Thursday, December 03, 2009

Misinterpretation?

Now, I will acknowledge I might be misinterpreting this...

As an alumnus of St. Thomas University and having been reared in a Catholic family, I would like to respond to your article in Sunday's Chronicle regarding Cardinal Daniel DiNardo's opposition to abortion (“DiNardo not going to ease up criticism of health bill issue; Cardinal says church has a duty to voice its views against abortion,” Page A1).
I regard the church's stand as extremely hypocritical and insensitive to women who risk their health bearing the burden of having more children than they can afford. This issue should be decided within the family without coercion from any church.

...but it seems to me that the author of the above passage is saying the Catholics should be fine with using abortion as birth control, and for the life of me I can't get my head wrapped around such "reasoning." As for not having children than one can afford, well, what happened to using some sort of, um, more conventional contraceptive? I would think that was far preferable to abortion, and cheaper to boot. As for this...
Cardinal Daniel DiNardo and Pope Benedict don't seem to understand the difference between lobbying and blackmail. When you threaten a member of Congress with withholding of church rites if they don't vote a certain way, that's blackmail, not lobbying.

Huh, and all this time I thought the Catholics were just asking the politician members of their church to adhere to one of their most fundamental beliefs. Hey, wait a minute, I still do think that....