Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Father Thomas Reese Gives a Great Example of an Idiotic Statement

If only it were Friday, my Idiot of the Week day... Quite a few people are vying for the title this week, although I have to say I'm always surprised when the candidate is an actual priest.
“It's important to make a distinction between people who are pro abortion and people who are pro choice.”
This amazing quote came from Father Thomas Reese, a Jesuit Priest, while debating Father Mitch Pacwa on prime time news. Father Reese came up with this stellar statement while attempting to explain why pro-abortion politicians should be allowed to receive communion.

I've done a number of posts on that issue and my opinion on it is pretty clear (as is the Canon Law that allows it). So I'll stick to the quote today.

Father Reese believes that there's an important distinction between the titles "pro abortion" and "pro choice." Are the babies that are murdered as a result of the votes cast by "pro choice" politicians any less dead?

Maybe we should all just use the term "pro death." It seems just a little more honest and less confusing than "pro choice." After all, the terminology did manage to confuse Father Reese into thinking that murdering someone as a matter of "choice" is somehow less evil.

3 comments:

  1. This is the best blog post I've seen in a looongg time!! I couldn't agree with you more!

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  2. Just like there is a big difference between people who say you shouldn't have an abortion because it isn't right and those that say you can't have an abortion and you should recieve a criminal punishment if you do.

    I have lived with orthodox Jews, devout Muslims and Mormons who all are in extreme opposition to abortion but because they are conscious of the need for the protection of religious and personal freedom, they would not propose criminalization.

    While I believe that the majority of Americans are and always have been pro life, it is only among orthodox Catholics, not the majority by any stretch of the imagination and some very fundamentalist Protestants that you find support for the idea that the dictates of their religion are elevated to "a natural law", that must be strictly observed by all, on pain of prosecution.

    When the beliefs of these fundamentalist Christians are examined more closely, you find that there is a whole panoply of "natural laws" given to them by their diety, both in the area of women's reproductive function and others, that non believers should be required to follow, on pain of ostracism or imprisonment.

    I am not an abortionist. I have never encouraged anyone to have one and never would. I believe that abortion is certainly the killing of a human being.

    I am old now. I remember very well what it was like before abortion was legal. I think there were probably about the same number of abortions then as now but even if that is not the case I would still be in favor of legal abortion. I would never voluntarily return to the old days. They were terrible. Mothers of unsanctioned children suffered terribly and it was primarily the religious community that persecuted them. The shrill, bombastic tenor of the largely orthodox Catholic pro life activist movement tells me that they would once again zero in on punishing women with unwanted pregnancies and illegitamate children within their communities should the laws revert back.

    I do not mean in any way to question the validity of your sincerely held beliefs, just telling you what I believe and that I believe Catholic priests such as Thomas Reese and Roy Bourgeois are brave men of great purpose.

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  3. Murder is murder. You can't get any simpler than that. And murder in all circumstance should be illegal.

    Thomas Reese is not a brave man with a great purpose. He is arguing for the normalization of murder. I wouldn't want to be in his position, having argued for the murder of innocent children, when I go to meet my maker.

    It's so strange how people with your sincerely held beliefs so often can't find the courage to type out even their first names. Perhaps it is because deep down you realize that you are arguing for the destruction of innocent life. And that has nothing to do with religion.

    Murder has been held to be a grave wrong across cultures and societies.

    I will pray for you and all those out there who blind themselves with our societies egocentric obsessions.

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