Powerful Straight-Talk

By John-Henry Westen

PHOENIX, March 11, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Bishop of Phoenix in Arizona has written a straight-talking column responding to President Barack Obama's executive order providing federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

"This means that American taxpayers will now be paying for the killing of human beings at a very early stage in their lives (as embryos), so that scientific research can make use of them for experiments that may or may not yield positive results," writes Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted in his diocesan newspaper, the Catholic Sun.

Unwilling to sugar-coat the reality with polite euphemisms, Bishop Olmsted says, "We U.S. taxpayers will now be forced to pay, whether we wish to or not, for the killing of our youngest brothers and sisters on the dubious hypothesis that their murders might, in the future, benefit others."

"What President Obama is doing is forcing all American taxpayers to pay for this homicidal research," he said.

The Bishop offers five ways in which Catholics should respond to the President's action. "First, we must beg forgiveness for this horrendous sin of our nation," he says. "Second, we Catholics must join with others of good will and make our voices heard across our land, at the White House, on Capitol Hill, in our state Legislatures and in the media. We must not stand by idly while our neighbor's life is at stake. The dignity of a human person does not depend upon his or her age, developmental stage, or ability to function."

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