So Sorry, San Diego!

My sincere apologies to San Diego. While we weren’t thrilled about Auxiliary Bishop McElroy being an annoying, backstabbing kind of guy in our area, we really weren’t looking to inflict him on anyone else, either, much less have him elevated to any real public area.  Sadly, here he is:  http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/faith_and_values/2015/11/20/u-s–catholic-bishops-new-voter-guide-ignores-key-causes-of-pope-critics-say.html
I’m sure he’s being joined by Archbishop Cupich, the National catholic Reporter, America Mag, and the rest of the usual seamless garment gang, but he’s the one flapping his gums this go around.

“I believe that this document is gravely hobbled,” said McElroy, who was an outspoken advocate of the church’s social-justice teachings even before Francis named him to lead the large and growing southern California diocese this year.
“Specifically, I think the pope is telling us that alongside the issues of abortion and euthanasia — which are central aspects of our commitment to transform this world — poverty and the degradation of the Earth are also central,” McElroy said. “But this document keeps to the structure of the worldview of 2007. It does not put those there.”

Umm, no, Bishop McElroy. Absolutely nothing is more paramount than life itself, and, thankfully, the majority of your fellow bishops understand that.  “Poverty and the degradation of the Earth” may be important, but they are not “central”.  We’re talking murder here.  Murder and hunger are not the same.  Murder and pollution are not the same.  You also don’t have to take the same actions to respond to either of these situations as you do to stop murder.  Murder must stop, plain and simple.  We wouldn’t look at a 3-year-old with a gun to her head and say, “Hey, we really need to look at carbon emissions that might cause her great-great-great grandchildren to have to endure an ice age or 150-degree heat (or whatever the argument of the day is)!” Hunger or pollution can be fixed in a myriad of different ways, and making people understand the basic right to life, first and foremost, is a pretty darn good way to start fixing the rest of what ails us.  History tells us that many civilizations, if not all, that have perished had one very important thing in common – murder became an accepted part of their society.  This doesn’t bode well for us.  The biggest question on our minds should be, “How long will God hold back His wrath?”
Downplaying the gravity of murder is one of the reasons why, in this country, we have an every growing issue with poverty. If there is no value to human life, why would people worry about people going hungry?  It’s easier to let them die, or worse, just kill them.  Think about it.  That really was Margaret Sanger’s solution.  Kill the poor people and keep them from reproducing.
I also found McElroy’s comment about the “worldview of 2007” pretty darn interesting. I don’t give a flying fig about the worldview, period.  This is one of the things I find rather troubling about McElroy, Cupich, et. al.  Their focus is the world when it should be God.
Here’s a novel idea. What if we all worked like hell to end abortion and euthanasia?  What if every homily we heard in our churches was about how and why abortion and euthanasia are mortal sins?  How about if we heard murder used as a synonym?  What if we heard about the intrinsic value of every human life?  Don’t you think that would be transformative in the rest of the areas of the Catholic Church and the world once they saw us following through? Don’t you think, starting with the faithful (or at this point, AKA the uneducated), the rest of the world might start thinking, “Wow!  If this is this serious, and every human life has value, then this human life or that other human life must have value too!”?  Want to talk “trickle down?”  That tactic might act as a dang waterfall!
As it stands now, many Catholics don’t even value life. Forget the rest of society.  Like everything else, it’s all about how someone’s life affects them.  If it’s hard, if it’s inconvenient, if it’s not perfect, then it’s better that it didn’t exist.  Of course that’s going to bleed into all other areas of our society.  When you are killing babies in the womb and the elderly because they are burdens, you’re devaluing life, so you’re going to turn a blind eye to anyone else who’s a burden. We (that’s the societal we) have spent an exhaustive amount of time telling our youth that they are valuable and they should have self-worth.  For the life of me, though, I can’t understand why they’d believe us when we show them by example of how to treat a burden.  Of course we’re going to have suicides, mass killings, bullying, etc.  We kill the most vulnerable.  Why should they believe their lives have worth anymore, when just about everything in society says the polar opposite?  They know society is telling them that their existence is simply about their parents being fulfilled, not that they have intrinsic value.  And guess what, Bishop McElroy, your minimizing murder by trying to water it down with all of your other pet issues is to blame for this mentality.  Congratulations!  Remember that when we have the next school shooting.  While you and your merry mob continue to talk about the immorality of hunger and “climate change” when you can’t even manage to teach that life is sacred is beyond me.  Why would God ever bless these peripheral issues?
So, yes, I will continue to prioritize my voting with life at the top, and a hearty thank you to the USCCB for telling the seamless garment crew to take a hike. They laid out the non-negotiables, and despite what you think, Pope Francis has never put these on par with anything else as much as you wish he would.  Now if we could only hear these things more than once or twice a year!!!  This can’t go the way of “The Fortnight of Freedom” which only a handful of us have even heard about.  The laity needs to be hit upside the head on these issues on a regular basis.  If we can’t end the atrocities of abortion and euthanasia, none of our other social ills will ever be straightened out.  We will be doomed.
One last note, there is no direct quote from Bishop McElroy in the article, so I’m going to try my hardest to give him the benefit of the doubt, but whoever is floating this nonsense needs to stop.

McElroy’s position was supported by a number of other bishops, some of whom also were dismayed by the number of times the draft mentioned same-sex marriage, even though the U.S. Supreme Court effectively settled the issue by legalizing gay marriage in June.

I might remind whoever inspired this lamest afterthought ever that the Supreme Court said slavery and abortion were legal too. What the heck does it matter what the Supreme Court decides if it’s completely immoral?  Again, I’m sure there is just a small “number of other bishops” who want us just to drop it.  Thanks to God we didn’t stop fighting against slavery and that we haven’t stopped fighting against abortion, despite the losers who suggest this mealy-mouthed garbage.  Have they learned nothing from history and the saints who have been martyred for opposing bad laws? We must never stop fighting evil and the destruction of life and family!  That might be the only reason God has held back his wrath thus far.