Church Leaders Who Equivocate on Abortion and Voting Asked to Resign

NEW YORK, September 9, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life (PFL) has called all Church leaders “who fail to point out the difference in seriousness between abortion and other issues” to “resign their positions.”  In the latest release from PFL, Fr. Pavone explains that the reason for his suggestion is that such Church leaders “obviously lack the most basic capacity for moral judgment.”  PFL refuted secular news reports claiming that a recent letter of the Vatican’s Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger allows Catholics to vote for pro-choice candidates.  Fr. Pavone, who was himself an Official at the Vatican, said that Cardinal Ratzinger’s letter is being misquoted, and that the faith of millions of people is being abused as a result.  “Cardinal Ratzinger explicitly states the opposite of what some are saying,” said Fr. Pavone.  Press reports suggested falsely that the Cardinal’s letter said Catholics may elect pro-abortion candidates because their other positions are favorable. Fr. Pavone points out that the Cardinal explicitly declares in the same letter that other issues do not carry the same weight as abortion.  Fr. Pavone concluded, “It is a classic abuse of religion that people will invoke a religious authority to justify violence. There is no act of violence more brutal, or claiming more victims than abortion. It kills 4,000 children daily in the United States alone. Practitioners admit under oath that they dismember and decapitate these babies. If people try to equate that with other issues by misquoting a Vatican Cardinal, they are guilty of the most shameless type of abuse of religion—the same kind of abuse used to justify burning people at the stake. Only this time, we’re talking about babies.”  jhw