Priest: 'Brownback remains a pro-life giant'; On free will and the Crucifixion

By Matt C. Abbott

U.S. Senator Sam Brownback has angered many in the right-to-life movement by supporting the nomination of pro-abortion Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to be the next Secretary of Health and Human Services (click here for story).

I wanted to get the reaction of Father C. John McCloskey, III — who played a significant role in the senator's conversion to Catholicism — to the controversy.

"There is more there than meets the eye. Think of Kansas in the 2010 elections. Senator Brownback remains a pro-life giant," said Father McCloskey in an e-mail.

But Father Tom Euteneuer takes an opposing view.

Writes Father Euteneuer (in part):

'I am not a politician, I am a priest. So I would like to give my priestly perspective about the recent endorsement of Senator Sam Brownback for the candidacy of Kathleen Sebelius for Secretary of Health and Human Services: Senator Brownback's cowardly betrayal of his Catholic faith is even more damaging than his political permission for this renegade to take office.

'The situation is atrocious. An extremist abortion hack (called the most pro-abortion governor in the nation by many), who falsely calls herself 'Catholic,' is given the opportunity to preside over the nation's healthcare system and normalize abortion even further; this radical is then endorsed by a U.S. senator who also calls himself 'Catholic' and who, many believe, wants her job back home when she becomes the abortion queen in D.C.

'With pro-lifers like Senator Sam Brownback, who needs pro-aborts?'

Click here for Father Euteneuer's entire column on the matter.

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My Feb. 25, 2009 column prompted a reader to ask a theological question regarding free will and the Crucifixion.

Father John M. Vega, a priest of the Diocese of Corpus Christi, Tex., provided the reader (and me) with the following response:

'Since God chose to create humanity and give them the gift of a free will, of necessity, God has to allow (permit) evil in this world. God has directly willed all good things and can never directly will something that is intrinsically evil — that would go against His divine nature which perfectly loves us and (directly) wills our good. Being free, humanity can freely choose to do good or to do evil and by that choice embrace God's will or reject it. God, however, is omnipotent and omniscient. He is greater than any good or evil we do and since he knows everything and nothing past, present or future is hidden from him, God foresees what we will freely choose and it is His plan from before the creation of the world so to order things that even the evil we choose is taken into account in His eternal plan of salvation to bring about good for humanity.

'C.S. Lewis, in his great science fiction/theological trilogy, speaks eloquently about this in his vision of Heaven before the fall. He speaks of the Creator willing a great and complicated symphony of music to be sung by all his angels which begins very beautifully but because of the malice and disobedience of the devil and his angels a contrary and discordant strain is introduced to ruin the harmony of the symphony. However, Lewis says that the Creator then changes the music of His symphony to incorporate the disharmony and make it work together to create even greater beauty and thus frustrate the devil's plan.

'And so, yes, the greatest criminal act of humanity, Deicide; a freely chosen act (permitted by God) by certain few humans but truly caused by the sinful choices of every human being that ever existed, past present and to come; encouraged and used by the devil to frustrate God's plan of salvation; is used by God to become the ultimate act of reconciliation and atonement for the sins of all mankind which is the mission given to the Son by His Father and freely embraced by the Son (Who is completely at one with the will of His Father) in perfect obedience and love. God permitted the greatest evil and directly willed that it be turned into the greatest of goods by the freely accepted sacrifice of His Son. Let us remember the lesson of Easter: All was lost in the sin of Adam and all was regained in the loving obedience of the New Adam.'

© Matt C. Abbott