Michael Gaynor
Obama apologist Douglas Kmiec is no longer pro-life
By Michael Gaynor
Professor Kmiec's political effectiveness is dependent upon his continued insistence that he IS still pro-life. That way he confers a bit of respectability and acceptability on President Obama. But Professor Kmiec is sowing confusion and promoting sacrilege and public scandal as well as abortion as he promotes President Obama politically, especially among Catholics.
Please don't thoughtlessly take Pepperdine Professor Douglas Kmiec's word for it: he's NOT pro-life.
No more so than the likes of Senator John Kerry and Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Actions trump words.
Lasy year Cardinal Egan did a great service for now President Obama by inviting him to the Alfred E. Smith Dinner and treating him as respectable despite his gravely sinful positions on life issues.
Predictably, things worsened.
Obama won the presidential election, was inaugurated, immediately reversed Bush policy on abortion and even showed up at purportedly Catholic Notre Dame to deliver the commencement degree and to receive an honorary degree.
Such things should not have been.
Assuming human equality, life beginning at conception, 6,000,000 as the number of Jewish Holocaust victims and 50,000,000 as the number of abortions of human beings in the United States since Roe v. Wade was decided, the United States is indulging in its ninth abortion Holocaust.
President Obama, aided by Professor Douglas Kmiec, even won a majority of the Catholic vote in the last presidential election.
Why?
Largely because President Obama succeeded in confusing many that he was a permissible choice.
He was not.
Professor Kmiec helped candidate Obama greatly, by claiming to be both pro-life himself and an ardent Obama supporter.
Professor Kmiec identifying himself as pro-life does not make him pro-life any more than Speaker Pelosi describing herself as an ardent Catholic makes her one.
In becoming an Obama supporter, he abandoned his former pro-life position and embraced the abortion-is-a-licit choice position that contradicts fundamental teaching of the Roman Catholic faith.
The tolerance of so many pro-abortion "Catholic" politicians by so many Catholic bishops and priests for so many years, President Obama's smooth style and Professor Kmiec's inadequately analyzed advocacy led most Catholic voters to vote for President Obama.
This year Professor Kmiec has continued his shameful roll as Obama's "pro life" apologist and he's been rewarded with a nomination as Ambassador to Malta.
After learning of the nomination, one Internet poster wryly commented:
"Wow.
"His soul for Malta.
"What a deal.
"Lawyers are so smart, especially those who pretend to be Catholic."
The key word is "pretend."
Catholic institutions like Notre Dame University and Catholic University of America have exacerbated the problem by treating the heresies of President Obama and Ambassador-to-be Kmiec as worthy of respect, or even honor.
If a Catholic institution has provided, in the name of academic freedom and robust public debate, a platform for anyone to proclaim that Jews or blacks are not entitled to be legally recognized as persons, I missed it.
Imagine that Hitler had publicly announced the Final Solution and it was being implemented openly.
Would it have been fitting to provide a forum for a spokesperson for Hitler to present the Fuehrer's case and praise his evil?
Kmiec is Obama's Propaganda Minister Goebbels specially targeting the Catholic community.
The next Ambassador to Malta appears to be amiable and is able, articulate and especially adept at misdirection.
He insists that refusing him and other pro-abortion "Catholic " politicians Holy Communion is "intimidation."
It's obeying canon law (Canon 915) and preventing sacrilege and public scandal!
NOT doing so is gravely sinful.
GIVING such people Communion is either succumbing to intimidation or promoting sacrilege and public scandal.
Do you know about Theresienstadt?
Wikipedia:
"On June 23, 1944, the Nazis permitted the visit [to Theresienstadt] by the Red Cross in order to dispel rumors about the extermination camps. The commission included E. Juel-Henningsen, the head physician at the Danish Ministry of Health, and Franz Hvass, the top civil servant at the Danish Foreign Ministry. Dr. Paul Eppstein was instructed by the SS to appear in the role of the mayor of Theresienstadt.
"To minimize the appearance of overcrowding in Theresienstadt, the Nazis deported many Jews to Auschwitz. Also deported in these actions were most of the Czechoslovakian workers assigned to 'Operation Embellishment.' They also erected fake shops and cafés to imply that the Jews lived in relative comfort. The Danes whom the Red Cross visited lived in freshly painted rooms, not more than three in a room. The guests enjoyed the performance of a children's opera, Brundibar....
"The hoax against the Red Cross was so successful for the Nazis that they went on to make a propaganda film at Theresienstadt. Production of the film began on February 26, 1944. Directed by Jewish prisoner Kurt Gerron..., it was meant to show how well the Jews lived under the 'benevolent' protection of the Third Reich. After the shooting of the film, most of the cast and even the filmmaker himself, were deported to Auschwitz. Gerron and his wife were executed in the gas chambers on October 28, 1944. The film was not released at the time, but was edited into pieces that served their purpose...."
Obama as acceptable presidential candidate for Catholics and abortion reducer are hoaxes!
Kmiec is Obama's dupe, at best.
On May 28, 2009, Professor Kmiec and Professor Robert George of Princeton engaged in a public discussion of what is the right response by pro-life citizens to the Obama administration. Harvard Professor Mary Ann Glendon moderated, Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law sponsored and the National Press Club hosted.
Comments by posters at www.jillstanek.com diagnose are illuminating.
"As a Catholic, Kmiec has chosen to be proabortion. He has chosen to support proabortion policies. He has chosen to support a political agenda that is intrinsically pro abortion, anti life.
"All choices have consequences — in his case as a Catholic his action prove[s] he is not in communion with the Body of Christ. Therefore, no communion.
"There is no common ground in abortion. There is only truth — either abortion is the killing of a human baby or it is not. Either we believe this is wrong or it is not."
"Obama was not 'engaged' at ND. There was NO discussion. Obama was rewarded for his antilife public policies with a law degree."
"Kmiec thinks scientists don't believe life begins at conception?? Seriously, read a medical textbook, would ya?
"And he comes across as terribly gullible. Obama hasn't taken FOCA off the table. He's just renaming it to make it sound more palatable.
"Is that Professor Iscariot I see onstage?"
"Kmiec isn't gullible. He is a power-hungry middle-aged man who is trying to walk the tight-rope between his desire for power and prestige and trying to be a Catholic in good standing.
"He's trying to serve two masters."
"Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, blah, blah, blah, blah.
"Civil discussion?
"I can guarantee that if 3,700 five year olds were being killed every single day in this country there wouldn't be much civil discussion going on. Heads would be rollin'.
"What a crock!"
"I wonder how civil 'Judgement Day' will be when the Lord separates the wheat from the tares, the sheep from the goats, the lambs from the wolves?"
"Instead of a Catholic University backdrop in that photo, how about superimposing a photo of a ripped apart and murdered child there, the victim of an abortion. You'd think people would get the point?"
"AHH! I can not believe that the debunked Eric Zorn story is still getting traction.
"I guess it's true when they say a lie can get half way around the world before the truth gets its shoes on!"
"...the best word to describe Doug Kmiec would be evasive. He tried to argue that other issues trumped sanctity of life issues when voting. He tried to make the case that the new stem cell regulations were part of a reasonable compromise. He said that denying holy communion to Catholic politicians who support legal abortion was counterproductive. Finally, he argued that science has not come to a consensus about the sanctity of human life. He was all over the place and on no issue was he particularly persuasive."
"Well he never did actually answer Glendon's question about how abortions will be lowered if funding is increased and laws are less restricted.
"In fact he ignored the question completely because of course any reasonable person knows that you will never stop a behavior if you pay for it and loosen the laws restricting the behavior! duh!
"Secondly, Kmiec is living in the 1850's when it comes to biology. Maybe prolifers should undertake to mail Kmiec copies of chapters on developing human life from various biology and embryology texts. This won't violate copyright laws and may do the poor man some good. (That and denying him Holy Communion.)"
"I definitely think Kmiec needs to be educated about conception. I don't know where he's getting his information, but it's not from a textbook."
"'He said that denying holy communion to Catholic politicians who support legal abortion was counterproductive"
"giving them communion is counterproductive, don't they know that when they go up there believing abortion is perfectly fine that they are receiving damnation?..."
"I don't know why they are having their picture with Kmiec."
"Kmiec spoke as an authority to Catholics. He is a smart guy and he is very, very dangerous. Face it, he delivered the Catholic vote to Obama and then was the 'in' for Obama to Notre Dame. In this I think Catholics were as wise as monkeys and as gentle as doves when they should have been as wise as serpents and gentle as doves. They were made fools of and Kmiec was the ring leader.
"Look, if he was able to suck in the Church of Christ, THE most extreme fundamentalist church on the planet, to teach at Pepperdine, he is capable of anything. I say it again, be aware of false prophets.
"If you think Kmiec has gotten this far just to give up on his goal because he is just now 'getting' it, look, I've got a used car I'd like to sell you. I mean if he is a Catholic and receiving communion, is he not filled with the Spirit? Well does the Spirit contradict Himself or is Kmiec simply not listening and a 'son of disobedience'?
"I think your are giving him way too much. If he is the political opportunist as many on this site see him, he deserves the full condemnation of the pro-life movement. We need to treat the enemies of the pro-life movement as the pro-aborts treated Thomas, Bork and many others.
"In short he needs to feel God's wrath and rejection before he sees God's mercy and grace. The 'tinges of regret/concern' you think he feels should not be mistaken for cunning. My spirit senses that this guy is full of himself and that's all he cares about. He's a perfect fit for Obama and a perfect plant fot the next SCJ. He's a male, his abortion stance is defensible, he's Catholic, ba-da-bing-ba-da-boom."
"I think [Kmiec] is like most politicians who support abortion: they talk about finding common ground, of which there is none, and then work towards entrenching their ideology.
"In his mind (and others like him) the common ground is working towards making abortion rare. However, they don't see it as something that should be completely eliminated. In other words, because abortion is tied to women's freedom etc, it is something that will always be necessary — even a necessary evil.
"The bottom line here is that we believe all human life is sacred and people like Kmiec do not.
"Kmiec is the typical proabort Catholic — he believes his social activism in other areas makes up for his support for abortion. And he therefore, can't see why he should be punished by the Catholic church."
"I couldn't believe it when I saw that Kmiec said:
"'Scientists don't say life begins at conception. They say properties are there for nascient human life. They will not say that that results in a legal conclusion of personhood.'
"Are we back to the 70's? Please, get your facts straight from a scientific source. This guy is some lawyer, he needs to spend a little more time on discovery-like getting SCIENTIFIC information from a scientific source. I guess you can overlook the facts when you want to mislead yourself. But to mislead others, even a more grave sin.
"I sure hope Kmiec does some real research on O's position on infanticide. Are you kidding, he is taking his information from Zorn and the Trib? This is very disheartening. Can't he use the internet and HEAR what Obama said? Really, my kids could do better research than him."
"Kmiec would do well to reconsider his own words from 2002 (Wikipedia):
When asked what it 'mean[s] to teach within a Catholic framework, Kmiec responded: Just consider the first year course in contracts. The Catholic emphasis of the study of this course explores not just how contracts are formed or what remedies exist for breach, but also the justice of keeping one's promises and paying a just or family wage, for example. By contrast, most law schools have become entirely utilitarian and consequentialist — believing that ends justify means — and they've cast aside first principles, the most prominent of which is the belief that moral reality can be known and understood by men and women. Although our students are not all Catholic, they all have a sincere desire to explore the relationship of faith and law, and to be of service through the legal profession.[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Kmiec"
"no he's not confused.... He is a heretic. Period.
"He knows what side his bread is buttered on. He cares for nothing except political expediency.
"I have nothing, absolutely NOTHING but contempt for this man."
Professor George in his opening statement for the discussion:
"One does not treat an interlocutor with respect if one refuses to speak plainly. Candor, far from being the enemy of civility, is one of its preconditions. And so I will speak candidly of the points where I, as someone dedicated to the principle that every member of the human family possesses profound, inherent, and equal dignity, find myself at odds — deeply at odds — with President Obama and his administration.
"In my judgment, must oppose the Obama administration's agenda on the taking of unborn human life. Our goal must be to frustrate at every turn the administration's efforts, which will be ongoing and determined, to expand the abortion license and the authorization and funding of human embryo-destructive research. Because the President came into office with large majorities in both houses of Congress, ours is a daunting task. But the difficulty of the challenge in no way diminishes our moral obligation to meet it. And I here call upon pro-life Americans, including those who, like Professor Kmiec, supported President Obama and helped to bring him to power, to find common ground with us in this great struggle for human equality, human rights, and human dignity.
"Professor Kmiec and I share common ground in the belief that every member of the human family — irrespective of race, class, and ethnicity, but also irrespective of age, size, location, stage of development or condition of dependency — is entitled to our care and respect and to the equal protection of our laws. This is what it means to be pro-life. In this shared conviction, Professor Kmiec and I are on one side of a crucial divide, and President Obama is on the other. Professor Kmiec and I stand together in our opposition to abortion and human embryo-destructive research, but we share very little common ground on these matters with President Obama and those whom he has appointed to high office who will determine the fate of vast numbers of our weakest and most vulnerable brothers and sisters."
The civil and candid Professor George is right about what "citizens who honor and seek to protect the lives of vulnerable unborn children" are obligated to do...and wrong in believing that Professor Kmiec is really on his side and pro-life.
No longer, Professor George.
Professor Kmiec's political effectiveness is dependent upon his continued insistence that he IS still pro-life. That way he confers a bit of respectability and acceptability on President Obama. But Professor Kmiec is sowing confusion and promoting sacrilege and public scandal as well as abortion as he promotes President Obama politically, especially among Catholics.
Saint Thomas More, a martyr, is the Patron of Statesmen and Politicians. He gave witness to "the inalienable dignity of the human conscience," by refusing to compromise, never forsaking the "constant fidelity to legitimate authority and institutions" which distinguished him, teaching by his life and his death that "man cannot be separated from God, nor politics from morality."
Professor Kmiec is no Saint Thomas More.
The "separation between faith and life" was condemned long ago by the Second Vatican Council: "This split between the faith which many profess and their daily lives deserves to be counted among the more serious errors of our age."
As the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stated in its Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life: "[T]he lay Catholic's duty to be morally coherent...is one and indivisible. There cannot be two parallel lives...: on the one hand, the so-called 'spiritual life,' with its values and demands; and on the other, the so-called 'secular' life, that is, life in a family, at work, in social responsibilities, in the responsibilities of public life and in culture."
The Doctrinal Note emphasized that lay Catholics, in fulfilling civic duties, are to be "'guided by a Christian conscience,' in conformity with its values," and that "their proper task [is] infusing the temporal order with Christian values, all the while respecting the nature and rightful autonomy of that order, and cooperating with other citizens according to theirparticular competence and responsibility."
The Doctrinal Note lamented that "[a] kind of cultural relativism exists today, evident in the conceptualization and defence of an ethical pluralism, which sanctions the decadence and disintegration of reason and the principles of the natural moral law." It categorically rejected the claims that citizens have "complete autonomy with regard to their moral choices and lawmakers...are respecting this freedom of choice by enacting laws which ignore the principles of natural ethics and yield to ephemeral cultural and moral trends, as if every possible outlook on life were of equal value."
And the Doctrinal Note observed that "the value of tolerance is disingenuously invoked when a large number of citizens, Catholics among them, are asked not to base their contribution to society and political life — through the legitimate means available to everyone in a democracy — on their particular understanding of the human person and the common good," and concluded that "[t]he history of the twentieth century demonstrates that those citizens were right who recognized the falsehood of relativism, and with it, the notion that there is no moral law rooted in the nature of the human person, which must govern our understanding of man, the common good and the state."
The Doctrinal Note distinguished legitimate and illegitimate freedom. It explicitly respected "the legitimate freedom of Catholic citizens to choose among the various political opinions that are compatible with faith and the natural moral law, and to select, according to their own criteria, what best corresponds to the needs of the common good."
"Political freedom is not — and cannot be — based upon the relativistic idea that all conceptions of the human person's good have the same value and truth," the Doctrinal Note proclaimed.
"Rather," the Doctrinal Note continued, "it is based on the fact that politics are concerned with very concrete realizations of the true human and social good in given historical, geographic, economic, technological and cultural contexts. From the specificity of the task at hand and the variety of circumstances, a plurality of morally acceptable policies and solutions arises. It is not the Church's task to set forth specific political solutions — and even less to propose a single solution as the acceptable one — to temporal questions that God has left to the free and responsible judgment of each person. It is, however, the Church's right and duty to provide a moral judgment on temporal matters when this is required by faith or the moral law."
The Doctrinal Note rejected moral relativism and related the essential basis of democracy in the clearest terms: "If Christians must 'recognize the legitimacy of differing points of view about the organization of worldly affairs,' they are also called to reject, as injurious to democratic life, a conception of pluralism that reflects moral relativism. Democracy must be based on the true and solid foundation of non-negotiable ethical principles, which are the underpinning of life in society."
With respect to abortion, the Doctrinal Note was categorical: "John Paul II, continuing the constant teaching of the Church, has reiterated many times that those who are directly involved in lawmaking bodies have a 'grave and clear obligation to oppose' any law that attacks human life. For them, as for every Catholic, it is impossible to promote such laws or to vote for them."
A faithful Catholic politician may not compromise on fundamental matters. "When political activity comes up against moral principles that do not admit of exception, compromise or derogation, the Catholic commitment becomes more evident and laden with responsibility. In the face of fundamental and inalienable ethical demands, Christians must recognize that what is at stake is the essence of the moral law, which concerns the integral good of the human person. This is the case with laws concerning abortion and euthanasia (not to be confused with the decision to forgo extraordinary treatments, which is morally legitimate). Such laws must defend the basic right to life from conception to natural death."
The Catholic faith informs a Catholic's participation in every sphere of life, not only religious services. Thus, the Second Vatican Council urged all Christians "to fulfill their duties faithfully in the spirit of the Gospel" and warned that "[i]t is a mistake to think that, because we have here no lasting city, but seek the city which is to come, we are entitled to shirk our earthly responsibilities; this is to forget that by our faith we are bound all the more to fulfill these responsibilities according to the vocation of each...."
Professor Kmiec is worse than a shirker. He's actively promoting sacrilege, scandal and confusion.
The notion that Professor Kmiec is still pro-life is...illusion.
© Michael Gaynor
July 6, 2009
Professor Kmiec's political effectiveness is dependent upon his continued insistence that he IS still pro-life. That way he confers a bit of respectability and acceptability on President Obama. But Professor Kmiec is sowing confusion and promoting sacrilege and public scandal as well as abortion as he promotes President Obama politically, especially among Catholics.
Please don't thoughtlessly take Pepperdine Professor Douglas Kmiec's word for it: he's NOT pro-life.
No more so than the likes of Senator John Kerry and Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Actions trump words.
Lasy year Cardinal Egan did a great service for now President Obama by inviting him to the Alfred E. Smith Dinner and treating him as respectable despite his gravely sinful positions on life issues.
Predictably, things worsened.
Obama won the presidential election, was inaugurated, immediately reversed Bush policy on abortion and even showed up at purportedly Catholic Notre Dame to deliver the commencement degree and to receive an honorary degree.
Such things should not have been.
Assuming human equality, life beginning at conception, 6,000,000 as the number of Jewish Holocaust victims and 50,000,000 as the number of abortions of human beings in the United States since Roe v. Wade was decided, the United States is indulging in its ninth abortion Holocaust.
President Obama, aided by Professor Douglas Kmiec, even won a majority of the Catholic vote in the last presidential election.
Why?
Largely because President Obama succeeded in confusing many that he was a permissible choice.
He was not.
Professor Kmiec helped candidate Obama greatly, by claiming to be both pro-life himself and an ardent Obama supporter.
Professor Kmiec identifying himself as pro-life does not make him pro-life any more than Speaker Pelosi describing herself as an ardent Catholic makes her one.
In becoming an Obama supporter, he abandoned his former pro-life position and embraced the abortion-is-a-licit choice position that contradicts fundamental teaching of the Roman Catholic faith.
The tolerance of so many pro-abortion "Catholic" politicians by so many Catholic bishops and priests for so many years, President Obama's smooth style and Professor Kmiec's inadequately analyzed advocacy led most Catholic voters to vote for President Obama.
This year Professor Kmiec has continued his shameful roll as Obama's "pro life" apologist and he's been rewarded with a nomination as Ambassador to Malta.
After learning of the nomination, one Internet poster wryly commented:
"Wow.
"His soul for Malta.
"What a deal.
"Lawyers are so smart, especially those who pretend to be Catholic."
The key word is "pretend."
Catholic institutions like Notre Dame University and Catholic University of America have exacerbated the problem by treating the heresies of President Obama and Ambassador-to-be Kmiec as worthy of respect, or even honor.
If a Catholic institution has provided, in the name of academic freedom and robust public debate, a platform for anyone to proclaim that Jews or blacks are not entitled to be legally recognized as persons, I missed it.
Imagine that Hitler had publicly announced the Final Solution and it was being implemented openly.
Would it have been fitting to provide a forum for a spokesperson for Hitler to present the Fuehrer's case and praise his evil?
Kmiec is Obama's Propaganda Minister Goebbels specially targeting the Catholic community.
The next Ambassador to Malta appears to be amiable and is able, articulate and especially adept at misdirection.
He insists that refusing him and other pro-abortion "Catholic " politicians Holy Communion is "intimidation."
It's obeying canon law (Canon 915) and preventing sacrilege and public scandal!
NOT doing so is gravely sinful.
GIVING such people Communion is either succumbing to intimidation or promoting sacrilege and public scandal.
Do you know about Theresienstadt?
Wikipedia:
"On June 23, 1944, the Nazis permitted the visit [to Theresienstadt] by the Red Cross in order to dispel rumors about the extermination camps. The commission included E. Juel-Henningsen, the head physician at the Danish Ministry of Health, and Franz Hvass, the top civil servant at the Danish Foreign Ministry. Dr. Paul Eppstein was instructed by the SS to appear in the role of the mayor of Theresienstadt.
"To minimize the appearance of overcrowding in Theresienstadt, the Nazis deported many Jews to Auschwitz. Also deported in these actions were most of the Czechoslovakian workers assigned to 'Operation Embellishment.' They also erected fake shops and cafés to imply that the Jews lived in relative comfort. The Danes whom the Red Cross visited lived in freshly painted rooms, not more than three in a room. The guests enjoyed the performance of a children's opera, Brundibar....
"The hoax against the Red Cross was so successful for the Nazis that they went on to make a propaganda film at Theresienstadt. Production of the film began on February 26, 1944. Directed by Jewish prisoner Kurt Gerron..., it was meant to show how well the Jews lived under the 'benevolent' protection of the Third Reich. After the shooting of the film, most of the cast and even the filmmaker himself, were deported to Auschwitz. Gerron and his wife were executed in the gas chambers on October 28, 1944. The film was not released at the time, but was edited into pieces that served their purpose...."
Obama as acceptable presidential candidate for Catholics and abortion reducer are hoaxes!
Kmiec is Obama's dupe, at best.
On May 28, 2009, Professor Kmiec and Professor Robert George of Princeton engaged in a public discussion of what is the right response by pro-life citizens to the Obama administration. Harvard Professor Mary Ann Glendon moderated, Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law sponsored and the National Press Club hosted.
Comments by posters at www.jillstanek.com diagnose are illuminating.
"As a Catholic, Kmiec has chosen to be proabortion. He has chosen to support proabortion policies. He has chosen to support a political agenda that is intrinsically pro abortion, anti life.
"All choices have consequences — in his case as a Catholic his action prove[s] he is not in communion with the Body of Christ. Therefore, no communion.
"There is no common ground in abortion. There is only truth — either abortion is the killing of a human baby or it is not. Either we believe this is wrong or it is not."
"Obama was not 'engaged' at ND. There was NO discussion. Obama was rewarded for his antilife public policies with a law degree."
"Kmiec thinks scientists don't believe life begins at conception?? Seriously, read a medical textbook, would ya?
"And he comes across as terribly gullible. Obama hasn't taken FOCA off the table. He's just renaming it to make it sound more palatable.
"Is that Professor Iscariot I see onstage?"
"Kmiec isn't gullible. He is a power-hungry middle-aged man who is trying to walk the tight-rope between his desire for power and prestige and trying to be a Catholic in good standing.
"He's trying to serve two masters."
"Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, blah, blah, blah, blah.
"Civil discussion?
"I can guarantee that if 3,700 five year olds were being killed every single day in this country there wouldn't be much civil discussion going on. Heads would be rollin'.
"What a crock!"
"I wonder how civil 'Judgement Day' will be when the Lord separates the wheat from the tares, the sheep from the goats, the lambs from the wolves?"
"Instead of a Catholic University backdrop in that photo, how about superimposing a photo of a ripped apart and murdered child there, the victim of an abortion. You'd think people would get the point?"
"AHH! I can not believe that the debunked Eric Zorn story is still getting traction.
"I guess it's true when they say a lie can get half way around the world before the truth gets its shoes on!"
"...the best word to describe Doug Kmiec would be evasive. He tried to argue that other issues trumped sanctity of life issues when voting. He tried to make the case that the new stem cell regulations were part of a reasonable compromise. He said that denying holy communion to Catholic politicians who support legal abortion was counterproductive. Finally, he argued that science has not come to a consensus about the sanctity of human life. He was all over the place and on no issue was he particularly persuasive."
"Well he never did actually answer Glendon's question about how abortions will be lowered if funding is increased and laws are less restricted.
"In fact he ignored the question completely because of course any reasonable person knows that you will never stop a behavior if you pay for it and loosen the laws restricting the behavior! duh!
"Secondly, Kmiec is living in the 1850's when it comes to biology. Maybe prolifers should undertake to mail Kmiec copies of chapters on developing human life from various biology and embryology texts. This won't violate copyright laws and may do the poor man some good. (That and denying him Holy Communion.)"
"I definitely think Kmiec needs to be educated about conception. I don't know where he's getting his information, but it's not from a textbook."
"'He said that denying holy communion to Catholic politicians who support legal abortion was counterproductive"
"giving them communion is counterproductive, don't they know that when they go up there believing abortion is perfectly fine that they are receiving damnation?..."
"I don't know why they are having their picture with Kmiec."
"Kmiec spoke as an authority to Catholics. He is a smart guy and he is very, very dangerous. Face it, he delivered the Catholic vote to Obama and then was the 'in' for Obama to Notre Dame. In this I think Catholics were as wise as monkeys and as gentle as doves when they should have been as wise as serpents and gentle as doves. They were made fools of and Kmiec was the ring leader.
"Look, if he was able to suck in the Church of Christ, THE most extreme fundamentalist church on the planet, to teach at Pepperdine, he is capable of anything. I say it again, be aware of false prophets.
"If you think Kmiec has gotten this far just to give up on his goal because he is just now 'getting' it, look, I've got a used car I'd like to sell you. I mean if he is a Catholic and receiving communion, is he not filled with the Spirit? Well does the Spirit contradict Himself or is Kmiec simply not listening and a 'son of disobedience'?
"I think your are giving him way too much. If he is the political opportunist as many on this site see him, he deserves the full condemnation of the pro-life movement. We need to treat the enemies of the pro-life movement as the pro-aborts treated Thomas, Bork and many others.
"In short he needs to feel God's wrath and rejection before he sees God's mercy and grace. The 'tinges of regret/concern' you think he feels should not be mistaken for cunning. My spirit senses that this guy is full of himself and that's all he cares about. He's a perfect fit for Obama and a perfect plant fot the next SCJ. He's a male, his abortion stance is defensible, he's Catholic, ba-da-bing-ba-da-boom."
"I think [Kmiec] is like most politicians who support abortion: they talk about finding common ground, of which there is none, and then work towards entrenching their ideology.
"In his mind (and others like him) the common ground is working towards making abortion rare. However, they don't see it as something that should be completely eliminated. In other words, because abortion is tied to women's freedom etc, it is something that will always be necessary — even a necessary evil.
"The bottom line here is that we believe all human life is sacred and people like Kmiec do not.
"Kmiec is the typical proabort Catholic — he believes his social activism in other areas makes up for his support for abortion. And he therefore, can't see why he should be punished by the Catholic church."
"I couldn't believe it when I saw that Kmiec said:
"'Scientists don't say life begins at conception. They say properties are there for nascient human life. They will not say that that results in a legal conclusion of personhood.'
"Are we back to the 70's? Please, get your facts straight from a scientific source. This guy is some lawyer, he needs to spend a little more time on discovery-like getting SCIENTIFIC information from a scientific source. I guess you can overlook the facts when you want to mislead yourself. But to mislead others, even a more grave sin.
"I sure hope Kmiec does some real research on O's position on infanticide. Are you kidding, he is taking his information from Zorn and the Trib? This is very disheartening. Can't he use the internet and HEAR what Obama said? Really, my kids could do better research than him."
"Kmiec would do well to reconsider his own words from 2002 (Wikipedia):
When asked what it 'mean[s] to teach within a Catholic framework, Kmiec responded: Just consider the first year course in contracts. The Catholic emphasis of the study of this course explores not just how contracts are formed or what remedies exist for breach, but also the justice of keeping one's promises and paying a just or family wage, for example. By contrast, most law schools have become entirely utilitarian and consequentialist — believing that ends justify means — and they've cast aside first principles, the most prominent of which is the belief that moral reality can be known and understood by men and women. Although our students are not all Catholic, they all have a sincere desire to explore the relationship of faith and law, and to be of service through the legal profession.[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Kmiec"
"no he's not confused.... He is a heretic. Period.
"He knows what side his bread is buttered on. He cares for nothing except political expediency.
"I have nothing, absolutely NOTHING but contempt for this man."
Professor George in his opening statement for the discussion:
"One does not treat an interlocutor with respect if one refuses to speak plainly. Candor, far from being the enemy of civility, is one of its preconditions. And so I will speak candidly of the points where I, as someone dedicated to the principle that every member of the human family possesses profound, inherent, and equal dignity, find myself at odds — deeply at odds — with President Obama and his administration.
"In my judgment, must oppose the Obama administration's agenda on the taking of unborn human life. Our goal must be to frustrate at every turn the administration's efforts, which will be ongoing and determined, to expand the abortion license and the authorization and funding of human embryo-destructive research. Because the President came into office with large majorities in both houses of Congress, ours is a daunting task. But the difficulty of the challenge in no way diminishes our moral obligation to meet it. And I here call upon pro-life Americans, including those who, like Professor Kmiec, supported President Obama and helped to bring him to power, to find common ground with us in this great struggle for human equality, human rights, and human dignity.
"Professor Kmiec and I share common ground in the belief that every member of the human family — irrespective of race, class, and ethnicity, but also irrespective of age, size, location, stage of development or condition of dependency — is entitled to our care and respect and to the equal protection of our laws. This is what it means to be pro-life. In this shared conviction, Professor Kmiec and I are on one side of a crucial divide, and President Obama is on the other. Professor Kmiec and I stand together in our opposition to abortion and human embryo-destructive research, but we share very little common ground on these matters with President Obama and those whom he has appointed to high office who will determine the fate of vast numbers of our weakest and most vulnerable brothers and sisters."
The civil and candid Professor George is right about what "citizens who honor and seek to protect the lives of vulnerable unborn children" are obligated to do...and wrong in believing that Professor Kmiec is really on his side and pro-life.
No longer, Professor George.
Professor Kmiec's political effectiveness is dependent upon his continued insistence that he IS still pro-life. That way he confers a bit of respectability and acceptability on President Obama. But Professor Kmiec is sowing confusion and promoting sacrilege and public scandal as well as abortion as he promotes President Obama politically, especially among Catholics.
Saint Thomas More, a martyr, is the Patron of Statesmen and Politicians. He gave witness to "the inalienable dignity of the human conscience," by refusing to compromise, never forsaking the "constant fidelity to legitimate authority and institutions" which distinguished him, teaching by his life and his death that "man cannot be separated from God, nor politics from morality."
Professor Kmiec is no Saint Thomas More.
The "separation between faith and life" was condemned long ago by the Second Vatican Council: "This split between the faith which many profess and their daily lives deserves to be counted among the more serious errors of our age."
As the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stated in its Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life: "[T]he lay Catholic's duty to be morally coherent...is one and indivisible. There cannot be two parallel lives...: on the one hand, the so-called 'spiritual life,' with its values and demands; and on the other, the so-called 'secular' life, that is, life in a family, at work, in social responsibilities, in the responsibilities of public life and in culture."
The Doctrinal Note emphasized that lay Catholics, in fulfilling civic duties, are to be "'guided by a Christian conscience,' in conformity with its values," and that "their proper task [is] infusing the temporal order with Christian values, all the while respecting the nature and rightful autonomy of that order, and cooperating with other citizens according to theirparticular competence and responsibility."
The Doctrinal Note lamented that "[a] kind of cultural relativism exists today, evident in the conceptualization and defence of an ethical pluralism, which sanctions the decadence and disintegration of reason and the principles of the natural moral law." It categorically rejected the claims that citizens have "complete autonomy with regard to their moral choices and lawmakers...are respecting this freedom of choice by enacting laws which ignore the principles of natural ethics and yield to ephemeral cultural and moral trends, as if every possible outlook on life were of equal value."
And the Doctrinal Note observed that "the value of tolerance is disingenuously invoked when a large number of citizens, Catholics among them, are asked not to base their contribution to society and political life — through the legitimate means available to everyone in a democracy — on their particular understanding of the human person and the common good," and concluded that "[t]he history of the twentieth century demonstrates that those citizens were right who recognized the falsehood of relativism, and with it, the notion that there is no moral law rooted in the nature of the human person, which must govern our understanding of man, the common good and the state."
The Doctrinal Note distinguished legitimate and illegitimate freedom. It explicitly respected "the legitimate freedom of Catholic citizens to choose among the various political opinions that are compatible with faith and the natural moral law, and to select, according to their own criteria, what best corresponds to the needs of the common good."
"Political freedom is not — and cannot be — based upon the relativistic idea that all conceptions of the human person's good have the same value and truth," the Doctrinal Note proclaimed.
"Rather," the Doctrinal Note continued, "it is based on the fact that politics are concerned with very concrete realizations of the true human and social good in given historical, geographic, economic, technological and cultural contexts. From the specificity of the task at hand and the variety of circumstances, a plurality of morally acceptable policies and solutions arises. It is not the Church's task to set forth specific political solutions — and even less to propose a single solution as the acceptable one — to temporal questions that God has left to the free and responsible judgment of each person. It is, however, the Church's right and duty to provide a moral judgment on temporal matters when this is required by faith or the moral law."
The Doctrinal Note rejected moral relativism and related the essential basis of democracy in the clearest terms: "If Christians must 'recognize the legitimacy of differing points of view about the organization of worldly affairs,' they are also called to reject, as injurious to democratic life, a conception of pluralism that reflects moral relativism. Democracy must be based on the true and solid foundation of non-negotiable ethical principles, which are the underpinning of life in society."
With respect to abortion, the Doctrinal Note was categorical: "John Paul II, continuing the constant teaching of the Church, has reiterated many times that those who are directly involved in lawmaking bodies have a 'grave and clear obligation to oppose' any law that attacks human life. For them, as for every Catholic, it is impossible to promote such laws or to vote for them."
A faithful Catholic politician may not compromise on fundamental matters. "When political activity comes up against moral principles that do not admit of exception, compromise or derogation, the Catholic commitment becomes more evident and laden with responsibility. In the face of fundamental and inalienable ethical demands, Christians must recognize that what is at stake is the essence of the moral law, which concerns the integral good of the human person. This is the case with laws concerning abortion and euthanasia (not to be confused with the decision to forgo extraordinary treatments, which is morally legitimate). Such laws must defend the basic right to life from conception to natural death."
The Catholic faith informs a Catholic's participation in every sphere of life, not only religious services. Thus, the Second Vatican Council urged all Christians "to fulfill their duties faithfully in the spirit of the Gospel" and warned that "[i]t is a mistake to think that, because we have here no lasting city, but seek the city which is to come, we are entitled to shirk our earthly responsibilities; this is to forget that by our faith we are bound all the more to fulfill these responsibilities according to the vocation of each...."
Professor Kmiec is worse than a shirker. He's actively promoting sacrilege, scandal and confusion.
The notion that Professor Kmiec is still pro-life is...illusion.
© Michael Gaynor
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