Tuesday, September 9th, 2008
Daily Archive
When Life Begins: Round Two
Posted by Fr. Aquinas on 09 Sep 2008 | Tagged as: Miscellaneous
“This is like deja vu all over again.”
Two weeks after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi grievously misrepresented the Church’s teaching on life and earned herself an unprecedented rebuke from the nation’s bishops, Senator Joseph Biden, also a professed Catholic, answered the same question, from the same journalist, on the same show, in the same scandalous way. Other than substituting the name “Aquinas” for “Augustine,” Biden simply copied Pelosi’s script when he claimed that medieval debates over delayed ensoulment reveal a loose thread in the Church’s otherwise seamless defense of life, a thread on which a Catholic politician may licitly hang a political defense of legalized abortion. The argument made little sense when Pelosi made it, and after the corrections offered by the bishops it makes even less sense now.
In at least one way, however, Biden’s answer to the question “When does life begin?” does more damage than Pelosi’s to the public’s perception of the Church’s teaching. More than twice on Sunday’s Meet the Press, Biden asserted that the statement ”life begins at conception” is an article of faith which a Catholic must accept under the authority of the Church’s Magisterium. As a witness to his Catholic credentials, Biden proudly proclaimed his obedience and fidelity. But Biden’s presentation of the Church’s teaching is not true. The statement “life begins at conception” is not an article of faith. It is a statement rooted in reason and science used by the Church to explain the full scope of the fifth commandment. By arguing that “life begins at conception” constitutes a tenet of a religious creed, Biden erroneouly reduces the Church’s Gospel of Life to a sectarian, fideist claim unsupported by either reason or science. As a definition of a particular creed, Biden argued, the statement “life begins at conception” can hold no sway in modern democratic debate.
As expected, the bishop’s have begun to respond.
Saint of the Slaves
Posted by Fr. Aquinas on 09 Sep 2008 | Tagged as: Liturgical Feasts
Like 
many young European religious of the late sixteenth century, St. Peter Claver left family and homeland to spread the faith in the New World. As a Jesuit priest, he settled in Cartagena, Columbia, the capital of the African slave trade. There, Peter Claver dedicated his life to becoming “the slave of the negroes forever.”
Trained as a missionary, Peter brought the faith to those Africans unwillingly brought to Columbia. He would meet them at the docks, supply for their physical needs, find translators who could speak their language, and offer them comfort and solace in the slave prisons. He catechized them, and many received baptism. Peter was also a fervent advocate for the Africans, protesting the abuse they received from their Spanish captors. For his protection of the slaves, Peter himself received much abuse.