Bishop Finn: A Week of Prayer for Our Country

KANSAS CITY - St. Joseph (The Catholic Key) - In our continued effort to present the strong teaching and inspired direction of our Bishops in this critical hour, Catholic Online is pleased to present the most recent letter from Bishop Finn to the faithful in his Diocese. We invite all of our readers to join in this concerted Vigil of Prayer:

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Dear Friends in Christ,

As we approach this monumental election, our choices are as clear as the Scriptures themselves: "I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live." (Deut 30:19)

Pope Benedict XVI similarly guides us in the proper ordering of our values as he teaches, "The fundamental human right, the presupposition of every other right, is the right to life itself. This is true of life from the moment of conception until its natural end. Abortion, consequently, cannot be a human right - it is the very opposite. It is 'a deep wound in society.'"

Our Catholic moral principles teach that a candidate's promise of economic prosperity is insufficient to justify their constant support of abortion laws, including partial-birth abortion, and infanticide for born-alive infants. Promotion of the Freedom of Choice Act is a pledge to eliminate every single limit on abortions achieved over the last thirty-five years. The real freedom that is ours in Jesus Christ compels us, not to take life, but to defend it.

Together with the other Bishops of Missouri I am calling on all the faithful to make this last week before the election a week of prayer for our nation - a week of prayer for the protection of Human Life.

Join me in calling upon Mary in this month of the rosary. In 1571, in the midst of the Battle of Lepanto, when the future of Christian Europe was in the balance and the odds against them were overwhelming, prayer to Our Lady of the Rosary brought the decisive victory. We ask her now to watch over our country and bring us the victory of life.

This is also the month of the Angels. I ask you to join me in invoking the Guardian Angels of 47 million babies lost through abortion in our country in the last thirty-five years. This horrendous loss of life remains one of the greatest threats to human civilization we have ever faced.

This week, please pray and make some sacrifices for our country. I ask every parish to provide some additional opportunity for prayer in the church: an evening Mass, or rosary, or time of adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. Say the rosary as individuals or as a family, or even simply a decade each night with your children. Say the election prayer. Give up meat, or do without some convenience this week. Make a good Act of Contrition and get to Confession. Offer a worthy Communion.

On Monday, November 3, at 7 p.m., I will celebrate an Eve of the Election Mass at St. Therese Parish, North. Join me as we pray for God's assistance and Mary's maternal aid.
Dear friends, we have great hope in Jesus Christ and His victory over sin and death. Let us keep this last week before the election as a time of prayer for our country, that we may experience His mercy and safeguard human life.

In Christ and Mary,

Most Reverend Robert W. Finn
Bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph

This story was made available to Catholic Online by permission of The Catholic Key(www.catholickey.org), official newspaper of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo.

I would hate to think that any Catholic could or would vote for someone who openly supports abortion and who, by his record, supports infanticide.

This so-called "Freedom of Choice" act can be extremely dangerous. Not only will it uphold a woman's "right" to murder her unborn child I believe it will be used to force women, such as Sarah Palin who know their child will be born less than perfect, to have an abortion. I believe it will also be used as justification to kill children after they are born if they are not perfect.

I have a sister who is menatlly retarded. I have a cousin who was born with a perfectly formed left hand, except that the fingers on it were just stubs. Where I used to work there was a woman who was born with arms that were about two-thrids the length of normal arms and her hands were not much more than claws with two fingers and a thumb on each.

If this "Freedom of Choice" act, which Obama wholeheartedly supports, goes through I believe that it can and will be used to end the lives of children born as those I have just described, just because they were not born perfect. Hitler's dream of "perfect" human beings will be fulfilled!

Harold Olsen | 10/27/2008

My message for "Catholics for Obama". Be prepared for your future.

Modern technology and its disciples, fueled by their self serving desires and wild visions of grandeur for society, will stop at nothing to fulfill their dreams of �curing� diseases or �healing� the handicapped even if it means denying �life� itself to normal human development at any stage. This is simply experimentation and destruction of early developing helpless life by its already mature counterparts who have the high technology and the will to do it. Embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, and unfettered barbaric abortion are nothing short of high-tech human cannibalism by the �fittest� disguised as progressive human rights which they and their supporters have bestowed upon themselves.

At the rate science and its powerful lobbies in congress are going we will soon witness legal clinical harvesting of body parts and organs from accident victims or even terminally ill patients �to repair or replace� ailing, damaged, and diseased ones.
Some countries are even proposing laws which, unless officially notified otherwise by a person, will allow medical personnel to confiscate needed organs from him/her at accident scenes or in hospitals as soon as the person is pronounced dead. In other words your body is now �assumed� by society to be government property once you stop breathing or are presumed unable to contribute to that society. This is nothing less than science fiction and the social progressives bonding for the welfare of the state.

All human life has its purpose whether it can walk, or talk, or breath on its own and deserves its opportunity to �survive� for its own sake, the value of which comes from the Creator God, and should not be determined by modern technology or the assumed �rights� of others. Otherwise the existence and lives of such as these soon will be progressively determined to be of �more value� to, and the �property� of, scientific exploration for the benefit of the �fittest� of humanity.

Science, with the intellectual power given by God to those who wish to pursue it, needs to strive to serve humanity by extolling our Creator, not use it in an attempt to compete with Him. This is more than folly; this is intellectual suicide and spiritual capitulation.

Bill Sharrett Sr.
Jacksonville, Fl.

Bill Sr. | 10/27/2008

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