KCCatholic.com – Recently the Kansas Catholic Conference (KCC), which serves as the official voice of the Catholic Church in Kansas on matters of public policy, has spoken out on a number of Bills before the Kansas Legislature. While I applaud the KCC for being involved and helping the faithful to understand where the church stands on some of the issues, I question its involvement in some issues.
KCCatholic.com – Recently the Kansas Catholic Conference (KCC), which serves as the official voice of the Catholic Church in Kansas on matters of public policy, has spoken out on a number of Bills before the Kansas Legislature. While I applaud the KCC for being involved and helping the faithful to understand where the church stands on some of the issues, I question its involvement in some issues.
Bills that the KCC is involved in which fall into the areas of faith and morals:
KCC Supports HB 2266 Umbilical Cord Donation Information Act
Providing people with information is never a bad thing and I support informing new parents of the benefit of Umbilical Cord Donation but personally I fail to see the necessity to make it a law. If its such a good idea hospitals and medical providers will be more than happy inform patients on their own without a law about it being on the books. I tend to prefer things to be simple and I see no reason to cause and extra form for new parents to sign before they leave the hospital, but by making it a law you do create a standard, which might help research dollars focus in on cord blood research versus embryonic stem cell research.
KCC Supports HB 2292 Restrictions around Minors Receiving Abortions
Amen
KCC Supports HB 2503 Child Support Enforcement
The only people against this bill are deadbeat parents and they don’t have a lobby.
KCC Supports HB 2098 Defining Terms Relating to Human Cloning
After Missouri’s deception debacle last election, I’m all for defining terms.
KCC Supports HB 2255 Prohibits State Money to Create Human Embryos
Amen Amen
KCC Supports HB 2006 Helps Protect Unborn Children who’s Mothers are Assaulted or Murdered
Sounds good to me.
KCC Supports HB 2510 & SB 222 Abolishes the Death Penalty
While personally, I go back and forth on this, Catechism 2267 does make it clear.
Bills that I feel the KCC should have no involvement in:
KCC Opposes HB 2410 Enacts English as the Official Language of Kansas
Why the KCC is involved in this in its support or opposition I do not understand. First this is not an issue of faith and morals. Is it morally wrong to define an official language? The Catholic Church has an official language, Latin. The KCC says the Bill sends a divisive message. Seems somewhat hypocritical coming from an organization that has an official language. To me this Bill has nothing to do with the Church and the Church should have nothing to do with the Bill. The Bishops have bigger issues to tackle than whether or not a State document is written in English, “Officially”. English has been the language used by the majority of Kansas citizens since it became a state. KCC stick to Faith and Morals and we’ll be much better off.
KCC Opposes HB 2367 Would Deny State and Local Public Benefits to Undocumented Immigrants.
My first question is “What public benefits would be denied?”
According to HB2367 ‘‘Public Benefit’’ means: Any grant, contract, loan or license provided by an agency of state or local government; or any retirement, welfare, health, disability, housing, postsecondary education, food assistance or unemployment benefit under which payments, assistance, credits or reduced rates or fees are provided.
Okay now we have a big issue in my mind. If an immigrant is here without documents, they are here ILLEGALLY. Why should they receive any of the above-mentioned “public benefits”? In my mind an illegal alien should be provided with the same “public benefits” that any criminal in our state currently receives. By definition an illegal alien is a criminal, to what degree they are a criminal is up for debate. The State of Kansas does not deny medical treatment, housing, or food assistance to its criminals. Why should the state be required to do more than that for people who are here without proper authority? I feel the KCC is out of bounds in supporting or opposing this issue. Let the Catholic Church and Christ’s faithful help those who are in need regardless of their legal status. The State can barely take care of those living in it legally; let us not task it to take care of those who are here illegally.
Again, I applaud the KCC in being involved but also remind the KCC that it needs to be very careful in determining which issues to be involved in. I pray they do not support or oppose issues that our outside the realm of faith and morals.
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