Stowe It!

Bishop Stowe not only thinks the environment is more important than ending baby killing, but he supports 'gender ideology' and the LGBTQXYZ∞ Agenda. In other words, the Marxist agenda!

From One Mad Mom

The attempt to persuade people to vote for Harris/Biden is just getting more and more lame and desperate.

US bishop says environment should be ‘preeminent issue’ for voters, not abortion

Pro-homosexual Bishop John Stowe justified his dissent from the USCCB by stating that ‘without the environment to sustain human life, you can’t have human life.’

Wed Sep 16, 2020

By Martin Bürger

LEXINGTON, Kentucky, September 16, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Bishop John Stowe suggested last Thursday that the environment is the preeminent issues for Catholic voters to consider, not abortion. “They are both critical issues,” the pro-homosexual bishop of Lexington, Kentucky, admitted. “I think an argument could be made that … creation is the preeminent issue, because without the environment to sustain human life, you can’t have human life.”

No, Bishop Stowe. That argument cannot be made. Nice try. Thanks for playing. Murdering a baby, the sick, or the elderly doesn’t compare to bad weather, changing climate, smog, rising tides, sinking coastlines, or whatever other anomalies you think are man-made. You know how I know? Because one is murder and one is not.

Now, before someone comes unglued and gives me a lecture about the environment, I am not against it. I’m pro-environment. That said, how we take care of it, the “science” cited by the disaster peddlers, etc., are all prudential judgments. Abortion and euthanasia are not prudential judgments. For example, I’m from California. I’m free to conclude that liberal idiots ruined the environment in our state with ridiculous policies that leave us no water and endless amounts of fuel for wildfires. I’m free to conclude that lightning and arsonists are not caused by “climate change.” The reason our state is burning down on a regular basis is poor management of the environment. We take extreme measures instead of levelheaded ones for protecting habitats that have now been completely destroyed in super fires. The animals, the trees, the endangered whatevers are gone thanks to the fire mismanagement in this state.

The bishop of Lexington, Kentucky, made his remarks during a webinar hosted by Catholic Climate Covenant.

“We have to look at what office are we voting people into – what office are we electing for and what is their role in that office,” Stowe continued. “We’ve seen what the current President can do by withdrawing from an international treaty about protecting the environment, and the effect that that has had immediately.”

What effect was that? Spill it, Bishop. We are not the grand polluters of the world. That would be China, India, etc., and yet the burdens placed on us instead of them are ridiculous. And, quite frankly, conservatives aren’t even the big polluters in the U.S. Ever see the National Mall after liberals have a rally and after conservatives have been there? Wee bit of a difference in sincerity. 

On the other hand, the bishop said, “We have unfortunately lived with abortion as interpreted as a right since 1973. After many administrations of both parties, that hasn’t changed, so when we look at just the immediacy and the role of office and what effect they have, I think that can weigh in on that decision.”

And this is why I’m voting for Trump. It most definitely has changed in the last four years. We’ve had states pass the most restrictive abortion laws we’ve ever seen. We’re seeing towns declaring themselves “sanctuary cities for the unborn.” Everyone looks at SCOTUS, but Trump has been stacking the lower courts with some pretty great people. And, yes, the Supreme Court does matter, and Ginsburg may not hold on until Trump is out of office. Hopefully that seat is going to break the liberal stranglehold on this country.

Stowe also criticized the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) for its document “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” which included language qualifying abortion as the “preeminent priority” for voters to be concerned about.

What a shocker.

“The threat of abortion remains our preeminent priority because it directly attacks life itself, because it takes place within the sanctuary of the family, and because of the number of lives destroyed,” the bishops wrote.

In another place, they added, “In our nation, ‘abortion and euthanasia have become preeminent threats to human dignity because they directly attack life itself, the most fundamental human good and the condition for all others.’”

“I voted against the inclusion of that language,” said Stowe, arguing it was confusing terminology.

Uh, what is confusing about it? It’s only confusing to one who would also like to confuse his flock. I’ve used this example before. If I see someone about to shoot a child to my left and a homeless person sleeping in a tent to my right, I’m going to help the child about to be killed first. Does that mean you don’t help the homeless man? Of course not. It means you help the one in immediate danger of death first. The one in imminent danger of death gets help first. I’m pretty sure a child would know which one needs help first.

“I do understand the logic of it being preeminent,” he conceded, “because without the right to life the other human rights don’t come into existence. So I do understand it on one level, but unfortunately it gives people the permission to think it’s the only one that matters, and I don’t think that was the intention of the document.”

That’s only one aspect. The other aspect is the proximity to death, as I showed above and, no, it doesn’t lead people to believe only one matters. This is a fallacy the liberals like to use. Maybe that’s because the liberals really do have their pet issues and don’t do anything else?  On the other hand, I don’t know a pro-life activist on the planet that only focuses on abortion. In fact, when I think of it, they are the most generous people I know with their time. It’s womb to tomb for them, but they do have a preeminent focus until all murder is outlawed. In fact, I guarantee, when abortion is ended, we will fill up our time with other charitable works.

“It goes against other parts of the document that tell us not to be single issue voters, so if we do take that web of life kind of spirituality, we see the interconnectedness of all these issues,” Stowe pointed out. “Pope Francis has done a great job of leading us towards that. I think the unnecessary inclusion of that word took a step backward.”

We’re not “single issue voters.” This is just another fallacy. If you have to label us, how about going with “proximity to death voters.” It would be a little more accurate. Our focus is ending murder and then we spiral out from there to help as many other people as possible.

“The USCCB’s document itself indeed asked Catholics to focus not simply on one issue. However, it qualified that any candidate’s “position on a single issue is not sufficient to guarantee a voter’s support. Yet if a candidate’s position on a single issue promotes an intrinsically evil act, such as legal abortion, redefining marriage in a way that denies its essential meaning, or racist behavior, a voter may legitimately disqualify a candidate from receiving support.”

The “single issue” isn’t really a single issue, it’s a starting point. When choosing between candidates, you’ve always got to start with abortion and euthanasia because, as Bishop Stowe kind of pointed out, if you are dead, none of the rest of the issues matter. As we like to say, social justice begins in the womb, and well over a million people a year are denied even having a chance at social justice.

For faithful Catholics, a politician’s position on abortion and other life issues, including euthanasia, is of key importance.

Pope Benedict XVI, in 2006, identified three “principles which are not negotiable” in politics.

He first mentioned the “protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death.

Also, he referenced the “recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family – as a union between a man and a woman based on marriage – and its defense from attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different forms of union which in reality harm it and contribute to its destabilization, obscuring its particular character and its irreplaceable social role.”

Finally, the Pope emeritus listed “the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.””

Remember when Bishop Stowe and friends said, “Listen to Pope Benedict!”? Yeah, neither do I. They definitely weren’t pumping the part about marriage, natural family structure, and parents right to educate their children, either. And, as you’ll see below, he’s all about lumping intrinsic evils in with prudential judgments.

In July, Bishop Stowe had discredited President Trump as not really being pro-life.

“For this President to call himself pro-life, and for anybody to back him because of claims of being pro-life, is almost willful ignorance,” he said. “He is so much anti-life because he is only concerned about himself, and he gives us every, every, every indication of that.”

Says the walking example of willful ignorance.

“Yes, we have to be concerned for the unborn children,” the bishop said at the time. “It’s foundational for us, but it’s all connected,” and “our understanding of pro-life has to be the vision that was described as the seamless garment vision.”

Says who? And who is it foundational for? You? I don’t think so. This is the reason you downplay abortion every chance you get. This is the “seamless garment” club’s main objective. Downplay abortion and lump it in with all sorts of areas where we have prudential judgment and, therefore, make it also a prudential judgment that can be downplayed in favor of some other prudential judgment.

The term “seamless garment” refers to a theory first spelled out by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin. According to that theory, intrinsic evils like abortion are essentially morally equivalent to societal ills like poverty.

“Pope Francis has given us a great definition of what pro-life means,” Bishop Stowe said. “He basically tells us we can’t claim to be pro-life if we support the separation of children from their parents at the U.S. border, if we support exposing people at the border to COVID-19 because of the facilities that they’re in, if we support denying people who have need to adequate health care access to that health care, if we keep people from getting the housing or the education that they need, we cannot call ourselves pro-life.”

He basically tells us? LOL! This means, “I can’t really point to anything but I’m going to paraphrase in a way that makes Pope Francis sound like he back me up.”

I’d like to stop and point something out that we younger generations don’t know. I’m not a fan of Bernardin in any way, but what HE said some things quite contradictory of modern “Seamless Garment.”. He may have gotten a rap on the knuckles from Pope John Paul II. Who knows? This is just a snippet, but I encourage you to read the rest. We look more like what Bernardin was describing below than Stowe, Cupich, Martin, McElroy, J. Tobin and the rest of the dissenting lot of them. (Emphasis mine and commentary mine.)

https://www.priestsforlife.org/magisterium/bernardinwade.html
“A consistent ethic of life does not equate the problem of taking life (e.g., through abortion and in war) with the problem of promoting human dignity (through humane programs of nutrition, health care, and housing). But a consistent ethic identifies both the protection of life and its promotion as moral questions. It argues for a continuum of life which must be sustained in the face of diverse and distinct threats.

A consistent ethic does not say everyone in the Church must do all things, but it does say that as individuals and groups pursue one issue, whether it is opposing abortion or capital punishment, the way we oppose one threat should be related to support for a systemic vision of life. It is not necessary or possible for every person to engage in each issue, but it is both possible and necessary for the Church as a whole to cultivate a conscious explicit connection among the several issues. And it is very necessary for preserving a systemic vision that individuals and groups who seek to witness to life at one point of the spectrum of life not be seen as insensitive to or even opposed to other moral claims on the overall spectrum of life. Consistency does rule out contradictory moral positions about the unique value of human life. No one is called to do everything, but each of us can do something. And we can strive not to stand against each other when the protection and the promotion of life are at stake.

1. The Seamless Garment: The Levels of the Question

A consistent ethic of life should honor the complexity of the multiple issues it must address. It is necessary to distinguish several levels of the question. Without attempting to be comprehensive, allow me to explore four distinct dimensions of a consistent ethic.

First, at the level of general moral principles, it is possible to identify a single principle with diverse applications. In the Fordham address I used the prohibition against direct attacks on innocent life. This principle is both central to the Catholic moral vision and systematically related to a range of specific moral issues. It prohibits direct attacks on unborn life in the womb, direct attacks on civilians in warfare, and the direct killing of patients in nursing homes.

Each of these topics has a constituency in society concerned with the morality of abortion, war, and care of the aged and dying. A consistent ethic of life encourages the specific concerns of each constituency, but also calls them to see the interrelatedness of their efforts. The need to defend the integrity of the moral principle in the full range of its application is a responsibility of each distinct constituency. If the principle is eroded in the public mind, all lose.

A second level of a consistent ethic stresses the distinction among cases rather than their similarities. We need different moral principles to apply to diverse cases. The classical distinction between ordinary and extraordinary means has applicability in the care of the dying but no relevance in the case of warfare. Not all moral principles have relevance across the whole range of life issues. Moreover, sometimes a systemic vision of the life issues requires a combination of moral insights to provide direction on one issue. At Fordham, I cited the classical teaching on capital punishment which gives the State the right to take life in defense of key social values. But I also pointed out how a concern for promoting a public attitude of respect for life has led the bishops of the United States to oppose the exercise of that right. (When was the last time you heard the classical teaching cited?! And today’s “Seamless Garment” extollers are going to cringe at the next part…)

Some of the responses I have received on the Fordham address correctly say that abortion and capital punishment are not identical issues. The principle which protects innocent life distinguishes the unborn child from the convicted murderer.

Other letters stress that while nuclear war is a threat to life, abortion involves the actual taking of life, here and now. I accept both of these distinctions, of course, but I also find compelling the need to relate the cases while keeping them in distinct categories.

Abortion is taking of life in ever growing numbers in our society. Those concerned about it, I believe, will find their case enhanced by taking note of the rapidly expanding use of public execution. In a similar way, those who are particularly concerned about these executions, even if the accused has taken another life, should recognize the elementary truth that a society which can be indifferent to the innocent life of an unborn child will not be easily stirred to concern for a convicted criminal. There is, I maintain, a political and psychological linkage among the life issues—from war to welfare concerns—which we ignore at our own peril: a systemic vision of life seeks to expand the moral imagination of a society, not partition it into airtight categories.”

I don’t totally disagree with Bernardin HERE. He very distinctly shows a difference between TAKING a life with THREATENING or DEVALUING a life, but yes, they are interconnected. If we’ve devalued life so much that we can kill a child in the womb, then killing people in war, letting them die by neglect, or simply not caring about our fellow man is easy peasy.

It is important to note that what is cited came after his Fordham lecture. The Fordham lecture really didn’t have all of the clarifications he makes here, which is why James Martin, SJ and friends usually only cite that. They’re also probably not going to cite the original USCCB document this was all based on, either, but I will, because it backs up what I said about the preeminence of abortion. (Emphasis and comments, again, mine).

https://www.usccb.org/upload/challenge-peace-gods-promise-our-response-1983.pdf

285. No society can live in peace with itself, or with the world, without a full awareness of the worth and dignity of every human person, and of the sacredness of all human life (Jas. 4:1-2). When we accept violence in any form as commonplace, our sensitivities become dulled. When we accept violence, war itself can be taken for granted. Violence has many faces: oppression of the poor, deprivation of basic human rights, economic exploitation, sexual exploitation and pornography, neglect or abuse of the aged and the helpless, and innumerable other acts of inhumanity. Abortion in particular blunts a sense of the sacredness of human life. In a society where the innocent unborn are killed wantonly, how can we expect people to feel righteous revulsion at the act or threat of killing noncombatants in war?

286. We are well aware of the differences involved in the taking of human life in warfare and the taking of human life through abortion. (What?! There’s not difference. Or at least that is what we are told by the modern day “Seamless Garment” types.) As we have discussed throughout this document, even justifiable defense against aggression may result in the indirect or unintended loss of innocent human lives. This is tragic, but be may conceivably proportionate to the values defended. (Can we bring back this USCCB???) Nothing, however, can justify direct attack on innocent human life, in or out of warfare. Abortion is precisely such an attack.

287. We know that millions of men and women of good will, of all religious persuasions, join us in our commitment to try to reduce the horrors of war, and particularly to assure that nuclear weapons will never again be used, by any nation, anywhere, for any reason. Millions join us in our “no” to nuclear war, in the certainty that nuclear war would inevitably result in the killing of millions of innocent human beings, directly or indirectly. Yet many part ways with us in our efforts to reduce the horror of abortion and our “no” to war on innocent human life in the womb, killed not indirectly, but directly.

288. We must ask how long a nation willing to extend a constitutional guarantee to the “right” to kill defenseless human beings by abortion is likely to refrain from adopting strategic warfare policies deliberately designed to kill millions of defenseless human beings, if adopting them should come to seem “expedient.” Since 1973, approximately 15 million abortions (We’re well over 60 million now. Sadly, we deserve everything we get as a nation.) have been performed in the United States, symptoms of a kind of disease of the human spirit. And we now find ourselves seriously discussing the pros and cons of such questions as infanticide, euthanasia, and the involvement of physicians in carrying out the death penalty. Those who would celebrate such a national disaster can only have blinded themselves to its reality. (And, sadly, so have some of our priests, bishops and cardinals. This is why they downplay preeminent.)

289. Pope Paul VI was resolutely clear: If you wish peace, defend life.[118] We plead with all who would work to end the scourge of war to begin by defending life at its most defenseless, the life of the unborn.”

Honestly, gentlemen, when are you going to figure this out, if ever? If you don’t help end the scourge of abortion, we will never have peace.

Bishop Stowe also used the July webinar to once again express his support for homosexuality and gender ideology, explicitly saying, “Our understanding of family has to change.”

The problem is, Bishop Stowe, it has, and you are one reason why. However, while I’m going to have to answer for many things in my life, you will have to answer for that and for the destruction of innocent children from the confusion you peddle. One has to wonder if you truly want peace or if you really just want to thwart the Church’s teachings you don’t care for.

“We have to be in a different understanding of family, and that’s where the LGBT issues come into play,” he said. “I agree completely with (another webinar participant) that our credibility is on the line with the whole generation, and more, of young people who just don’t buy that teaching, and know from their experience, and know from the people that they know, that there are good and loving people that happen to identify as LGBT, and that’s part of who they are.”

And there you have it. “Our understanding of family has to change because sinners want to sin and we just have to accept it.” Heresy.