Catholics raise issue of guns amid calls to end abortion - NY Times

[Kolesar]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/us/politics/catholics-raise-issue-of-guns-amid-call-to-end-abortion.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0
The March for Life in Washington on Friday renewed the annual impassioned call to end legalized abortion, 40 years after the Roe v. Wade decision. But this year, some Roman Catholic leaders and theologians are asking why so many of those who call themselves “pro-life” have been silent, or even opposed, when it comes to controlling the guns that have been used to kill and injure millions of Americans.
...
Jeanne Monahan, the president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, which organizes the march, said that as a Catholic in the anti-abortion movement, “We absolutely support the idea of being pro-life from conception to natural death.” “Really, the difference between the little ones in Connecticut, which is so heartbreaking, and the little ones in the womb is their size and their age.”

But asked about the letter from the Catholic leaders, she said: “I definitely have nothing to say about gun control. That’s so out of the parameter of what we’re about.”

....
Since the killings in Newtown, a broad spectrum of religious leaders have joined Faiths United to Prevent Gun Violence to demand controls on guns, but leaders of evangelical churches have been conspicuously absent. The National Association of Evangelicals surveyed its board of more than 100 members in December and found that 73 percent of them said that government should increase gun regulations. However, the association has not taken a position publicly.

A poll released this week by the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, found that among the roughly two-thirds of white evangelical Protestants who say the term “pro-life” describes them very well, 64 percent are opposed to stricter gun control laws, while 33 percent favor them.

The picture among Catholics is the opposite. The poll found that of the 4 in 10 Catholics who say that “pro-life” describes them very well, 61 percent support stricter gun control laws and 33 percent oppose them. The survey was taken in January and included more than 1,000 respondents with a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.
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[Thinkingabout]

1. Finally, some gets the real picture here, you should not be pushing against AWB and be against

abortion. It is so very true, it does not matter where the person is, in the womb or living and walking on their own. Pro-Life is what it is, Pro-Life and not providing means of innocent American citizens to kill masses at will.

[meow2u3]

2. Here's a telling passage

But John Gehring, the Catholic program director at Faith in Public Life, a liberal advocacy group in Washington, said that bishops who had demanded that Catholic legislators vote against abortion rights should do the same on gun control.

He said, “Catholic lawmakers who call themselves pro-life and are pretty cozy with the N.R.A. shouldn’t be getting a free pass.”

Amen!

[AngryOldDem]

3. And thus the big joke about "pro-life."

They are also silent on poverty, war, the right to health care, the list goes on.

They don't care, because their concern begins and ends at the delivery room door. Literally -- once babies are here, then they're on their own. Good luck and God bless.

That is the issue I have with a lot of pro-lifers -- their deafening silence on a lot of issues that also have a direct bearing on life. That's
someone else's concern." Well, no; if you are all good Catholics as you say you are, then it IS your concern.

Ask any of them how they feel about the late Cardinal Bernardin and his "seamless garment of life" theory, and you'll see their true colors come out.