In his column for the diocesan newspaper The Tablet, entitled “Deeper Into the Culture of Death,” Bishop DiMarzio praises Abraham Lincoln, the abolition of slavery, and notes how far the nation has come in electing Obama as president. DiMarzio also notes the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion through all nine months of pregnancy and how Obama has promoted that decision.
“The so-called ‘pro-choice’ movement has its roots in the ideology of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, who understood her call to be one who would ‘assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit,’” states Bishop DiMarzio. “Of course, a young Barack Obama was precisely the sort of unfit child that Sanger and her allies would want to eliminate.”
“Tragically, the President has not been an advocate for those young children faced with similarly difficult circumstances,” says Bp. DiMarzio. “He has chosen to use the bully pulpit not to call upon us all to be nobler and to embrace each child, regardless of origins and circumstances; rather, he has been a proponent of an expediency that is shameful and criminal in the eyes of Almighty God.”
President Barack Obama (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
The bishop also discusses the Obamacare mandate that requires nearly all health care plans to offer contraceptives, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs without co-pays, arguing that these rules “imposed on our Nation” would force “Catholic institutions to provide employees with medical procedures and services we believe to be in defiance of the will of God.”
“We know that, today, an administration that is hostile requires contraception and sterilization,” states the bishop. “However, as government involves itself in our internal affairs, there is little doubt in anyone’s mind that the government would seek to compel religious institutions to provide abortion services in the future.”
He continues, “In my view, those who voted for President Obama bear the responsibility for a step deeper in the culture of death. Under the cover of women’s issues, we now see an assault on religious freedom and personal conscience.”
The bishop criticizes New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Catholic, for proposing “the largest expansion of abortion rights in New York State history,” which he says is an expansion of “this culture of death.”
“I would have hoped that the first African-American president of the United States would have stood on the side of freedom for all,” says Bishop DiMarzio in conclusion. “Instead, he stands on the side of political expediency. Mr. Lincoln, with great difficulty, put out into the deep and paid with his life.
Would that our political leaders today would have some of the same courage.”
In the Diocese of Brooklyn, N.Y., there are about 1.5 million Catholics, 206 parishes, and 119 Catholic schools.
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