The article is 15 paragraphs and written by Alexandra DeSanctis - only takes a few minutes to read the whole article.
U.S. bishops said abortion should be Catholic voters’ top priority. Here’s why they’re right.
Bishop McElroy said the inclusion of the word “preeminent” before the letter’s mention of abortion is at least discordant with and perhaps inconsistent with the pope’s teaching. “It is not Catholic teaching that abortion is the preeminent issue that we face in the world of Catholic social teaching,” he added.
Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia pushed back against this claim, even as he agreed with Bishop McElroy that the pope’s language could be added to the letter. “I am against anyone stating that our stating [abortion] is ‘preeminent’ is contrary to the teaching of the pope. That isn’t true,” he said, noting that it “sets up an artificial battle” between the U.S. bishops and Pope Francis.
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Even though, as Archbishop Chaput said, the church holds that all human lives have equal dignity—and that reality has various policy implications open to prudential disagreements among the faithful on issues like immigration and the climate—Catholic teaching has long held that the right to life is paramount. In other words, Catholics must prioritize the fact that every innocent human being has a right not to be killed, a truth that abortion directly attacks.
Here is how Pope St. John Paul II put it in his apostolic exhortation “Christifideles Laici” in 1988: “The common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights—for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture—is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination.”
Without the protection of LIFE all other rights are harmed due to the devaluation of God's precious gift of LIFE.
Posted by: Eileen Peterson | November 21, 2019 at 01:43 PM