You know, the fact that Troy Davis was in all likelihood innocent is what sparked nationwide protests against his execution and as I explained in my post in Feminists for Choice, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops didn’t do anything to stop this gross violation of their religious principles.
So now I ask this again, isn’t a part of being pro-life that you support all life? As in, whether the person is guilty or not doesn’t matter right? Catholicism deems all life to be sacred and is religiously and morally against executions right?
So, why isn’t the USCCB protesting the seven executions scheduled in March (this number does not include ones that have been stayed or will likely be stayed)? Again, are their lives unimportant?
I guess they’re too busy fighting against birth control rights so that they can save the lives that would be conceived if these women didn’t use birth control. I guess God told them that they could pick and chose which lives and principles were the most sacred.
It’s either that or, I can only assume, that they’re thinking ’come on, messing with women and trying to assert our dominance over them is so much more fun than pissing off our Republican constituents and actually saving some real lives. Plus those people deserve to die, IT’S THE UNBORN WE NEED TO SAVE!’
Really though and in all seriousness, it seems as if they chose their positions and advocacy based, less on religion, and more on political grandstanding.
For example, the USCCB has a sorry-excuse of a website as their ‘campaign to end capital punishment’. There isn’t much information on it but if you go through the Issues and Actions tab on the main USCCB site and click on Death Penalty you will see exactly how hard they have recently fought for the end of capital punishment.
The two press releases dated in March 2011 focus on Illinois barring capital punishment. While it’s great that the USCCB supported the move, they again failed to use their advocating prowess. The dates of the press releases speak for them selves. The actual PR statement supporting the bill was released on March 3, 2011. The bill in question ( SB3539) was passed on March 9, 2011 and had been in the works and on paper since early 2010. The USCCB joined the cause when they were almost 99% sure the bill was going to pass. So was it a fight for their religious principles or political grandstanding or a little bit of both?
Preceding this PR statement, they have a link that leads to this (lots of talk as you can see), another one that links to the website I mentioned above, and then the next post is dated 2006 (where is the action?).
Lots of campaigning and hard work, I see.
So why focus so hard on birth control and abortion but almost entirely ignore capital punishment? Isn’t all life sacred?
Consider this: In 2012, while the USCCB was busy bashing women, birth control, and fighting for God’s Word, 6 executions were carried out in the United States. Six real lives they didn’t fight for.
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Regarding the names below, I have no idea if the men are innocent or guilty of the crimes they committed though they were all, obviously, found guilty. These are all horrible crimes but the point is that the USCCB is actively ignoring their religious principles, the same principles that led them to launch their vicious attack on women’s rights and the same principles that we’ve seen come forth in the silliness that was the Issa Panel and this whole birth control mandate uproar.
List of upcoming executions:
March 7 - Keith Thurmond
March 8 - Robert Towery
March 15- Timothy Stemple
March 20- Larry Puckett
March 22- William Mitchell
March 28- Jesse Hernandez
March 29- Tommy Arthur
Related articles
- Catholic Bishops Respond to Obama’s Compromise (frstephensmuts.wordpress.com)
- Catholic Bishops Practicing Ethics Lite In Debate Over Contraception (lezgetreal.com)
- Random Thoughts on the Contraception Battle (firedoglake.com)
- Abortion Issue in Catholic Bishops Sex Trafficking Victim Funding (abcnews.go.com)
“The bishops pledged to affirm the intrinsic value of human life and the dignity of every human being in a way that transforms the culture by implementing “The Life and Dignity of the Human Person” priority plan for 2010-2012.To achieve this goal, the priority plan includes ongoing education, prayer, policy, and advocacy efforts to mobilize the Catholic community on issues of life, justice, and peace.”
Justice is an important word there. The USCCB has an interest in protecting human life when it conforms with justice. The USCCB will take up the cause of unborn children because those are innocent lives. Death row inmates have been adjudicated and found guilty by our justice system. Your post makes it seem like ALL of those convicted felons deserve the advocacy of the USCCB.
So they get to decide when justice is being served and when it isn’t and base their advocacy programs on that? That’s pretty scary.
How exactly was Timothy McVeigh someone that deserved that justice but not any of these people? He was responsible for hundreds of deaths whereas these people are responsible for a few.
Again, my point is that if they’re going to be all about life then perhaps they should actually be all about life.
Any argument discussing humans not being totally constant in their views on ‘pro-life’ (as in, being actively against ending the life of an innocent creature out of largely selfish motives, but not actively against the death penalty for grown adults that have chosen to commit depraved acts against other humans) shrinks to absolute nothingness next to the arbitrary nature of deciding when a homo-sapien is a person and when they are considered morally relevant. 40 or so years ago, after Roe v Wade, it was deemed reasonable that a fetus was not yet a person and so not morally relevant, but no one would have ever believed that someone would seriously argue for the moral acceptability of murdering fully born babies simply because the parents don’t want the inconvenience of having to take care of him or her. This is now the third time in the past 6 months that I have seen where ‘ethicists’ have ‘decided’ that new born baby’s are not people and so not ‘morally relevant’: http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/journal-editor-defends-pro-infanticide-piece-killing-newborns-is-already-le
Who gives them that authority? Who are they to decide who is a human, who is morally relevant and who isnt? Why do they get to choose? How can they be so arrogant?! it is just OUTRAGEOUS!!! Then they have the audacity to claim that they are ‘victims’ of ‘hate speech’ being ‘oppressed’ by ‘fanatics’ who are opposed to ‘reason’ when people criticize them. It is just absurd! it is enraging! Thinking that you have the authority to ‘decide’ when a defenseless living homo sapien is morally relevant is the foundation of Hitler’s Final Solution; after all, those Jews weren’t really ‘persons’, they werent ‘morally relevant’ to the German populace, therefore it was not inherently wrong to kill them (speaking from the Nazi point of view of course).
Do you see how ‘reason’ is totally dependent on starting point? If you start with the understanding that fetus’ are somehow people, then to say that they are not is about as far as you can go (as in, murdering babies is off limits for discussion). But if you start with the premise that fetus are not people, and that if someone finds the developing human to be ‘inconvenient’ then it is acceptable to kill it, the next step in logical reasoning is that killing new born babies is no different. Where is the line? When is someone morally relevant? When is someone a person?
Funny how these people believe that a man who rapes and butchers a 6 year old girl is still a ‘human’ with the right to live, but a new born baby is not a human but a ‘morally irrelevant’ creature that can be deprived of its natural right to life at the whim of parents who are too selfish to take care of it. Contrary to the post-modern point of view, it is actually quite natural in most all human cultures of all time periods that human adults can loose the right to live if they preform certain actions, but the ending of a pregnancy or killing of a baby is almost always an unnatural act that can only be done under the most grave of circumstances…the post-modern “pro-abortion/infanticide but anti-death penalty on some claim of humanitarianism” is an inversion of human nature.
However, I agree with you that they should be protesting more actively the death penalty. However, that is largely an issue of cultural relativism. Just look at Christians (or any religion really) of the same denomination across geographic and cultural lines; for example, catholics – catholics in America and many other countries are more averse to sexual issues than they are to violence/death penalty issues, where as it is the opposite for many European Catholics. Why? The reason is cultural orientation/bias. I guarantee you that the reason that most American Bishops do not seem to care much about death penalty issues is that because (while it is starting to slowly change) the death penalty is a ‘normal’ thing to their cultural orientation, where as recent sexual issues are not normal to their cultural orientation. The only people who notice the disparity between the Bishop’s support for pro-life and anti-death penalty issues are [1] people that were not primarily raised in the traditional American cultural world-view (this is most often people from other countries, but also includes Americans who were raised in cities or in families that did not have a traditional American cultural orientation ), (2) Pro-choice people who are looking for a reason to criticize pro-lifer supporters, or (3) those who are able to step outside of their cultural context and place consistency of their religious principles over their local culture.
As far as my personal experience, I have found the the first type is by far the most common, followed fairly closely by the second type, and with the third type being by far the most rare reason that someone notices the disparity between support for pro-life and anti-execution issues. In fact I have only personally known of about 7 people who have allowed their religious principles to override their cultural conditioning in regards to the death penalty; it is just not something that humans naturally due.
Religion is inherently an expression of cultural values, and so when the culture that someone is raised in is different that the religion that they are raised in, their religious principles frequently start to override, and at times even infect and alter, their religious principles. Yes, there is a disparity, however, I do not think that it is fair to hold human nature against in order to denigrate their support for something that you do not agree with. If your goal is to get them to support abolishment of the death penalty, then that would be a legitimate reason for pointing out their inconstancy. However, if your motive for calling them out is to attack them for being pro-life, to get them to change their position on the issue, or to somehow make the claim that their inconsistency makes their pro-life arguments less invalid, then I do not believe that those are fair and legitimate reasons to point of their flaws (because then the motive is malicious rather than truly caring about consistency).
Also, I do not think that you are taking into account an important factor: status quo vs. novelty. The death penalty is an entrenched institution in America that has existed longer than another political or social belief or principle, no amount of resources or effort on behalf of the Bishops could have any real effect on its abolition. On the other hand, easy and legal abortion is a relatively new institution and nearly every bishop can remember a time when they were alive when it was not an institution; you on the other hand were not alive before it became the status quo, so your view of the issues is inherently going to be fundamentally different than theirs is even if you remove the religious differences. To most people who are roughly 60 or so years old and up, easy legal abortion is a novelty, because they were around (and old enough to fully comprehend) to see the standard be overthrown and replaced with something new. To people under that age, it seems like less of an issue because it is the standard that they grew up with. More catholics are less dogmatic on the issue than there were 20-40 years ago, because an entire generation of Catholics have now grown up with it being the status quo. What has caused that adjustment? Their religion has not changed one bit on the issue, so why are there less Catholics that are dogmatically opposed to all abortion than there used to be? it is because of CULTURAL CONDITIONING affecting religious principles.
How this relates to the current issue is that government forcing everyone against their will to provide an elective product without the right to choose for themselves is not only a novelty in regards to the specific product in question, but the very principle is a novelty in the american socio-political scene. Furthermore, as this is both a religious freedom issue and a american-political principle issue, the bishops are much more likely to effect some sort of change on the forced contraception issue than they are on the death penalty, which is neither a disputed political-principle nor a religious freedom issue. On top of all of that, the simple fact that the contraception issue is something that will affect their daily lives, where as the death penalty is a remote abstraction to the daily lives of not just bishops but to the vast majority of americans.
Something that is new, that directly affects you, and that represents a marked departure from tradition american-political principles is de facto going to get much more attention than something that is old, does not directly affect you, and that is inline with long standing american socio-political-cultural practice.
Please do not take this as some sort of personal attack or insult, but rather as a neutral suggestion that could very well be wrong: but I feel that you might have a deficient perspective of the history of the traditional american socio-political and cultural world-view, and as well as an incomplete understanding of how cultural relativism and life experience affect people’s psychology (and hence their perspective). Again, this is not an attack on you as a person, nor is it in anyway trying to say that your opinion does not matter, nor am I saying that is is defiantly true; it is merely an observation that the unique combination of my perspectives, education, and background cause my mind to form, just as your observation of the Bishop’s inconsistency is the product of your unique combination of perspectives, education, and background.
On another note, I take issue with your comment, “I can only assume, that they’re thinking ’come on, messing with women and trying to assert our dominance over them is so much more fun than pissing off our Republican constituents….”. [1] As Bishops, they do not have constituents; political-party affiliation is not a concern of the Church; they are not worried about pissing off anyone but their own religious superiors (which, incidentally, is often a major factor in bishops being vocal. Causing a scene is often the only way that they get noticed by their superiors half way around the world – for example, if there is a new position for cardinal open, those who are not regularly apart of the pope’s life have to resort to public displays to get noticed as someone who might be fit for the position. you have to take into account inner church politics and power-struggles anytime you are talking about bishops, cardinals, and popes stepping into the public arena). [2] I absolutely cannot stand when people make this issue about male domination of women, or how this is somehow an attack on women’s rights and independence. That is either a deliberate red herring to draw attention away from the real issue, or is put forth by self-centered people who cannot see past their own desires and grasp the primary cause of the drama; which is that President Obama has overturned a foundational american principle in reversing well over 200 years worth of traditional rights to religious contentious objector exemptions. Contraception has been sold in this country with barely lip service objections by Catholic Bishops for half a century. It was not until Feminists/Obama/Liberals (capitol L not lower case liberal) decided that their views are the only ones that are valid, and that everyone should be forced to comply with their beliefs on the issue. For over half a century the church was generally content with “to each his own”, but now a significant portion of America no longer believes in “to each his own”, but rather that everyone should be forced to conform to their views regardless of it if violates their conscious.
I’d like to remind people that it was the Catholic Church who first argued that women were equal in worth to men over 2,000 years ago, and that the idea of the inherent dignity of humans, and the concept of human rights, originated from the Catholic Church. Furthermore, i’d also like to point out that those who criticize or complain about the Church/Bishops causing a scene over the issue are hypocritical and blind to their own hubris, because they were the first offender in this debate. Those people are like Japan in WWII: the US was silent until they tried to force america to comply with their opinions at pearl harbor, then were baffled as to why the US became such a problem afterwards. That sort of short-sighted stupidity reminds me of a quote from Cold Mountain, “They say this war is a cloud upon the land; but they made the weather and then they stand out in the rain and say, ‘Well SHIT ITS RAINING!!’.” I am not speaking directly to you when I say this, but rather the more general Feminist/Liberal (again capitol L not lowercase) movement: Next time that you are frustrated with the Bishops/Catholic over the issue of mandated free contraception, just remember that it was your camp that fired the first shot; just remember that it was Obama and your political party who refused to let them have the exemption that the founding principles of this country dictate that they are supposed to have.
I just cannot explain how unbelievably enraging it is to see someone holding a smoking gun in their hand while trying to play the ‘oppressed victim’; it is the sign of someone who mentally inverts reality. I am thinking of digging up Maximilien Robespierre’s speech where he tries to claim that his government that is forcing everyone to comply with its views is actually the ‘oppressed victim’, and that the hundreds of people getting their heads cut off every day for having a different opinion are actually the ones that are the ‘oppressors’. After he gave that speech his own government realized that he was crazy and they order his own head cut off, thus ending his oppressive, tyrannical, and anti-freedom practices. Believing that those who are forcing their opinions on others are “champions of human freedom”, and that the ones who are not being allowed to follow their own beliefs are “tyrants”, is indicative of a distorted mind that inverts reality. The definition of a tyrant that most classical philosophers, and many of the foundational figures of the US, used is roughly “a person who believes that their ideas and opinions are so important and right that everyone else should be forced to comply with them even against their will”. This was the mode of action of Stalin, Hitler, Moussolini, Franco, Nero, Gaddafi, Mubarak……need I go on? What does it say about Obama and the Feminist Lobby that they believe that their opinion that an elective drug should free is so important and right that everyone else should be forced to conform to their views and not be allowed to exercise their own free-will over the issue”?
I think I have made my point, even if a bit sporadically; I have already written too much, and I apologize that i do not have time to go back and make it more clear and concise.
Until next time,
Your Friend With Radically Different Opinions
I’m not going to address the whole a fetus is a person point here because it comes to fundamentally different beliefs. I’m going to assume that you were raised in a household that held that religious that life begins at conception and therefore a fetus is a person (correct me if I’m wrong with that assumption). I was raised with a religion that does not believe so and allows for a fetus to be aborted up to 120 days. It is our choice to adhere to these beliefs so if a woman decides not to abort a pregnancy based on religious values then that is her prerogative.
I absolutely 100% do not agree with the notion that new-born babies are not people. There is no scientific basis for that and that is definitely not a part of the dialect in the United State for abortion. No advocate here is talking about legalizing the murder of a new born or an infant nor do I think any pro-choice man or woman here would condone such outrageous practices. There are some horrible people in this horrible who commit and condone horrible acts of violence, something as, well, crazy as that has no baring on the abortion debate here because as I said, there is no basis for it.
However, there is a scientific backing in the fact that a fetus is not a person. I think by bringing that Holland case into the pro-abortion debate here in the United States only allows people to clump all pro-choice’ers into one category which is completely incorrect.
So, again, I’m with you on the absurdity of this.
My point about the USCCB largely ignoring death penalty cases is simply to point out the hypocrisy towards their notion of pro-life. Their main argument against abortions is that it is against their religion and they vehemently attack it yet another government-sanctioned practice that is against their religion as well and falls into the same reasoning they use to deride abortion, is ignored.
And you say that these bishops remember a time when abortion was illegal, so do millions of women who were forced to give birth to an unwanted child or those who put their own lives at risk to obtain back-alley abortions. They remember a time when a women was shamed for her sexuality, shamed for an unwanted pregnancy, and had no legal access to medical help. The men had no part in the dialogue which is eerily similar to today when women are yet again being shamed for their sexuality and for getting pregnant and having an abortion and the men who contribute to putting them in that situation are completely ignored and not a part of the conversation. It is also important to remember that making abortion illegal will not at all put an end to abortion. It will simply create and unhealthy and unsafe environment where women obtain back-alley abortions. Millions of illegal abortions were performed before Roe v. Wade and thousands of women died in botched procedures.
Perhaps the bishops and the pro-lifers don’t intend on being anti-woman but the legislation that they draft and the practices that they condone put women at risk and are largely anti-woman and anti-women’s health. A simple look at Texas right now shows this—their anti-abortion measures have deprived 130,000 women of health care that they depend on. Texas has some of the poorest counties in the United States and these are the women that will suffer from this. This is anti-woman.
There is only one way and one way alone to try to decrease the rate of abortion and that’s through adequate sex education and easy access to contraceptives.
Also, while in theory the USCCB has no constituents, they lobby and advocate which means they sure as hell have friends in high places and people that back them in their policies. These are largely Republican politicians and could therefore be considered their constituents.
Comparing Barack Obama’s birth control mandate to Stalin, Hitler, Moussolini, Franco, Nero, Gaddafi, Mubarak is such wrong. These are people who condoned and sanctioned the torture and murder of millions of people where as Obama. Telling organizations to provide birth control to women who want it or in some cases need it is very, very far from indoctrinating the people of your country based on the color of their skin to persecute and murder others based on their religion and colorings. In Germany some Jews were able to escape persecution simply because they had the ideal Aryan markings—pale skin, blonde hair, blue eyes. Hitler murdered millions because of their religion, sexual preferences, disabilities, and perceived ‘subhuman’ natures. Barack Obama is mandating NONE of the above and to slump him into that category is again very blind-sighted and a simple effort to incite anger in people.
Anyway, that’s my take on this. As always, I appreciate your input.
Until next time,
Saira
A few things.
1. Sure, Obama is acting in a way that could be considered “tyrannical,” in that he’s attempting to force his views through legislative debate on a federal level. Bush was also guilty of this when he called for an amendment stating that marriage be between a man and a woman, and when he enacted the Patriot Act, which gave the government the right to encroach American citizens’ private lives and records without their personal knowledge. One could even say that Abraham Lincoln did tyrannical thing by bringing forth the Emancipation Proclamation, which in reality did nothing but still declared all slaves free in spite of those who may have wanted to keep them in the case the Union won the Civil War. These were attempts and actions to mandate personal views on a federal level, so Obama isn’t alone in this. It’s a historical precedent for not only a leader, but any politician to force their personal views on others. It’s an inevitable problem with the political game.
2. The list of tyrannical leaders you listed were much more violent and usurping than Obama is. Remember, Hitler started the Holocaust. Be glad you’re under Obama.
3. I grew up a practicing Catholic. In Sunday School, I was told that the Church stood against the death penalty because it was indeed a practice that took lives, much like we were told abortion did. The fact that the USCCB doesn’t stand up against capital punishment is severely hypocritical, and to defend their silence is tantamount to defending the act of murder itself. Then again, the Church has been known to sweep things under the rug when it wasn’t politically convenient. I see things like this and find myself embarrassed to say that I was once associated with and defended that group. True Catholics would never act this way, at least in the sense that I was taught they would. True Catholics forgive and treasure what life exists in this world, and welcome all with open arms despite their past mistakes. The Catholic Church I see attacking women’s rights advocates and remaining silent on other equally important issues is morally bankrupt.