Category: Guest column

Imagine that you are a patient needing routine surgery at an outpatient facility. At the Madison Surgery Center, you receive treatment to enhance your health, while in the next room or down the hall a fully formed 19 to 22 week unborn baby is being dismembered, experiencing significant pain from the abortion procedure.

The UW Hospital and Clinics, Meriter Hospital, and the Madison Surgery Center recently approved such a venture. The second trimester abortion program was discussed for months, shrouded in secrecy. Since becoming public knowledge, information from facilities’ officials has been incredibly inconsistent and filled with public relations puffery.

Fr. Jim Murphy, in his letter in the December 25 edition of the Catholic Herald, argues that Catholics ought not participate in the U.S. military at this time because that participation “would likely involve immoral activity.”

He cites papal and other ecclesiastical opinions that our invasion of Iraq was not moral, conditions at the Abu Ghraib prison, and the holding of people at the Guantanamo Naval Base, the rendition program, the condition of veterans returning from the theater of combat, the existence of nuclear weapons, and the shear size of annual military spending.

I would like to share with you a special Christmas tradition from our family. It goes back as far as I can remember.

My mother was a wonderful baker, especially at Christmas time. She would spend the weeks before Christmas diligently turning out one wonderful confection after the other.

Months ago I had a conversation with my father that will stick in my memory forever. I told him Barack Obama was a lock to be our next president.

My father who was born in 1940 and raised me to believe all people were created equal regardless of their skin color told me, “I don’t believe the people of the United States will elect an African American in my lifetime.”

During his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, presidential nominee Barack Obama made a comment in which he attempted to appeal to both pro-life and pro-abortion voters.

“We may not agree on abortion,” Obama said. “But surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country.”

While this sound byte may sound like a good faith effort to unite Americans, it revealed a fundamental flaw in the candidate’s understanding of the sanctity of life. We can agree on reducing the number of malaria cases in Africa or the number of car accidents on our highways because malaria and car accidents are by their very nature bad. But human beings are created in the image and likeness of God — whether they are wanted or unwanted.

As Catholics we face many complex questions and challenges in regards to being involved in public and political life.  We face similar questions and challenges in selecting a candidate.

I had the pleasure of attending a Theology On Tap in which Thomas Peters, an extremely articulate and funny Internet-journalist, worked hard to sell that McCain is the best choice for Catholics.  His argument was that the abortion issue encapsulates and trumps all other life issues. If you get the abortion issue wrong, how can you be an advocate for life in its later stages? This seems on the onset like a salient point.

What are these other “life issues” that might motivate a Catholic voter to either pick Barack Obama or perhaps trouble a Catholic enough not to vote for John McCain? A few mentioned but not adequately discussed were the evils of  “preventive war,” the death penalty, embryonic stem cell research, and the social sins of poverty and oppression in its many forms.

As we creep into the end of another year, it prompts us to consider our charitable gifting opportunities in respect to our year-end tax planning. There are many ways in which you can structure a gift to provide benefit to you personally while supporting the causes that mean the most to you. Congress has recently made it more attractive for IRA owners over 70 to do just that.

On October 3, 2008, as part of the economic recovery plan, the House joined with the Senate to approve the much awaited IRA charitable rollover plan. This allows IRA owners to make a direct gift to their parish, parish school, diocese, or other qualified diocesan institution through their required minimum distribution from an IRA. This also applies to legally binding pledges you may have made to the Church.

Our diocesan Rural Life Office serves to support communities of all sizes as consumers of a constant, safe and affordable food supply, with focused emphasis in supporting the farmers and rural communities who plant, grow, and harvest the crops that feed us.

The Rural Life Office works to connect our rural parish communities to the greater diocesan Church as well as inform non-rural parish communities of the many challenges and justice issues facing those who labor to provide “our daily bread.” The success and vitality of all our communities must be measured along-side the health and sustainability of our local farmers and rural families, rural parishes, and farming communities.