Fr. Tom “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!” Reese, SJ, shills for Big-Business Abortion

This is about par for the Jesuit course.

From Breitbart:

Jesuit Priest Tells Catholics to Fight Abortion by Electing ‘Pro-Choice Democrats’

Writing for Religion News Service (RNS)— Father Reese, the former editor-in-chief of [Jesuit] America Magazine—says that “pro-lifers must consider voting for candidates, even pro-choice Democrats, who will reduce the number of abortions by supporting programs that help mothers and their children.”

In his political propaganda piece aimed at discrediting President Trump’s recent moves to partially defund Planned Parenthood, Father Reese abandons his role as a Catholic cleric to stump for the Democratic Party.  [Jesuit Reese, fundraiser for big-business abortion?]

Closing Planned Parenthood clinics “that provide health care and birth control to women before replacements are up and running is irresponsible and counterproductive,” he writes. [So, support organizations that provide sound alternatives to big-business abortion!]

Employing convoluted logic meant to assuage the consciences of Christians who support pro-abortion legislators, Reese makes the claim that Democrats like Hillary Clinton who support Planned Parenthood and abortion-on-demand are actually better for the pro-life cause than Republicans who attempt to install pro-life justices or draft legislation aimed at restricting abortions.

“Pro-life voters must choose between Republican rhetoric and Democratic results,” he writes, in bold advocacy for the party that applies a pro-abortion litmus test to all its potential political candidates. [The Party of Death.]

Reese’s “argument” goes something like this: Abortion will never be illegal, and pro-lifers must accept this fact. They must, therefore, abandon efforts to rescind or limit laws permitting abortion and devote themselves, instead, to enacting more expansive government programs that support women so they will not choose to have abortions.

“Trying to preserve anti-abortion laws or trying to reverse the legalization of abortion is simply not working,” Reese writes, citing the recent Irish abortion referendum as a case in point.  [Ahhh, Ireland.  The gift that keeps on giving.]

Thinking that abortion could ever be illegal is “simply ignoring reality,” he contends. “Time is on the side of the pro-choice movement.”  [Tom “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!” Reese, SJ]

Pro-life advocates should, instead, “strongly support programs that give women a real choice — increasing the minimum wage, free or affordable day care for working and student moms, free or affordable health care for mothers and their children, parental leave programs, education and job-training programs, income and food supplements, etc.” he writes.

Had he lived a century-and-a-half ago, Father Reese would have found himself among the shameful Christian clerics who argued that since abolition was impossible and black slavery would never be illegal, efforts should be made to help slaveowners treat their human property as nicely as possible. Such political “realism” has ever been the ally of moral cowardice.

In direct opposition to the U.S. Bishops, Reese further asserts that “the contraceptive mandate of the Obama administration will do more to reduce the number of abortions than all of the legislative gimmicks of Republican legislators.” [pro pro-abortion politicians, pro contraceptives]

“If European Catholic institutions can pay money into national health programs that perform abortions, then American Catholic employers can pay for insurance programs that pay for birth control,” he insists. [Okaaaaay… if someone robs a bank, commits a murder, burns a hospital down, I can do it too!]

The pro-life movement “has to support birth control as a means of avoiding unwanted pregnancies,” he insists, and those, like the Catholic church, “who consider artificial contraception to be wrong must also recognize that abortion is a greater evil. When forced to choose, one must choose the lesser of two evils.”

What Father Reese may forget from his seminary lessons in moral theology, the concept of choosing a “lesser evil” never justifies choosing any moral evil so that good may come from it. It refers, rather, to opting for an imperfect—but not immoral—solution to a problem when a perfect solution is unavailable.

Father Reese’s love affair with the Democratic Party and his willingness to sacrifice moral truth for political gain is reminiscent of the conduct of his confrère, Jesuit Father Robert Drinan (D-MA), who served in the House of Representatives from 1971 to 1981.

A vocal advocate of abortion rights, Father Drinan notably supported President Bill Clinton’s veto of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in 1996.

Soon after, the redoubtable archbishop of New York, Cardinal John O’Connor, rebuked Drinan in his weekly column in Catholic New York. “You could have raised your voice for life; you raised it for death. Hardly the role of a lawyer. Surely not the role of a priest.”

One can only hope that, similarly, moral clarity will prevail in the present case. If Father Reese wishes to speak for the Catholic church, he had best get his story straight.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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14 Comments

  1. benedetta says:

    Who is Fr. Reese to pass judgement on whether or not women and mothers would be better off killing their children and pumping their bodies full with hormonal birth control just to satisfy men’s urges better? Historically, the prolife movement has one since it dates back Elizabeth Cady Stanton in this country and moreover to Christians of ancient Rome who objected to those pagans who left their children out to die of exposure, indifferently. And obviously Fr. Reese felt the pro choice movement endangered enough to send out this alarm. Plenty of state governments have been closely considering restrictions on wide open come and get ’em big business abortion, Cecille Richards has been ousted into early retirement, etc etc etc. He is so hell bent on promoting it that he doesn’t care that he’s not gotten his facts straight…

  2. benedetta says:

    * pro life movement has won not one and is winning. NB!

  3. Luminis says:

    ” A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing”

  4. Actually, Fr. Reese’s contention that improved income and social net will reduce abortions among the “poor” is not confirmed by the evidence. In 2015 the Brooking Institute finally disaggregated the percentage of unborn children aborted by their mothers by economic class. The result shows that the abortion rate is the highest for the highest income bracket they looked at (4 times of the poverty rate). Here are the statistic:
    Single women who make $47,000 or more a year abort 32 percent of their pregnancies.
    Single women in the middle group abort 11 percent of their pregnancies.
    Single women making $11,670 a year or less abort only 8.6 percent of their pregnancies.
    By all means policies should be instituted that will raise those in poverty, but under the current legal regime the result will be more, not fewer, abortions. The wealthy are the most addicted to aborting their children. The only way to stop this is to change the law—the rich they don’t need more income, health care benefits, etc.

  5. “Time is on the side of the pro-choice movement.”

    Except that time will come to an end. Unlike hell, which Fr. Reese and, I fear, a majority of his brothers in Holy Orders, seem no longer to believe in.

  6. P.S. Those with the most access to contraception (the rich), abort a higher percentage of their children than those with fewer resources. Three times as often! So Fr. Reese’s argument that more contraception means fewer abortions is simply false. Ignorance or falsehood? I am not sure which.

  7. benedetta says:

    One thing I will never understand, something so in evidence in Fr. Reese’s publications and advocacy, is why abortion “rights” are such bedrock dogma for the homosexualist agenda. I mean, what interest does gay pride have in whether others have their babies or kill them in the womb? Why is it so essential to that agenda that a gay identifying Jesuit would buck Church doctrine for millenia by coming out vociferously for abortion rights to persuade people to support it? Supposedly, it is a “women’s issue” but that doesn’t stop those who are astoundingly unqualified to pass judgment on women’s interests to have their children from coming out loudly to say they ought to just happily use hormonal contraception and get rid of their babies, so much the more the better, and even that this agenda of abortion is somehow intricately related and logically (?!) connects to some supposed compassion platform that those who stand for prolife supposedly lack. So many falsehoods and weirdness there. It’s an embarrassment to the Jesuits, that’s for sure.

    [I think the key to understanding these people is their obsession, their goal, of detaching procreation from sexual acts.
    If they can eliminate both the consequences of sex and the association of sex from procreation, then the field is entirely open for their … appetites.]

  8. benedetta says: One thing I will never understand, something so in evidence in Fr. Reese’s publications and advocacy, is why abortion “rights” are such bedrock dogma for the homosexualist agenda.

    It is all part of the satanic inversion of the words of institution, and blasphemous mockery of the Eucharist. Hoc est enim Corpus Meum: This is My Body. Jesus says it to make of His Body a sacrificial offering for the atonement of sin. But the devil’s dupes also say Hoc est enim corpus meum: this is my body, to do with as I please, whether it be to engage in fornication, or homosexual acts, or to destroy my unborn child. This is my body, to use in serving myself in any way I see fit. It’s all of a piece.

  9. Ave Maria says:

    “Demoncratic results”? Yes, I know what those are: more tax dollars to fund the killing of the unborn, more support for “immigrants”, more support for “gun control”, more support for homosexualist agendas, etc. When priests, religious, and other leaders give specious reasons for supporting the party of death….well, it is damnable.

  10. benedetta says:

    Yes I see Fr Z. There is a certain consequential line there in the absence of reason and logic. And humanity. Why also I wonder — this Catholic priest who is bending over backward to insist that Catholics vote a particular way — why does he not just simply do the work of persuading Dems to include the life agenda on their platform? The problem is not with the Church ‘s position but is within his own party which lacks the compassion and wherewithal to propose better ways to let those babies have their lives just as he enjoys his own life.

  11. It would be exhausting to write an opposing argument. Other than divine intervention, it would take a good Vicar of Christ to set this character straight and strip him of his priesthood. Perhaps we can show him and his kind how much we care about pre-born children and their mothers by getting our parishes to participate in The Gabriel Project (https://thegabrielproject.wordpress.com).

    Former coordinator of The Gabriel Project of the Archdiocese of San Francisco

  12. TonyO says:

    “Trying to preserve anti-abortion laws or trying to reverse the legalization of abortion is simply not working,” Reese writes, citing the recent Irish abortion referendum as a case in point.

    Sure… with people like Fr. Reese pushing at it, of course. So, what would have happened if, instead, all the Jesuits in the world were to push AGAINST abortion? Why, excellent things might result. But it appears Fr. Reese doesn’t believe in the sanctity of life, and most of the Jesuits are pretty much like him.

    Pope Paul VI should have suppressed the Jesuit order. So should JPII have. And Benedict. There are no longer enough of them who are even Catholic to justify leaving them in place.

  13. maternalView says:

    And at the time of John Paul II’s election there were only a few people who believed Poland would ever be free and the Soviet Union could be stopped or that the Berlin Wall would come down.

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