Q: There’s been a lot of discussion about whether the bishops’ teaching on voting is too nuanced, because it was used in all kinds of ways by all kinds of groups during this election, because it said Catholics are not single-issue voters. What do you think?

A: I think that most Catholics understand what the church’s teachings are and those voter guide things are always problematic but I think in general people understand. It was interesting, if one considers Massachusetts, which is so overwhelmingly Democratic, and 8 years ago Gore got 75 percent of the Catholic vote and four years ago, Kerry, who is Catholic and from Massachusetts, got 50 percent of it, so they lost 25 percent of the vote in four years, and I think a lot of that was the influence of people’s concerns about life issues and things like that. And obviously when you look at the differential between the way that Catholics who are church-going Catholics vote and those who are not church going Catholics, I think that the Catholics reflect the church’s teaching. Not as much as we’d like them to, but certainly this last election there were many other factors that intervened.

Q: You just alluded to the fact that many of the people in your archdiocese are Catholics who support abortion rights, including leading politicians, and both US senators. What is your position on whether they should present themselves for Communion, and whether you should be giving it to them?

A: The church’s teaching on worthiness for Communion and proper disposition is in the Catholic catechism, and it’s no secret, and I support that. There is perhaps a teaching where we have not done as good a job of late as we used to. When I was growing up, we would go to confession every Saturday, we would fast from midnight, there was much more of an awareness of the need to be spiritually prepared and in communion with the church and in a state of grace. Today I think we need to reinforce that teaching a lot. And once that teaching is better understood, then, I think, it will be obvious as to who should be coming to Communion and who shouldn’t. But until there’s a decision of the church to formally excommunicate people, I don’t think we’re going to be denying Communion to the people. However, whatever the church’s decision is, we will certainly enforce.

Q: Your position four years ago was that you did not want confrontations at the altar rail.

A: That’s right. We do not want to make a battleground out of the Eucharist.

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Washington state’s dramatic Election Day vote to decriminalize assisted suicide – which on Wednesday was drawing media attention around the world – means the debate can no longer be avoided in Canada, especially B.C.

One of the few things that both opponents and advocates of euthanasia for the terminally ill agree on is that it is time to expose this emotion-charged issue to the full light of day.

With the so-called “Death with Dignity” bill receiving the support of three out of five voters, Washington joins Oregon as the only American states to legalize assisted suicide in certain conditions. The Pacific Northwest states enter the company of the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland.

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Voters approved Initiative 1000 on Tuesday, making Washington the second state to give terminally ill people the option of medically assisted suicide.

The ballot measure, patterned after Oregon’s “Death with Dignity” law, allows a terminally ill person to be prescribed lethal medication, which would be self-administered.

With about 43 percent of the expected vote counted Tuesday in unofficial returns, I-1000 was being approved by a margin of about 58 percent to about 42 percent.

Supporters, led publicly by Democratic former Gov. Booth Gardner, said the initiative would provide a compassionate way for terminally ill people to die.

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Bishop Ronald Gainer said Monday that he wrote a letter stressing the church’s stance on abortion to the Lexington Diocese because he felt that too many Catholic politicians had misstated key Catholic teachings.

On Sunday, 64 parishes in the Lexington Diocese were read a letter written by Gainer that stressed that issues about the sanctity of life ”” including abortion ”” are morally more important than other political issues.

The letter, Gainer said Monday, was in response to several letters to the editor and statements made by Catholic politicians on a key Catholic document related to voting and citizenship.

“I mention no party and mention no candidates,” Gainer said of his letter. “Our policy is that we are non-partisan but principled.”

Read it all and the letter itself is there.

Scientists in Japan say they have successfully cloned a mouse from a body that had been frozen for 16 years, theoretically opening the door to a range of possibilities from preserving endangered animals, to resurrecting extinct animals to cloning Ted Williams.

The authors of the study made no bones about what they believe the implications of their work could be.

“It has been suggested that the ‘resurrection’ of frozen extinct species, such as the woolly mammoth, is impracticable, as no live cells are available, and the genomic material that remains is inevitably degraded,” wrote the authors in the Monday edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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The 2008 presidential campaigns will end Nov. 4 when the nation votes. But they will have seen an unprecedented activity by one very small group of American leaders: Catholic bishops.

Most have shared the attitude of Bishop Larry Silva of Honolulu ”” that “one issue alone far outweighs all others: the right to life.”

In unusually strong language, bishops have denounced abortion and directed voters away from pro-abortion candidates ”” so much so that Americans United for Separation of Church and State has threatened to sue at least one bishop. According to USA Today, the group sent a letter to the Internal Revenue Service accusing Bishop Arthur Serratelli of Paterson, N.J., of illegal partisanship for lambasting Obama’s support of abortion rights.

With the election just days away, the Register offers its own compilation of some of the strongest statements….

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Those statistics are supported by an Oct. 15 letter from Bishop Martin D. Holley, a member of the committee on pro-life activities of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Holley wrote that the more than 13 million babies lost to abortion is more than one third of the current black population in the United States.
“Since 1973, twice as many black Americans have died from abortion than from AIDS, accidents, violent crimes, cancer and heart disease combined,” he wrote. “Black women have abortions at five times the rate of white women.”

Merritt also spoke about studies that show abortion facilities such as Planned Parenthood are often built either near or in the middle of black communities.
“The event gave us an opportunity to get the facts about abortion out there, and to inform the NAACP about Birthright, a crisis pregnancy center in Columbia,” Black said. “Hopefully, now if those students or their friends face an unplanned pregnancy, they will have more information about choosing life.”

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But many evangelicals, left and right, have been haunted by the belief that their movement failed at a critical moment in American history. As Donald Dayton put it in his 1976 study, “Evangelical Christianity rather consistently opposed currents of the 1960s that demanded social justice and civil rights.” The claim may be exaggerated. The great evangelist Billy Graham was remarkably progressive on matters of race, and major Southern denominations, such as the Baptists and Presbyterians, explicitly supported desegregation. But the weight of the charge is felt, even if the failure was generally more one of passivity than strident opposition. It is a sign of evangelicalism’s active conscience that it remains uneasy.

Hence the Promise Keepers movement of the ’90s, overwhelmingly an evangelical-right phenomenon, was not only a men’s movement but also a movement for racial reconciliation — a facet entirely missed by hysterical secular critics who were obsessed with its gender dimensions to the exclusion of all else. Hence even within theologically conservative denominations such as the Presbyterian Church in America one finds strenuous efforts to build biracial congregations and support inner-city ministries and missions. Hence the effort by evangelical megachurch pastor Rick Warren, in the presidential forum held at his Saddleback Church on Aug. 16, to promote greater civility in the presidential campaign.

Unfortunately for Sen. Obama, the Saddleback forum turned out to be one of his least effective outings, and his stumbling and evasive remarks about abortion — the question of life’s beginning, he said, was “above my pay grade” — brought to a sharp point the dilemma faced in this election by all white evangelicals, left, right and center. It would have been one thing to overlook the record of a moderately pro-choice candidate for the sake of racial progress. But the starkness of Sen. Obama’s position forces upon evangelicals a profoundly unenviable choice.

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An attempt to legalise assisted suicide was made at the Scottish Parliament last night.

Margo MacDonald, the veteran MSP who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, started the process to bring a Private Member’s Bill before the Parliament next year.

The move will fuel the debate prompted by the suicide in Switzerland of the paralysed rugby player Daniel James, 23, and the attempt by Debbie Purdy, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, to have the Crown Prosecution Service clarify its position on assisted suicide.

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A woman with multiple sclerosis has lost her High Court case to clarify the law on assisted suicide.

Debbie Purdy, 45, from Bradford, is considering going to a Swiss clinic to end her life, but fears her husband may be charged on his return to the UK.

She had wanted a guarantee that her husband, Omar Puente, would not be prosecuted.

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Colorado is one of several states facing a controversial ballot measure this fall that could have far-reaching impacts on abortion law. Amendment 48 would define “personhood” as beginning at the moment of conception, giving fertilized human eggs the same constitutional rights as a person.

The first of its kind in the U.S., the amendment is the brainchild of 21-year-old Kristi Burton, who says she wants to establish a concrete definition of when life begins to protect unborn children. On a Sunday in October, Burton drove three hours from her home near Colorado Springs to speak at Life Church, an evangelical congregation in Fort Collins.

Read or listen to it all.

The hottest campaign in Michigan this fall features no candidate, but an embryo.

In the fight over Proposal 2, advocates and opponents are spending millions to shape voter opinion on a proposal to loosen current restrictions on embryonic stem cell research in the state.

In West Michigan, Amway co-founder Richard DeVos has given $200,000 to fight the proposal to free up state funds for the research, according to recent campaign finance statements.

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The cardinal, who is archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, Scotland, said this at a conference Saturday in reference to Wednesday’s approval of the Human Fertilization and Embryology Bill.

With a vote of 355-129, the bill passed through its third reading in the House of Commons. The bill passed through the House of Lords earlier this year. After a debate on the amendments introduced by the House of Commons, the bill could become law by November.

The bill permits the creation of animal-human hybrids for medical research, the creation of “savior siblings” genetically matched to an older sick sibling (meaning that those who do not match are eliminated), and loosens access to in-vitro fertilization for lesbian couples by eliminating the requirement for children to have fathers.

John Smeaton, the national director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said the passage of the bill marks a “tragic date in British history, as Parliament has passed a law extending the lethal abuse of the most vulnerable members of our society. Future generations will look back on this macabre bill and wonder how a supposedly civilized nation could have so devalued human life.”

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Forasmuch as the Reformed Episcopal Church has affirmed the teaching of God’s Word that abortion is the taking of an unborn human life, and inasmuch as we have recognized the duty of all faithful Christians to work to protect the unborn and restrain the sin of abortion on demand, we hereby move that the General Council of the Reformed Episcopal Church direct the clergy and laity of the Reformed Episcopal Church to make a political candidate’s position on the Sanctity of Human Life the highest priority in discerning for whom to vote regardless of political party represented or office being sought.

A quarter of America’s bishops have said that the most important issue for voters in the forthcoming presidential election is abortion – comments that may help boost the fortunes of Republican candidate John McCain.

Some 50 out of the nation’s 197 active bishops have published articles or given interviews during the run-up up to the election urging abortion as the key issue on which voters should decide which way to vote.

Senator McCain opposes the 1973 Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade, which legalised abortion in the US, but has refused – most recently, at last week’s final television debate between the presidential candidates – to impose an abortion-based “litmus test” on his Supreme Court nominees. The Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, has repeatedly indicated his support for the 1973 ruling alongside a pledge to sign a proposed Freedom of Choice Act that would invalidate any state or local ordinance intended to “deny or interfere” with a woman’s choice to have an abortion.

Among the bishops who have intervened is Bishop Robert Hermann of St Louis who last Friday wrote: “the issue of life is the most basic issue and must be given priority over the issue of the economy, the issue of war or any other issue.” His comment came in a column for the archdiocesan newspaper that appeared hours before Mr Obama addressed 100,000 people in the heavily Catholic city.

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The lower house of parliament approved legislation Wednesday allowing scientists to create animal-human embryos for medical research, in the biggest shake-up of embryology laws in two decades.

Despite opposition from religious and pro-life groups, MPs in the House of Commons backed the Human Embryology and Fertilisation Bill by 355 votes to 129. It will now go to a vote in the House of Lords, and could be law by November.

The wide-ranging bill, which has been debated for months, would also allow “saviour siblings” — children created as a close genetic match for a sick brother or sister so their genetic material can help treat them.

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In 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision knocked down laws against abortion in all 50 states, fabricating a constitutional “right” to abortion that continues to haunt and divide our society. Within two days of that decision, the Catholic bishops rejected it as “bad morality, bad medicine and bad public policy.” We called for a comprehensive response: exploring “every legal possibility” for challenging the Court’s tragic error and restoring legal safeguards for the right to life of the unborn child; helping to pass laws to “restrict the practice of abortion as much as possible” in the meantime; and educating society to the need to safeguard the child and support “more humane and morally acceptable solutions” for women facing problems during pregnancy.

Recently, some have called on the Church to abandon most of this effort. They say we should accept Roe as a permanent fixture of constitutional law, stop trying to restore recognition for the unborn child’s human rights, and confine our public advocacy to efforts to “reduce abortions” through improved economic and social support for women and families.

[We have been very involved in manifold ways in seeking to provide such ministry and support]….

These efforts, however, are not an adequate or complete response to the injustice of Roe v. Wade for several important reasons. First, the Court’s decision in Roe denied an entire class of innocent human beings the most fundamental human right, the right to life. In fact, the act of killing these fellow human beings was transformed from a crime into a “right,” turning the structure of human rights on its head. Roe v. Wade is a clear case of an “intrinsically unjust law” we are morally obliged to oppose (see Evangelium vitae, nos. 71-73). Reversing it is not a mere political tactic, but a moral imperative for Catholics and others who respect human life.

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Denver Roman Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput labeled Barack Obama the “most committed” abortion-rights candidate from a major party in 35 years while accusing a Catholic Obama ally and other Democratic-friendly Catholic groups of doing a “disservice to the church.”

Chaput, one of the nation’s most politically outspoken Catholic prelates, delivered the remarks Friday night at a dinner of a Catholic women’s group.

His comments were among the sharpest in a debate over abortion and Catholic political responsibility in a campaign in which Catholics represent a key swing vote.

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The story of Daniel James is almost unbearable. Paralysed in a rugby scrum, he made several suicide attempts and finally persuaded his parents to take him to the Swiss Dignitas clinic to end his life. At 23.

His parents have been questioned by police; what happens next is anybody’s guess. Since its inception Dignitas has left the British legislature mortally confused. Take Debbie Purdy, who has multiple sclerosis: she has challenged the Director of Public Prosecutions to state unequivocally whether or not her husband will be charged with assisting suicide (a 14-year sentence) if he takes her there, when she decides the time has come. Ms Purdy robustly says that, if the answer is yes, then she will go alone – and therefore much sooner. If he is in the clear, she can enjoy her remaining time. She deserves that clarity.

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One of the most interesting facets of the intra-Catholic furor over Kmiec, Kaveny, Cafardi and other pro-life, pro-Obama Catholics is the way this argument seems to have displaced the struggle between bishops and pro-choice Catholic politicians that was so prominent in 1984 (when the contest was between Geraldine Ferraro and New York’s Cardinal John O’Connor) and 2004 (when the candidacy of John Kerry embroiled the entire U.S. bishops conference in a dispute over whether pro-choice Catholic politicians ought to be permitted to receive holy communion). That displacement, however, is likely to be temporary.

In the wake of ill-advised (and nationally televised) ventures into theology by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden, several bishops””including Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput, Madison Bishop Robert Morlino and Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl””issued statements underscoring the Catholic Church’s unswerving moral opposition to abortion from the very beginnings of Christianity; the morality of abortion was not an open question for serious Catholics, as Pelosi in particular had suggested. (After receiving what seems to have been an avalanche of protest over the Speaker’s misstatement on “Meet the Press,” Pelosi’s own archbishop, George Niederauer of San Francisco, announced publicly that he would invite Mrs. Pelosi in for a conversation.) Moreover, in the wake of both the Pelosi and Biden incidents, the chairmen of the bishops’ pro-life and doctrine committees, Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia and Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., issued sharp statements deploring the misrepresentation of Catholic teaching by the Speaker and the senator.

Many U.S. bishops, in other words, seem exasperated with Catholic politicians who present themselves as ardent Catholics and yet consistently oppose the Church on what the bishops consider the premier civil-rights issue of the day.

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So can Catholics vote for a pro-choice candidate? The answer is yes, but as I found when I publicly endorsed Obama, you’ve then got “some ‘splain’n’ to do.” It’s a matter of conscience, but had Obama proclaimed himself to be pro-choice and said nothing more, it would have been problematic. But there are those additional words about appropriate education as well as adoption and assistance for mothers who choose to keep their baby.

This is not just debate posturing. It is consistent with Obama’s successful effort to add language to the Democratic platform affirming the choice of a mother to keep her child by pledging pre- and post-natal care, funded maternity leave and income support for poor women who, studies show, are four times more likely to pursue an abortion absent some tangible assistance.

Some might ask, isn’t John McCain, the self-proclaimed “pro-lifer,” still a morally superior choice for Catholics? Not necessarily. McCain’s commitment, as he stressed in the debate, is to try to reverse Roe vs. Wade. But Republicans have been after this for decades, and the effort has not saved a single child. Even if Roe were reversed — unlikely, in my judgment — it merely transfers the question to the states, most of which are not expected to ban abortion. A Catholic serious about preserving life could reasonably find Obama’s educational and material assistance to mothers the practical, stronger alternative.

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With the presidential election just 40 days away, many Roman Catholic bishops and parish leaders are working aggressively to highlight the church’s opposition to abortion.

In Chicago, the archdiocese’s Respect Life office and five other anti-abortion groups are holding a round-the clock prayer vigil for the next 40 days outside a medical clinic on the city’s North Side that performs abortions. On Wednesday, the first night of the vigil outside Family Planning Associates, more than 100 people gathered, many holding white candles and rosary beads, staring at the clinic as they prayed. No mention was made of either Sens. John McCain or Barack Obama, but apprehension about the election was in the night air.

“The purpose of the vigil is to end abortion,” said Mary Louise Kurey, director of the Respect Life office. “But the election is definitely one of our intentions as we are praying together.”

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The BBC blurb says:

As a severely disabled woman in Britain goes to court to clarify the law on assisted suicide, could there be a duty to die so you don’t become a burden on your loved ones?

Featured are Debbie Purdy, the disabled woman just mentioned above,John Hardwig of the Philosophy Department of the University of Tennessee, and Professor Hank Jacomsen from a private institute for medical ethics in the Netherlands.

It starts at about 8:40 and the segment runs approximately 9 1/2 minutes.

A recommendation from a committee of Protestant bioethical experts calling for a ban on sex selection for non-medical reasons was voted in virtually unopposed at the Presbyterians’ biannual general assembly.

The Bioethics Council, a ministerial advisory committee, recommended in June that the ban on using pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to select a baby’s sex purely for social reasons be lifted.

However, the joint Presbyterian, Methodist and Anglican Inte-church Bioethics Council declared the idea “undesirable” on social and cultural grounds.

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Perhaps the most absorbing element of this election season is the spectacle of abortion activists and media analysts grappling with both Gov. Sarah Palin’s decision to spare the life of her Down syndrome child and her teenage daughter’s decision to continue her pregnancy and marry the father of her unborn child.

As a group of talking heads on television expressed their amazement at the state of the Palin household, I thought of William May, my moral theology professor at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, and his penchant for poking holes in the tortured logic of abortion advocates. May could nail the source of abortion supporters’ present discomfort in a nanosecond: Palin’s family choices directly challenge arguments that justify abortion as the “lesser evil.”

Since the ’60s, reproductive rights activists have presented abortion as perhaps the best solution for the scourge of teenage pregnancy, inner-city poverty, gender inequality, and the suffering experienced by disabled infants and their families. But May didn’t buy those arguments: “If abortion is the ”˜lesser evil,’” he used to tell our class, “then the alternative ”” keeping the baby ”” constitutes the ”˜greater evil.’ But how can that position be proved?”

The answer is that it’s impossible to prove that abortion constitutes the “lesser evil.” Catholic moral theologians like May have labored for years to explain both the logical inconsistencies and the moral dangers of the “lesser evil” argument. Now, the Palin family is providing an assist.

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Obscured by the polemics and theologizing, however, is the hard reality that abortion rates in the U.S., and legalized abortion, will not soon yield to restatements of the catechism or the notion that abortion is a violation of “natural law.” Such arguments have not yet proved persuasive to the American public, and minds are not likely to be changed by judicial fiat, even from the Supreme Court.

That means that abortion today is primarily a political challenge, and in that context Democrats have been embracing a more effective strategy than the GOP. In an interview with ABC last week, Mr. Obama wisely noted (a month after his “above my pay grade” gaffe) that the theological question was one “I don’t presume to be able to answer” for everyone else. “The better answer,” he said, “is to figure out, how do we make sure the young mothers, or women who have a pregnancy that’s unexpected or difficult, have the kind of support they need to make a whole range of choices, including adoption and keeping the child.”

Mr. Obama’s argument has won some surprising converts, most notably the former Reagan official Douglas W. Kmiec, whose switch has infuriated his erstwhile allies in the conservative movement. While Mr. Kmiec still strongly opposes abortion, he also believes that the status quo will be perpetuated by a McCain-Palin win. As he notes, Republicans have dominated the White House and Congress for nearly 30 years, and appointed most of the Supreme Court justices. Yet little has changed. (Abortion rates in fact dropped under Bill Clinton and are leveling off under George Bush.)

Mr. Kmiec also argues that Roe v. Wade is effectively settled law, and while the high court has a mostly Catholic conservative majority, only Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia would consider overturning Roe — and not for moral reasons, but because they believe it was based on a flawed reading of the Constitution.

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Turning his remarks to Sen. Biden, Bishop [Robert] Morlino said he and the senator shared as their hometown Scranton, Pennsylvania.

“I am positive of what Sen. Biden was taught in Scranton. And it’s the same thing that I was taught,” he declared.

While Rep. Pelosi may be confused, he said, he claimed Sen. Biden doesn’t understand the difference between “religious faith and natural law.”

“Any human being — regardless of his faith, his religious practice or having no faith — any human being can reason to the fact that human life from conception unto natural death is sacred,” he argued. “Biology — not faith, not philosophy, not any kind of theology — Biology tells us, science [says], that at the moment of conception there exists a unique individual of the human species.”

“It’s not a matter of what I might believe. What my faith might teach me,” he said.
“Sen. Biden has an obligation to know that. And he doesn’t know it.”
Charging that some theologians, priests, and bishops also allowed Biden to become confused, Bishop Morlino then criticized politicians for confusing the Catholic faithful.

“They’re supposed to believe in separation of church and state. They’re violating the separation of church and state by confusing people about what I have an obligation to teach,” he charged, though he did not hold them culpable.

“They themselves were confused after the Council and I don’t blame them for that. Bishops allowed it, theologians did it, some priests did it, and in Canada even some bishops did it.”

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Rocco describes what happened this past Sunday:

Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison told his usual Sunday-morning crowd that, having seen the [Meet the Press] program just prior to the liturgy, he was shelving his prepared preach to address the theme of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Delaware senator “as Catholics.”

“You can see I’m worked up about this,” the Wisconsin prelate — like Biden, a son of Scranton — said during his weekly 11am Mass at St Patrick’s parish in the heart of the “People’s Republic.”

It is an mp3 file and the homily is about 15 minutes long (hat tip: Rocco).

Update: A brief biography of the bishop is here.

MR. BROKAW: Two weeks ago I interviewed Senator Nancy Pelosi–she’s the speaker of the House, obviously–when she was in Denver. When Barack Obama appeared before Rick Warren, he was asked a simple question: When does life begin? And he said at that time that it was above his pay grade. That was the essence of his question. When I asked the speaker what advice she would give him about when life began, she said the church has struggled with this issue for a long time, especially in the last 50 years or so. Her archbishop and others across the country had a very strong refutation to her views on all this; I guess the strongest probably came from Edward Cardinal Egan, who’s the Archbishop of New York. He said, “Anyone who dares to defend that they may be legitimately killed because another human being `chooses’ to do so or for any other equally ridiculous reason should not be providing leadership in a civilized democracy worthy of the name.” Those are very strong words. If Senator Obama comes to you and says, “When does life begin? Help me out here, Joe,” as a Roman Catholic, what would you say to him?

SEN. BIDEN: I’d say, “Look, I know when it begins for me.” It’s a personal and private issue. For me, as a Roman Catholic, I’m prepared to accept the teachings of my church. But let me tell you. There are an awful lot of people of great confessional faiths–Protestants, Jews, Muslims and others–who have a different view. They believe in God as strongly as I do. They’re intensely as religious as I am religious. They believe in their faith and they believe in human life, and they have differing views as to when life–I’m prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception. But that is my judgment. For me to impose that judgment on everyone else who is equally and maybe even more devout than I am seems to me is inappropriate in a pluralistic society. And I know you get the push back, “Well, what about fascism?” Everybody, you know, you going to say fascism’s all right? Fascism isn’t a matter of faith. No decent religious person thinks fascism is a good idea.

Read it all (there is a video link available for those who desire it also).

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has “created confusion” with regard to the Church’s stance against abortion, says the bishop of Fargo.

Bishop Samuel Aquila said this in a the latest in a series of episcopal statements that have responded to comments made by Pelosi during an interview Sunday on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.”

Pelosi, when asked to comment on when life begins, said that as a Catholic, she had studied the issue for “a long time” and that “the doctors of the Church have not been able to make that definition.”

Cardinal Justin Rigali, chairman of the U. Committee on Pro-Life Activities, and Bishop William Lori, chairman of the Committee on Doctrine, said in a statement Monday that her answer “misrepresented the history and nature of the authentic teaching of the Catholic Church against abortion.”

The prelates noted that since the first century the Church has “affirmed the moral evil of every abortion.”

Read it all.