In a scalding reproach to abortion giant Planned Parenthood, Phoenix Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted is denouncing its “barbaric practice of selling baby body parts,” and calling for its immediate defunding.
Planned Parenthood, which Olmsted calls an “infamous agency,” receives around half a billion dollars each year from the U.S. Government, “funds to carry on their slaughter of innocents,” Olmsted writes in a letter to the Catholic men of his diocese, in which he summons them to stand up against this practice.
According to the bishop, “no American citizen, and certainly no man, can remain silent about this travesty of our times.”
In his message aimed at firing up the men in his diocese to be more active in American culture wars, Olmsted tells the men that they have the privilege to be “soldiers of Jesus Christ and to do battle with the devil.”
“This battle is often hidden, but the battle is real,” he writes, urging Christians to be more actively pro-life.
“We need to get off the sidelines and stand up for life on the front lines. We need faith like that of our fathers who defended the children of previous generations and who gave up their own lives rather than abandon their faith in Christ.”
“My sons and brothers, men of the Diocese of Phoenix,” he writes, “we need you to step into the breach!”
Bishop Olmsted isn’t the first American prelate to come out strongly against Planned Parenthood. In a statement over the summer after the first of the Planned Parenthood videos had been released, Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput wrote:
No one should be shocked by this video. This is who Planned Parenthood is and what it does. It’s been part of the organization’s gene code from the start. The logic of its disdain for new life is just working itself out. And it won’t stop until the money and the media adulation are cut off.
New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan also responded to the videos, noting that most of us “simply recoil in horror from this ghoulish practice.”
One positive thing, however, is that “the truth is finally coming out about what Planned Parenthood actually does,” he said.
“For decades,” he said, “the advocates for legal abortion — with Planned Parenthood in the forefront — have minimized or denied the humanity of the unborn child.”
“Those tricks of misleading language are no longer viable, thanks to the Planned Parenthood staff members who were captured on these undercover videos, with their callous bluntness about what they were actually doing,” he said.
“In other words, the folks at Planned Parenthood finally told the truth about what they are actually doing when they abort over 300,000 babies each year – that’s more than 20% of all abortions in this country: they are putting an end to an innocent, fragile, defenseless, human life,” he said.
Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter @tdwilliamsrome