Bishop Joseph Martino takes over parish election forum, rips pro-abortion Catholics, says the babies come first and his word is law
Now, here's a bishop! This past Sunday, Bishop Joseph Martino (above, at the Consecration) of Scranton, Pa., marched into a parish election forum, took it over and laid down the law. So reports the Wayne Independent of Honesdale, Pa. (click on this post's title)Today is a big news day, as people in the news business say -- and this particular news is good. It's all over the Catholic net: Bishop Martino has expressed and exercised his apostolic authority in no uncertain terms.
Bishop Martino blasted some at the forum for misrepresenting Catholic teaching about voting for pro-abortion politicians, for excluding the powerfully pro-life Sept. 30 pastoral letter he had written and circulated for this year's Respect Life Sunday on Oct. 5 -- and, startlingly, for touting the U.S. bishops' Faithful Citizenship document, which pro-lifers know is deliberately ambiguous about voting for pro-aborts.
Bishop Martino said, “No USCCB document is relevant in this diocese. The USCCB doesn’t speak for me. The only relevant document ... is my letter. There is one teacher in this diocese, and these points are not debatable.”
The bishop was making the point that true Catholic teaching is that in voting, aborting babies supersedes all other issues. (The U.S. bishops said this themselves in their 1998 document Living the Gospel of Life, but they have been retreating from it ever since.)
Bishop Martino said, “No social issue has caused the death of 50 million people. This is madness, people.” He said he no longer supports the Democrat Party.
The newspaper report said most of the audience cheered the bishop and gave him a standing ovation, but about a quarter of the attendees left after he finished speaking.
Note that Bishop Martino said, "No social issue has caused the death of 50 million people." He was following Donum Vitae's true Catholic teaching, which says that from conception onward, babies before birth have the exact same moral status and worth as people already born.
Here's a bishop who knows how to bish! Bravo, Bishop Martino! Bravissimo!
Thanks to two great Q-tipsters for tipping me off to this super pro-life news!
posted by Quintero at 10:08 PM
27 Comments:
This is great news! Ad Multos Annos to Bp. Martino.
This is the way to spell it out, clear, to the point. A certian Cdl. Abp. should follow this.
Praise the Lord!
I am a Catholic at a very secular University and so I am constantly defending the value of the life of a conceived embryo against most people. However, given what the bishop said about how abortion has caused 50 million deaths, what would we do with 50 million more people in our country? We are already having serious issues such as poverty in our country. Nothing justifies taking a life, but someday overpopulation will be a serious problem in our country.
All I can say is wounderful, refreshing,at last a bishop with conviction.
Praise God for this man!
I am so weary of the weenies who seem to hold so much sway in the USCCB.
Personally I believe the entire organization is a solution in search of a problem.
If the USCCB were of any real value, perhaps 44 million American citizens would be alive today.
For shame on the linguini-spined Bishops!!!!!
My prayers of gratitude for the Bishop. Thank God, we still have strong Catholic Bishops left in this country.
David Coit
Dear Anonymous 2:55 p.m.,
Remember that people are producers of wealth, not just consumers. Don't believe the population controllers. Visit the Population Research Institute at www.pri.org to find out the truth about the overpopulation myth.
We need more people, not fewer. Japan is dying out: All old people, few young ones. Same in Europe; Germany cannot recover. This is why immigrants are flocking into Europe; they fill the jobs for which there are no, or not enough, young Europeans to work at.
Also, this news has just been circulating about the economic LOSS caused by abortion:
Researcher: Economic Impact of Abortion in U.S. Since 1970 - $35 to $70 Trillion
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/oct/08102109.html
Life Site News
Researcher Dennis M. Howard, president of the pro-life group Movement for a Better America, who has been tracking the economic impact of abortion since 1995, has shown that the 50.5 million surgical abortions since 1970 have cost the U.S. $35 trillion dollars in lost Gross Domestic Product (GDP). If the number of missing children includes those aborted by IUDs, RU-486, sterilization and [contraceptive] abortifacients, the figure climbs to over $70 trillion.
Dear Anonymous 2:55 p.m.,
I forgot to thank you and congratulate you for defending the right to life on your college campus. That's very good of you.
Have you checked to see whether there is a student pro-life group on your campus?
The group Students for Life says it has chapters on 443 campuses! Maybe there is one where you are.
Best wishes, thank you for visiting here, and please keep coming back and commenting!
YES!!! Another Bishop speaks the truth! :)
THANK THE ALMIGHTY FOR THIS MAN AND OTHERS LIKE HIM.
There is no ambiguious rhetoric from Bishop Martino. I wish I were in his diocese.
I have copied his statement of Sept.30 and given a copy of it to everyone I can.
I live in a USCCB state. NOTHING FROM OUR BISHOP, OR PRIESTS other than the statement of dubious certainty from the USCCB itself.
We have a LOT of confused Catholics in Illinois.
I would love to hear this Bishop's take on the $1 million that the Catholic Bishops' Fund has given to ACORN! What a disgrace!
I find it astonishing that you and so many of your readers find the acts of this bishop worthy of praise. This is a bishop who is acting outside the bounds of collegiality, a central tenet of Catholic ecclesiology, by proclaiming that his word alone goes in his diocese. That actually isn't how Catholic ecclesial governance works, and as a bishop he should know better. Praise be to God that I don't live in his diocese.
I'm not pro-choice, but the comments of this bishop and of this blog post betray a remarkably simplistic attitude to the issue of abortion and how this issue should affect one's vote.
The sheep need a Shepard guarding the flock from the wolves! God bless and Keep Bishop Martino
I am not an American, but one of your cousins to the north living in Canada. I am praying to our God that the pro-lifers in the States awake and vote for life. I pray this because I firmly believe that if Roe vs. Wade is over-turned it may form a basis for making abortion illegal once more in Canada. God Bless America, keep the faith!!
Email your comments of support to Bp. Martino's priestly secretary, Father Christopher Washington. I just spoke to the Chancery Office and they said we could use this priest's private address and the bishop would get our words of support. He's going to need them.
Rev-Christopher-Washington@DioceseofScranton.org
Email your comments of support to Bp. Martino's priestly secretary,Father Christopher Washington. I just spoke again to the Chancery Office and they said we could use this priest's private address and the bishop would get our words of support. He's going to need them.
Rev-Christopher-Washington@DioceseofScranton.org
Hopefully after these important comments, Bishop Martino can make a public statement condemning the Catholic church for protecting the child molesters in its midst.
Dear Anonymous 7:34 a.m.,
Bishop Martino was entirely correct and in the right. Collegiality is not a relevant objection in this case.
I don't have them in front of me, but Vatican documents point out that bishops' conferences have a very limited role and are not really part of governance in the Church.
Dear Anonymous 7:34 a.m.,
Cardinal Edward Egan of New York City has just issued a document in which he slams those who claim that aborting babies is a complex issue.
Cardinal Egan includes with his letter a photo of a preborn baby and asks everyone to study the photo and then still try to tell him that aborting babies is a complicated issue.
Pro-lifers have studied every angle of aborting babies in a far more complex way than pro-aborts ever have, ever can or ever will. We know whereof we speak.
Dear Anonymous 2:29 p.m.,
Maybe you are not aware that the Popes themselves, all kinds of Church bodies and many individual bishops have already condemned the cover-ups and pledged to work to see that they do not happen again.
But you cannot deny that in defending the teaching of the Church about preborn babies and their right to life, and about not voting for pro-aborts, Bishop Joseph Martino of Scranton did just what a bishop should do.
Dear Anonymous 10:12 a.m.,
Thank you very much for your prayers for our election in the USA! We need them and we're most grateful. That's awfully good of you.
We're proud of Canada's pro-life movement and all of your devotion to the cause of the babies.
Thank you again, and please keep checking in here and commenting!
Great post! Keep up the great work! I'm so thankful that the Catholic Church is taking a strong stance on issue of abortion and sanctity of marriage.
One of the best and most convicting pieces I've read this year was written by Fr. Roger J. Landry -- linked here http://www.chlorinatedliberty.com/2008/10/novemeber-election-ramifications-of-our.html
It is a great work. I would be thrilled to have some Catholics chime in on the conversation regarding the Church's position on abortion and the death penalty. As a protestant I do not want to speak too heavily for our Catholic brothers and sisters on the dictates of the Church.
God bless you all... keep up the great work!
Dear Team,
Thank you for your very kind words and for the link.
Liberals hate to admit it, but the Church teaches that there can be debate on prudential matters such as war and the death penalty but not on "non-negotiable" matters such as aborting babies, which is an intrinsic evil.
The liberals like to blur the distinctions between prudential and non-negotiable matters.
The liberals also like to equate them, as if the handful of criminals executed in the USA every year equals the 1.2 million babies aborted in the USA every year. Of course, that minimizes the toll of the dead babies.
For solid info on what the Church teaches, you can find online the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a very useful resource.
God bless!
Who needs tax-free status? Maybe, it's that fear that keeps dioceses from speaking out as well as Bishop Joseph Martino has done. Calling it as they see it - defending human life and what our Faith teaches - Thou shalt not kill. Have a Mass said for this good Bishop. And speak loudly and unashamed of this moral stand - in public - There unbaptized souls - somewhere - crying out tonight. Think about it. God & Our Lady bless you, Bishop Martino.
Kay in Texas
Thank you Bishop Martino for taking this stand. I'm not Catholic, but I completely support your stand!!! I stand with you!!!
I HAVE KNOWN HIM SINCE 1975 WHEN HE CAME TO OUR LADY OF GRACE PARISH IN PENNDEL, PA, HE IS A BRILLIANT, COURAGEOUS PRIEST. IT WAS HE WHO INSPRIED MY OWN FATHER TO BECOME A PRIEST AFTER THE DEATH OF MY MOTHER IN 1983. MY OWN FATHER WAS ORDAINED IN 1988 ABD BY THE GRACE OF GOD JUST CELEBRATED HIS 20TH ANNIVERSARY IN THE SAME YEAR HE TURNED 80. FATHER, BISHOP MARTINO DID SO MUCH FOR US IN THE SHORT 2 YRS. HE WAS HERE. AD MULTOS ANNOS FOR HIM AND FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT. I WILL STAY ABREAST OF ALL YOUR LETTERS AN TEACHINGS.
CHRIS CONAWAY, PENNDEL, PA
March 19, 2009 --
Dear Chris,
Thank you very much for writing this week. I'm very sorry to learn that your Mom passed away; but I'm also glad, along with you, that your Dad later entered the seminary, was ordained, and has just celebrated the 20th anniversary of his ordination.
Thank you for writing about Bishop Martino! Glad to hear your praise for him.
Please keep checking in here when you have the time! God bless!
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