Father Pavone on the “litmus test.”

Father Pavone rocks! Excerpts:

The editorial, however, goes on to miss the fact that what it regards as a “narrow litmus test,” namely, the candidate’s position on abortion, has more than a little to do with the candidate’s “vision for this country.”

Any vision of this country worth struggling for includes a wide range of values — life itself, provision for its needs, education, employment, health care, peace, justice, and a humane way of dealing with offenders. Yet if we are to avoid a superficial analysis, we need to ask what causes these to be issues in the first place. Why is it always wrong to neglect the poor? Why is it always wrong to deny adequate health care? Why is it always right to strive for justice and peace?

Why, indeed, if not because of the dignity of the human person? If a person can be disposed of, why must he be fed? If a person can be chopped apart, why must she have health care? In fact, every right we have flows from our inherent dignity, at every stage of life.

That dignity is beyond the power of any government to bestow or deny. Government exists for the human person, not the other way around, and the rights of human beings are there not because anyone grants them, but precisely because one is a human being.

To permit abortion is to radically reject that premise. Abortion supporters do not deny that a human being is killed in the process; they simply claim that it should be a legal right. This is not just about the legality of a procedure; this is about a totally different kind of government — the kind that can decide when the legal right to life begins and when it doesn’t; the kind that can separate the concept of human being from human person.

That is hardly a “narrow” litmus test. And that does have a lot to do with a “person’s vision for this country.”

The editorial suggests that candidates who support the legality of abortion might have policies that actually reduce abortions by creating better conditions for choosing life. Whether that is or is not the case is open to legitimate debate, but it misses the point. When bishops are criticized for not properly addressing clergy sexual abuse, it is hardly an appropriate response to claim that they are creating the conditions to make such abuse more rare. They are expected to have zero tolerance and to condemn such activity in principle. One child abused is one too many.

And one child dismembered by abortion is one too many. Why is it a “narrow litmus test” to expect a public servant to say the same?

BRAVO!!!!

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