Cardinal Dolan WSJ column: "Abortion, Guns and the ‘Throwaway Culture’ "

This was published on the op ed page of the Wall Street Journal yesterday. We are sure the Cardinal won't mind us printing the entire commentary.

Abortion, Guns and the ‘Throwaway Culture’ Democrats and Republicans reject policies that would fortify what St. John Paul II referred to as a ‘culture of life.’

Like so many others, I am heartbroken by the senseless gun violence that has taken the lives of innocent victims in recent weeks. The loss is immeasurable. Americans of all political stripes are grieving and crying out to God to ask when our beloved nation will restore its respect for human life.

Unfortunately, our political system appears to be broken, as Republicans and Democrats operate in silos and see more political benefit in intransigence than consensus. The result is that both parties reject policies that would fortify what St. John Paul II referred to as a culture of life and instead embrace what Pope Francis has called a throwaway culture that extends even to human beings.

Among Republicans, we see it in the refusal to consider even widely popular proposals that would help to increase gun safety. Among Democrats, we see it in the frantic drive to expand abortion, even in states where it would be impossible to expand it further.

Take my state, New York. Lawmakers in Albany recently scurried to pass a package of bills designed to increase the practice of abortion. These proposals extended virtually no support to scared and overwhelmed pregnant women who might seek alternatives to abortion, if only they knew they existed. Never mind that, though. With the Supreme Court poised to render a decision that could allow states to protect helpless human lives in the womb, New York lawmakers saw a political opportunity. They have stampeded to make the state an abortion “sanctuary.” They’ve passed measures to shield abortionists from liability and to encourage women from other states to come here to terminate the lives of their children. Gov. Kathy Hochul has unilaterally allocated millions of taxpayer dollars to abortion facilities to welcome out-of-state women.

What’s next? Will they add abortion clinics to the “I Love NY” tourism guide, alongside craft breweries and weekend getaway destinations? Would anyone be surprised if they did?

It gets worse. In addition to these new laws encouraging abortion, the Legislature also passed a measure designed to eliminate pro-life options. That bill, now awaiting the governor’s signature, would require the state health commissioner to “study” pro-life pregnancy centers, which exist to give women in crisis pregnancies a real alternative to abortion. The goal is to intimidate these wonderful organizations into shutting down.

This is a complete rejection of the “choice” that elected representatives say they support. Where is the choice for the frightened young pregnant mom, usually African-American or Latina, who desperately wants to keep her baby but is having trouble paying her rent, putting food on the table, and filling her gas tank? Where is her sanctuary? Will the only answer for her be to destroy her offspring? And where is the sanctuary for the helpless baby in her womb, which should be the safest place around? Can’t it be a “both and” rather than an “either or” when it comes to a mother and her baby? According to our state’s elected Democrats, the answer appears to be no.

Republicans share the political blame. Toward the end of the legislative session, New York’s elected Republicans opposed a raft of important new gun-safety laws, which passed anyway, promising to increase the legal age to purchase semiautomatic rifles and strengthen the state’s red-flag law. My brother bishops and I were happy to support these important initiatives, all intended to save lives, just as we firmly opposed the new abortion laws.

How will it be possible to sustain a culture of nonviolence and safety when one party continues to applaud and promote the killing of defenseless babies in the womb and the other practically deifies firearms and rejects even the most common-sense regulations on them?

The prospects look bleak, but I’m in the business of hope. I ask New Yorkers of every faith to join me in prayer that our lawmakers will take seriously their responsibility to protect and defend human life.

Cardinal Dolan is Archbishop of New York.

 

Comments

[Peter Paul Lepre]

Dear Cardinal Dolan, this has to be heralded in our Catholic Churches at every Holy Mass... Every Bishop in America and the world has to inform and deny firmly and with compassion Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist to every Catholic politician who promotes abortion... Please step up to the plate and do what Our Lord demands of you and know Souls are at risk of going to Hell... In Christ's Love, Peter Lepre

[catherine Adago]

Almost every day children are shot on our streets and even in their homes in this city. We have gun laws on the books that are not enforced. We have a D.A. that will not charge criminals if a loaded gun is carried but not used at the scene of a crime. Some legal gun restriction is necessary but for God's sake stop ignoring punishment for the criminals who shoot and kill on our streets.

[Keith Anderson Philipstown Conservative Party Chairman]

Believe it or not Cardinal, most times Government is not the answer and only exacerbates the problem.

Catherine Adago above speaks the truth. The new restrictive legislation by the likes of Albany politicians to create greater encroaches to liberty are often targeting the wrong people and will do more to get people killed, because those who want to do the killing often have no interest in obedience to law. What we do find is that law abiding citizens become further restricted from exercising their liberties and are not available or in the proper place to intervene in these incidents. For instance, two or three legally armed customers in that Buffalo supermarket may have changed the entire dynamic. Like Buffalo, nearly every city throughout the US, has superfluous gun laws that largely keep guns out of the hands of law-abiding people.

Note, that there was no buttressing of the Mental Health Laws in NY to perhaps find better ways of identifying people with severe mental illness who might be inclined to commit these atrocities.
Furthermore, there are no buttresses to Laws involving Family Law or removing No Fault Divorce where fathers are driven from roughly 50% of homes and children are left wanting for male guidance at times when they are most vulnerable to the pitfalls of idiotic culture.
One more for good measure, is exactly the abortion problem you identified. We know abortion stems largely from John Paul IIs observations about people not giving sex its proper deference. Largely sex outside of marriage has led to the inevitable subjugation of women. Abortion, pornography, casual sex and as a result the de facto removal of male roles as protectors. All of this is complicated further by the new idea of finding identity in whatever sexual perversion you may embrace and how much attention you can direct to yourself on Tik Tok. This seems to have lead mental health through a brand new path in the sewer lines and now there are mental health experts embracing the idea of transitioning minors.
Largely, I believe you can see the grand theme, that we are violating the all-time human issue of wanting to be God and somehow having the hubris to believe the secular religion of the tower we are building will get us to heaven, but as you know it will not. Perhaps this is a good start for where we can focus our concentration.
So Cardinal, perhaps you can water it down to two quick things and say what you think your audience wants to hear, but I believe, and I think you know too that the problem is much deeper and speaks to a many pronged approach.
We have tried to slap bandages on the problem and created all sorts of gun laws, yet these shootings still occur and shootings are worst in the areas where gun laws are the most strict like LA and Chicago, where people are shot by the score every weekend. So my final thought, just because a gun is involved it certainly does not mean that should be our primary focus. There is a lot more going on than the gun which is only a convenient victim of human hubris.