Seth Udinski, FISM News
A bishop in Las Vegas is taking a stand for the unborn, imploring politicians who claim fidelity to the Catholic faith but also support abortion to refrain from partaking in the Lord’s Supper.
Bishop George Thomas of Las Vegas is joining other Catholics, including San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, in calling pro-choice Catholics to account:
It is my sincere hope that Catholic politicians and Catholics at large take this moment to look deeply into their own hearts, and re-examine the church’s moral conviction on the inviolability and dignity of human life. If a politician from the Diocese of Las Vegas finds himself or herself at odds with the church’s teaching on the sacredness of human life, I ask him or her voluntarily to refrain from the reception of Holy Communion while holding public office. I place the onus of that decision upon the individual politician’s shoulders, and not on the backs of Pastors or Eucharistic Ministers.
It appears Bishop Thomas’ came as a response to Democratic Representative Susie Lee, a pro-abortion Catholic, who argued for abortion in a column she wrote in The Las Vegas Sun on January 24.
As a Catholic, I have a deep understanding of the moral dilemma that the choice to have an abortion presents. At the same time, the choice to become a mother is an extremely personal one, and that choice should stay between a woman, her family and her doctor. When extremists insert themselves into this decision, they refuse to recognize women’s bodily autonomy, potentially put them in life-threatening circumstances, and often coerce them into having a future that they neither wanted nor prepared for. I will always be a fierce advocate in the fight to ensure that women have the freedom to seek unrestrained and medically accurate advice from their doctors and make their own decisions about their health and their bodies. Protecting the right to safe, legal abortion will be an uphill battle, but I will never back down.
Bishop Thomas highlighted the ignorance of Lee and others like her who fatally overlook the plight of unborn children:
Throughout her column, Lee proffers her support for unrestricted reproductive care, without ever mentioning the consequences of her advocacy for the unborn child, over 60 million of whom have been annihilated in the womb since the enactment of Roe v. Wade 49 years ago.
The Catholic church has consistently condemned the practice of abortion as part of their doctrine. According to the Catholic church’s official teaching, “Human life is sacred because from its beginning it involves the creative action of God and it remains for ever in a special relationship with the Creator, who is its sole end. God alone is the Lord of life from its beginning until its end: no one can under any circumstance claim for himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human being.”