{"id":7217,"date":"2004-05-26T07:58:45","date_gmt":"2004-05-26T07:58:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/justice_yup.html"},"modified":"2004-05-26T07:58:45","modified_gmt":"2004-05-26T07:58:45","slug":"justice_yup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/justice_yup.html","title":{"rendered":"Justice? Yup."},"content":{"rendered":"

In the NCR(eporter), Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life responds to the paper’s editorial on politicians, life issues and the dreaded “narrow litmus test.”<\/a> Great stuff.<\/p>\n

Any vision of this country worth struggling for includes a wide range of values — life itself, provision for its needs, education, employment, health care, peace, justice, and a humane way of dealing with offenders. Yet if we are to avoid a superficial analysis, we need to ask what causes these to be issues in the first place. Why is it always wrong to neglect the poor? Why is it always wrong to deny adequate health care? Why is it always right to strive for justice and peace?<\/p>\n

Why, indeed, if not because of the dignity of the human person? If a person can be disposed of, why must he be fed? If a person can be chopped apart, why must she have health care? In fact, every right we have flows from our inherent dignity, at every stage of life.<\/p>\n

That dignity is beyond the power of any government to bestow or deny. Government exists for the human person, not the other way around, and the rights of human beings are there not because anyone grants them, but precisely because one is a human being.<\/p>\n

To permit abortion is to radically reject that premise. Abortion supporters do not deny that a human being is killed in the process; they simply claim that it should be a legal right. This is not just about the legality of a procedure; this is about a totally different kind of government — the kind that can decide when the legal right to life begins and when it doesn\u2019t; the kind that can separate the concept of human being from human person.<\/p>\n

That is hardly a \u201cnarrow\u201d litmus test. And that does have a lot to do with a \u201cperson\u2019s vision for this country.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the NCR(eporter), Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life responds to the paper’s editorial on politicians, life issues and the dreaded “narrow litmus test.” Great stuff. Any vision of this country worth struggling for includes a wide range of values — life itself, provision for its needs, education, employment, health care, peace, justice, and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nJustice? 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}