CONGRATULATIONS TO NOTRE DAME OFFICIALS FOR STICKING TO THEIR GUNS!
UNDER GREAT PRESSURE FROM THE U. S. COUNCIL OF BISHOPS UNDER THE MISGUIDED LEADERSHIP OF FRANCIS CARDINAL GEORGE AND SOME OF HIS HEIRARCHIAL ALLIES,
A MINORITY OF NOTRE DAME’S STUDENTS WHO HAVE OD’D ON CATHOLICISM’S IMPRUDENT POSITION ON CHOICE AND STEM CELL RESEARCH
AND THE INFAMOUS OUTSIDE INFLUENCE OF RANDALL TERRY AND THE ANTIQUATED VOICE OF ALAN KEYS
I am an ardent supporter of “choice” on the subject of abortion and the federal funding for stem cell research.
I am tired of living under the dictatorship of the minority of Americans who violently oppose both “choice” and stem cell research.
I respect the right of these ill-advised individuals to believe as they believe, but not at my expense. I have never understood why the Catholic Church that has a seriously bloody history in matter of war and heresy can be so vehement on issues of “choice” and stem cells.
In other words, they are particularly concerned about the death of innocent people in conflicts between nations, but they fiercely oppose what they perceive to be the “killing” of human life in the form of embryos.
What hypocrites; and that goes for the students of Notre Dame who are protesting the appearance of the President of the United States, Barack Obama at their commencement ceremony.
I do not know what unfounded information your Catholic professors have been shoving down your throat, but what it is not is the concept of “freedom,” and more importantly, “freedom of speech.” The fact the leadership of your church believes that your faith cannot tolerate hearing the points of view of those who disagree with you should tell you just how defenseless the heterodoxy your are hearing in your censored classrooms is simply not the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
They are cramming down your throats the “papal bull” a small clique of men dressed in red capes and red skull caps have decided is the truth.
I am a Protestant and my people and I decided with Martin Luther [1483-1546] that the Pope was not infallible, the Catholic Church did not represent the “one true word of God,” and that every man is endowed with the ability to read and understand the Word of God.
In my opinion the Catholic Church attempts to keep its adherents as babes in the manger of their repressive reformatory. They do not encourage members of the Catholic Church to think for themselves, and will not allow those who arduously disagree with their often childish beliefs to expose their followers with the truth.
Think on this: Galileo who lived from [1546-1642] whose credentials as a scientific wonder, the founder of physics, and an astronomer of immense insights while warned by the Catholic pecking order to cease writing, teaching and speaking about his controversial posture that the sun circled the earth as the church of his day made an integral part of its dogma (insisting that the earth and the men who lived here were, indeed, the center of the galaxy).
In 1633, Galileo was forced to appear before the Inquisition, despicable and disgraceful arm of the Roman Catholic legal system and was found guilty on three counts.
Because he continued to teach and preach “the heresy” the Church despised, in 1633 he was excommunicated and forced to spend the remainder of his days in house arrest at his estate outside of Florence.
Wikipedia describes the verdict in the following three counts:
· “Galileo was found "vehemently suspect of heresy", namely of having held the opinions that the Sun lies motionless at the centre of the universe, that the Earth is not at its centre and moves, and that one may hold and defend an opinion as probable after it has been declared contrary to Holy Scripture. He was required to "abjure, curse and detest" those opinions.[90]
· He was ordered imprisoned; the sentence was later commuted to house arrest.
· His offending Dialogue was banned; and in an action not announced at the trial, publication of any of his works was forbidden, including any he might write in the future.[91]”
His sentence was handed down in 1633 and yet it too the church 360 years to right their own wrong. In late 1992, Pope John Paul II pronounced Galileo’s sentence a miscarriage of justice. In other words, it took nearly 360 years for the church to recognize the error of its stubborn ways. The Catholic Church moves with the speed of a crippled snail on crutchs when it has wrongly destroyed the life of one of the great minds in all of history and to restore him and his reputation to their rightful place in the mind of history.
Wikipedia describes it this way:
“On 31 October 1992, Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the Galileo affair was handled, and officially conceded that the Earth was not stationary, as the result of a study conducted by the Pontifical Council for Culture.[107][108] In March 2008 the Vatican proposed to complete its rehabilitation of Galileo by erecting a statue of him inside the Vatican walls.[109] In December of the same year, during events to mark the 400th anniversary of Galileo's earliest telescopic observations, Pope Benedict XVI praised his contributions to astronomy.[110]”
Returning to the issue at hand. I interject the Galileo story only to point out to my Catholic friends who stick to the dogma of the Church in Rome like dead creatures on fly paper, often the infallible Pope, is not infallible.
In this case there are numerous points that must be made.
· This is America. We enjoy freedom of speech. We believe that for a mind to be truly educated, it must hear, see and listen to all sides of an issue and that any issue that cannot survive the scrutiny of objectivity is not worthy of our time and energy.
· The President of the United States should be honored not because he is Barack Obama, although he brings many new reasons to the office, that previous president failed to provide, but because we honor the office and what it stands for.
· Your church is an autocracy that does not fit well into a democracy. It is a body ruled by a few that count on the many to follow without questioning.That, my friends, is anti-democratic.
· Jesus Christ said nothing about the issue of abortion or stem cell research and therefore is not relative to the theological circumstances surrounding these issue. The churches position on these issues are the opinions of men, fallible, sinful men and not directions from the Word which is love. No Catholic will ever be forced to have an abortion nor to accept or reject stem cells as a curative for any disease which might invade your body. Therefore you and George W. Bush had no right to deny the potential benefits that may be derived by the employment of stem cells in the research for a cure for some of the most horrendous diseases facing us today. You have to be a hideous person to deny even the potential for a cure to those who bear the burdens associated with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and spinal injuries that paralyze people in one degree other another. If the potential for healing is truly within the reach of stem cells that are about to be thrown into the rubbish can, you would have to be a morally depraved human being to dare to say “no.”
· Abortion is a much more contentious subject. Nobody is in favor of abortion; however, there are real moments in time when a woman’s life demands a choice—either the embryo is aborted or the mother dies. There are equally critical times when a woman can not emotionally bring herself to give birth to a physically mutilated embryo and elects to abort. At that stage, before life itself is evident that the woman in concert with her doctor should be able to make that awful decision.
· Jesus does not address the issue of abortion. The church’s stand is man made and therefore subject to prejudice and transgressions.
· No on who does not wish to have an abortion is forced under any circumstances to undergo such a medical procedure.
· Abortion is a religious issue not a legal issue. The government and the courts ought to keep their hands out of a matter that is perhaps the most personnel and most agonizing to ever be faced by a woman, a man and the doctor.
· The first amendment requires that the government and the courts shall not interfere in the determination of the rightness or the wrongness of abortion and its extenuating circumstances.
· The First Amendment to the constitution “expressly prohibits the United States Congress from make laws ‘respecting an establishment of religion’ or the ‘free exercise of religion.’ Abortion falls within the purview of the phrase, “the free exercise” thereof. Abortion is the free exercise of one’s beliefs, one’s faith, one’s religion, one’s entire awareness of right and wrong.
Therefore, it is behooves a university such as Notre Dame to practice without faltering its primary goal; “the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others s intellectually for a mature life.”
What Francis Cardinal George and his colleagues in the College of Catholic Bishops is doing by their virulent attempt to prevent the graduating seniors of Notre Dame from hearing the voice of one the most eloquent and intelligent president’s to occupy the oval office is to tear the guts out of the very heart of the educational process.
God forbid that Catholic students should hear an opinion in direct conflict with the teachings of their church. Just think of the damage to the twenty-two year old mind that has not been tutored to think for himself, to learn to reason, to acquire the great gift of judging for himself the difference between right and wrong. Think of the untold harm that would come to any student who had prepared himself for an “intellectually mature” life.
It was the Catholic Church that sought with all its might to prevent the Bible from being printed in the language of the common man. It is the Catholic Church that does not believe women have the ability to serve in its priesthood. It is the Catholic Church that denies ordination of those who are married, or have sexual encounters including masturbation.
St. Peter was married. Others in the early Church were married. As I have often said, the Roman Catholic Church’s theological dogma is based more upon the alleged teachings of Paul of Tarsus than of Jesus of Nazareth.
In either case, the church as a whole is anachronistic and its obstinate insistence to continue the practice of many of its antiquated practices is the main reason why people are fleeing the Catholic Church like a flock of birds headed South to avoid the ice and snow of a Northern winter.
Every student of Notre Dame should flock to the commencement venue to hear one of the truly great speakers of our day and while he may disagree with your faith, give him the honor of the president of the United States.
10:44:59 PM 
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