http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/17/AR2009051701622.html?sid=ST2009051701939

So it’s not the office of the President of the United States of America that’s important it’s who’s in it?

Ah, it’s the cult of personality again. Wow, that’s so left!
I think Bismark would have a thing or two to say about that.

What a load of detritus! “a powerful taboo” indeed!

Let’s contrast this wild statement with the speeches of the previous President GW Bush.
I’m not into USA politics but if you can tell me no-one ever interrupted a speech by GWB I’ll admit my error.

Basically, it’s the Rudd Factor at work.

At the heart of all this is the rather unique idea that the interpretion of the Word can only be made by one man at the head of the church and that no other persons view can have any validity.

The power of the Pope parrallels the power of God. It would seem that it’s OK for God in his omnipotence to allow (or perhaps cause) spontaneous abortion, but it’s not OK for us humans. THAT is what the debate is really all about. Power. And of course only the Pope knows the mind of God.

It is not the people who either believe that abortion is OK or believe that whilst abortion is not for them, they will not impose their views on others who turn the debate into the unedifying spectacle that it has become.

The reason for accepting the non-utilitarian moral position of the Church on abortion (and certainly on the extreme protection-of-the-micoscopic blastocyst line) is that the Church conveys the will of God. If God didn’t care there wouldn’t be a moral position to take on the issue: it would be as open to individual preference as whether to say g’day to your most disliked person. But the evidence is entirely in favour of God not caring at all about the subject. Is he not Omniscient and does He not care enough about us to give us guidance as in the 10 Commandments and the teachings of Jesus, if not Mahomet also and the Early Fathers amongst other contestable candidates? If you don’t believe that then you are clearly not a Christian and can hardly be expected to abide by the Pope’s rules - or those of the Bible as interpreted by anyone.

So, what evidence have we the Great Rational Creator Communicator (who loves us and cares what we do) cares any more about the about-to-be-aborted than he does about the millions which are spontaneously aborted, or at all? Nothing said to the Hebrews except to protect the patriarch’s property in his wives’ pregnancies against damage. Nothing said by Jesus. The most authoritative Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas relied on Aristotle’s errors of the 4th century BC to say that male foetuses “quickened” (i.e. received souls and thereby became human persons) 40 days after conception, femal foetuses after 90 days. This error persisted in the Catholic Encyclopaedia of 100 years ago.

It follows that God doesn’t care about the issue. If the Popes had it right then God’s rule would have to have been “you shall not destroy anything which, according to the scientific knowledge available to the Church from time to time, is fully equipped with what it takes to grow into a human being” which is obviously absurd. Hence, God simply doesn’t care, and, since we are all, no matter our ethnicity, equally part of God’s creation his failure to give clear instructions to Buddhists, Hindus, animists, Zoroastrians, people deprived of religion under Lenin and Mao etc. is also totally inconsistent with His caring about this issue which has been got up to rouse the passion for unity with others that requires obsessional defiance of reason.

Try that on a cerebrally capable Christian and see how he or she can wriggle out of it.

“Former neo-con House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a recent convert to Catholicism…. “

Ewww almost enough to turn me anglican!