Life!!!

[catholicbuckeye]

I feel your concern and have gotten in NUMEROUS heated debates concerning this issue… i hate how the ‘prime’ evils in america are pornography, homosexuals and abortion… totally forgetting the real evils we perfrom as a society to other developing worlds… i have much more concern for the starving, hungry and impoverished and i often take a lot of flack for that here in america… but these same americans are living a lavish lifestyle that puts other citizens further into economic bondage. A lot of things need to change and abortion is not the primary issue! Foreign debt, poverty and education are just as important if not more. AND they will indirectyly affect abortion rates anyways.

Heres a good article by NT Wright, one of the worlds elading NT scholars on the issue i am talking about:

nationalcatholicreporter.org/word/wright.htm

scroll down a bit, the first part is about the homosexuality issue, but the part on poverty, economics and world debt is PRICELESS and needs to be read by ALL!

A few comments.

1.) Living a “lavish” lifestyle in and of itself does not put anybody into economic bondage. In fact, punishing “lavish living” has often cost working class people jobs (i.e. luxury tax crippling yacht industry and costing thousands of workers their jobs when fewer yachts were bought). Now, the way that lifestyle is procured may cause economic bondage (obvious example being slavery in and before the 1800s, which was truly evil) but otherwise, you seem to be speaking more out of class envy than out of logic or reason. There is no 1 for 1 cause effect relationship there.

2.) Anybody who doesn’t think abortion is of vital interest has as poor a sense of perspective as is humanly possible. 50,000,000+ legally killed innocent human beings in 34 years (in the US alone) and you believe education is the major concern? I read a fascinating stat today. The murder rate nationwide is 5.6 per 100,000; however, the abortion rate is 25,000 out of every 100,000 pregnancies.

However, I do see why a liberal would be more concerned with education than murdered babies. Considering that liberals account for 8 or 9 out of every 10 abortions performed, the only way liberal ideals will survive the next generation is if liberals are able to successfully indoctrinate children in the schools.

When you care for life at every stage I may then believe that you honestly care for the human condition and aren’t just a big-government socialist.

 

[Future_Prodigy]

hahahhaha im sorry but you are VERY ignorant/arrogant to even be saying ANYTHING remotely like that… and class envy? Excuse you!? What is that supposed to mean!

I think you need to do some further research, maybe START BY READING THE ARTICLE!

 

[Future_Prodigy]

you know i am very offended that you would insinuate i have class envy, when you know NOTHING OF MY BACKGROUND

[Mod edit: deleted uncharitable comments]

I’m not even going to enter in a intellectual debate with you.

 

[Future_Prodigy]

p.s. if you want to get into a stat war, id love to! To be far though i’d have to tell you in advace that abortion is a shadow in compairison to the deaths caused by malaria, starvation, AIDS, and poverty… which may come as a surprise but are fueled by our actions (even if indirectly!).

 

[Future_Prodigy]

for those of us who did not read the article (reporter question in bold):

**Let’s turn to the current debate in the American Catholic church about denying communion to public officials who take positions contrary to church teaching. Can scripture help us? **
It is difficult, because the main issue in 1 Corinthians 11, or so it seems, is the rich and the poor. People who have enough money and food are going ahead and having a great meal, and Christians who don’t are left out, left on the side. Paul is pretty severe about that. If I were simply to pick up 1 Corinthians 11 and ask, “What does this suggest about Eucharistic fellowship?”, the biggest issue that shouts straight back at me is that the rich, white, Western world, which keeps the “two-thirds world” in grinding poverty and unpayable debt, stands condemned every time it receives the Eucharist because its brothers and sisters in the two-third world are growing the wrong sort of crops, are paying compound interest they can’t afford, and are being left on the side. I really would want to go very hard on that. If you want to start with scripture, that is the moral issue that comes straight out of 1 Corinthians 11. Until one addresses that sort of question, more local questions about “the church teaches x, but this person says y, therefore should they be allowed to receive the Eucharist?” … what’s the point of even putting that one on the table until we’ve started to address the big ones?

**I suspect one response would be that abortion is the defining moral issue of our times. If we can’t protect unborn life, this argument runs, we can’t protect anyone or anything. **
This is where I really would get quite angry with that point of view. Though I happen to agree with the stance on abortion, it seems blindingly obvious that it is not the big moral issue of our time. Global debt and the economic systems that were set up in 1944 with the Breton Woods Agreement, to slope the table so the money slides into the pockets of the Western banking system, at the cost of keeping most of the world in unpayable debt, seems to me as big a moral issue as slavery was 200 years ago. I and others intend to bang on about it until we achieve something. I just don’t think we can say, “abortion is the issue.” Apart from anything else, there are millions of children being born all the time in Africa, in Latin America, on the Indian subcontinent, whose economic circumstances are such that it would almost be better if they hadn’t been born. The reason they’re in those economic situations are precisely because of decisions taken in the World Bank and the IMF, and they are structural decisions, not just particular decisions. This has been so intensively and extensively studied, people have shown it so often, that I just wonder what kind of blindness it is that prevents people from seeing it. Of course part of the answer is, our churches have endowments. We’ve got investments in these things, and you can’t tell us to go back on that. That’s a serious problem, but it’s a problem that’s got to be addressed. Yes, abortion matters, but all this matters much, much more. Just in terms of sheer quantity, there are millions more people whose lives are totally blighted by it. That’s where I would go for starters. To play around with your Democratic presidential candidate, for example, seems to me to play with one particular pawn without noticing what’s happening on the chessboard as a whole. When you see the whole, I think you have to say, let’s try to address the big issues. If you haven’t got the courage to do that, addressing the little issues of one particular person and his views on this or that looks like a displacement activity. It looks like something you do rather frantically in order to avoid having to talk about the elephant in the living room.

 

[Future_Prodigy]

**The church, however, does not propose particular economic systems with the same clarity with which it denounces the killing of the unborn. **
That may be so, but Jesus says that you’re good at prophesying weather forecasts, why can’t you see the signs of the times? The weather forecasts that he instances are the easiest ones ever in the Middle East. If there’s a wind from the south, it’s going to be hot. If there’s a cloud coming up over the Mediterranean, it’s going to rain. It does not take a master’s degree in meteorology to figure that one out. If you stand in Jerusalem, that’s the way it is. Similarly, it does not take a degree in macroeconomics or a complicated statement from the House of Bishops to say that if two-thirds of the world is in unpayable debt, with compound interest getting higher all the time, and without a bankruptcy system that allows them to draw a line and start over, and if a small minority concentrated in our part of the world is getting richer and richer, being paid indecent sums of money on the basis of shuffling a few financial counters around and playing with these people’s lives … I don’t think it’s a complicated issue at all. I think it’s pretty straightforward issue. It only becomes complicated when people wriggle and twist and try to get off the hook.
**
The cure is more complicated than the diagnosis, yes? **
It is and it isn’t. The relief of global debt has actually been figured out. There are serious economists and bankers who have worked on this. I’m not an economist or a banker, but I have seen and talked to people in that field. They’ve got strategies where if you do this now, then you can do that next year, and so on. There would be ways through. Somebody said the sort of broad-brush sums we’re talking about would cost, say, America roughly the amount that it spends on going to the movies each year. It would cost roughly that amount to put the whole thing back the right way around. Then we could all proceed together. What really sticks in my throat is that while all this is going on, the American government, along with my own government and several others, talk about bringing freedom and justice to the world, when we are doing the precise opposite. Use of imperial rhetoric to cover up our own consistent greed … if we have any Christian moral courage, this is what we ought to be talking about. Face it, we are in a world where two-thirds of the people are poor and crying for justice. One-third of the people are rich and wanting more sex. I want to say, what is wrong with this picture? This cannot be the way the Creator-God intended the cosmos to work.

 

[anthony022071]

for those of us who did not read the article (reporter question in bold):

**Let’s turn to the current debate in the American Catholic church about denying communion to public officials who take positions contrary to church teaching. Can scripture help us? **
It is difficult, because the main issue in 1 Corinthians 11, or so it seems, is the rich and the poor. People who have enough money and food are going ahead and having a great meal, and Christians who don’t are left out, left on the side. Paul is pretty severe about that. If I were simply to pick up 1 Corinthians 11 and ask, “What does this suggest about Eucharistic fellowship?”, the biggest issue that shouts straight back at me is that the rich, white, Western world, which keeps the “two-thirds world” in grinding poverty and unpayable debt, stands condemned every time it receives the Eucharist because its brothers and sisters in the two-third world are growing the wrong sort of crops, are paying compound interest they can’t afford, and are being left on the side. I really would want to go very hard on that. If you want to start with scripture, that is the moral issue that comes straight out of 1 Corinthians 11. Until one addresses that sort of question, more local questions about “the church teaches x, but this person says y, therefore should they be allowed to receive the Eucharist?” … what’s the point of even putting that one on the table until we’ve started to address the big ones?

1B] Corinthians 11 suggests no such thing! There is no talk about the rich and the poor.

I suspect one response would be that abortion is the defining moral issue of our times. If we can’t protect unborn life, this argument runs, we can’t protect anyone or anything.
This is where I really would get quite angry with that point of view. Though I happen to agree with the stance on abortion, it seems blindingly obvious that it is not the big moral issue of our time. Global debt and the economic systems that were set up in 1944 with the Breton Woods Agreement, to slope the table so the money slides into the pockets of the Western banking system, at the cost of keeping most of the world in unpayable debt, seems to me as big a moral issue as slavery was 200 years ago. I and others intend to bang on about it until we achieve something. I just don’t think we can say, “abortion is the issue.” Apart from anything else, there are millions of children being born all the time in Africa, in Latin America, on the Indian subcontinent, whose economic circumstances are such that it would almost be better if they hadn’t been born.

]This sentence shows how misguided his moral conscience is. He’s thinking like an economist or statistician. Should a man’s economic circumstances determine whether he should have been born?]

The reason they’re in those economic situations are precisely because of decisions taken in the World Bank and the IMF, and they are structural decisions, not just particular decisions. This has been so intensively and extensively studied, people have shown it so often, that I just wonder what kind of blindness it is that prevents people from seeing it. Of course part of the answer is, our churches have endowments. We’ve got investments in these things, and you can’t tell us to go back on that. That’s a serious problem, but it’s a problem that’s got to be addressed. Yes, abortion matters, but all this matters much, much more. Just in terms of sheer quantity, there are millions more people whose lives are totally blighted by it. Again,thinking in terms of sheer quantities instead of the sanctity of human life!That’s where I would go for starters. To play around with your Democratic presidential candidate, for example, seems to me to play with one particular pawn without noticing what’s happening on the chessboard as a whole. When you see the whole, I think you have to say, let’s try to address the big issues. If you haven’t got the courage to do that, addressing the little issues of one particular person and his views on this or that looks like a displacement activity. It looks like something you do rather frantically in order to avoid having to talk about the elephant in the living room. Christians must practice love,charity,and mercy person to person – not try to address the “big issues” in an economic,quantitative manner in which questions of truth are postponed.

This guy is confused and muddle-headed and morally misguided. His views are like a combination of Marxism,liberation theology,pragmatism,Peter Singer,and Freakonomics.

 

[anthony022071]

for those of us who did not read the article (reporter question in bold):

**Let’s turn to the current debate in the American Catholic church about denying communion to public officials who take positions contrary to church teaching. Can scripture help us? **
It is difficult, because the main issue in 1 Corinthians 11, or so it seems, is the rich and the poor. People who have enough money and food are going ahead and having a great meal, and Christians who don’t are left out, left on the side. Paul is pretty severe about that. If I were simply to pick up 1 Corinthians 11 and ask, “What does this suggest about Eucharistic fellowship?”, the biggest issue that shouts straight back at me is that the rich, white, Western world, which keeps the “two-thirds world” in grinding poverty and unpayable debt, stands condemned every time it receives the Eucharist because its brothers and sisters in the two-third world are growing the wrong sort of crops, are paying compound interest they can’t afford, and are being left on the side. I really would want to go very hard on that. If you want to start with scripture, that is the moral issue that comes straight out of 1 Corinthians 11. Until one addresses that sort of question, more local questions about “the church teaches x, but this person says y, therefore should they be allowed to receive the Eucharist?” … what’s the point of even putting that one on the table until we’ve started to address the big ones?

1 Corinthians 11 suggests no such thing! There is no talk of the rich and the poor. There is nothing there to shout straight back at us that we are condemned when we receive the Eucharist because of the continued existence of poor people.

**I suspect one response would be that abortion is the defining moral issue of our times. If we can’t protect unborn life, this argument runs, we can’t protect anyone or anything. **
This is where I really would get quite angry with that point of view. Though I happen to agree with the stance on abortion, it seems blindingly obvious that it is not the big moral issue of our time. Global debt and the economic systems that were set up in 1944 with the Breton Woods Agreement, to slope the table so the money slides into the pockets of the Western banking system, at the cost of keeping most of the world in unpayable debt, seems to me as big a moral issue as slavery was 200 years ago. I and others intend to bang on about it until we achieve something. I just don’t think we can say, “abortion is the issue.” Apart from anything else, there are millions of children being born all the time in Africa, in Latin America, on the Indian subcontinent, whose economic circumstances are such that it would almost be better if they hadn’t been born.

He is thinking like an amoral economist or statistician.
Should a man’s economic circumstance determine whether he should have been born? Is it good to mitigate or prevent human suffering by mitigating and preventing humans that suffer?

The reason they’re in those economic situations are precisely because of decisions taken in the World Bank and the IMF, and they are structural decisions, not just particular decisions. This has been so intensively and extensively studied, people have shown it so often, that I just wonder what kind of blindness it is that prevents people from seeing it. Of course part of the answer is, our churches have endowments. We’ve got investments in these things, and you can’t tell us to go back on that. That’s a serious problem, but it’s a problem that’s got to be addressed. Yes, abortion matters, but all this matters much, much more. Just in terms of sheer quantity, there are millions more people whose lives are totally blighted by it. That’s where I would go for starters. To play around with your Democratic presidential candidate, for example, seems to me to play with one particular pawn without noticing what’s happening on the chessboard as a whole. When you see the whole, I think you have to say, let’s try to address the big issues. If you haven’t got the courage to do that, addressing the little issues of one particular person and his views on this or that looks like a displacement activity. It looks like something you do rather frantically in order to avoid having to talk about the elephant in the living room.

**Christians must practice love,charity,and mercy person to person – not try to address the “big issues” in a quantitative,economic,statistical manner
in which the question of truth is postponed.

This guy’s views are like a combination of Marxism,liberation theology,pragmatism,Peter Singer,and Freakonomics.**

 

[catholicbuckeye]

p.s. if you want to get into a stat war, id love to! To be far though i’d have to tell you in advace that abortion is a shadow in compairison to the deaths caused by malaria, starvation, AIDS, and poverty… which may come as a surprise but are fueled by our actions (even if indirectly!).

That didn’t take long! Held to your convictions of not debating for 13 minutes, well done. I will say, you really bombarded me with those stats.

1.) We created AIDS how? Does our billions of dollars in aid we have given as a country “fuel” AIDS? Actually I would argue that the loose moral values of the past 40 years have done plenty to “fuel” AIDS.
2.) We fuel malaria how (I sense a silly global warming argument coming)?
3.) We fuel poverty/starvation how? Through our billions of dollars we give annually in humanitarian relief? You would cure it how? By emulating the communist uber-economies of North Korea, Cuba (home of the world’s greatest medical care, ask Castro:thumbsup: ), former USSR (before it collapsed economically)? Just because they market it as “to each according to his needs” doesn’t mean that’s how it works out.

 

[Future_Prodigy]

i was wondering where you got your education? Because you are very misinformed with respect to globalsim, and human geography. If you really would like to do some readings then read the post above, i can post many more links. AND I SAID I COULD GET INTO A STAT WAR, if you would like me to post some stats i can!

p.s. anthony… what is wrong with marxism (when it is not to the extreme), liberation theogly, and pragmatism… NT Wright makes many good arguments and i believe confronts the issue of trying to restrict catholic politicans from receiving communion right on.

 

[Future_Prodigy]

Christians must practice love,charity,and mercy person to person – not try to address the “big issues” in a quantitative,economic,statistical manner
in which the question of truth is postponed.
.

Do you realize by your own line of reasoning the churches fight for ending abortion is wrong. Lets try to openly debate the issue and not sweep it under the rug like many north americans and europeans do!

 

[Future_Prodigy]

and my comment remains that was deleted, do not say anything on here that you would not say to my face. The internet is not a place for a dose of courage. We are christians so lets act charitablly!

 

[catholicbuckeye]

AND I SAID I COULD GET INTO A STAT WAR, if you would like me to post some stats i can!

p.s. anthony… what is wrong with marxism (when it is not to the extreme), liberation theogly, and pragmatism… NT Wright makes many good arguments and i believe confronts the issue of trying to restrict catholic politicans from receiving communion right on.

OK, show me some stats. What stats will you show me? That there are a lot of people dying of AIDS? We know that. That there are a lot of people starving or dying of malaria? We know that as well. Catholics empathize with these people, pray for these people and where possible materially help these people. It is right and necessary that we do so and is required of us by Christ.

This still doesn’t change the fact that 50,000,000 babies have been killed in this country alone in the last 34 years, under protection of law. Sorry I don’t have the stats for worldwide totals. I still don’t get how anybody can poo-poo abortion and it’s consequences as being a small thing and then claim to have compassion for the human condition and act as some sort a social justice crusader. It is as phony as it gets, I am sorry.

Ofcourse, then the “what’s wrong with Marxism” line (which neatly solved my question of whether you have compassion or are just big government socialist, thanks). The problem with Marxism (besides the most important aspect that it requires the removal of religion) is that you cannot advance in society through merit. The only way to advance yourself is through government, which has in every case lead to tyrants who brutally sqwelch all opposition. It is not bad luck that the USSR, Communist China, North Korea, Cuba all have had dictators throughout every year of their existence as Communist regimes. It is the logical end of Marxism or any form of government where power is transferred from the people to the government. That “Social Contract” simply does not work.

Liberation theology - I admit I am not too familiar with it other than that it promotes class struggle/warfare (and class envy, which you also denied as being a motivation for you - you really help me win my arguments quickly!)…w/o getting too deeply into it, I would just say Jesus came to save us all. He was ridiculed for trying to save the rich (tax collectors) as well as the poor and sinners. He did not goad the poor into struggle with the rich. He tried to convert the heart and soul of the rich to look after their poorer brothers and sisters. If this world followed that more closely, what a wonderful place it would be.

 

[Future_Prodigy]

Im not even going to respond to your post anymore. You need to do some reading and shed your shell of ignorance (saying in a polite way!). If you want numbers then look them up, i can get back to you on it but cant right now (im doing a project on human geography and dont have time to waste on these matters with you)… but on sheer numbers alone, which you seem to keep returning to, the numbers of people who die from poverty and starvation far exceed anything close to abortion (the so called american moral crisis)!!! Please stop wasting all of our time and read the article yourself, then when you have a sound critique of it (the article and tis argument) i will be glad to respond. Till then. Peace

 

[Future_Prodigy]

OK, show me some stats. What stats will you show me? That there are a lot of people dying of AIDS? We know that. That there are a lot of people starving or dying of malaria? We know that as well. Catholics empathize with these people, pray for these people and where possible materially help these people. It is right and necessary that we do so and is required of us by Christ.
.

p.s. that is only a bandaid to the problem… do you believe praying for, emphasizing and materially sponsoring (if possible) the pro-life movement enough?! No you want a direct change! Not prayer support and empathy! So please do not apply that line of reasoning to this world issue!

 

[luvmykids]

Im not even going to respond to your post anymore. You need to do some reading and shed your shell of ignorance (saying in a polite way!). If you want numbers then look them up, i can get back to you on it but cant right now (im doing a project on human geography and dont have time to waste on these matters with you)… but on sheer numbers alone, which you seem to keep returning to, the numbers of people who die from poverty and starvation far exceed anything close to abortion (the so called american moral crisis)!!! Please stop wasting all of our time and read the article yourself, then when you have a sound critique of it (the article and tis argument) i will be glad to respond. Till then. Peace

Dying from starvation and intentionally being killed by someone are two different things. How do you propose we help solve the problem of starvation? There are those of us who DO donate time and money towards this effort, and those of us who are in a position of needing to feed our God given families first.

Also, what exactly are saying? We put too much time and effort into trying to stop these mass killings? You think any other problem in society is going to be solved when life at it’s most vulnerable is being destroyed? Why should anyone care about anyone at all when human life is treated this way to begin with? It all starts in the womb!

 

[puzzleannie]

i.e. the bit that comes in between being born and lying in a hospital bed about to die.

It seems that some Catholics are obsessed with abortion and euthanasia issues. I went to my local Catholic book shop the other day to get some reading matter on Catholic views of social justice. In the ethics section, there were 3 bookshelves full of bioethics, and one sparsely stocked shelf of histories of the Church’s response to Nazis and Communists.

Is there anybody out there who, like me, cares as much about what happens to my neighbour after we’ve left the birth canal as about before?

If we do not first defend the primary basis for all other human rights, the right to life, we have no basis for defending any other rights, including the rights protected in our constitution, the UN charter on human rights, or any social justice issues. We are your allies, not your opponents, in these debates and struggles. Without us pro-lifers your other arguments, strategies and efforts are useless and without foundation. The Catholic Church is virtually the only institution that discusses and preaches these rights as a unity, interdependent, with a basis both in human logic and divine law, on the right to life.

 

[Future_Prodigy]

If we do not first defend the primary basis for all other human rights, the right to life, we have no basis for defending any other rights, including the rights protected in our constitution, the UN charter on human rights, or any social justice issues. We are your allies, not your opponents, in these debates and struggles. Without us pro-lifers your other arguments, strategies and efforts are useless and without foundation. The Catholic Church is virtually the only institution that discusses and preaches these rights as a unity, interdependent, with a basis both in human logic and divine law, on the right to life.

Yes, from on high it may preach these values but on the ground level ALL you hear about is pornography and abortion being the main moral issue of our time (at least in the Canadian Roman Catholic Church and i assume it is the same in the United States!) My whole argument is that those 2 ARE NOT the moral issue of our time. I agree with you that the RCC is one of the few institutions that has something to say about social justice but the actual ground level preaching, retreat/seminar talks are not about them!

 

[Future_Prodigy]

-According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”

Here are a few website links…
Check them out!

unicef.org/

unicefusa.org/site/c.duLRI8O0H/b.25933/k.CA88/Home.htm

makepovertyhistory.org/

one.org/#

globalissues.org/TradeRelated/PovertyAroundTheWorld.asp

partnershipwalk.org/usa/content/

globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Facts.asp

 

[anthony022071]

Yes, from on high it may preach these values but on the ground level ALL you hear about is pornography and abortion being the main moral issue of our time (at least in the Canadian Roman Catholic Church and i assume it is the same in the United States!) My whole argument is that those 2 ARE NOT the moral issue of our time. I agree with you that the RCC is one of the few institutions that has something to say about social justice but the actual ground level preaching, retreat/seminar talks are not about them!

For many middle-class Catholic Americans,abortion is indeed the moral issue of our time,since it is the form of evil which glares out the most and is closest at hand in middle-class society. We don’t experience widespread poverty or starvation or oppression or war.