan to shed some light on the cultural dark spot of circumcision....

Jeremiah Clayton Jones discovered that his former fiancée was pregnant just three weeks before the baby was due, when an adoption-agency lawyer called and asked if he would consent to have his baby adopted. "I said absolutely not," said Mr. Jones, a 23-year-old Arizona man who met his ex-fiancée at Pensacola Christian College in Florida. "It was an awkward moment, hearing for the first time that I would be a father, and then right away being told, 'We want to take your kid away.' But I knew that if I was having a baby, I wanted that baby." Mr. Jones...

The script is being written Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane, president of the USCCB, has now officially granted the "out" to all those pro-abortion Catholic Senators on the nomination of a Supreme Court Justice. In a letter to President Bush on the qualities he should be looking for in a nominee, Skylstad listed the death penalty alongside pro-life, rights of minorities and immigrants, the First Amendment, and parental choice in education. Now when one of the CINO Senators wants to oppose a pro-life, pro-death penalty nominee, he'll be able to cite his Catholic faith, and the backing of the...

Benedict's Blanket Replaces Bernadine's Seamless Garment In the June 2004 essay, Seamless Garment or Political Comforter? , Michael Ulmann accurately described the seamless garment as follows: In the 1970s, the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin and his episcopal allies advanced the notion that Catholic politicians should not be judged only, or even primarily, by their position on abortion. Abortion was merely one strand in a rich and finely woven “seamless garment” of Catholic social teaching in defense of life. Numerous other issues, the bishops said, ought to be considered. Nearly one month after this essay was published, the now Pope...