Sunday, August 24, 2008

Yes Virginia, There is a Conscience Clause.


In an interview with Thomas J. McKenna from the San Diego based group Catholic Action for Faith and Family Archbishop Raymond L. Burke, newly appointed Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura discussed how the respect for the Holy Eucharist has eroded and his commitment through Cannon law to the policy of denying those who are publicly engaged in grave sins from partaking in the Eucharist. He turns our attention to Cannons 915 and 916 of Church law. He also discusses the misappropriation of civil liberties philosophy that declares access to the Eucharist a 'right' that cannot be denied.
All of this is well and good it still remains to see how the Church will enforce this policy if implemented. It is often the case that these kind of hard lines are made amongst the strong adherent of such policies, strictly between preacher and choir, rather than amongst those that might challenge such a untenable position be they members of the Church or not. However, this is an impractical stragety at disciplining the lay Catholics for the practical reason that it is only en forcible and probably will only be enforced upon prominent members of the Church, those in the public eye.

Of course that is no doubt the intention of the Cannon in the first place but what about those Catholics both lay and clergy who privately and often not so privately support abortion? Presumably the Church will not have to subject these people to the same act of excommunication because they are not public figures. However, in today's world where it is easier to propel oneself into the public arena via video, overnight celebrity or ... blogging the question arise whether the Church will take steps to identify these people and then deny them the Eucharist as well. Then there are all the divorcees who are by Church law excommunicated and are not to take communion. These people are publicly known to be divorced as a statement of such a fact must be published. Will the Church try to have them identified and deny them the Eucharist as well. What about the pedophile priest and the homosexuals who are dispensing the Eucharist, can they also be denied the Host? All these people will have to made known to the the Priest and lay people administering the Eucharist in order for them to take action. What will the Church do, have them wear a scarlet letter "A" for Pro-choice advocate, a scarlet letter "D" for divorcee or a scarlet let "P" and "H" for pedophile and homosexual? While one can respect the Archbishops ire over those who form a misalliance between liberal philosophy of atheists like Thomas Paine and Catholic theology, denying nominal Catholics the Holy Eucharist is a misstep.

The Archbishops uses Cannon law 915 and 916 to deny those from taking Communion if they are unworthy out of a deference to their own welfare, 1 Corinthians 27, "Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. (29)For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgement to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. The passage continues however, (31) "But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. (32) But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world." Thus in all actuality the Archbishop is only fore bearing their discipline. The Archbishop enters into erroneous theological territory when he attempts to use the Eucharist as an embargoed commodity exported from the Vatican subject to doctrinal compliance.
On the other hand, the left that is, reason is applied to to take exception to the truth. In a letter I recently wrote to a Pro-Choice Internet publication I challenged the the use of their euphemism in order to put their defense of abortion, a civil liberties issue, in an amicable light.

"It is often the case that naturally subordinated social groups like women tend to exhibit the exact traits that relegated them to the secondary social status they culturally and traditionally inhabit. In this instance your unscrupulous and disingenuous employment of euphemism such as “family planning clinics”,” Reproductive rights advocates” and certainly “Pro-choice advocates” incriminate women as being either blindly selfish hedonist or ideological invalids for the sole purpose of preserving their secular independent lifestyles over the actual life of even their own children. It lends the impression that personal autonomy is more important than the child they conceive but isn’t that to be expected of women? It is interesting to note as stated in the Roe.v.Wade decision that the AMA Committee on Criminal Abortion appointed in May 1857 called “the attention of the clergy of all denominations to the perverted views of morality entertained by a large class of females—aye, and men also, on this important question.”

It seems that organizations like yours are perfectly Pro-choice as long as the choice is yours alone. When a health care provider wants to make a choice based on his values, belief and conscience you are against it, how can you justify Pro-choice for a few? For myself the reason why abortion should be illegal is not just that it is a herodian act against the will of God but that as a matter of private choice those who want to have an abortion ought to do so without the endorsement of the citizens of the State who do not agree with this procedure. All people like myself is asking for is the Pro-choice to say “No!” to abortion, rather than falsely implying to the world that we here in the State of New York or elsewhere agree with this lie. The etymological root to the word abortion is aboriri, a miscarriage, women are not having a miscarriage, they are forcing a miscarriage. "

The Church and Secular Liberals seem to be taking their combat to the wide open front of the human conscience. The underlying premise, spoken correctly by both atheist Austin Dacey author of The Secular Conscience and the Archbishop response in the Catholic Action for Faith and Family interview to Catholics who appeal to their conscience in mitigating their Pro-abortion stance and 'right' to take communion. "Conscience is not some sort of subjective reality" says the Archbishop, "where I make up for myself what is right and good. Rather, it is an objective reality where I conform my own thinking to what is true."

This willing to "dance within the shadows" of objective reality is a continuance of the post modernist deconstruction era, a retort to the promises of The Enlightenment, that permits an anti-intellectual or pseudo intellectual air where thoughts, words, education and human knowledge are deployed for the sole intent of defending or attempting to legitimize ones demands and preferences. Homosexuality, abortion, the prevailing attitude that "I can believe thus and at the same time act contrarily..." , the persuasion of the masses that it is the Church that is antagonist against human life and Pro-abortion crowd that are "people-persons" or pro-people, for the crowd. When in fact our Christian freedoms are rest on the basis of one death, while their 'freedom to choose', right to privacy is propped upon a thousand deaths of innocents a day. What is true is that the religion, the binding to God or binding of ones actions to adhere to the wisdom, i.e. the discipline of the Catholic faith is deceptively depicted as an oppressive power grab by an egomaniacal heierchial administration. Your friends on the other hand are the ones who permit you to do whatever you want... so long as it does not affect them. Drunks on the Bowery pile up and are stepped over until their wives or the in fact the drunks themselves decided to make a change, consolidate and admit that they have a problem and when I say 'they' I mean 'we'. The recently deceased great comedic actor Bernie Mac would in his weekly television series face the camera and directly talk to his television viewers. Invariably he start off with the address, "Amearica" in a comedic southern drawl, but he hit a note and quite frankly many of us were happy to be address and brought into counsel about the dilemmas he faced and by extension we as his 'neighbors' faced as well. It was Terrance that said "I am human, nothing human is alien to me." The plight with the homosexual position is that it tries to assert that homosexuals are a different species, a variant form of human beings. When in fact there are no alternative life styles, there are no alternatives to life. As a man you get a job, get a a wife and have kids. What are the alternatives? No, certainly we do not all have that or have yet obtained that but certainly as Americans we have been misguided by nihilist liberal ideology that we do not need it.

Thus for instance my trouble with homosexuality as a legitimized norm stems from the very premise that it is an acceptable form of being, that these are a people, like the drunks on the Bowery, who do not have a problem but the fallacy is that this train of thought is their exact overwrought psychological defense, they are 'gay' never venturing into the convoluted bowels of the subconscious mind that requires us all to address the reality not of what we think but of what we feel. I call on homosexual to accept themselves for who they are not to token their exclusive other directness towards the goal of having others accept them. If you are a man outwardly, inwardly act accordingly, if you are a woman outwardly, inwardly act accordingly, jihad until you get it 'straighten out'.


The celebrity Star Jones, surgically had her stomach staple, left the television show she co-hosted because she would have preferred to deny the fact and married a homosexual man who soon left her. Star Jones story is an example of the "do-it-yourself", put together from the 'outside', self assembled life of the modern secularist.We staple our stomaches because we are too spiritually weak to control our consumption by the same measure homosexual men in the fall after the pride in a cyclical and natural tendency towards equilibrium subject themselves to abuse by others in order to rectify the imbalance, we are out of our minds, beside ourselves. We have been unable to be poor in spirit, to humble our hearts and contend with life's frustrations, the differences between reality and the fanciful 'alternative lifestyle'. It would make sense that the psychologically immature would be sexually disoriented as their command of an object related readiness can come into question, the mind needs objects in order to operate. There is a natural mind- body relationship which makes the opposite sex important. Men akin to the maneges of the brain are the mind and the wife the 'ol ball and chain' the body that keeps us grounded. The live wires that we have become, ungrounded, moving in migratory economic patterns with no social cohesiveness have made it difficult to satiate our emotional and psychological needs. This in my opinion has lead some men to construe an economically adaptive lifestyle by conforming themselves into becoming the automatons corporate elitist would prefer over flesh and blood God fearing human beings. The labor of undocumented aliens are welcomed for instance but separating them from their American born children was perhaps an unforeseen dilemma, if only they were drones. Many of us undocumented or otherwise have no medical coverage but all the while we are asked to 'donate' blood, blood is free but health care is not. It could be argued that since we 'give' blood we should be be able to see a physician, yet that is to venture into my own embargo. He who has given His blood and not only His blood but His body did not ask to be repaid because He cannot be repaid for what He gave, it was a gift.

The Eucharist is the body of Christ given to us, his own flesh sacrificed for us to help us 'soften our hearts', we soften our hearts so we can change them, maneuver them, grow. How is it that we surgically alter our physical bodies to suit our 'inner selves' but can not do the opposite, alter our inner selves to suit the body that God gave us? It is because there are those amongst us who would try to live their lives without God, subsequently that is how they end up, homosexuality is a consequence of trying to live without God.

The legitimization of homosexuality abandons those who like depressives and schizophrenics are left in the mire of the maladaptive psychological medicines. The homosexuals in claiming that they do not have a problem in a dissociative clamoring for social acceptance have abandoned these people and they have abandoned America by refusing to be counted amongst the disturbed and disordered as evidence of the psychological malady that is the natural result of our obedience to economic primacy. If the American Psychiatric Association reversed its position on the health status of homosexuals tommorrow there would be a huge camp of people who would have to be openly declared psychological aberrants, along with the huge number of people in psychactric care who are taking medication for their depression and the schizoid disorders. We would have to admit that their is a nation wide psychological epidemic in America and the cause of it like global warming has to be the way that we are living, it would have to be attributed to the idolatrous pursuit of money.

None the less it would appear that we will now be called on to defend our choices and stances openly once we ratified that the conscience is an can be objectively scrutinized. In liberal California, Ecuador and Spain where they are engaging in a deCatholicization of the State, Catholic values are being marginalized. It will be interesting to see if where the dividing line will stand when it comes to the exercise of ones conscience. This will be a real challenge for law in America.

Recently President Bush tried to push through a law that would allow health care providers to refuse to service those people they felt opposed their conscience. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt stated, "People should not be forced to say or do things they believe are morally wrong. Health-care workers should not be forced to provide services that violate their own conscience."

In his previous draft abortion would have been extended even to contraceptive devised that prevent the fertilized egg from implanting on the uterine wall, these contraceptives are known are abortifacients, which work by causing early term abortions. (http://www.goodmorals.org/smith4.htm)

Whether this conscience clause will compel people to thrash out sound reasons for their actions comes into question since the motives for their actions are often quite distinct from political stances, such as the case of abortion, a matter of privacy and woman's political Independence from men. Now the case has been made that the conscience is an open arena that operates on objective principals not closeted or 'private' beliefs. So how can abortion remain a privacy issue if the legitimacy of what is deemed private comes into question?

According Cecile Richards, president of the New York-based Planned Parenthood Federation of America, "Women's ability to manage their own health care is at risk of being compromised by politics and ideology." Exactly what she means by 'health care" when it comes to contraceptives is not clear.



Margaret Sanger, atheist, anti-Catholic and negative eugenics support or who thought it was best to eliminate the unfit, including minorities is the founder of Planned Parenthood as early as 1921 under the title The American Birth Control League. That this woman's movement and Pro-abortion position is a continence of negative eugenics philosophy where by the unfit are euthanized or the numbers reduced is questionable. It is ironic that whatever Mrs. Sangers goal was it probably did not included the 'browning" of America that has taken place with the anticipated increase of non-whites in America over that of Caucasians by 2050.







































Sunday, August 3, 2008

Render Unto Caesar

Unfortunately, it seems that attacks by Barack Obama's rivals have a tendency of drawing even Barack Obama's detractors to his aid. This is what happened when John McCain says that Obama is 'playing the race card' based on a speech Obama gave describing how Republican engineers of fear would contrast his visage from those notable Americans who today have the honor of being commerated on the U.S. currency.


John McCain feels that Senator Obama is portraying him as racist through these comments. Yet his portrayal of Barrack Obama being the equivalent of white women, somehow inferior and certainly not a man is to be tolerated. It is to be tolerated why? In the add run by the McCain campaign the juxtaposition of Barack Obama with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton claiming that the Senator has more celebrity than substantial leadership qualities may seem to some that he denies Barack Obama has any depth, any intrinsic personal dialogue, that he is devoid of thought and subsequently devoid of a soul. In effect an inference can be drawn saying that Barack like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton are vapid, psychologically underdeveloped girls, whose judgement is questionable. If the implication from McCain's campagin advertisement is to suggest that these celebrities are simply ingenue to be dismissed and treated with disrespect where did that notion come from, is it inherent in the girls or the misogynistic men who groom them? When one sees the pictures of these girls one has to keep in mind that pornography is not only legal but promoted by major American corporations. What is troubling about McCain's advertisement was frankly how positive it was "Barack Obama is the greatest celebrity in the world, but is he ready to lead?" One has to construe celebrity to be incompatible with leadership which in itself takes some convincing. What's more, McCain's attacks Barack's allegeded vacuousness by hurling his own vain and incomplete charges against him. "Barack is famous, how can he be President at the same time?" Again there is this sense that celeberties are inherently insubstantial, Dr. Phil (Dr. Phillip C. McGraw. PH.D) cofounder and president of a litigation consulting firm and host of his popular television show can relate to people who are not rich, white and famous. Danica McKellar co-star of the hit television sitcom "The Wonder Years" is also a gifted mathematican and author of the book "Math Dosen't Suck" which encourages middle aged girls to maintain an affection for the subject. There doesn't have to be this William Caufield condemnation about all celebrites.
People like Spears, Lohan and Hilton may be better known for their exploits than their respective professions but there also seems to be hidden animosity coming from men like McCain and Jesse Jackson who would prefer to perceive Barack Obama as a homosexual minstrel by equating his success with the celebrity of these white women rather than acknowledging that he is running a successful campaign. It is quite possible that there is some psychosexual attraction they have towards Obama which I was here to fore not willing to concede as the fount of Reverand Jacksons off air condemnation of Senator Obama. Barack Obama needs to get votes to win an election, how can his popularity impede that goal? It is like claiming that Barack Obama's success is not success. It is somewhat interesting to note that Senator Barack Obama is leaps and bounds ahead of Senator McCain in campaign contribution thwarting the significance of McCain's best known political accomplishment, campaign finance reform.
What is it that these 'celebrities' are providing that we as fans are not pining after? Lindsy Lohan, the Spears sisters, Vanessa Williams and virtual every American female beauty winner that we have today can not claim to be the chaste girl next door type nor does it seem likely at this point that they would stand a chance of winning any of those contest if they could, but chastity as recognized by the Catholic faith is a communal chore, are we as men playing our part? There is a dangerous portrayal of how women are to be perceived and in particular, young, white, blond females. Senator McCain, known for his off colored jokes sends the message to American males that young blond women are thrift to be exploited. It states that it is okay to kill, hurt and maimed these kind of women because they are silly and not 'real', suitable only for sexual gratification and trophy wives or trivial retail posts.


John McCain dismisses Britney's reality even though we as a nation watched her suffer a nervous break down on national television, even though she is the mother of two children and living a lifestyle very similar to millions of struggling mom's. If Britney Spears were a poor Black women struggling with two kids as a single mom he would not have said those things, we as a society would have empathized with her plight and difficulties, instead because she is a young white blond female and successful artist she is treated as the scum of the earth by men like McCain and LA police commissioner Bill Braxton who trot them out for ridicule and disdain rather than showing them any compassion or giving them any manly comfort and support.


Paris Hilton has held her own as a young woman with a successful reality show which critics hailed as one of the most entertaining yet it is said of women like Paris that they have become famous for nothing. A claim asserted against Anna Nicole Smith for whom this could not be the case nor was she famous for being famous but was in fact one of the most popular nude centerfolds for Playboy magazine not a feat accessible to many women although they would feign to have no interest to be posted in the publication. Anna Nicole Smith was also a model for Guess jeans and spokes person for Trimspa diet products. She subsequently, used her attractiveness to fetch a rich husband, billionaire Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall, and inherited hundreds of millions of dollars at his death, a sexual coup many woman would deem a success. She was not famous for nothing, she was famous because she was sweet, seductive and sexually alluring. Anna Nicole Smith was the desire of many men and in fact quite successfully used her charm and attractiveness to navigate her way to what would have been a blissful plateau many would envy and perhaps did because most could not stop speaking evil about her even after she died. Even though she had a real life with very real public joys and sufferings like the birth of one child and at the same time the lost of another people kept talking about her as if she were insubstantial as if she were not really living. Although many thought they knew all about her the fact of the matter is that most probably did not even know her real name, Vicke Lynn Marshall. Anna Nicole Smith like Norma Jean's Marylin Monroe pseudonym, was only her stage name. All she did was smile and look beautiful and people hated her.





Why is it okay to say that certain people are insubstantial, that they are less real than others? What makes Senator McCain more fit to 'lead' than Barrack Obama, would it be the time that he spent as a prisoner by the Vietnamese? There is a hidden sentiment that I have and I am not sure that others share that when we speak of heroes we are speaking of one or two things, those who go for a goal and against all odds win like Elie Manning of the New York Giants, who despite the terrible things said about him persevered and won the Super Bowl and those who like the mythical pagan priestess Hero, in a bout of hysteria do not prevail in the contest with themselves or others and lose or forfeit their life. John McCain does not fall into either category. He got his arms broke and they were not set for five years and so he cannot comb his own hair as a consequence but who did he save, what war did he win, what bunker did he charge? If everybody who fought in Vietnam got shot down the way he did America would have never won the Vietnam war... oh, wait.



When General Wesley Clarke brought to the attention of the American people that Senator McCain's record does not entitle him to inherit the United States Presidency he spoke the truth, many of the American service personal that later went on to be President were like President Grant and Eisenhower, Generals. President Kennedy who was a lieutenant actually saved some one's life and Senator Kerry also made real contributions to the fight but neither men rested on their laurels over their war experience, neither really touted themselves as 'war heroes'. As far as actors are concerned they fared pretty well in politics themselves with Ronald Regan and Arnold Schwarzenegger ascending to the highest office in the country and the their state respectively . Why doesn't McCain use images of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Ronald Regan with the monkey in his campaign? It is in this respect that when the rap artist Ludicrous says that McCain ought to be paralyzed before he sits in a chair (presumably in the White house) I take it to mean he might as well further extend his credentials as war veteran which in part he exploits for his own presidential ambitions. The exaggerated piety that men like Senator McCain pay to the American military service only obfuscate the reality of both the missions that the soldiers are sent on and the suffering of the wounded who return. They try to render their service and activities as beyond critic and examination, when in fact we know now that there are quiet a bit of domestic disturbances and other disturbances in the armed forces as exist in any community of people.





It is not that it is not honorable to serve ones country, by all accounts it is, yet when one holds the suffering of military personal to be more exalted than that of other people, like Britney Spears and Anna Nicole Smith, it reveals an artificial perception about life, one that people like Senator McCain and Senator Hillary Clinton had which is why she lapsed into a fictional account of the real world in her Bosnia landing story that she perhaps imagines one needs to be a part of in order to be eligible for the presidency. Somehow she felt her real life experiences too inadequate to satisfy the role of President of the United States. It is an eligibility she subconsciously signals to the American people that she does not possess and in fact very few people do, except presidents like Eisenhower and Grant. Senator McCain in his own way lives in this fictional account of what it takes by dismissing Senator's Obama credentials, accomplishments and successes, which admittedly the press fails to enumerate. Men like Eisenhower and Grant were not 'hard talkers' like McCain and Clinton, they were genuinely compassionate and affectionate men who understood that having a big heart is more important when leading people than a big mouth. Hard talkers talk hard because they do not fully understand people, they do not really like people and they do not know people.


Senator McCain does not know Britney Spears or Paris Hilton, he like millions of other people assume their television persona, two dimensional as images are constitute all that they are, he is wrong and he is wrong about Barrack Obamas statement about the U.S. currency because he in a racist arrogance, racist because he feels the need to submerge Barack into the role of a servant 'boy' who like a Roman soldier conquering the Greek countryside and it's inhabitants he can sodomize and exploit at his whim and leisure, considers him a mere boy with no capacity for depth. Barrack Obama unlike any other person in the United States probably does look at the United States currency in a way that none of us in this country can. When Barrack Obama looks at U.S. currency today he alone can genuinely contemplate his face on a specific denomination as something more than a pipe dream. The fact of the matter is that his election alone would be a pivotal turning point in American history. He has the opportunity to be a pivotal American figure like Washington(War of Independence), Lincoln (Civil War), Grant(Civil War) and Benjamin Franklin (Founding Father) if Barrack Obama's becomes president and has a successful term he unlike millions of other people in this country has the opportunity to have not only his visage on the currency but his face added to Mount Rushmore. No, it is not likely but right now for Barrack Obama, it is possible. Perhaps no one else in America at this time can say that, not McCain because his election in itself would not be pivotal and not Senator Clinton because she is no longer in the race.


The theory of life that states when someone is real, as Wade county was told they had no claim in adopting in the Roe.V.Wade landmark Supreme Court decision resulted in the legalization of abortion, the Justices did not confirm who is alive and when they are to be deemed so but rather avoided the situation all together by having the State refrain from making the conscience of millions a public matter. That is why Roe.V.Wade is a contention of privacy not murder. People matter when they are matter, naturally their thoughts their feelings their souls have no matter so can not matter but to which they can make a liberal appeal which leads to murder. This is the Terry Schivo question, when are we no longer alive? When is it that we can be deemed dead? The dead we are free to kill and the living have a claim to their conscience which is immaterial. Meaning and value,the substance of thought, the substance of things hoped for have a jumbled role and play in the United States. A theory of life should not be adopted by the State, although ' The State' is not matter. A theory of life should not be adopted by the living at all, for that would be a vanity, a hypothesis of being which is impossible. When do people count? Why are some to be dismissed as 'punks' as worthless, who has given people like Senator McCain the right to judge? Is it because he has been in a war, because he has provided this service to United States?That is barter that is not respect, love and dignity, of course he will be given his say. That is more than the aborted fetuses have been given but because he is pro-life does not give him the liberty to slander those of us who are living, everyday, day to day. His own life was held in the balance by his captives, was that because he had some value to them at the time or was it out of an intrinsic respect for life held by the Vietcong?


I personally have no intention of voting for Senator Obama, however, I do believe in rendering onto Caesar's that which is Caesars and Barack Obama is fully justified in expressing the portent of change a successful presidency with him in the White House would mean for this country. He does not look like the other faces on the dollar and we cannot play the race card retrospectively, because in the era of the other 'dead presidents' a President Obama was fiction. We can not keep up the same tired gambits of soundbite such as 'race card', Senator Obama had a thought about his presidency in relations to the United States currency which was profound, but Senator McCain chose the low road or could not interpret it's significance, that does not bode well for the future if McCain wins the election.