- The Roman Catholic Church is making the "abortion"
issue its main concern in the upcoming 2004 election, just as it did when
Ronald Reagan first captured the White House back in 1980. It calls abortion
"the greatest social issue of all time," and it's doing everything
it can to back anti-abortion candidates, without regard to critically important
social and geopolitical matters, such as the evil of perpetual wars ("The
Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic,"
by Chalmers Johnson).
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- Speaking of social issues, today, our planet looks like
this: "3 billion of the world's people (one-half) live in 'poverty'
(living on less than $2 per day). 1.3 billion people live in 'absolute'
or 'extreme poverty' (living on less than $1 per day). 800 million people
lack access to basic healthcare. 17 million people, including 11 million
children, die every year from easily preventable diseases and malnutrition.
800 million people are hungry or malnourished. Nearly 160 million children
are malnourished worldwide. 11 million people die every year from hunger
and malnutrition..." (worldrevolution.org). One might ask, how will
stopping abortion help cure these ills?
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- However, the Church has a one-track moral issue mindset.
It seems prepared to give its imprimatur to the reelection of a demented
warmonger, President George W. Bush, Jr., since he is anti-abortion. Meanwhile,
the Church has paid little attention to compelling evils, such as the Iraq
and Afghanistan Wars, Militarism and the Arms Race, Crime and Drugs, the
Environment, Economic and Social Justice, or Globalism (http://www.globalismnews.com/agenda.html).
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- Questions: Is the Church's silence on these issues a
quid pro quo with the Bush-Cheney Gang for its pushing the Vatican's anti-abortion
agenda the last four years? And, if so, can we expect four more years of
clerical complicity if Bush wins in November?
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- History is a reliable teacher. Reagan won the presidency
in both 1980 and 1984, with large majorities, because of the Catholic vote,
many of whom came over from the Democratic side. The U.S. Catholic Bishops
saw Reagan as a standard bearer for their one-issue anti-abortion campaign.
So, what did Reagan get in return? Well, one could argue that he bought
the silence of the Bishops with respect to his brutal Right Wing agenda,
both at home and abroad. Here are two examples. As the death squads were
running amuck in Central and South America with Reagan's connivance, the
Bishops issued the predictable press releases opposing his murderous polices,
but never publicly broke with his administration. Than, there was the case
of the Ten Irish Hunger Strikers who died in the spring of 1981, in the
British-controlled police state in the north of Ireland, over their moral
and legal status as POWs. Rather than asking Reagan to intervene, the Bishops
did little or nothing to stop the deaths, even though Reagan was supposedly
"their man" in the White House, and then-British Prime Minister,
Margaret Thatcher, was one of Reagan's closest allies ("Ten Men Dead,"
David Beresford).
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- There is another disturbing element to the politics
of abortion: the robot-like moralizing over the abortion issue tends to
desensitize people to the existential horrors now confronting the living.
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- For instance: Suppose you're an Iraqi and you live today
in war-battered Falluja. It has been attacked by Coalition Forces for weeks
now. You are a father, with a wife and a small family to support. You live
in the middle of Falluja and you haven't been able to get to your job on
the outskirts of town, or to get food for your family to eat. Over 700
of your friends have already been killed. You witness your Mosque, too,
being bombed. You also see an older, unarmed man shot in the back by the
Americans ("Eyewitness Report of Falluja," Jo Wilding, 04/13/04,
at: http://www.occupationwatch.org.) In what way are the anti-abortion
ideologues helping that Iraqi father?
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- In South America, grinding poverty is endemic. A few
years back, I visited Caracas, Venezuela, a city of five million, with
miserable shanty towns sprawling all over the hills surrounding it. It
was a shocking site to behold. It is estimated that 85 percent of Venezuela
lives in desperate poverty (BBC Online News, 02-14-04, "Country Profile:
Venezuela"). Does the cleric-driven, anti-abortion agenda do anything
to resolve the misery of these people?
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- In America's Rust Belt, like say Youngstown, PA, where
the mighty Steel Industry once thrived, there are countless accounts of
families living in quiet desperation, worried about making it economically.
Since the Bush-Cheney Gang took office three years ago, "The country
has lost more than 2.5 million factory jobs, according to the federal Bureau
of Labor Statistics. More than 145,000 of those were in Pennsylvania"
(Boston Globe, "Economy Is Rust Belt Battleground," 02/21/04,
Tatsha Robertson). Do these forgotten workers, who are struggling to keep
their proverbial heads above water, give a good hoot for the "abortion
is bad" doctrine? How are the anti-abortionist theologians addressing
these major social and economic problems?
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- Do African-Americans, who live in the ghettoes of our
inner cities, like Baltimore for instance, and who fear, daily, the dangers
of a drive-by shooting, think "stopping abortion" is a serious
problem in their lives? Not from the stories that I have read about drugs,
racism and underemployment. There have already been 80 murders in Baltimore
this year, earning it the nickname the "Dodge City of the East"
(http://www.geocities.com/grantorino.geo/). Meanwhile, pollution in Baltimore's
harbor, and also in the Chesapeake Bay, threatens the health and lives
of people, as well as the existence of the fish and crabs (www.cbf.org).
Do the anti-abortionist Bishops ever consider these kinds of concerns when
drafting up their lists of worldly evils?
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- This brings me to the late Phil Berrigan. He was for
me a prototype Catholic for all seasons. He spent 11 of his 79 years behind
bars in the cause of justice. He fought against the spread of nuclear weapons
and depleted uranium, war and rabid militarism. He died of cancer, in Baltimore,
on Dec. 6, 2002. Berrigan, an ex-priest, was also a veteran of WWII. He
feared the planet would one day commit "omnicide" by way of nuclear
weapons. Unlike some of the reactionary Bishops, many of whom can be seen
at their annual conference dressed in fancy silk suits and being chauffeured
around town in luxurious limousines, he dared to confront, via non-violent
resistance, the Establishment's War & Death Machine, and its staggering
costs to the beleaguered taxpayers ("The Federal Pie Chart,"
warresisters.org).
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- Berrigan wrote this letter to Bishop William Baum of
Washington, DC, in September, 1971, saying , in part, "The Church
in America...in fact, in the West as a whole has accepted as 'religion'
a kind of cultural syncretism, culminating in near perfect allegiance to
the State. Not a few of our more prominent Bishops have even waited upon
the Presidency like court jesters... we sorrow over Christian myopia, hardness
of heart, and even cowardice" (thesocialedge.com, Dec., 2002, Ted
Schmidt, "Bus Ride to Baltimore").
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- Finally, stopping abortion is a non-issue for the vast
majority of the suffering peoples of the world. If abortion were ended
tomorrow, the seminal wrongs, like economic and political oppression, imperialism,
poverty, perpetual war and militarism, neo-colonialism and the nuclear
arms race would still persist. Isn't time for the Roman Catholic Church
to acknowledge that fact? Isn't it time for it to use its immense resources
to fight on the side of struggling humanity, rather than to continue acting
as a silent partner of the Bush-Cheney Gang? And, isn't it time for the
Church to end, what Phil Berrigan, the great Dissenter Emeritus, called,
its "near perfect allegiance to the State?"
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- © William Hughes 2004
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- William Hughes is the author of "Saying 'No' to
the War Party" (IUniverse, Inc.). He can be reached at liamhughes@mindspring.com.
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- http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/7420/index.php
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