First, some personal disclosure. I have been told I was conceived by rape. Republican presidential candidates like George W. Bush and Mitt Romney would not oppose executing me for the “crime” of being conceived. My mother had three abortions. We called them “miscarriages” in those days. I am the father of an innocent baby who was aborted to save the life of the mother after a tubular pregnancy.
I oppose voluntary abortion because I oppose all murder all the time. The Catholic Catechism lists some 30 violations of the Fifth Commandment and opposes those sins instead of merely ranking them. The Catechism does not tell me how to vote; instead, it leaves my voting to my prudential judgment.
My prudential judgment is this: I vote on what politicians do, not on what they say. Opinions don’t kill people. People kill people. As a friend and colleague Jerry Fears used to say, “A politician’s biggest asset is his lie-ability.” That’s why I do not vote for politicians simply because they claim to oppose abortion. I oppose politicians who disregard church teaching and start and support immoral wars like the one against Iraq and the ones against poor Christians in Latin American countries run by murdering dictators. An abortion kills one baby. Wars violating Catholic “just war” doctrine kill thousands of babies. I fight abortions the way I believe Jesus wants me to. I try to love all my neighbors, not just those who oppose abortion and I try to protect life as consistently as I can. I have little use for those who claim to be “pro-life” as they refuse to wear masks and get vaccinated and claim their “right” to spread the COVID-19 virus to innocent people in the name of personal freedom. Yet I refrain from trying to impose my views on the COVID-19 and abortion pro-choicers and seek conversion, not coercion — as Jesus does.
I plan to send copies of this letter to my pastor and archbishop in case they want to deny me communion when it’s safe to resume going to Mass. I challenge those Catholic bishops who defy Pope Francis to tell me where they were when Sen. Joe Biden violated church teaching and supported the invasion of Iraq and the sanctions that killed half a million innocent Iraqis, one-third of them innocent children, born and unborn.
— Geoff Kennedy
Anchorage
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