HeadlineBistro

A day after Sarah Palin became the first woman in history to be named VP candidate on the GOP ballot, the news media was still abuzz with analysis of McCain’s choice.

Barack Obama quickly distanced himself from his campaign’s more strident criticism of Palin. And while anti-Palin pundits pointed to her short political résumé and lack of foreign policy experience, pro-Palin commentators pointed out that she had more executive experience than Barack Obama and no less foreign policy experience.

No doubt religion will continue to figure heavily in the race as well. We learned today from John Allen that Palin is a post-denominational Christian (read more) and the irony of the post-denominational Christian holding more theologically traditional views than her Catholic rival on issues such as abortion was not lost on Allen. He wrote:

Finally, there’s a bit of political irony for Catholics. Given Palin’s strong pro-life credentials, it’s likely she will appeal to the most strongly "denominational" Catholics, those most devoted to traditional Catholic identity and teaching. Meanwhile, what one might call "post-denominational Catholics," meaning those for whom religious branding carries less theological significance, may embrace Palin’s Democratic rival, Delaware Senator Joseph Biden, the lone Roman Catholic on either ticket, because of his progressive stands on social and political matters.

The religious issues at stake in the election were noted by many other commentators as well. Writing in the Chicago Sun Times, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus Carl Anderson pointed out that both Joseph Biden – because of his stand on abortion – and Barack Obama – because of the abortion issue and his relationship with a church steeped in liberation theology – have done poorly in convincing Catholics and evangelicals to vote for them (read the Sun Times article here). Anderson wrote:

The problem -- for Catholics and evangelicals alike -- is that a ticket whose politics appear to trump moral reasoning is not a compelling ticket. Catholics and evangelicals are looking for candidates who share their core values, not just their pews or holy water.

And while abortion dominates many of the headlines in the United States during this election cycle, it has made headlines in Mexico as well, as the Supreme Court there upheld Mexico City’s new abortion law.

Elsewhere in the news, Hurricane Gustav continues to gain strength and bear down on the Louisiana coast. In the face of what could become a Category 5 storm, many are praying and Bishop Michael Jarrell of the Diocese of Lafayette asked his priests to say special Masses Friday and Saturday to avert the storm. 

The storm could have an unusual victim, hundreds of miles away, as talk abounds of a possible delay of the Republican National Convention in Minnesota. "It wouldn't be appropriate to have a festive occasion while a near tragedy or a terrible challenge is presented in the form of a natural disaster," John McCain told Fox News.

Far from the Atlantic hurricane season, scholars in Israel, plan to use computer technology to make the Dead Sea Scrolls much more accessible: they will be digitized over the next several years, then made available online.

With the Russia/Georgia conflict simmering, but no longer boiling, it seems likely that the stories that promise to make the most headlines next week will relate to weather or politics – both unpredictable, both changing fast, both being followed closely at headlinebistro.com.

The McCain camp needed one heck of a story to detract from Obama’s electrifying acceptance speech on Thursday night:

And they got it yesterday with McCain’s pick of Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate.

News stories have been running non-stop on the relatively-unknown, first-term Alaskan governor. Here’s an interview Palin had recently with NewsMax.com for the Magazine's September issue, as well as a longer profile from The Associated Press. 

Of special interest to Catholics and evangelicals is her choice to not abort her youngest child, who was born with Down syndrome earlier this year. Palin and her husband learned of their son’s diagnosis when he was four months in utero, and never considered abortion.

"We understand that every innocent life has wonderful potential," Palin told the AP in May. And after bringing baby Trig home from the hospital, she added, "I’m looking at him now, and I see perfection."

Those are words that could resonate with voters wary or disenchanted with Obama’s much-challenged record on abortion, or Biden’s being at odds with Catholic Church teaching through his own support of pro-abortion policies.

This is not to say that Obama’s acceptance speech failed to pack its intended rhetorical punch – indeed, the Democratic nominee proved his skill as an orator Thursday night, with his constant theme of calling for – and promising – change in America reverberating much further than the packed Invesco Field.

"All across America something is stirring," Obama said toward the end of his speech.

He continued, "What the naysayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me; it’s about you. … You have shown what history teaches us, that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn’t come from Washington. Change comes to Washington."

"Change happens," Obama rallied, "because the American people demand it, because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time."

Keith Fournier from Catholic Online reflected on Obama's speech - and acknowledged that it "touched the chords which can move men like me." 

From concern for the working class to language of solidarity with those who are hurting in America, Obama hit social issues that the Catholic Church, as well, holds near and dear to Her heart, Fournier said.

The promise of America, Obama said, is "the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation; the fundamental belief that I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper."

However, in taking in the inspiring words, Fournier hit the nail on the head: with one passing sentence dedicated to abortion – "we may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country" – Obama overlooked an entire segment of the American population, despite his call for citizens to be their "brothers’ keepers."

The election is drawing near – yes, there is an end to stadium-hype and VP-speculation. The GOP Convention is next week and Election Day only two months after that.

Americans, and particularly those who see innocent life as the most priceless thing worth defending with their vote, will be watching both nominees closely.

Barack Obama made history last night as he accepted his party’s nomination in Denver’s Invesco Field. Close observers will note that in the midst of his acceptance speech, Obama felt compelled to mention abortion – an issue on which he said Americans could disagree.

That abortion was mentioned at all is a testament to its constant presence in the news over the past two weeks. First there was Obama’s “above my pay grade” comment on when life begins, which was eclipsed this week by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s claim on Meet the Press that the Catholic Church has not had a consistent teaching on abortion until recently. Needless to say, abortion has been a thorny issue for the Democratic party, particularly with the swift condemnation of Pelosi’s comments by, at last count, 13 prominent members of the American Church hierarchy.

And now, Thomas Peters’ American Papist blog has dug up a transcript from another Meet the Press show last year: this one featuring then-presidential contender Joe Biden.

Biden’s interview, as well, turned to the senator’s pro-abortion stances. And like Nancy Pelosi did last weekend, Biden first brought up his understanding of the teaching of the Catholic Church.

“I’m a practicing Catholic, and it is the biggest dilemma for me in terms of comporting my … religious and cultural views with my political responsibility,” Biden told Tim Russert.

Like Pelosi, Biden swiftly declared that there was inconsistency within the Catholic Church, which he believed had had many “debates” within itself about abortion. This he sees as evidence that Roe v. Wade is “the closest thing politically” to bridge “philosophic divisions” in America.

However, in their sweeping summary of 2,000 years’ worth of theologians’ varying opinions of when life begins, both Biden and Pelosi miss the historical consistency of the Catholic prohibition on abortion by focusing exclusively on the exact moment that life begins.

For example, Pelosi brought St. Augustine into the fray when she mentioned that even the great Doctor of the Church believed a fetus did not immediately have life after conception. What Pelosi missed, or ignored, however, is that despite his lack of modern scientific knowledge, Augustine unwaveringly held that abortion itself is immoral.

In his work Marriage and Concupiscence, Augustine – whose feast day we celebrated yesterday – left no doubt that contraception and abortion were grave sins against marriage:

Sometimes this lustful cruelty … comes to this that they even procure poisons of sterility, and if these do not work, they extinguish and destroy the fetus in some way in the womb, preferring that their offspring dies before it lives, or if it was already alive in the womb, to kill it before it was born. (From De nuptiis et concupiscentia, 1.15.17)

Note that Augustine differentiated between a child “alive in the womb” and one who “dies before it lives” – regardless of the stage of pregnancy in which abortion occurs, the act itself was reprehensible. To hang one’s support of abortion on late fourth-century medical understanding, while ignoring Augustine’s theological conclusion, seems disingenuous in the extreme.

In his letter to the Archdiocese of Denver the day after Pelosi’s Meet the Press statements, Archbishop Chaput affirmed the historical continuity in the Church’s thought:

In the absence of modern medical knowledge, some of the Early Fathers held that abortion was homicide; others that it was tantamount to homicide; and various scholars theorized about when and how the unborn child might be animated or “ensouled.” But none diminished the unique evil of abortion as an attack on life itself, and the early Church closely associated abortion with infanticide. In short, from the beginning, the believing Christian community held that abortion was always, gravely wrong.

St. Thomas Aquinas, whom Biden referenced in support of his pro-Roe position, likewise affirmed – in the clearest terms – that abortion in itself is immoral, and the moral theologians who followed him never doubted that when there is a soul, there is life, and to directly intend to take that life was never permitted.

And Pope Pius IX, another theologian thrown in Biden’s mix, removed any distinction of fetal life from abortion’s penalty – excommunication.

Pelosi and Biden have been poorly served by their selective readings; moreover, they both seem to fail in their understanding of the relationship between individual theologians’ opinions and the development of actual Church doctrine.

Their “Catholic” justification of abortion seems to fit in the modern ideology that the Church’s stream of thought is full of ruptures, thus casting into doubt any weight behind magisterial statements – a mentality Pope Benedict XVI has called the “hermeneutic of discontinuity.”

However, as the evidence shows, Biden and Pelosi’s “facts” are incorrect. Ignoring official Church documents, which are the very hallmark of Her continuity, Pelosi, Biden and others like them prefer to fracture the entire issue into a myriad of voices that cannot stand alone without the Church behind them – for how else could a self-professing Catholic support abortion?

This is, and always has been, a continuous theme in the Church:

Life is sacred. And when there is life, it must be protected.

Augustine said this. Aquinas said this. 2,000 years of Church Tradition, countless years of Jewish tradition before that, the modern popes and Natural Law have all said this – and if Catholic, pro-abortion U.S. politicians like Biden and Pelosi are still uncomfortable “comporting” their religious views to their “political responsibilities,” the United States Constitution itself says this in its unabashed mandate that the right to life must be upheld, first and foremost.

Pope John Paul II could not have been more clear in his 1995 encyclical Evagelium Vitae – “The Gospel of Life”:

“By the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors, and in communion with the Bishops of the Catholic Church, I confirm that the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral. This doctrine, based upon that unwritten law which man, in the light of reason, finds in his own heart, is reaffirmed by Sacred Scripture, transmitted by the Tradition of the Church and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.” (Paragraph 57)

With this infallible statement alone, no amount of fumbling or “moral and verbal gymnastics,” as Archbishop Chaput has put it, can ever honestly allow a Catholic politician to justify his or her political support of abortion – ever. Any attempts to do so are delusional, regardless of qualifiers like, “personally, I oppose abortion, but –” 

Chaput’s conclusion to his archdiocesan letter drives that home, as he writes, “Today’s religious alibis for abortion and a so-called “right to choose” are nothing more than that – alibis that break radically with historic Christian and Catholic belief.”

However, neither Pelosi, who stood by her comments via her spokeswoman this week, nor Biden – who said in an interview with The Christian Science Monitor last year that he found his views “totally consistent with Catholic social doctrine” – seem to understand the illogic of those excuses. 

The nation’s eyes are on Denver this week, awaiting Obama’s acceptance of the Democratic Party’s nomination tonight.

Recent moments of note include:

Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania’s speech Tuesday night, in which he described Obama as “one of us.” Casey, a self-described pro-life politician, said he and the presidential candidate are in “honest disagreement” when it comes to abortion, but that Obama will listen and respect those with differing opinions.

That same night, Sen. Hillary Clinton delivered her highly anticipated address to a party still struggling to unite after she and Obama battled it out in the primaries. Still, many of her die-hard supporters expressed remaining frustration over the party’s nomination of Obama.

And finally, yesterday, the Democratic Party officially nominated Barack Obama as the party’s candidate for the 2008 election. This followed a roll call vote in which Clinton released her own delegates and nominated Obama herself.

----

Turning our attention outside Denver and the rest of the country, we find a long list of world headlines that speak to the frailty and brokenness that plagues our international family.

Violence in India has escalated this week between Christians and Hindus, with Christians being hurt and killed as fires are set to homes and other buildings in the villages. One nun was raped by a group of Hindu extremists, priests have been brutally beaten and others have been forced to flee their homes before their meager possessions are ransacked or doused in kerosene and torched. A home for the elderly run by the Missionaries of Charity was one of the buildings destroyed.

Pope Benedict XVI deplored the violence, both against Hindus and Christians (the killing of a Hindu leader triggered this week’s attacks, although Indian authorities do not suspect that Christians were behind the plot).

“I firmly condemn any attack on human life,” the Pope was quoted as saying by the Associated Press. “I express spiritual closeness and solidarity to the brothers and sisters in faith who are being so harshly tested.”

The president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India called for a nation-wide fast next Sunday, as well as for Indian Catholics to peacefully protest the violence against fellow Christians.

Another bleak story yesterday was the World Bank report that the world poverty rate is much higher than previously thought. According to its estimate, 1.4 billion people live in poverty – that is, on less than $1.25 a day. This is a tremendous rise from four years ago, when the World Bank estimated that 985 million people lived in poverty.

Also, according to the European Union’s statistical office, by 2015 the number of deaths in the EU will outnumber that of births. The BBC story focuses on the effect this would have on the proportion between working-age citizens and pensioners – but economics aside, the very story itself ought to be alarming for one whose continent is literally dying out.

As Der Spiegel, a German publication, puts it, “The EU has known for years it is sitting on a demographic time bomb but new statistics released Tuesday predict just how close the problem looms.”

And finally, in England, the Catholic bishop of Lancaster linked the recent spurt of violence among Britain’s young people (24 stabbing deaths among youth in London alone this year) to the cheapening of life that comes from a mentality that accepts abortion.

According to The Telegraph, Bishop Patrick Donoghue is “convinced that (Britain’s) 1967 Abortion Act was a major cause of widespread violence among young people.”

With a headline like “Bishop Patrick Donoghue Says Abortion is to Blame for Violent Britain,” The Telegraph story, as other news sources that carry the bishop’s quotes most likely will, as well, flirts with portraying the Church leader as reactionary, if not a little off in his logical connections.

However, the question he poses in his brand new booklet, “Fit For Mission? Church,” resonates more with the simple, paradoxical wisdom of Mother Theresa than any reactionary words of someone seeking to blame all social problems on abortion:

“If a society holds human life so cheaply is it any surprise that young people will also hold life cheaply and engage in violence?” he asks.

There’s definite truth in that statement, and one could apply its logic to the European demographic crisis, as well – when nations as a whole (even those with strong Catholic roots, such as Poland) are unwilling to have children, they will be hard set by the consequences. Granted, the act of abortion is much graver than a couple’s choice to not have children, but ultimately, society suffers when it remains closed to new life.

Unfortunately, that will most likely go over the heads of those who report on and quickly read the bishop’s words. 

Catholic Church leaders have continued to step in and reject Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s statement that, as Catholics, “we don’t know” when life begins, as well as her argument that Church teaching itself is vague when it comes to abortion.

Quickly following Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, who on Monday issued a letter to his archdiocese, were Cardinal Justin Rigali and Bishop William Lori, both chairmen of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Rigali serves as chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, and Lori is chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine, as well as Supreme Chaplain of the Knights of Columbus.

Rigali and Lori’s statement, found at the top of the main page of the USCCB website, refutes Pelosi’s account of Church views on abortion throughout history – while much less was known about human embryology in the Middle Ages, they note, the Catholic Church has always held its ground on the immorality of procuring an abortion at any stage of pregnancy.

A link at the bottom of the statement leads to the USCCB document on worthy reception of the Eucharist: a completely apropos connection, and one that certainly won’t be lost on those keeping track of Church leaders such as Chaput and Archbishop Burke, who are outspoken in their defense of withholding the Eucharist from a public dissenter of Church teaching.

Archbishop Wuerl of Washington, D.C., likewise issued a statement quoting the Catechism of the Catholic Church’s paragraphs on abortion, including a selection of the Didache, a first-century text that very clearly condemns infanticide and the killing of an embryo by abortion.

And finally, yesterday afternoon, Cardinal Edward Egan of New York released perhaps the most incisive, cutting remarks yet from any office in the American Church hierarchy.

Egan, “shocked” at Pelosi’s statements, writes, “What the Speaker had to say about theologians and their positions regarding abortion was not only misinformed; it was also, and especially, utterly incredible in this day and age.”

He goes on to mention technology that clearly depicts life beginning at conception and continuing to develop in the womb – evidence that “no one with the slightest measure of integrity or honor” could deny.

Egan’s short press release is well worth a read and speaks for itself in conveying the cardinal’s astonishment at Pelosi’s words, as well as his deeply embedded conviction that the unborn must be protected.

He concludes, “Anyone who dares to defend that they may be legitimately killed because another human being ‘chooses’ to do so or for any other equally ridiculous reason should not be providing leadership in a civilized democracy worthy of the name.”

Lifenews.com reported that ten Catholic members of Congress have sent Pelosi a letter asking that she “rectify (her) errant claims and apologize for misrepresenting the Church’s doctrine and misleading fellow Catholics.”   

Despite all this, though, the majority of mainstream media are not covering the Church’s response to Pelosi, whose statements were broadcast nationally.

Another event that received equal, if not even less than, media coverage, was Monday night’s prayer vigil at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Denver. 2,500 people came to peacefully pray for the end to abortion, led by Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Archbishop Charles Chaput (who was not among the religious leaders invited to the DNC.)

By now we’ve all heard of Nancy Pelosi’s fumbling of the question, “When does life begin?” on Meet the Press Sunday. Her answer – perhaps even more convoluted than Obama’s “above my pay grade” offering last weekend – has astounded the blogosphere, particularly among Catholics, as the Speaker of the House used her own Catholicism and claim of knowledge of Church teaching as credence to her pro-abortion stance. 

“We don’t know,” Pelosi answered Tom Brokaw, after saying St. Augustine believed life began after three months of pregnancy. She continued, “The point is, is that it shouldn’t have an impact on a woman’s right to choose.”

In all, she said, even though the Catholic Church “feels very strongly” (to use Brokaw’s words) that life begins at conception, that stance only developed within the past half century – and ultimately, our God-given free will reigns, as well as our “responsibility to answer for our actions.”

And with that, the criticism begins, from mother and blogger Amy Welborn to the Archbishop of Denver, Charles Chaput, writing from the host city of the Democratic National Convention.

Welborn called on U.S. bishops to seize Pelosi’s statements as a teachable moment – a chance to correct a very public misinterpretation of Church teaching – and Chaput did just that with “On the Separation of Sense and State: A Clarification for the People of the Church in Northern Colorado.”

In his letter, Chaput takes on Pelosi directly, and his letter warrants a read as a prime example of a bishop fulfilling his role of shepherd by protecting his flock from errant theology.   

Elsewhere in the Catholic blogosphere, Thomas Peters called picking out Pelosi’s attempts to evade the truth of Church teaching, while tripping over her own argument in the process, “like shooting fish in a barrel.”

Creative Minority Report pointed out Pelosi’s need to fall back on her claim of being an “ardent, practicing Catholic.”

“Brokaw didn't ask about her religion,” Matthew Archbold wrote. “But Pelosi runs from the science on this issue and attempts to camouflage her casualness towards life and death in mystery and the spiritual realm. But that's not what was asked.”

Speaking of the Denver archbishop, Chaput also told an Associated Press reporter Sunday that Joseph Biden’s pro-abortion stance is “seriously wrong” and would prevent him from receiving Communion.

Before getting sucked into the imminent media hype sure to begin over “Communion wars” and Obama’s running-mate pick, take a look at the actual quote from the archbishop: through Catholic perspective, Chaput is not only upholding the seriousness of the Sacrament, but he is doing so in a very charitable manner toward Biden, as well.

“I certainly presume his good will and integrity,” Chaput says in The Washington Times. “And I presume that his integrity will lead him to refrain from presenting himself for Communion if he supports a false ‘right’ to abortion.”

Chaput also said he wanted to meet with Biden privately to discuss this, as he done in the past with other politicians.

By withholding the Eucharist from a pro-abortion politician, the Church isn’t making a political statement, despite the sensationalizing the mainstream media will apply to each case of Communion denial. Rather, as Archbishop Burke recently reiterated from the Vatican, receiving the Eucharist unworthily is always a grave sin – and to receive deliberately while in mortal sin, such as supporting the murder of unborn children, is a sacrilege. The Church’s reasoning runs much, much deeper than politics and is concerned, rather, with “the soul of a member of (her) flock.”

Burke said that when a Church leader chooses to withhold the Eucharist from someone – in this case, an abortion supporter – “it is not with the intention of interfering in public life but rather with the concern of the spiritual state of the politician or public official who, if Catholic, should follow the divine law in the public sphere as well.”

Finally, the Democratic National Convention is underway this week, and the question of faith – and how Democrats can convince religious voters that they are, indeed, their party – is definitely at the forefront. Religious diversity abounds, from a rabbi reciting the Torah to Catholic nun and author Helen Prejean speaking out against the death penalty. (Notably absent, though, is Denver’s own Chaput.)

However, the party still has tough inroads to pave, as a recent Pew Forum survey indicated that Obama is doing no better among religious voters than Kerry did in 2004.

Naomi Shaefer Riley has an insightful column at The Wall Street Journal on perceptions and predictions about “the religious vote.” In it, she interviews Saddleback pastor Rick Warren himself.

She quotes Warren as saying that “people hear (about a broader agenda) and they think, ‘Oh, evangelicals are giving up on believing that life begins at conception.”

However, Warren adds, “They’re not giving up on that at all. Not at all.”

Under a proposed regulation from the Department of Health and Human Services, the Bush administration pushed yesterday for the protection of health care workers’ freedom of consciences in cases of refusing to participate in abortions for religious or moral reasons.

Though described by pro-abortion activists as a direct threat to women’s access to health care, the rule itself makes clear that this is not its purpose, nor in any way will it be the regulation’s result.

“This regulation does not limit patient access to health care,” it states, “but rather protects any individual health care provider or institution from being compelled to participate in, or from being punished for refusal to participate in, a service that, for example, violates their conscience.”

While there have been similar regulations and legislation in the past that protect freedom of conscience, the Department cited the need to clarify these precedents, pointing to a mistaken mentality within the health care industry that institutions must choose between upholding freedom of consciences or facing discrimination charges.

In other words, a false dichotomy has arisen between practicing one’s career in good standing and upholding religious or moral values. Sadly, the regulation noted, in some cases the very exercise of conscience has been equated with unprofessionalism. 

Mike Leavitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services, captured this illogical mentality on his blog, in which he refers to a quote from the president of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association. Doctors must put their education to use and treat every patient, not “pick and choose” which procedures to do, she argued. In response, Leavitt writes, “According to (her) ideology, if a person goes to medical school they lose their rights of conscience. Freedom of expression and action is surrendered with the issuance of a medical degree.”

Last month, Cardinal Justin Rigali, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, issued a letter to Congress in which he urged members to support the regulation.

This regulation should appeal to both pro-life and pro-choice legislators, Rigali pointed out – after all, shouldn’t both be concerned about upholding an individual’s freedom?

Indeed, the rule cites as one of its goals the “fostering (of) a more inclusive, tolerant environment in the health care industry than may currently exist” – to a society that claims a greater need of inclusiveness and tolerance in terms of accepting a woman’s “right to choose” or homosexual couples’ wishes to marry, this Health and Human Services regulation should not be controversial at all to those who are ironically trying to tear it down.

In the midst of the celebration and awe that surround great athletic feats, the pride of cheering for one’s country and the rich Chinese heritage that Olympics viewers have been wowed with since the Opening Ceremony, reports like these cast a chilling shadow over the “One World, One Dream” mentality that Beijing is trying to conceive.

Censorship, suppression and the arrest or disappearance of “dissidents” (in one case, a pair of elderly evicted women, and in another, a pastor) are being reported by the media, but become hopelessly lost in the spectacle of the Games.

It’s almost surreal to think that, while we cheer in front of our TVs for Shawn Johnson’s gold, become avowed fans of Michael Phelps (and endeared toward his mother) and agonize over Tyson Gay dropping the baton – the Chinese promise of being open to the world has been no more real than the voice behind its star child singer in the Opening Ceremony, or the “multi-ethnic” group of children that carried the Chinese flag that same night.

This piece in Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine is appropriately titled “The Phantoms of the Beijing Opera” – between silence from officials (both Chinese and in the International Olympics Committee) and the eerie stillness of empty protest parks, one gets the definite feeling that despite the glamour and emotions of the Games, something is wrong – everyone knows there’s an undercurrent of secrecy and covering up what didn’t come off perfectly. Or, if the cover-up fails – spinning the story. (The now-paralyzed dancer who fell from a 3-meter platform during an Opening Ceremony rehearsal is an example, as she’s quoted in the Chinese press as saying, “I fell for the sake of the Olympics. There is no regret. My life would resume with beauty in another form.”)

Will any good come from being Olympics hosts in terms of China’s paltry human rights record? There were definitely those who expressed hope that being the focus of the world would force China to open up, even just a little. But if a quote like that of the Xinhua news employee in the Washington Times’ story is a fair indicator of China’s inaction in terms of moving forward, then perhaps some disillusionment is in order.

“There was a sort of openness in the run-up to the event, which was intended to show how China could tolerate discussion and report more freely,” the employee said. “But that seems to have disappeared since the games started.”

On a vastly different note, considering Tuesday's Census Bureau report of the number of childless, 40-year-old American women doubling in the past 30 years, yesterday's headline of the Amish population nearly doubling in the past 16 years is ironic, yet welcoming. With large families and a large percentage of young Amish who remain in the denomination, America’s Anabaptist population is thriving – and half of them are under the age of 21.

It’s literally a complete reversal of the majority of American society captured by the census report. As a denomination that seeks to set itself apart from the world and live modestly with close ties to family and the land, their numbers – and ours – show they’re doing well in living out those tenets.

Yesterday, the Census Bureau released a study from 2006 that showed the number of childless women ages 40-44 in America has doubled in the past 30 years. And not only are women apparently waiting longer to have children, but more are opting to not have any at all.

Some interesting factors have been pointed out in news articles on the survey: Hispanic birthrates, for example, are keeping the whole American birthrate afloat. (Which recalls to mind last week’s story on minorities becoming the majority in America in less than 40 years.) Also, the highest fertility rate was among women who had completed a graduate or professional degree – suggesting that women are waiting to finish a higher level of education before starting a family.

Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink finds the survey results disturbing and problematic – first, it’s harder for women to conceive if they wait too long to have baby, and second, the results seem all too reflective of a society absorbed in nothing but itself.

“So much of our culture has made kids seem like big sacrifices and a big inconvenience,” said one woman quoted in the story, a vice president of policy and economics at the Independent Women’s Forum.

It will be interesting to read Catholic columnists and bloggers’ insights into the study, considering that all Catholic couples are given a mandate to be open to children in their marriage.

On a related note, a news show on BBC featured a young Indian woman essentially forced out of her husband’s home because she refused to abort her baby – which scans had revealed to be a girl.

Daughters in India are a liability, the show explains, as the girl’s family will have to provide an expensive bridal dowry at her wedding and then lose her help at home when she moves to her husband’s family residence.

Indian demographic statistics reflect this: only 821 girls born to every 1,000 boys in Delhi, for example. Technically, it is illegal in India to test and abort for gender selection, although the featured woman in the show was obviously caught in the middle of this very practice.

Even India’s minister for women admits on the show that the implications of having fewer girls than boys will greatly affect the country in the coming years. Not enough men will find wives, she points out – “the nation will soon face an unimaginable crisis.”

On one hand, the Indian story seems to serve as the provocative flip side to the American census study: Western women will put child-bearing on hold, if they’re even open to motherhood at all, while some Indian women suffer persecution from their own family in order to carry unborn daughters to term.

On the other hand, the sad, root element in both stories lies in a society oblivious to the legacy built through its children – because whether in America or on the other side of the world, a culture cannot thrive if it is not willing to embrace life.   

The California Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday that doctors cannot withhold medical care to gays and lesbians – specifically, two Christian fertility doctors were wrong to refuse to artificially inseminate a lesbian under a religious exemption or free speech right.

Of course, this comes in the midst of pre-Election Day, Proposition 8 furor, when Californians will vote whether or not to overturn the Supreme Court’s legalizing of same-sex marriage this past May.

A cursory look at the headlines for this story turns up, “State Supreme Court Says Doctors Must Treat Gays and Lesbians”, “Doctors Can’t Withhold Care to Gays Based on Religious Beliefs” and the like – automatically implying to the reader that artificial insemination is routine health care that should, indeed, be accessible to all. (As well as positing that religious beliefs could interfere with a doctor’s job of performing actual life-saving duties.)

In brief, the story is as follows: in 2000, Guadalupe Benitez, a lesbian of Oceanside, Calif., went to two fertility doctors from the North Coast Women’s Care Medical Group seeking artificial insemination in order to conceive and raise a child with her longtime partner.

While the doctors refused, citing religious beliefs – they said they would have also refused to inseminate an unmarried woman – they did treat Benitez with fertility drugs and gave her further instructions on how to inseminate herself at home. Benitez sued the following year, and the case has made its way through California’s courts up until now.

According to the Associated Press report, the California Medical Association withdrew its initial support of the doctors after receiving a backlash of criticism from gay-rights groups.

Ultimately, the real implications of this court ruling revolves around the issue of freedom of religion and free speech. The court ruling itself states:

Do the rights of religious freedom and free speech, as guaranteed in both the federal and the California Constitutions, exempt a medical clinic’s physicians from complying with the California Unruh Civil Rights Act’s prohibition against discrimination based on a person’s sexual orientation? Our answer is no.

(The Civil Rights Act referred to did not include discrimination based on a person’s sexual orientation in its original language, but had been amended in 2005 – four years after Benitez initially sued the medical group – to include that caveat.)

Although the doctors can still argue that their objection to the insemination procedure stemmed from the fact that Benitez was not married, not that she was a lesbian, the ruling sets a precedent in the state that could greatly weaken any employer’s ability to not compromise his or religious beliefs without getting slapped with charges of discrimination.

A quote from Benitez in this ABC story reveals the sad nature of couples’ clamoring – whether heterosexual or not – for fertility techniques such as in vitro fertilization or artificial insemination.

“For me this is a case about doing the right thing and being fair,” Benitez is quoted as saying. “Not discriminating against people and doctors not playing the role of God, saying because you are gay, you are not worthy of having a child or a family.”

The court’s ruling is a terrible assault on freedom of conscience; however, the specifics of the case – the issue of artificial insemination – shouldn’t be affecting Catholic doctors if they refuse to do the practice at all. (The ruling stated that in order to avoid conflict between religious views and discrimination charges, doctors could opt to not offer a specific procedure to anyone at all.)

Exactly what the two doctors believed in terms of the morality of a lesbian couple “conceiving” a child is not described in the court ruling. The Catholic Church teaches that techniques that achieve fertilization via any methods other than the conjugal act between a married man and woman are morally unacceptable, period.

No matter how much a person, heterosexual or homosexual, married or unmarried, may want or love a child, he or she does not have a right to one.

“A child is not something owed to one, but is a gift,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, going on to describe a newly conceived human person as “the supreme gift of marriage.” The Catechism continues, “In this area, only the child possesses genuine rights: the right ‘to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents,’ and ‘the right to be respected as a person from the moment of his conception.’”

As prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, then-Cardinal Ratzinger instructed that “the procreation of a new person, whereby the man and the woman collaborate with the power of the Creator, must be the fruit and the sign of the mutual self-giving of the spouses, of their love and of their fidelity.” Again, this precludes any method of conceiving other than the conjugal act between husband and wife.

Pope Benedict XVI, John Paul II and the Catholic Tradition behind them have taught that marriage and its indissoluble unity is the only setting worthy of “truly responsible parenthood.” Building upon this premise, along with an understanding of the profound “mutual self-giving of the spouses,” the Catholic Church teaches that artificial insemination – even of a woman by her husband – is immoral, as it disconnects the procreative and unitive meanings of sexual union and subjects the conceived child to the domination of science. A child has a right to be born of married parents, within the context of loving, natural, sexual union.

And in terms of those in the health industry, the Church has issued an “urgent appeal to Catholic doctors and scientists that they bear exemplary witness to the respect due to the human embryo and to the dignity of procreation.”

The facts of Benitez’s case – two lesbian women seeking artificial means of conceiving a child, which they will raise in a home devoid of that fundamental building block of the family, a marriage between husband and wife – reveal how disjointed our society has become in relation to the beauty and freedom of God’s plan for marriage and the family. And it’s a sad state of affairs when doctors’ freedoms of speech and religion are trampled upon in the name of preserving a culture that has settled for second best.