Defending the Church: In the Newspaper Twice!

It was so cool to get the opportunity to defend the Church in the newspaper twice in one week. As you may already know, I gave a talk on Monday night about the Church’s teaching on voting and the issue of abortion. The talk, which was written about in the paper, emphasized the fact that abortion (and other intrinsically evil acts which can never be tolerated) can be found to be evil by both faith and reason.

The only prerequisite to being fundamentally opposed to abortion is: being human.

This isn’t to say that every human being will be opposed to abortion, but it doesn’t take faith in a religion to be pro-life. In fact, there are many atheists that are pro-life. So below are a couple of excerpts from the article in the paper. Enjoy!


“Faith does have a role in the ballot box, according to the teaching of the Catholic church, a Catholic educator said Monday.

“‘As Catholics, our mission is to go out and change the world for the better,’ said Andrew Lynch… during a presentation Monday night on the church’s teaching regarding voting.

“An important role parishioners have in achieving that mission, he said, is voting for candidates based on their stance on moral issues such as abortion, embryonic stem cell research and social justice.

“‘It is not the role of the clergy nor the church to support a party or candidate,’ Lynch said, referring to the U.S. Bishop’s document titled, ‘Reflection on Catholic Teaching and Political Life.’ However, clergy can help churchgoers see what is morally right, he said. Intrinsically evil acts are never to be tolerated, according to Catholic teachings.

"'You don’t have to be Catholic or even a Christian to be pro-life,’ Lynch said.“He said a person — by reason and faith — ‘can reach the conclusion abortion is intrinsically evil because it’s killing a human life.

"'He said it is for that reason that abortion always ‘rises to the top’ as an issue for Catholics in regard to candidates and their stance on the issue.”