DEACON FOR LIFE

Were there to be no support in the whole history of ethical and moral thought, were there no acknowledged confirmation from medical science, were the history of legal opinion to the contrary, we would still have to conclude on the basis of God's Holy Word that the unborn child is a person in the sight of God. He is protected by the sanctity of life graciously given to each individual by the Creator, Who alone places His image upon man and grants them any right to life which they have.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

FROM CALIFORNIA CATHOLIC DAILY:

Maybe they just needed to fill up space

Orange County diocesan newspaper publishes disturbing poll numbers, but doesn't bother to offer moral guidance to its readers

The last page of the November 2008 edition of Orange County Catholic carries a graphic with some disturbing statistics, published without comment by the newspaper's editors. The graphic, entitled "Voting and Values," shows that a majority of Catholics believe it is ok to vote for politicians who support embryonic stem-cell research, the death penalty -- and abortion.

The publisher of Orange County Catholic is Bishop Tod Brown; the editor is Elisabeth Deffner.

The image, bearing the copyright of Catholic News Service, appeared on the bottom right corner of a page encaptioned, "The Month in Pictures." The figures cited are attributed to a telephone survey of 1000 "self-identified Catholics" for the LeMoyne/Zogby "Contemporary Catholic Trends Poll."

Here are the results:

"U.S. Catholic adults who say people can be good Catholics if they vote for a candidate who…

Supports embryonic stem-cell research – 60%

Supports the death penalty – 55%

Supports abortion rights – 53%

Supports same-sex marriage – 45%

Supports euthanasia – 36%

Supports human cloning – 19%"