Voting Guidelines for Catholics - Part II

10-20-2024Weekly ReflectionFr. Leonard F. Villa

Reminder: Vote to protect parental rights. Prop 1 is a dishonest attempt to overturn parental rights in raising their children to force gender ideology on the State of New York and children regardless of parental rights not to mention allowing biological males in women’s locker rooms and bathrooms and the destruction of women’s sports. It is packaged as an anti-discrimination measure hoping that people without reading the whole text will check yes because they are against discrimination. There are already laws federal and state against racial, religious, and other forms of unjust discrimination. VOTE NO ON PROP 1 when you vote to protect parental rights, religious freedom, and human life. The Church teaches that sex is assigned at conception. Gender confusion is a psychological issue which should be treated with compassion and understanding but also with the truth.

A cardinal principle of Catholic social teaching is that the State must serve the common good. What does the common good mean? The common good requires peace, that is, the stability and security of a just order. It presupposes that authority should ensure by morally acceptable means the security of society and its members. It is the basis of the right to legitimate personal and collective defense. An open-border violates the common good affecting citizens and legal immigrants. Uncontrolled immigration is unsustainable because of the burden inflicted on communities unable to provide for and maintain cities, towns, and villages. This burden currently involves enabling drug cartels to operate freely, the flow of deadly fentanyl in our country, the operation of human trafficking, entry into the country of criminals and criminal gangs, not to mention security threats from potential terrorists, and Americans being killed by illegal immigrants. The term undocumented immigrants is dishonest. The issue is not lack of documents but the breaking of immigration law which a country has a right to uphold for ordered rather than disordered immigration policy.

Pope Benedict XVI reminded the Church: States have the right to regulate migration and defend their borders. He made these comments in his message for the Church's World Day of Migrants and Refugees. He also believed that: Immigrants have a duty to integrate into the host country. Migrants should be treated with dignity. Nations should cooperate to address the challenges of migration. Migrants' safety should be ensured, especially from trafficking. Unaccompanied minors and foreign students should be cared for. The right to emigrate and not to emigrate should be upheld. He also said: we must not overlook the question of irregular migration, an issue all the more pressing when it takes the form of human trafficking and exploitation, particularly of women and children. These crimes must be clearly condemned and prosecuted, while an orderly migration policy which does not end up in a hermetic sealing of borders, more severe sanctions against irregular migrants and the adoption of measures meant to discourage new entries, could at least limit for many migrants the danger of falling prey to such forms of human trafficking. https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/messages/migration/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20121012_world-migrantsday.html

In the course of political conflict and election-seasons the term “Nazi” is often hurled at opponents, forgetting that a cardinal point of Nazi ideology was eugenics, which did not start in Germany. The phrase "life unworthy of life" (German: Lebensunwertes Leben) was a Nazi designation for the segments of the populace which, according to the Nazi regime, had no right to live. Those individuals were targeted to be murdered by the state via involuntary euthanasia, usually through the compulsion or deception of their caretakers. The term included people with disabilities and later those considered grossly inferior according to the Nazi ideology. This did not start with the Nazis. It was already being promoted in Great Britain and the U.S. especially by Margaret Sanger the founder of the Birth-Control League now Planned Parenthood. The tools of elimination included abortion, euthanasia, and sterilization not to mention infanticide. Eugenics (“breed the best” was the slogan) is the notion that humans should be bred like other animals; certain races were superior and others inferior; and undesirables should be eliminated and/or sterilized lest they have children; and that not all humans were equal in dignity since some lives were and are of no value. That notion is alive and well in our country and among many politicians.

(Re sterilization, read the Supreme Court opinion Buck vs. Bell with the infamous quote “three generations of imbeciles are enough.”) https://education.blogs.archives.gov/2017/05/02/buck-v-bell/) Consider these comments from the discoverers of DNA: Dr. James Watson, Nobel laureate for unraveling the mystery of DNA, wrote in Prism Magazine, “If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice only a few are given under the present system. The doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so choose and save a lot of misery and suffering. I believe this view is the only rational, compassionate attitude to have.”In like manner, Dr. Francis Crick, who received the Nobel Prize with Watson, said that, “…no newborn infant should be declared human until it has passed certain tests regarding its genetic endowment and that if it fails these tests it forfeits the right to live.” The dehumanization of newborns isn’t new but it’s getting worse. The Hill 3/18/2012 (END)

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