The following comes from a Jan. 9 email sent to California Catholic Daily.

Dear faithful friend,

I have appealed to my bishop and in turn, to several of his brother bishops and then their adjutants regarding the odd political focus by the Roman Catholic Church in California. My appeals are based on the scriptures and the teachings of the Roman Catholic Catechism.

It appears that mundane and cosmopolitan ideas compete as a ‘moral foundation’ and have supplanted the Church’s actual teaching on moral and civic duty, particularly as this applies to our present moment in history.  This confusion of culturally approved ‘good things’ with the necessary things, is by definition scandalous (Catechism. 2289)….

Respectfully yours,
Paul O’Malley

P.S. I note that today’s California Catholic Conference email alert leads with Jerry Brown, under the aegis of: Economic Justice. He is often presented heroically, despite his unalloyed advocacy for killing human babies for ‘choice’ and his sponsorship of non-physician abortions in our state.

Below is the last in a string of e-mails I have exchanged with representatives of the bishops. This details their championing of Mr. Brown’s social order, and their silence on his genuine propagation of intrinsic evil.

From: Paul O’Malley <paulomalley38@gmail.com>
Date: January 6, 2015 at 12:19:06 PM PST
To: <archbishop.gomez@la-archdiocese.org>
Subject: Roe v. Wade and Catholic disordered political thinking

….The bishops of California via the Los Angeles Archdiocese, are boldly admitting how they prefer to address abortion. And this may explain a lot about current California politics. The official Church publication, The Angelus, (the LA Tidings online version) on December 26, 2014, details the fact the Catholic Church in Los Angeles will no longer refer to the Roe v Wade decision as a ruling to be mourned or challenged.

The Church will instead organize a massive festival. The Roe day is now to be a Celebration of Life in its many expressions by those who are alive.

“We differentiate ourselves by not focusing on the political side of pro-life issues,” declares Kevin Kast, coordinator of the event. To keep a tight lid on the new message, participants, “are not to hand out literature or to educate,” Kast continues. His supervisor, director of Life Justice and Peace, Kathleen Buckley-Domingo, reiterates in the article that on the anniversary of Roe, “There is not to be protest or political rallying” at the festivities.

In an earlier guideline to invited groups, Kast warned that participants would be screened. Only a ‘holistic’ position on affirming life is permitted. A game plan and materials must be approved. Finally, only ‘social service’ projects are allowed involvement.

The largest, politically-active religious organization in California is officially declaring that abortion is not to be presented as a political issue.

This is the same Catholic Church fresh from open political agitation for drivers licenses for foreign nationals. They were successful. Bishop Jaime Soto, president of the California Bishops Conference, and nationally the leader of the bishops’ political efforts to change the laws governing immigration, routinely invokes the presumed ‘Right to Life’ of these foreign nationals in justification for his political activities.

Ned Dolejsi is the most prominent layman/employee of California bishops; he is director of the Calif. Catholic Conference of Bishops. He formerly worked in the same capacity for shamed Archbishop Hunthausen of Seattle, 1987-1996. (Pope John Paul II had removed Hunthausen for the false teachings and odd moral policies that emanated from that policy office.)

Dolejsi, with the express permission of the California bishops, is still extremely political, but a bit quiet on abortion-related issues. He was a principal ‘community organizer’ for the recent effort to ban the death penalty. For that initiative he personally directed Roman Catholic parish involvement statewide. Once again, his political activity is asserted to be actually ‘based’ in the political “right to life.”  This confusion comes from a false notion that convicted criminals adjudged by authorities to have violated the right to life of others, must now be protected under that same right to life.

Section 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church is very clear that the death penalty is not morally excluded from consideration by the law – it may be used ethically. Agitating for an absolute ban on the death penalty pales in moral significance to the intentional, legal dismemberment of living babies in the womb.

On the other hand, Section 2273 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church instructs that “the right to life of the innocent individual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation.”  The Church charges its teachers that the abortion issue is therefore by its very definition, political.

On the West Coast, why are political issues that the real Catechism teaches to be incidental, now elevated to that of highest political priority? And why is the one issue that the Catechism declares to be an essential element of civic and legislative concern, now prohibited from political discussion?

For those who may be confused, the word ‘holistic’ used as the ‘guideline’ by  OneLife:LA is not in anyway related to the word ‘holy’. Bishops and their representatives who instruct and act for the faithful should repudiate such disordered and errant thoughts and instructions, particularly on the anniversary of Roe v Wade.

Respectfully,
Paul O’Malley

On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 1:16 PM, David Scott <DScott@la-archdiocese.org> wrote:

Paul,

Archbishop Gomez and I had a good conversation about your note. He asked me to thank you for it and to try to explain a little more about what he is thinking with OneLife LA.

First, as you know, the Archbishop has been clear that human life is sacred and that he believes the right to life is the foundation of every other right in civil society and that we need to do all we can to defend unborn life and defeat the culture of abortion in our country. If you have not seen it, please read his essay in L’Osservatore Romano on the topic.

I appreciate your respectful presentation of your opinions on OneLifeLA, Paul. But we have to disagree with the conclusions you are drawing. With due respect, Paul, I don’t think your conclusions are warranted given the facts.

Please review the speakers and our partners and our topics for the event — choosing life over abortion, the dignity of persons living with handicaps, human trafficking, terminal illness and euthanasia. It will be a beautiful, hopeful celebration yes, not a political rally. But there is no mistaking that this is a pro-life event that highlights the sanctity and dignity of human life from conception to natural death.

Ben Shapiro is calling it the “largest pro-life event in Southern California.” I think he’s right. One of our partners, 40 Days for Life, is looking forward to offering free pro-life training in conjunction with the event.

Also as you may know, we have joined OneLife LA to the U.S. bishops’ “9 Days for Life” commemoration of Roe v. Wade and, the Saturday following OneLife LA, we will hold our annual Requiem Mass for the Unborn at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.

That’s what we’re doing, Paul. I appreciate that you would rather us hold a different kind of event. But I hope you will reconsider sharing your criticisms with others. I don’t think the things you are saying are not fair or accurate. Our commitment to end abortion and create a culture of life is clear and on-going.

I hope you will join us for OneLife LA.  If I can help further, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Wishing you all God’s blessings in the year to come.
peace, David
David Scott  |  Vice Chancellor for Communications

From: Paul O’Malley <paulomalley38@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 11:28 PM
Subject: Re: FW: Roe v. Wade and Catholic disordered political thinking
To: David Scott <DScott@la-archdiocese.org>, archbishop.gomez@la-archdiocese.org

Thank you David, and please thank Archbishop Gomez.

Those ideas are very attractive.  Please understand there are many, many wonderful people and stars and bands and issues presented, and well, just know that I am not in any way contesting how wonderful these good people of the festival are.

Did you think I was doing that? I am not.

I don’t think you understand the actual nature of Roe v Wade. And while we all love good things I am genuinely concerned that these “good things” are conflated with the issues at hand in Roe and the civic process that Roe did violence to… and which call the faithful to action – it is the law itself which must protect the lives of the innocent.  (Catechism of RCC section 2273)

My pressing concern is that this conflation of ‘other good stuff’ is becoming more and more intentional and it is NOT the actual teaching of scriptures or the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church.

As you know from studying the Catechism and scripture, the heart of learning is understanding and making moral distinctions.

Please re-read your e-mail above, and please encourage His Excellency to also read it.. Nowhere do you refer to the innocent human life. That is in fact the only moral distinction at stake in the Roe v. Wade decision: The government in 1973 authorized intentional taking of an innocent human life.    The adjective and clear moral distinction of “innocent” is used widely in the Catechism.

You have refused to use it.

Your generic insistence above and elsewhere, to erroneously remove such a distinction and sweepingly refer to human life without moral distinction is – exactly that… teaching which now lacks moral distinction. This results in ‘moral’ conclusions collateral with the secular moralists of this age.

The societal ethics at stake in Roe is the killing of innocents. Not the killing of human beings. Please do not simplistically conflate these two.   The Nuremburg laws of the 1930s and the subsequent Nuremburg trials of 1948 dealt very clearly with the evil of a government licensing the killing of innocents which the law should instead protect.. It did not condemn Germans for killing in warfare. It did not condemn them for killing capital criminals. The moral evil of the National Socialist regime was that they killed the innocent.

Why does your response NOT recognize this essential moral distinction of the laws and the duty of the laws in all just societies, to protect the innocent? Why is your fiesta silencing the faithful and ignoring the explicit urging of the Catechism to ensure that the laws protect the innocent? Why is this essential moral distinction absent from your moral teaching?

Roe s. Wade does not urge the American citizens to become better social workers so that then there will be fewer abortions. This is the interpretation of NOW, NARAL, and all pro-choice advocates (including vocal pseudo-Catholics Gov. Brown and Congresswoman and former speaker, Nancy Pelosi.) “Roe is the law,” they say. Accept it; leave it alone. If you don’t like abortion, go be a social worker and take care of those kids we don’t kill.” Roe does not invite the faithful to ignore its existence and go do other good things. Roe, just as the Dred Scott and Nuremburg laws, invites the faithful to stand clearly against it. to work through the civic process to change that law.

Sex trafficking is truly evil. I am in complete agreement. But you are confusing the faithful when you ‘equate it’ with abortion. Please understand, Sex trafficking is illegal.  The law already agrees with you and me that this is evil.  If I see girls going into a building where I suspect they will be pimped, I can call a policeman and he, as an agent of the law will act to protect them. If I see girls induced to go into a building where they will be coerced into having an abortion, this is perfectly legal. In California the government finances it all. The Law protects abortionists and the Catechism urges us to actively redress such laws. If I call the police he will protect the abortionist, but he will still arrest the trafficker. The moral and legal distinction is clear.

It is this inversion of the law that is the evil that is palpable and present due to Roe v. Wade. But it is intentionally beclouded in the cultural milieu and beclouded by poor moral teachers enamored of the present government and cultural values of a political partisans. (again 2273 et. seq.)

Is the death penalty ‘equal in stature’ to the abortion issue? It clearly is not. The Catechism is clear that it is not. If I am wrong please Excellency, clarify where. I need to understand how that is the case. It is only the ‘seeming relationship offered by the culture  has been used to supplant and obfuscate the true intrinsic evil being practiced in legal abortion on demand. The use of the death penalty is clearly a prudential evil… but when the teachers of the Church declare without distinction,  ‘all these issues are about Life.’ This is now all ‘pro-life’. This is disordered thinking.

This false teaching is beneficial to the status quo that perpetuates the evil of legal killing of the innocent and acceptance of government officials who embrace it. If the governor asks the people to give their voice on what laws are to be enforced, and if the employees of the bishops go to the faithful and insist that the people at such opportunity instead, “Call for Barabas” This is an evil act designed to confuse the people of God and to support the political status quo.

If I am wrong please explain how this equivocating of guilt and innocence is a clear moral teaching. I would genuinely be willing to see this in the scriptures or the Catechism or the historic teachings of the Church. But I do offer above an historic action from the scriptures of such error in relation to government officials.

At your festival many good things, social programs and religious views of abortion (40 Days, a public prayer group, does not work to change the laws, and this comports with the fiesta of OneLifeLA, as it refuses all things of political policy based on the Roe anniversary. But the oddity is not the presence of 40 Days, it is that the prelates are assertively political if the ‘right to life’ is redefined to apply to other political issues. Am I wrong? Have I misread the recent publications of the Church and secular newspapers?

Why do those new ‘interpretations of the right to life’ that are deemed appropriate for political activity and education, exclude the taking of innocent human life, the one, singular moral requirement placed on all civil societies? Could you please have the archbishop clarify this?

40 Days people are very, very nice people. All the folks at OneLife are nice and good folks.  Governor Brown will be pleased that these good folks will not hold him accountable for his extension of Roe v. Wade beyond its own parameters. Roe said abortion was ‘between a woman and her physician’. Governor Brown has ruled abortionists no longer need be physicians. But you are silent on that law or the moral need to oppose it. This may not be discussed at OnelifeLA. Or am I in error? May it be presented as an item of concern?…