Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 26, 2020 / 09:45 am (CNA).- Faith and social issues took center stage on night two of the Republican National Convention, as speakers said the Trump administration had worked to advance the cause of religious freedom, promoting pro-life causes, and criminal justice reform.
Among the speakers was pro-life activist and former Planned Parenthood employee Abby Johnson who condemned her former employer’s racist heritage. She noted that 80% of Planned Parenthood’s abortion facilities are located near minority neighborhoods, and that the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was a eugenicist.
Trump, she said “has done more for the unborn than any other president” and is “the most pro-life president we’ve ever had.
Johnson graphically described a second-trimester abortion she says she witnessed while working for Planned Parenthood, saying that she saw “an unborn baby fighting back, desperate to move away from the suction … The last thing I saw was a spine twirling around in the mother’s womb before succumbing to the force of the suction.”
Seeing that abortion, she said, caused her to quit her job and leave the abortion industry.
Most Americans, said Johnson, do not understand the “barbarity” of abortion.
“They don’t know about the ‘products of conception’ room in abortion clinics, where infant corpses are pieced back together to ensure nothing remains in the mother’s wombs; or that we joked and called it the ‘pieces of children’ room,” she said.
“See, for me, abortion is real. I know what it sounds like. I know what abortion smells like. Did you know abortion even had a smell?” Johnson herself had two abortions prior to her pro-life conversion.
In her speech, Johnson referred to Biden and Harris as “two radical, anti-life activists.” The Democratic Party platform called, for the first time, for abortion to be codified in federal law, and repeated the 2016 platform’s call for a repeal of the Hyde Amendment forbidding taxpayer dollars for abortions.
The Republican Party has not changed its the 2016 platform, which calls for abortion to be illegal, but did release a list of 50 bullet points outlining the priorities of a second term of the Trump presidency. Those points do not mention abortion policy, though Johnson emphasized that in her view, Trump’s second term will feature continued efforts on restricting legal protection for abortion.
Cissie Graham Lynch, the granddaughter of evangelist Billy Graham, spoke Tuesday night on the importance of the free exercise of religion “in our schools, and in our jobs, and yes, even in the public square.”
“Our founders did not envision a quiet, hidden faith: they fought to ensure that the voices of faith were always welcomed; not silenced, not bullied,” she said. Lynch said that during the Obama/Biden administration, “these freedoms were under attack.”
Lynch cited the examples of the HHS contraceptive mandate, which she said was an attempt to “force religious organizations to pay for abortion-inducing drugs,” and efforts to force adoption agencies to violate their religious beliefs in who they worked with.
“Democrats pressured schools to allow boys to compete in girls sports and use girls locker rooms,” she said, referring to transgender activists. “Those are the facts.”
With the election of Donald Trump, she said, “people of faith suddenly had a fierce advocate in the White House,” noting that he appointed judges who “respect the First Amendment” and withdrew policies that violated conscience rights.
“The Biden-Harris vision leaves no room for people of faith,” Lynch said. “Whether you’re a baker or florist or a football coach, they will force the choice between being obedient to God or to caesar–because the radical left’s God is government power.”
One of the more emotional moments of the night was the story of Jon Ponder, a convicted bank robber. While in prison, Ponder turned his life around through a chaplaincy program. Upon release, Ponder founded a nonprofit organization Hope for Prisoners, and befriended the FBI agent who arrested him.
Hope for Prisoners works to assist prisoners with reentry into society, and provides leadership training, financial advice, professional development, and technology training.
“My hope for America is that all people regardless of race, color, class or background will take advantage of the fact that we live in a nation of second chances,” said Ponder on Tuesday. Trump called his story “a beautiful testament to the power of redemption.”
At the end of the segment, Trump pardoned Ponder for his bank robbery conviction, which is a federal crime. Ponder had previously been granted clemency in Nevada on battery charges.
Also featured on Tuesday night was Nick Sandmann, who, as a student at Covington Catholic High School, was the subject of a media firestorm after an out-of-context clip went viral showing him smiling at a Native American demonstrator in front of the Lincoln Memorial after the March for Life earlier this year. Sandmann spoke on the topics of cancel culture and the need for media accountability and honesty.
[…]
““As a founding principle of our country, we have always welcomed immigrant and refugee populations, and through the social services and good works of the Church, we have accompanied our brothers and sisters in integrating to daily American life,” Bishop Mario Dorsonville, auxiliary bishop of Washington and chair of the US bishops’ Comittee on Migration, said Jan. 2.”
Someone needs to take a remedial US history class.
SOL,
Which part of US history did you think they need a remedial class on?
Who are most Americans originally if not immigrants?
I’d agree it’s not correct to say that we have always, at all times welcomed immigrants and refugees but we certainly have done that selectively. And Catholics have for the greater part been among the groups of immigrants not warmly welcomed.
We need immigration to counteract the current birth dearth but we don’t have to have open borders or risk our national security. There should be a reasonable and humane approach to immigration.
Has it occurred to you that mass immigration is a cause of the drop in birthrates? By driving up the cost of living (housing, heath care, taxes, etc.), while depressing wages, it makes family formation so much more difficult.
Tony,
Birthrates are plummeting globally with or without immigration. Even government incentives to have a replacement level birthrate have failed.
Hungary is offering tax incentives for families and hopefully they’ll have some success.
Mrscracker,
The founding American people were not immigrants but colonists/settlers. They didn’t enter into a pre-existing polity and receive citizenship or some other form of membership from another people. The whole “America is a land of immigrants” myth was created by leftist subversives even if used by 20th ce nationalists for their own purposes after the fact, more than 3 centuries after the first British colonists started settling this country. Many of the founding fathers after the revolution even explicitly wrote on the question of whether anyone non-British should be allowed to immigrate to the US.
This original Anglo-American (and Protestant Christian) heritage and identity is what the left is trying to erase and unfortunately too many Catholic bishops are assisting in this, even if the bishops seek to replace it with some vague “Catholic” identity.
This system is currently in a stage of collapse, and continued immigration will further destabilization and increase the likelihood of wide-scale violence, regardless of how necessary believers in infinite economic growth say immigrants are for that.
SOL,
Good morning!
My daddy’s side of the family has been here for 400 years. I went to the UK a few years ago and visited the parish church of a 17th century colonial ancestor. In his memorial he’s referred to as “Henry the Immigrant” because he migrated to the American Colonies.
🙂
You know, the longer your ancestors have lived in North America the more likely you are to find non Anglo Saxon ancestry or ancestors who came as convicts. The American colonies were a dumping ground for thousands of British convicts until the Revolutionary War. After that, the British had to turn to Australia and Tasmania to dump their unwanted.
Beyond chattel slavery, folks of African ancestry have been here for 400 plus years. Many were free people of color and many intermarried with white colonists.
And of course, our American Indians have their own perspectives on immigration.
History is complicated and the more you look at it, the more humble you feel. Most of us have very modest beginnings and sometimes, we find very surprising narratives along the way.
Your argument seems to be that, since we are all the descendants of immigrants (in the broadest sense of the word), there is no justification for this nation (or really, any nation) to have a restrictive immigration policy. Apparently, this Ellis Island sentimentalism must override all other political, social, cultural and economic considerations. Does a country have a right to try to maintain its ethnic and cultural balance by limiting who is allowed in?
More mindless, liberal rubbish from bishops who seem utterly incapable of, not to mention unwilling to, speak in anything other than left wing cliches. Will they ever declare solidarity with the American people?
Looked up the bishop in question.
Wikipedia: Mario Eduardo Dorsonville-Rodríguez (born October 31, 1960) is a Colombian-born bishop of the Catholic Church in the United States.
Like Jose Gomez, another immigrant who is presumptuous enough to lecture Americans about American history and identity.
Thanks for the information. I suppose the good bishop has admonished the elites in Colombia on the need to clean up the corruption and to improve the nation’s economy that has apparently created such intolerable conditions.
Wish the bishops (and the nuns!!) would show a little solidarity with the dyslexic/dyscalculaic/etc community.
.
Just because dyslexics frequently have high intelligence does not mean they all go to MIT and walk out with $75,000 starting income.
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Many suffer socially as well as educationally and the job situation upon adulthood can look bleak. As many prisoners are dyslexic, I think it is a good bet if it was caught early in school, we’d have fewer children in trouble and fewer adults in prison.
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I mean no ill will toward those looking for a better life, but we have plenty of hurting children/adults who were born here. Don’t they deserve the same concern?
Tony,
North Americans, with the exception of those descended from our Indian tribes, are all the product of quite diverse immigrant populations from the past 400-500 years. I dislike the term “diverse ” because it’s become a cliche, but it really does describe our immigrant history.
I don’t think race or ethnicity should even enter into a Catholic conversation regarding what to conserve in America. Color and ethnicity simply don’t signify but culture does.
A Judeo Christian culture is what conservative Christians and others should be concerned about preserving. Not Anglo Saxonism. Culture, not color is what’s critical.
And yes, I strongly believe that sovereign nations have a right to secure their borders and enforce immigration laws. And preserve their unique cultures. But you have to have enough population to ensure a functioning society to pass that culture down to. Societies that are ageing and not reproducing themselves won’t be capable of that and will eventually be replaced.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Immigrants – they are ambassadors of the Good News.
All of them? How so? In what way?