Good stuff from my newspaper, the National Catholic Register.
We at the Register were very focused on the
life issue, and will remain so. But we we always knew John McCain was
no pro-life hero (he supports using taxpayer money to fund fatal
experiments on embryos) and though we disagree on much, we always liked
Obama.
He is a civil, decent man. His historic election is exciting in that it
hails, we hope, the end of an era when race was factored into decisions
it had nothing to do with.
There used to be ground rules for the way a president is treated. We wish to review them here and renew them.
"Ground rules" discussed include: Be not afraid; Respect; and Reach out. Get the story.
http://www.zenit.org/article-24160?l=english
Dear President-elect Obama,
I write to you, in my capacity as President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, to express our congratulations on your historic election as President of the United States. The people of our country have entrusted you with a great responsibility. As Catholic Bishops, we offer our prayers that God give you strength and wisdom to meet the coming challenges.
Our country is confronting many uncertainties. We pray that you will use the powers of your office to meet them with a special concern to defend the most vulnerable among us and heal the divisions in our country and our world. We stand ready to work with you in defense and support of the life and dignity of every human person.
May God bless you and Vice President-elect Biden as you prepare to assume your duties in service to our country and its citizens.
Sincerely yours,
Francis Cardinal George, OMI
Archbishop of Chicago
President
McCain was generally pro-life insofar that he supported a ban on abortion. His stem cell support was incorrect but not as significant as the completely pro-abortion Obama. We can always hope, but Obama will not throw a bone to pro-lifers. We can still pray. McCain is a good man and was far more pro-life than Obama.
These are sad election results for Catholics and the unborn.
What comes to mind after reading this article is the following:
“Happy”, politically correct, horse manure.
That’s nice that you “liked” Obama. I too like many “civil, decent” men who champion evil and who pose as prophets and Messiahs.
And we couldn’t get a “congratulatory” note to Obama without the obligatory mention of race. Question: if racism is over, why do we keep talking about it?
And are we so terribly stupid to believe that no one voted for Obama because of race, that blacks don’t see him as “their guy” simply because he is black? I saw several people on the way to work this morning overjoyed by his election. They were black and they feel that “their time” has finally come, that their dream has been realized. Noooo, this wasn’t about race at all…
I’ve also heard the following: that the election of Obama proves that racism is over. Give. Me. A. Break. I know of several people who one could easily call racists. True, they are not in the KKK, but they don’t hide their racial slurs very well either. And yet, they voted for Obama. And yet, they will still use racial slurs and remain fixated on the color of one’s skin when forming their opinions.
What exactly is impressive about Obama? His public speaking? His smile?
And, to the people who are “in their hearts” pro-life “but who haven’t translated their pro-life principles into their voting decisions”, I’d like to know where you’ve been living for the past two years. Obama is THE culture of death icon. There is no excuse, assuming you are informed on his positions. To be pro-life and support Obama is simply a contradiction. Why dress it up in niceties and explain it away?
Finally, please tell me, without the platitudes and generalizations, what “great” thing Obama has done.
Please. Tell me.
My own congratulations goes out to those Catholics who have not become heretics and who heeded the teaching authority of the Church. You are to be commended for your fortitude and for your courage.
Political correctness is cowardice and the dressing up of Obama’s “achievement” as exciting is sickening.
Steve,
I have to agree that those who voted as Catholics and heeded the teaching authority of the Church should be commended.
I’m personally not happy that Obama won.
However, he did win and he is going to be our president, no matter how much we want to complain about it and who should have done what, etc.
As I mentioned to my coworkers who were all in favor of having McCain elected, “Yes, it’s a disappointment, that he didn’t win, but we now have four years of praying for Obama that he might have a conversion.” Had he not won, most people would probably have just forgotten him.
Now we have something else to help focus our attention and our prayers in the hopes that he will be open to the spirit and have a change of heart.
Wrong on all three counts. Not happy, not PC and certainly not horse manure. Anyone who thinks that is probably either not a Register reader or else just plain contrary.
As has been pointed out many times, McCain championed evil too, just on a smaller scale.
First, who said racism was over? Second, whatever else this election means, and it unquestionably means many terrible things, Obama is the not only the first black U.S. president, but AFAIK the first black head of state of any Western power, and that in a nation where he could have been sold as a slave little more than a lifetime ago. One 109-year-old black woman who voted for Obama was the daughter of a slave. That is worth something.
Look. I was in there slugging against Obama with the best of them, and so was the Register. I’m the first to say this is a disaster of epic proportions. But since you ask, Obama is smart, charismatic and a good communicator. He seems to be an effective organizer, and he just went 2-and-0 against the Clinton machine and the whole GOP. You don’t do that without having some leadership chops and decision-making skills.
Thank you.
I have been warned by priests not to congratulate people who marry outside the church because in doing so you give approval to their sin. Is it not also wrong to congratulate Obama and his supporters? Why did Card. George and Pope Benedict do just that?
We have been told it was gravely sinful to vote pro-Abortion and now our leaders have congratulated their victory. I believe Pope Benedict and Card. George are of course good holy men doing great work, I just sort feel thrown under the bus a little.
I assume we could understand Pope Benedict’s congrats as from one head of state to another…
I am only seeking understanding here, not bashing our Holy Father or Card. George.
False analogy. Catholics who attempt marriage outside the Church are not really married. Obama is really our president-elect; he hasn’t sinned by winning the election.
While he certainly sinned in the course of getting to this point (such as by promising to sign FOCA, etc.), once again, the same would have been true of McCain, just on a smaller scale. If it would be right to congratulate McCain, it’s right to congratulate Obama.
I just feel like we are congratulating an evil, that’s all. Perhaps the analogy was off. But then there is also a legitimate argument that all earthly power is given by God right? Or at least in this case, it was permitted.
Right. We are not congratulating an evil. We’re congratulating a man for an achievement. He already knows what we think of some aspects of what he intends to do with that achievement, and we’ll continue letting him know as he moves forward with his plans.
“Wrong on all three counts. Not happy, not PC and certainly not horse manure. Anyone who thinks that is probably either not a Register reader or else just plain contrary.”
If the Register was against him, why congratulate him now? That seems to be happifying the situation by way of PC-ness, which is horse manure. What am I missing?
“First, who said racism was over?”
Another blogger I read alluded to that. I wasn’t putting that on the Register.
“Second, whatever else this election means, and it unquestionably means many terrible things, Obama is the not only the first black U.S. president, but AFAIK the first black head of state of any Western power, and that in a nation where he could have been sold as a slave little more than a lifetime ago. One 109-year-old black woman who voted for Obama was the daughter of a slave. That is worth something.”
Ok, but what is it worth, is my question. What’s the big deal?
The point is that race, it seems to me, is still very much in play. Only now it’s on the side of blacks who are thrilled about Obama. So I’m not “excited” by this achievement for the cause of racial divide at all. It simply reinforces the problem.
“Look. I was in there slugging against Obama with the best of them, and so was the Register.”
I know you were. I’ve read your 6 posts on the election and I appreciate them very much. Great work.
“I’m the first to say this is a disaster of epic proportions. But since you ask, Obama is smart, charismatic and a good communicator. He seems to be an effective organizer, and he just went 2-and-0 against the Clinton machine and the whole GOP. You don’t do that without having some leadership chops and decision-making skills.”
Great, and I don’t dispute that. But that, in itself, means nothing. He’s a good politician so far, that’s what we know. You can have a well-functioning hard drive, but if you’re using it to pass around porn, then the hard drive does you no good–in more senses than one.
That fact that he has leadership chops AND supports the evil that he does is more scary to me, not less. It’s that fact that makes the disaster all the more epic.
And it’s this being enamored with Obama on his natural talents that have lead many people astray. To sit back now and say “wow” to those things is ridiculous. We ought to be warning people further in light of those things.
“you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall follow the LORD your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him” (Deut 13:3-4).
As one commentator has said: “there is no reason for any of us to feel united around this moral monster. With the stroke of a pen he will condemn more than 8,000,000 children to death. And we are all going to pay for it. If being united under The One is the goal here, I’d rather be divided under most anyone else. No one in their right mind willingly attaches themselves to this kind of evil.
This feel-good stuff is going to subside and all those with these ridiculous expectations of the Messiah are going to be very, very disappointed.”
So it’s the happifying and the PC-ness of articles like the Register’s that bother me. The article gives the impression that we ought to cheer up and unite under “Our President”. No way.
Putting aside Obama’s policies for a moment.
The international stereotype of America and Americans has been deeply challenged, probably forever.
America’s friends and foes are in awe of her progress.
Americans of all backgrounds will find it easier to believe that any kid has the potential to become President, regardless of race, poverty, or being conceived out of wedlock.
The election of someone of Obama’s appearance would have been unthinkable a couple of years ago. Now some of the core values of the Constitution seem manifest. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal …”
As the abolitionists called on America to live up to the values of her Constitution, those who are pro-life now call on America to do the same. “… that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life …”
Bravo Patrick! I’ve long held the same beliefs about the PC BS. Would we be as congratulatory to someone else who, say like a Hitler, who promoted the butchering of some other group, say like Jews. The direction this moral monstrosity wants to take this country is horrific and not worthy of congratulations or other niceties. Sorry, I just can’t get into our wonderful democratic change of power.
I wouldn’t expect this from the LC. McCain is no pro-life champion, but BO is a pro-death champion.
It’s time to put on ash and sackcloth.
May Our Lady of Guadalupe pray for us and for the unborn whose blood will be on the hands of millions of American Catholics.
Congratulations aren’t generalized approval. They’re acknowledgement — of the winner’s achievement, of the respect due the office, and on a basic level of our common humanity. They are how we show our own class in defeat, and how we acknowledge the fact that the other person may be our adversary, but he is not our enemy. Only the devil is that.
How important do you consider the injustices of a scant half-century ago — hardly before I was born, and within Obama’s own lifetime — when “colored” people in America had separate bathrooms, water fountains, schools, bus seats, and so on? To go from the back of the bus to the Oval Office in half a decade seems a pretty big deal. The scars of slavery and racism go deep in our country. Of course there are bigger issues — that’s why I voted for McCain — but yeah, this is a big deal. Of course it’s not the end of race as an issue, but it’s a positive step toward a world where race doesn’t matter.
And white people too. That’s the point too.
I get that, I do. Even so, the engineer who builds the fastest server deserves his props, however he intends to use it. And, really, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to hope for some good things amid the evil of an Obama presidency.
Quite possibly. But maybe not. We don’t really know for sure how things will play out. Who knew when Bush 43 was elected in 2000 that 9/11 was lurking around the corner?
Yes and no. For the time being, I think we’ve done all the warning we could, for all the good we accomplished. There will be time for more warnings down the road. But you can’t make warning a 24×7 job; people just tune you out.
If Obama is a monster, McCain is a little monster. But I don’t like monster imagery. The devil is a monster. Obama is a man; a man who stands for some monstrous things and for some good things. Today I tip my hat to him as a man. Tomorrow I do whatever I can to resist him when he does evil — and support him when he does good.
Maybe. That would be one good outcome. Another good outcome might be if Obama wound up doing a lot more good and a lot less harm than anyone anticipates. I’ll be hoping and praying for that outcome.
That’s not how I read it. Here’s what I read: “Under Bush, many Americans turned their opposition to the president into exaggerated fears and premature anger. We needn’t do that. Oppose what he proposes that must be opposed, but don’t believe the voices that say “America has changed forever.” Mr. President: We will be here applauding all that you do that is good, and reminding people just how heinous it is to kill America’s future in the womb, if you dare attack the voiceless, defenseless unborn.” I agree.
Exactly Pete. Us being “nice” is giving the impression, though perhaps we don’t intend to do this, that what happened is ok. But it is not ok. What Obama wants to do cannot be tolerated.
In fact, it is the appearance of “civility” and “decency” that Obama is now famous for that has perhaps allowed people to explain away his support of evil. Granted, McCain did a poor job of exposing this, but nonetheless, you are what you are.
Going on to congratulate his victory is a ridiculous move. So it’s now time for us to expose him. If I was a Bishop, I’d write him a letter, but there would be no congratulations. It would be a full exposition of the evil he endorses as well as a laying out of exactly the fradulence of being a “public servant” for the “common good” who, in turn, picks and chooses who lives and who dies. Along with that, would be a challenge to come clean and “convert”, not for the sake of religion, but in the name of the Declaration of Independence and the founding principles of this country, of which he is in direct violation of. With Obama-math, it’s the Common Good minus 50 million and counting.
I think of Pontius Pilate. When you think of him, do you envision a “moral monster”? No, likely not. He’s kind of “in the mix” in our minds, but he is not a blood-thristy villian in our recollection.
Pilate was probably civil and appeared decent. He was reluctant to execute Jesus, afterall. But Pilate is a worldly man, knowing the right and anxious to do it so far as it can be done without personal sacrifice of any kind, but yielding easily to pressure from those whose interest it is that he should act otherwise.
But does that excuse his guilt, even though he wasn’t the one driving the nails through Christ’s hands?
Pilate asked “what is truth?” and in turn, he crucified the Truth. There is a fundamental connection between the support of lies, in any form, and decay and darkness.
I know of Obama apologists who say that abortion is a tragedy, and yet, it should be kept “safe, legal and rare.” That’s nice-sounding language that is meant to explain away evil. It’s that kind of permissiveness, ala Pilate, that leads to disaster. It’s not always bombs and blow-ups. The more subtle, the more the devil can sneak in.
History, thankfully, has left an impression on us that Hitler was a moral monster and now his name is synonymous with evil.
In principle, Obama concides with Hitler. Some live and some die, but we decide. There is no fundamental human right to life. We are blind to this horror for many reasons, but one of which is our weak opposition.
This is not crying over spilt milk. I fully acknowledge that Obama will be President and I “accept” that as far as it goes. I’m not going to demand a recount or anything like that. But the fact that he will be in office is the most devastating reality our country has ever faced. It is a total and complete lie.
I don’t disagree. I consider congratulating Obama and his supporters an act of both decency and mortification. Other such acts are also highly recommended.
Obama is good communicator
Only when he’s using a telepromptor.
SDG,
Great article. Thanks for the link. I am wary, but not despairing. Let’s be ready to stand behind our new president when we can and oppose him when we must.
Augustine,
I must take issue with your “blood… on the hands of… American Catholics” statement. A vote for Obama is not an act of murder. Some sense of proportion would be nice.
Patrick,
It’s not as bleak as you think. We had Clinton for eight years, and he was as pro-abortion as Obama. Sure, Clinton gave us more of the same abortion-on-demand, but that didn’t change when we elected Bush. Clinton also bombed Belgrade and Baghdad, but again, we got more of the same under Bush.
And while racism isn’t dead in America (and may never be) this election has symbolic importance and may help put to rest some measure of the pain and resentment under which our nation suffers. We can hope.
I disagree. It’s a popular charge among conservatives, but it’s not true. Obama performed well in the debates, and he does well in interviews. As a writer and public speaker, I’ve carefully watched him constructing clearly impromptu, well-crafted and elegant sentences and paragraphs, responding intelligently to the specifics of questions by adapting phrases and perspectives from the question into his comments — unlike, say, Sarah Palin, who always seemed to be effectively reading off note cards even when they weren’t germane to the question.
Patrick,
I think of Pontius Pilate.
And I think of Jesus’ mild suggestion that we render unto Caesar. During the time of Pilate’s prefecture, no less.
“Congratulations aren’t generalized approval. They’re acknowledgement — of the winner’s achievement, of the respect due the office, and on a basic level of our common humanity.”
Ok, though I think we need to watch the tone of our “Congratulations” and the message it sends. Perhaps, in itself, it is a show of decency. But many Catholics are so lost on what’s at stake that I fear they will read this as an approval. If they can misconstrue the Bishops’ document on voting, this will be a walk in the park.
“How important do you consider the injustices of a scant half-century ago — hardly before I was born, and within Obama’s own lifetime — when “colored” people in America had separate bathrooms, water fountains, schools, bus seats, and so on? To go from the back of the bus to the Oval Office in half a decade seems a pretty big deal. The scars of slavery and racism go deep in our country.”
I consider those injustices to be a very big deal. Is it significant in the sense that a black man is now President and that it happened so quickly? Yes. Clearly something has changed to allow that to happen. But I’m skeptical that that necessarily translates into progress. If we are celebrating Obama because he is black, which it seems that we are, then his victory is reinforcing our racial consciousness just as much, if not more than, the supposed progress this has made to end racism. I think about it this way: it’s almost as if we needed this to happen to believe that there really was no differences between us all that are based on skin color. But if that is so, then it really reveals a very deep fundamental flaw that still exists.
“I get that, I do. Even so, the engineer who builds the fastest server deserves his props, however he intends to use it. And, really, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to hope for some good things amid the evil of an Obama presidency.”
There are alot of people out there with great leadship skills and things that Obama, on a natural level, can do. I’m not impressed. That alone means nothing in terms of the Presidency just like McCain being a war hero meant nothing in itself.
I do hope for some good things, though, as you say and I will pray for him.
“If Obama is a monster, McCain is a little monster. But I don’t like monster imagery. The devil is a monster. Obama is a man; a man who stands for some monstrous things and for some good things. Today I tip my hat to him as a man. Tomorrow I do whatever I can to resist him when he does evil — and support him when he does good.”
You’re right. It’s important to remember that our real enemy is the devil and not our fellow man. Thank you for that reminder. I needed it.
What Jesus said was, Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.
So what do you do when Caesar demands the things that are God’s? What do you do when Caesar, in effect, demands human sacrifice? Jesus also said that a man cannot serve two masters. The time is coming when every Catholic, every Christian, will have a hard choice to make.
I have to say that while I appreciate civility and charity I have to lean more towards those who will never congradulate Obama and don’t think those representing the Catholic Church should either. This election wasn’t a sporting event. It was life or death for millions of people. It’s time to voice our opposition even more strongly, not send congradulations.
“This election wasn’t a sporting event. It was life or death for millions of people. It’s time to voice our opposition even more strongly, not send congradulations.”
That’s a great way of putting it. Much better than I did. Thank you.
I strongly disagree. Abortion may be as absolute a horror as the holocaust, but efforts to compare Obama to Hitler rightly trigger the penumbra of skepticism around Godwin’s law.
There is a vast moral difference between, on the one hand, the enormity of directly sentencing a specific class of persons to death by fiat and by the direct instrumentality of the state and, on the other, that of depriving a specific class of persons of protection under law and actively allowing some members of society to optionally kill other members of society, or even assisting them financially to do so at their discretion. Both are unspeakably evil, but on different orders of magnitude.
Under Hitler and the Third Reich, human beings were executed by functionaries who were merely obeying orders from on high. Families were forcibly ripped apart, children and parents forcibly taken from one another and killed for no other reason than that the Reich had declared it so.
AFAIK, no proposal on Obama’s abortion agenda would directly sentence any particular human being to death. If all mothers loved their babies as much as the victims of the holocaust were loved by their mothers, no pro-death legislation in the world would create an abortion holocaust.
Embryonic stem-cell research is somewhat closer, perhaps, since there we not only have a designated class of those doomed to die but will even, under Obama, actively grow that population in order to victimize them. But, once again, McCain was for ESCR too, at least in the case of the existing population. Does that make McCain equivalent to Hitler? I feel Zippy waiting in the wings…
Tom,
So what do you do when Caesar demands the things that are God’s? What do you do when Caesar, in effect, demands human sacrifice?
Fortunately, we have good, solid magisterial teaching on just that subject. See CCC 2242. We can be both good citizens and good Christians- in fact, we can be better citizens for being better Christians.
Jesus also said that a man cannot serve two masters. The time is coming when every Catholic, every Christian, will have a hard choice to make.
Quite possibly. For the moment, the state does not require evil acts of me, and I can be at once a good American and a faithful Catholic. If the time comes when that changes, I pray that God will grant me the strength and wisdom to know where my true allegiance lies: with my creator and redeemer, Jesus Christ.
Stoodley,
It’s time to voice our opposition even more strongly, not send congradulations.
It seemed to me the bishops were doing both. They’re hoping to work with Obama, not unseat him.
I recognize that it wasn’t a sporting event, of course, which is why I didn’t appeal to the notion of “good sportsmanship.” But, by the same token, the presidency is not a mere trophy or championship ring. Obama hasn’t merely proved his skill on the court. He has become our president-elect.
Abortion did not win this election. Barack Obama won this election. Obama is a man who stands for some horrific things and for some good things and for some things that good and honest men can disagree about.
I certainly agree with the need to voice our opposition more strongly when and where appropriate. I don’t agree with the assessment that now is the “time” to do so, and certainly not with the assessment that the need to do so requires us not to congratulate him.
Good night, here we are again. Before the election, it was “What does a vote mean?” Now it’s “What do congratulations mean?” There’s something less than healthy about this.
After spending the requisite time emitting smoke from my ears, mourning and otherwise gnashing my teeth over the election results, I figured that we better DO SOMETHING BIG to try to save our country and set it back on the right track.
Well, the only power-play left to us (besides the weak one of the Senate filibuster) is the power of prayer.
I’d like to propose a huge prayer initiative.
What I’d like to see is that American Catholics (others could join in too, I suppose) would commit to saying 68,000,000 rosaries/Divine Mercy chaplets for President-elect Obama and for our country in general.
Why 68,000,000? It’s about the number of Catholics in America, and it’s also pretty close to the number of votes cast in favor of Obama.
If you’re interested, let’s think of a name for this initiative and get it going. I’m sure we won’t be able to approach that number before Inauguration Day, but we’ve got four years.
I’m hoping to get someone to set up a website for this initiative, with other historical stories of the power of prayer (Lepanto, 1947 Austria, etc.)
We need a spiffy name so help me out here. I wish we would have done this with President Clinton and Bush. Maybe things would be in a lot better shape now.
Anyone interested?
S.B.:
Fortunately, we have good, solid magisterial teaching on just that subject. See CCC 2242. We can be both good citizens and good Christians- in fact, we can be better citizens for being better Christians.
That depends on the definition of good citizenship.
Here in Canada, a good citizen by definition is one who leaves his religion at the door before coming in to vote. Hardly anyone dares to dispute the conventional wisdom that morality, if based in religion, has no place in political discourse. Only atheists are permitted to vote their conscience; if Christians do so, they are cursed and castigated as theocratic Fascists — even by other Christians.
We have had our Obama, our political rock star anointed by the media, and he nearly destroyed us; our political system is still crippled by the laws he imposed on us. Now you Americans have made the same ghastly mistake. Experto crede.
A.M.D.G.
The fervent support of abortion, partial birth abortion, infanticide, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, euthanasia and same-sex unions are not the actions of a civil and decent man.
So we have a black President-Elect — kind of. He is half-white, and was reared by his white mother and grandmother primarily. He is fiddling with a pen watching the clock for the day he can sign away the lives of many millions of black, white and Native American children, among others. He isn’t much for old and sick people either, apparently. But, well, he is charismatic. He puts on a good show. Not as much as old Jim Jones did, and nothing on the shows a lot of former heads of state have put together, people clapping for days and all, but he is nice to look at. He says he’s a Christian, just doesn’t see any reason to let that influence his behavior or something like that. He says he’s for feeding people and taking care of people’s medical needs, as long as everyone in their families wants them. It’s when people are unpopular he’s willing to let them lay in a boiler room crying until their lungs quit. I guess that won’t ever spill over onto the rest of us. Anyway, so we got a minority group member, sort-of, as a President-Elect. Sort of a Christian too. Cool.
David Mueller, please e-mail me re: your website concept. I would love to run it but I need some tips to learn how. I know a little html. I have no money.
Remember to think big — it gives people confidence to be treated with confidence in their abilities and challenged to care.
Actually, I don’t see a difference between a head of State (the Pope) congratulating the president elect and me congratulating a friend on his marriage outside the church. I won’t argue that getting married outside the church is wrong but if I do it then I am congratulating the person not the sin. Someone explain to me how that is any more wrong than the Pope congratulating Obama on four more years of abortion. Sorry, I don’t get the difference.
Dear Obama,
Congratulations on fooling millions of Americans. Good luck with fooling God.
Obama was not merely McCain lite. McCain was not perfect but was pro-life, he was wrong on stem cell research but science may make that issue moot. McCain was more on a Catholic worldview than Obama. McCain was agains gay marriage and was pro-life in 99% of circumstances.
studdunker: I have already explained that Catholics marrying outside the Church isn’t simply “wrong,” it is NOT MARRIAGE. They are NOT MARRIED, so there is no state of affairs regarding which to congratulate them. Obama IS the president-elect and in the normal course of events WILL BE THE ACTUAL PRESIDENT.
studdunker: I asked the original question to SDG about the marriage congrats thing. After considering SDG’s answer I think we have to understand there is a big difference in this case between condoning Obama’s sinful positions and his election. The Pope is the head of state and offered a very mild congratulatory note in which he asked the Lord to enlighten Obama’s heart. We can judge for ourselves whether we think it is prudent or not for him to offer congrats but I don’t think it was sinful.
I also want to back track here a little and say I did not mean to criticize the Holy Father or Card. George. I merely asked a question and expressed how I felt. If my question has caused scandal then I am sorry I asked it.
Tom,
A good citizen is a good neighbor. If the Canadian establishment (and even many Canadian Christians) wish to redefine the word to mean someone who toes some party line at the expense of the welfare of his neighbors, then he is using a different concept of “citizenship” than I.
I’m sorry to have to add my voice to the dissent, but here it is:
I see where one could say that BO is “decent,” if by decent one means “conforming to the recognized standard of propriety, good taste, modesty, etc., as in behavior or speech.”, or “of fairly attractive appearance,” but not if one means “kind,” or “generous.” A man who listens apathetically to Jill Stanek’s testimony is not my definition of decent. I guess we just have to disagree.
On race, I must also disagree. 🙂 How often did Obama’s staff and others say that “community organizer,” “socialist,” etc, were racist. Obama didn’t attempt to curb much of that, and indeed excused the comparison of John McCain and Sarah Palin to Gov. Wallace.
Anyway, I’ll admit that Obama can spin a vacuous sentence better than anyone since Bill Clinton. 😛 But when he does say something, he usually concludes, when he does conclude, that the Government has not done enough or had enough control over whatever problems he is asked about.
He has, however, had his off-the-cuff missteps:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDJSVPAx8xc
Oh, and I think it is important to not understate the power of the MSM’s silence on Obama’s extreme positions on abortion and FOCA, his admittedly ‘bankrupting’ economic plan, etc. Undoubtedly, their Teflonization of our new president-elect helped him greatly. Never before have I had so little respect for the MSM.
“He is a civil, decent man”
Very disappointing comment from the NCR. I don’t call a man “decent” who’s publicly stated he can’t wait to sign the FOCA decent and wouldn’t vote to protect babies who survived a botched abortion. McCain’s and Obama’s views on the sanctity of life are not even in the same category.
I will pray for Obama but I certainly do not congratulate him.
The gentle tone approach sounds nice but it does need a strong and clear objection. We need to be clear about the danger presented by Obama’s views and the present threat to our freedoms and of course the loves of unborn children and the well being of their mothers. After all they are diplomats.
We are confronted with a real problem. All the rejoicing is the result of an election that was guided by the interest in making history, and the “excitement” of it all, but not about making sound policy or protecting the voiceless or true justice. We need to sound a loud and clear challenge to all the Obama-Palooza partiers that this is no game!
I assure you there has been no dearth of strong and clear objections in virtually every issue and every Register article in which Obama has been mentioned. Even in this one piece, note how it ends. Their clear editorial policy and stance is in no way compromised or confused by this piece (even here, see how it ends). No one who spends any time at all perusing the Register week by week, or day by day on the blogs, would have any doubt where the editors stand, and where they will continue to stand next week and next month and next year as Obama takes specific actions. This response on the occasion of his victory is measured and appropriate.
I still don’t like using the word “decent” to describe Commander-in-Chief to be. Maybe NCR was using definition 7, as in, “He is a civil, decent man, at least every time we’ve seen him, but just in case, you should probably knock first if you want to get your toothbrush, but the door’s closed. He might not be decent.”
“I’m sorry to have to add my voice to the dissent, but here it is:
I see where one could say that BO is “decent,” if by decent one means “conforming to the recognized standard of propriety, good taste, modesty, etc., as in behavior or speech.”, or “of fairly attractive appearance,” but not if one means “kind,” or “generous.” A man who listens apathetically to Jill Stanek’s testimony is not my definition of decent. I guess we just have to disagree.”
Exactly. I will say it again: to claim that Obama is decent in a spirit of congratulations is not measured and appropriate. Why do we need to congratulate him in the first place? Why say anything at all about it?
If he really is the most culture of death candidate we’ve had before us, then I ask again: why pretty it up with PC jargon like “civil” and “decent”. I don’t think we show enough backbone.
As another poster said, this is about lives being lost. Obama was not an “ok choice, but not the best one” for Catholics. He was completely unacceptable. Period. That was our Catholic stance.
I fear that the offering of congratulations, while nice and perhaps a show of “civility” on our part, will cause scandal and perhaps confirm stray Catholics in their support of Obama.
Let me put it to you this way: I know of a person who is a “Catholic”. He is a “social justice Catholic, you may say” He is offended by the Sunday obligation to go to Mass and feels he should go when he chooses to worship.
He believes excommunication is “silly” and that the denial by some Bishops and Priests of communion to some Catholics (mainly those politicians who support things like abortion) is “decidedly un-Christian.”
He also freely admits that he has a low opinion of the Church because of their refusal to ordain women, among other things.
I confronted him about this and advised him charitably to really look at the Church and understand that he is a heretic and that receving communion further is sinful. He responded back that that is his business, essentially.
In terms of abortion and his support of Obama in this election, he claimed that “abortion is a tragedy” that should “nonetheless be kept legal, safe and rare.” He is unapologetic about all of this.
Folks, not only is this heresy, it’s insanity. We are dealing with Catholics who are so lost that it would be easy to despair over it. But of course, we must not and we must go get the lost sheep.
My point is not that congratulations to Obama necessarily means we condone his policies. My point is that to the blind, it will look that way and they will take it as a confirmation of their dissent.
This one person in particular has already pointed to a Catholic newspaper, though not NCR, which often shares his liberal, pick and choose, “spectrum of issues” mindset and believes fully that such a stance IS an option for Catholics.
These folks believe that the Church is a democracy that needs to be forward-looking and all of that. They are in a fundamental misunderstanding and disagreement with the Church.
Yes, the problem goes far deeper than reacting to an election like this and we as Catholics are very much to blame for letting them stray this far. But now is the time for tough love. PC-ness and bland, obligatory statements of congratulations are not helping.
Ha! 🙂
Since you may be using this online source, I think there are senses here worth objecting to in Obama’s case, such as “respectable; worthy” (definition 2), “adequate; fair” (definition 3), etc.
However, a case could be made for definition 1, “conforming to the recognized standard of propriety, good taste, modesty, etc., as in behavior or speech.” These terms in turn would be taken in senses relating to etiquette and decorum rather than morality or rectitude.
Going a bit further, Obama does bring positives along with the negatives I’ve worked hard to establish and condemn.
As a husband and a father, he seems to conform to the standard upheld by Catholic moral teaching in ways that, for example, his defeated Republican rival hasn’t.
As a role model to many in the black community particularly, obviously his abortion advocacy is a fatal negative and his past has its checkered aspects, but he’s a guy who took his education seriously, earned a couple of degrees, taught at the university level, etc., and, again, is married to the mother of his children.
At the risk of approaching Biden’s bizarre comments about how “clean” he is, Obama’s disciplined, statesmanlike bearing and elocution respresent a positive image of black achievement and ambition. In many respects, young black American Obama-wanna-bes could do a lot worse.
It may not be fair that the accomplishments of a privileged liberal like Obama* somehow count for more in the media and in some sectors of the black community than those of, say, a black conservative like Clarence Thomas who was born into abject poverty and lifted himself up by his bootstraps. Be that as it may, the symbolic and cultural value of America’s first black president is an undeniable and significant milestone. To go in half a century from the back of the bus to the Oval Office is a momentous thing; we may reasonably hope it will have positive implications in American society.
Whatever his associations and ideology, the tone Obama has projected in this election is not the resentful, agitating sort of rhetoric that has often come from black leaders like Jackson and Sharpton. He projects, and for many people embodies, positive, can-do optimism and hope.
One could argue that people are hoping that the government will magically solve all their problems and take care of them. Maybe. Certainly there are unreasonable expectations out there. Some people seem to think Obama will sweep into office and suddenly there will be jobs, jobs, jobs. But, again, if people are excited about jobs, about the opportunity to work hard and support themselves and their own, they could be doing a lot worse.
* Edit: Apparently I am wrong about this.
Incidentally, a clarification:
“NCR” always refers to the National Catholic Reporter — a very different publication from the National Catholic Register, the paper I write for, which is always called “the Register,” not “NCR.”
“NCR” all but endorsed Obama — and sanctimoniously scolded the bishops for their anti-abortion campaigning. The Register, after tireless anti-Obama reporting, thanked the bishops for their unprecedented efforts.
In my judgment, the Register’s willingness to offer Obama congratulations mixed with exhortations to Catholics and a firm restatement of their commitment to Catholic moral teaching is well worth it, and need not trouble any Catholic. Likewise the Pope’s congratulations to Obama, and the USCCB’s.
To worries that it could lead to scandal, once again, as in the election itself, I reply that all reasonable courses include potential good and potential harm. As with Jesus eating with the Pharisees on the one hand and with “sinners” on the other, what the Register stands for, what the Pope stands for, and in this election even what the bishops stand for is sufficiently clear that this act need not engender any confusion as to what this act does and does not mean.
OTOH, offering congratulations to Obama (especially mixed with exhortations to Catholics and a firm restatement of their commitment to Catholic moral teaching) is helpful to many in ways that yet another reiteration of how bad abortion is, by itself, would not be.
For all who objected to “Bush Derangement Syndrome”: Be aware that Obama Derangement Syndrome now waits in the wings. Lo, I tell you beforehand. (Well, not really, since it’s already underway in some quarters. Guess I’ll never be a prophet.)
There have been many good points to demonstrate why Obama is not decent or civil. One more: during the campaign he used threats, intimidation and lawyers to shut down people who were asking tough questions and/or uncomfortable truths about his background.
Not decent. Not civil.
I will not offer words of comfort or encouragement to this evil man as he embarks on his mission.
Praise, flattery, consent, and silence are a few of the standard “ways of aiding another in sin”.
JohnD: FWIW, the McCain campaign appears to have used similar tactics, though for all I know you wouldn’t have voted for McCain either. Also, not everything that was done by Obama advocates was necessarily sanctioned by Obama himself.
What you will or won’t do is, of course, your call. How you judge the actions of others is another matter.
There are always sins in the opposite direction of the ones we are most concerned about. We are often inattentive to these, and the danger they pose to us is all the greater because we fall into them at precisely the moment that we are most convinced that what we are really doing is avoiding sin.
Does this push Biden’s well-known support of “choice” even more into the public forum, now that he’s vice-president, elect? If so, does he become even more liable for Eucharistic sanctions?
Don’t you miss the days when a St. Thomas Becket would upbraid a King Henry II?
The Chicken
I wrote:
However, according to Jonathan Prejean, I’m wrong about Obama’s background. He apparently grew up poor, like Thomas. That would seem to enhance Obama’s credentials as a role model for many underprivileged young black Americans.
So it’s still unfair that Thomas is castigated because he’s conservative, but the symbolic and cultural significance of a black president who grew up poor is even more significant than otherwise.
If anybody is interested in joining, the prayer initiative is described in more detail at:
http://rosariesforlife.wordpress.com/
Please drop a comment if you are able to join in the novena, and/or interested in the initiative in general.
“the tone Obama has projected in this election is not the resentful, agitating sort of rhetoric that has often come from black leaders like Jackson and Sharpton.”
At the risk of being labeled with ODS (Obama Derangement Syndrome), I’ll bite. 🙂
Talking about “these small towns”: “And it’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them….
That is agitating. Bonus points for accusing others of being resentful, and then saying that he meant that people fall back on things they can trust. Yeah, antipathy to people who aren’t like them is something Americans fall back on and trust. Shame on the Government for forcing people to trust in God and not Government. :-7
Sure. And that was clearly a mistake. It cost him, and he learned from it. My point is, other people sound like this all the time. An integral ingredient in Obama’s success has been not sounding like this.
I furthermore don’t know how significant his election is, ethnicity-wise.
The whole race was pretty much split along party lines, and millions of people who usually vote for the GOP stayed home on Tuesday, which essentially gave Obama the gap he needed.
The fact that the second weakest possible candidate of the incumbent party, the party of an extremely unpopular president, the president who started a war which said candidate supported, was narrowly defeated in those states (and the popular vote) he lost, is telling of the fact that almost half the voters judged Obama (hopefully) on the content of his character and found him wanting.
Liberals, who voted Obama into office, don’t have a stellar track record with other black candidates. Michael Steele, Catholic conservative, had Oreos thrown at him by white liberals. Clarence Thomas, Catholic conservative, was called “brother lite” by Bill Cosby. The message is clear: you are not really black if you aren’t liberal.
I hail the history of this election, but I mourn the fact that the man elected, whose wife’s ancestors had their humanity denied, denies the humanity of other humans in need of defense. The latter sad fact overwhelms the former historic fact for me.
End rant. 🙂
“My point is, other people sound like this all the time.”
Yet whenever Obama speaks off the cuff, he sounds less reasonable than he would have us believe. Plumbergate, and old interviews of his, are at odds with the image he projects.
Did the Pope congratulate Hitler when he was elected chancellor of germany? Were the circumstances totally different? I really wish to know.
The truly chilling thing about all of this is that BO is calling for the installation of “civilian police forces” of sorts. Sort of like the brown shirts that the nazis instituted.
Like the isrealites of old, we have been handed over to our enemies and for the same reason. Apostasy.
“Second, whatever else this election means … Obama is the not only the first black U.S. president, but AFAIK the first black head of state of any Western power, and that in a nation where he could have been sold as a slave little more than a lifetime ago. One 109-year-old black woman who voted for Obama was the daughter of a slave. That is worth something.”
It is noteworthy that, apparently, when it was suggested prior to this election that the election of Obama would be a step forward for black Americans, you did not lift a finger to affirm that and in fact you, apparently, maintained that it wasn’t with some even asserting that it would be a step BACKWARD for black Americans for various reasons. Now when there is nothing at stake and when a commercial or personal interest, the NCR, is involved, there is a different attitude and response to a dissimilar suggestion from another that though dissimilar is disanalagous in a way which can potentially betray moral inconsistency. Known not is the reason for the inconsistency and I won’t assume it is malicious or dishonest, but it is striking. Let not a man nor a race of people’s honor go undefended for the sake of expediency even the expediency of a quixotic dash to save the lives of the unborn by defeating the man by voting for McCain instead.
CT/cath mav: I feel no need to dignify your claims and judgments with any reply. You can’t think you are serving the good and the beautiful this way. I literally cannot imagine what motivates you.
Barb: FWIW, apostasy entails renunciation of the faith. Julian was an apostate; Arius was only a heretic and the worst popes were only flagrant sinners.
From Tom Hoopes’ editorial:>
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This is incorrect. NEVER before has race had MORE to do with an election, as evidenced by the incredibly staggering imbalance between minorities who voted for Obama versus McCain. In too many cases, Obama got the vote precisely BECAUSE he was black. The Curt Jester rightly calls this the ‘Affirmative Action’ election, in which race was subtly played up by one nominee and the voters excluded everything but that nominee’s race in their choice. America is in a weird, weird place right now.
Barb,
Did the Pope congratulate Hitler when he was elected chancellor of germany? Were the circumstances totally different? I really wish to know.
Yes, the circumstances were quite different. For one thing, Hitler was not elected into a nation that already had a standing policy of slaughtering Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals, and the disabled. Our nation has had abortion on demand for 35 years. Hitler’s election meant much more significant changes for Germany than Obama’s does for America.
But Pius XI did ask then-Cardinal Pacelli to sign the Reichskonkordat with Hitler, although he followed it up a few years later with Mit Brennender Sorge, attacking National Socialist ideology and practice. If HH BXVI needs to follow his congratulations with yet another Church condemnation of the practice of abortion, I suspect he will.
I don’t know the answer to your question, but in addition to Beastly’s point above, as I pointed out earlier, nothing Obama is talking about doing or is likely to do in office is on an order of magnitude comparable to from the evil Hitler implemented.
The evil of abortion is an absolute evil comparable to the Holocaust, but the abortion holocaust is not being actively carried out or implemented by any branch of the government, and/or at the behest of government authority, against specific government-targeted victims, including children of unwilling parents, etc.
None of this makes the total evil of abortion itself any less horrific — if anything the complicity of the mother adds a new level of horror — but it does alter how responsibility is apportioned, and government per se does not have the same responsibility in the abortion holocaust that the Third Reich had in the Nazi Holocaust.
Add to that the point Beastly makes, that the Reich’s policy toward the unworthy was not something that Hitler largely or significantly inherited from a previous generation, but was fundamentally something he and his supporters championed, shaped and implemented from scratch, and you have two utterly disparate levels of moral culpability.
Charel Weng,
Your comments like your new handle are silly.
It is noteworthy to point out that you said you would not post comments here anymore….
or maybe you are impersonating yourself?
Take care and God bless,
Inocencio
J+M+J
The Pope, the bishops and prominent civil leaders likley have justified reasons for offering congratulations in order to establish diplomatic relations and prevent civil strife. Not so, it seems to me, for the Register.
I think the Register has made a huge mistake and will be hounded for it. You can argue the denotations of what “decent” means if you want, but I am confident the connotations are what people interpret. I would be willing to bet the Register’s general readership is quite disturbed by the reference to this “decent” man and the Register’s “like” for him.
Whatever good effect the Register might have in mind with this congratulatory note, I think the risk of offering scandal and confusion and the subsequent feeling of betrayal likely outweigh the proposed good, which is lost on me.
Finally, prescinding from practical effects, I fail to see the good in gratuitous, deferential recognition of someone who espouses views that patently promote, endorse and enable attacks on defenseless human beings, regardless of other praiseworthy qualities that he may posses. Help me see!
Anonymous, please use a handle. Thank you.
I’m glad you can see your way clear to allowing the probability that the pope and the bishops know what they’re doing.
As for the Register, I’ve heard stuff like this from time to time regarding some of my movie reviews, and every Catholic publication in the world gets it from time to time.
In general — prescinding from judgments in the present case — my basic stance tends to be: People need to get a grip, grow up, get some perspective, stop being so easily wigged out. Such thinking often reflects a brittle ritual-purity fortress mentality that is more self-destructive than anything else.
Those in Catholic media have an obligation to call ’em as we see ’em. This includes making appropriate allowances for perception and occasions of scandal — and those, too, we have to call as we see. You pretty much can’t turn around without offending someone. You have to try to do your best and leave it to the Lord. If people don’t find it helpful, they’ll go elsewhere.
One thing I do know: Nobody is served by hyper-concern for the most scrupulous possible objections to anything that could possibly be scandalous to anyone. I’ve seen that in action and the results aren’t pretty.
First, the man is a human being created in God’s image and redeemed by the Incarnation and Passion of Jesus Christ, and we owe him the respect and honor due to every bearer of our common humanity.
Second, he is our president-elect, and we owe him the special respect and honor due to those who bear authority.
Third, whatever positive qualities he has and whatever positive aspects of his agenda there may be must in justice be duly acknowledged and credited even as we oppose him and his agenda where opposition is necessary.
Finally, precisely because at the core of our being we so utterly oppose some of the things he stands for, it is appropriate and salutary on occasion specifically to remind ourselves of these things, without ever forgetting the rest of the picture.
If not now, on the occasion of his election, then when?
I don’t think most will be scandalized. I just can’t bring myself to call him “decent”. Not, I think, because I’m a petty jerk, but because of the reasons I have mentioned.
I acknowledge that Barack Obama will be the president. God save us from his promises.
“I feel no need to dignify your claims and judgments with any reply. You can’t think you are serving the good and the beautiful this way. I literally cannot imagine what motivates you.”
I made no judgment regarding you and I applaud the steps the church has taken by not being quick to assume suicides go to hell and denying the funeral rites as was official law and policy in the past; I take the new church as the model or inspiration to follow and reject the judgmentalism of the old church; I would hope you would do the same.
As for “claims”; you must have a short memory or an ignorance of the meaning of “you” or perhaps something else is involved, or perhaps not, as above I make no judgment.
Question: Is anyone here willing to say that the election of Obama, who would be the first African American President, would be bad for the country?
Answer: Yes. The election of Obama would be a first-rate disaster for the country. The ethnicity and continental origin of his father would do nothing to change that.
P.S. In fact, Obama’s paternal racial origins would, if anything, make his election an even greater calamity: the first African-American President of the United States an ardent supporter of the slaughter of unborn children? The first African-American president should be a noble and virtuous man, a man of enlightened moral principles.
http://www.jimmyakin.org/2008/09/elections-vot-1/comments/page/2/
So the interlocutor expressed then that Obama’s black heritage is not something of positive significance, not merely that it wasn’t something of positive significance that would outweigh the negative of abortion, but that it is something indeed of NEGATIVE significance for reasons not so clear but I assume he has in mind that it would be an embarassment to blacks or a shameful dishonor on blacks. I have a question that I doubt you will answer but that would reveal if not moral inconsistency at least intellectual inconsistency. (BTW I think you confused on “moral” — “moral” there means, well pertaining to morality as in of inconsistency of a moral nature, it’s not referring to being malicious as I thought I had made clear).
The revelatory question I have that is pressing on my mind is:
Should black Americans be proud that Obama has been elected President?
If you answer, yes, then irrespective of what you may or may not have said or done back then, at least you are being consistent now. If you answer, no, then it is difficult to see how yours is an intellectually or morally consistent position.
BTW, I believe in the future there will be a technological and medical advance that renders the abortion discussion moot from a “Catholic” perspective. There will be technology that will be able to put the mother’s life in danger if not for an “indirect abortion” and technology that would unfailing be able to then effect the “indirect abortion.” This way Catholic morality that is okey dokey with “indirect abortion” would be satisfied while the spiritual and material desires of a species worth more than reproductive utility and defined by more than reproductive potential would be met per individual choice. This proposal would satisfy double effect as much as indirect abortion itself would. For putting the mother’s life in danger is not intrinsically evil — if it were, then it’d be intrinsically evil for a fireman to put his life in danger. There is a good effect, namely the liberty to engage in indirect abortion which adherents of the semi-official doctrine of probabilism contend is a good in an of itself irrespective of whether the act at which you are at liberty to engage in would be licit prior to the probabilism analysis. There is an evil effect, namely the death of the embryo. But the good effect is not brought about by the evil effect, for again the good effect is not not bearing a child but merely the intrinsic liberty to be free to engage in the indirect abortion. So either the semi-official, some say official, doctrine of probabilism or this portion of it must go or support for indirect abortion must go and the principle of double effect revisited.
Double effect is a good principle but you can’t argue “I am not killing a person, I am merely separating parts of his body by igniting this bomb; I am not intending to kill him; that’s merely an effect” even if that were a truthful statement since the separation of parts of the body is too closely tied on an objective physical level with death. The same is true of “indirect abortion.” The means by which “indirect abortion” is effected involve things that cannot be legitimately seperated from the killing of the person.
In case you didn’t notice, yes I have moral qualms about abortion and I have always had such qualms, anything to the contrary notwithstanding. But the principle of subsdiarity, a Catholic principle, — not to be put to the extreme when it comes to economic or practical matters — entails that abortion be dealt with best not on the federal or state or local level but on the level of doctor and patient, believer and priest, woman and husband, daughter and mother, and above all the individual whose choice, however wrong it may be must be final. The inside of your body is not subject to the jurisdiction of the State. That is a violation of the right to privacy, the right which forms the basis of Roe v Wade.
Look at it this way. If your body is subject to the jurisdiction of the State when it comes to danger to a human life, then the State would be just in prohibiting you from eating unhealthy food as they have done in some places that make transfat foods inaccessible and de facto prohibited. It is only when your body affects something outside your body … like body odor or public nudity or being noisy … that the State can in principle justly regulate its activity. Is the zygote outside the body of the woman? No. If it were, then you are contending that the body of a woman has literally a hole in it. That is theologically and scientifically silly and demonstrably false. Whatever it may mean for sin and whatever it may mean for justice, the ends cannot justify the means here — this is at least what deontologist ethics would say as opposed to consequentialism. Maybe your rejection of deontology is what causes you to embrace the violation of the privacy of women. I know that if it were men, there would be no consequential societal debate about it.
I’m reading Catholic Maverick’s last comment (well, a few seconds ago I was), and I find the grammar hard to follow.
I have a comment on the reasons black Americans should be worried about Obama’s presidency beyond those they share with other Americans.
It’s more than a shame and dishonor — after all, he represents no one but himself and those who support him, who are anonymous for the most part — it’s a danger to the hope of a future, different, black president, who will be more likely remembered kindly by the future generations. He is setting black America back a long way, because the next several viable black candidates will be unjustly associated with him by generations who will likely have learned painfully from this man.
Catholic Maverick wrote that subsidiarity means that it is better “that abortion be dealt with best not on the federal or state or local level but on the level of doctor and patient, believer and priest, woman and husband, daughter and mother, and above all the individual whose choice, however wrong it may be must be final.”
This is a principle that would apply in exactly the same way to Dahmer, Bundy, killer cult leader Jeffrey Lundgren and all the other individuals who have made a firm and personal choice of what to do with those who were on their own property, and made the choice to kill them. The inside of one’s body is almost always one’s own business. The exception, as with exceptions to all other rights to privacy, is when another human being is there whose life hangs in the balance and who has no protection but the thin hope of some outside intervention when a more powerful person decides to take his or her life. The zygote is indeed inside her mother’s abdomen (most aborted babies whose sexes have been identified are girls), just as the boys were in Dahmer’s own apartment in the night, the girls and women in Bundy’s private automobile, and the mother, father and three little girls were in Lundgren’s living room, relaxing after a communal dinner. Private places, private times, but with a tremendous difference — there were lives in immediate jeopardy.
SDG:
Sorry, I did not intenitonally post anonymously. I just failed to enter the field before posting.
As I see it, bypassing congratulating the president-elect has nothing whatsoever to do with a fortress mentality, unless that is something that is expected according to protocol due to one’s position. It neither has anything to do with “being so wigged out.” It has to do with what is good.
Sure, maybe you media guys cannot avoid all scandal, but I detect a bit of an edge from you about this issue. I did not say anything about hyper-concern.
Of course, we owe him the respect and honor due to our common humanity. Of course, he is our president-elect, and we owe him the special respect and honor due to those who bear authority. Of course, whatever positive qualities he has and whatever positive aspects of his agenda there may be, must in justice be duly acknowledged and credited even as we oppose him and his agenda where opposition is necessary.
However, Obama voted for a baby born alive to be killed. He promised his FIRST order of business would be to sign FOCA. To call one who takes such actions “civil,” “impressive,” “decent,” “a great man,” seems not to be just.
NCR is lying about McCain. He promised in his campaign to only fund adult stem cell research and rejected his prior position on embryonic stem cell research. Obama supports clonning babies and then killing them for research to the tune of millions and has voted against adult stem cell research in addition to his support for abortion.
“We like Obama better.” How infantile. If Obama supported racism or wife beating, etc he would have been rejected by these people, which only shows that their consciences are not in communion with the Church, they do not truly believe that abortion is the murder of an innocent or their moral calculus would have been different.
cath mav:
Nice try.
You just now quoted me and then immediately went on to address “you.” There is such a thing as context, and in this context “you” here is clearly understood to function as second person singular, referring to me. Yet, strangely, you don’t now quote my actual response to the interlocutor’s question, which is as follows:
“I thought I had been saying that as emphatically as I knew how. Of course there would be good consequences of an Obama presidency, as well as bad. And the same is true of McCain. That is a trivial acknowledgement. It’s the degree of gravity and the ratios that makes the difference.”
I stand by everything I have said in this connection and I deny any inconsistency, moral or intellectual.
I wouldn’t presume to tell anyone how they “should feel,” and while I’ve discussed Obama with black friends at church who voted against him, this specific question hasn’t come up.
FWIW, my race aside, I clearly do regard this milestone as having positive significance as well as disastrous likely consequences. I’ve already stated that above, and FWIW I made a big point of the positive end of things with my kids last night (they are already well aware of the downside, so I wanted to balance out the picture.
I would hazard a guess that if I were black, I would likely feel both pride and grief.
Gunnar Gundersen: Put a cork in the “lying” crap. Feel free to lodge whatever putative corrections you feel necessary, but please refrain from accusing others without sufficient warrant of violating the eighth commandment. Because that is called, you know, violating the eighth commandment.
If by “NCR” you mean the Register, you need to read more carefully before you start accusing others of sin.
Serena I apologize for my poor writing and you make an excellent point, the same one that the pro-legalized prostitution, pro no more prosecution for victimless crimes, libertarian/Republican, Baldwin endorser, Ron Paul made (he is pro-life). But my counter is that there is a big difference between one’s home and one’s body. Consider embassies. Embassies are on physical American soil but have a special status in terms of sovereignty and jurisdiction. So someone in someone’s home would also have a special status in that person’s property and home. But a person’s body is more intimate than a nation’s physical soil or a person’s property and home. Your body is not just something you lug along with you. It is part of you and it is you. Your body is as much “you” as your mind is you or your heart is you or your soul is you. Humans are created both body and soul and both are equally you, both integral to your being.
Let me ask you this question:
Is it the responsibility of the American govt to protect the rights of foreigners living in foreign lands, to be the policeman of the whole world and intervene whenever it is at all possible regardless of the cost in treasure, blood (overall less lost than those saved), sweat and tears?
99% of Americans and pro-lifers answer: Hell, no!
But then why is it the responsibility of the American govt to protect the rights of humans living within the body of women? These humans according to Aquinas (after “quickening” and receiving a rational soul) are part of the women. If govt has no business policing the whole world, what business does it have in policing the bodies of all American women?
We trade with China despite the enormous human rights violations and many pro-lifers think it wise to do so. Why shouldn’t we also acquiesce to human rights violations within women’s bodies? Because they are not as powerful as China? Because China is more important to our pocket book than poor women?
I think we know the answer. Maybe the pro-life position is right, but the pro-life movement isn’t right. If the pro-life position is right, there’s a lot of purification that needs to take place within the movement. And I’ve got to tell ya, that voting for McCain is scandalous to pro-choicers. Purity begins in one’s self. Remember Mother Teresa’s wisdom: God does not call us to be successful [for ex. vote for McCain and topple Obama]; God only calls us to be faithful [for ex. abstain from voting or vote for a truly pro-life candidate or candidate of integrity like Ron Paul or any libertarian party candidate in these times]
Okay, CT, you’ve stopped being funny.
I… reject the judgmentalism of the old church; I would hope you would do the same.
Shame on you for your judgmentalism vis-a-vis the old church!
So the interlocutor expressed then that Obama’s black heritage is not something of positive significance, not merely that it wasn’t something of positive significance that would outweigh the negative of abortion, but that it is something indeed of NEGATIVE significance for reasons not so clear but I assume he has in mind that it would be an embarassment to blacks or a shameful dishonor on blacks.
What??? This from the guy who’s always complaining that we don’t make the most charitable possible assumptions about him. What your interlocutor said was no judgment of Obama’s heritage at all. It was a judgment of how his policy + his heritage would affect our country.
There will be technology that will be able to put the mother’s life in danger if not for an “indirect abortion” and technology that would unfailing be able to then effect the “indirect abortion.” This way Catholic morality that is okey dokey with “indirect abortion” would be satisfied
You have gone and smoked yourself stupid. Put down the crack pipe and give Betty Ford a call.
while the spiritual and material desires of a species worth more than reproductive utility and defined by more than reproductive potential would be met per individual choice.
Yup. ‘Cause Heaven knows chastity doesn’t accomplish this.
This proposal would satisfy double effect as much as indirect abortion itself would. For putting the mother’s life in danger is not intrinsically evil — if it were, then it’d be intrinsically evil for a fireman to put his life in danger.
Um… The difference is that the fireman does it to save lives, rather than to eliminate them. Firemen don’t have the moral right to put their lives in danger for no reason- less so for wicked reasons.
There is a good effect, namely the liberty to engage in indirect abortion
Well, at least you’ve stopped pretending to be Catholic…
There is an evil effect, namely the death of the embryo. But the good effect is not brought about by the evil effect, for again the good effect is not not bearing a child but merely the intrinsic liberty to be free to engage in the indirect abortion.
If this were the case, then even direct abortion would be permissible, since the death of the child would only be the means to an end, rather than end itself- the unfortunate side effect of living free of the consequences of sex.
In case you didn’t notice, yes I have moral qualms about abortion and I have always had such qualms, anything to the contrary notwithstanding.
I always wonder about people like you. What kind of moral qualms do you have?
But the principle of subsdiarity, a Catholic principle, — not to be put to the extreme when it comes to economic or practical matters — entails that abortion be dealt with best not on the federal or state or local level but on the level of doctor and patient, believer and priest, woman and husband, daughter and mother, and above all the individual whose choice, however wrong it may be must be final.
Good point. Let’s treat infanticide and child molestation the same way. As long as a family only molests and kills its own children, the rest of society should just look away. Or, if the citizens of a town decide to practice ritual human sacrifice, we should ignore it as long as they only sacrifice their fellow townsmen. Heaven forbid we should ignore the principle of subsidiarity in order to be good neighbors to our fellow human beings.
The inside of your body is not subject to the jurisdiction of the State. That is a violation of the right to privacy, the right which forms the basis of Roe v Wade.
So… if I stole your kidney and put it in someone else, would you call the cops?
Look at it this way. If your body is subject to the jurisdiction of the State when it comes to danger to a human life, then the State would be just in prohibiting you from eating unhealthy food as they have done in some places that make transfat foods inaccessible and de facto prohibited. It is only when your body affects something outside your body … like body odor or public nudity or being noisy … that the State can in principle justly regulate its activity. Is the zygote outside the body of the woman? No. If it were, then you are contending that the body of a woman has literally a hole in it.
So… if I stabbed a pregnant woman and killed her child, I could be charged with assault, but not with murder? The state obviously has jurisdiction over the woman, but not over the baby inside her?
Kirk: No worries.
“Bypassing congratulations” is fine. I’m talking about responding to a source taking an action, like “congratulating Obama and noting some of the more positive aspects of this outcome while exhorting Catholics and promising to fight Obama tooth and nail on abortion,” the prudence of which some might in part question, dispute or criticize.
I have no quarrel with anyone questioning, disputing or criticizing the prudence of something. It’s when people start “hounding,” professing themselves “deeply disturbed” or feeling “scandal,” “confusion” and “betrayal” — none of which, I note, you have said describes you yourself, just some of the Register’s readership — that the “edge” comes into my reply and I start wanting to say things like: Grow up. Get a grip. Get some perspective.
It bears repeating that “scandal” means giving bad example that leads others into sin in imitation of us. It is not technically correct to say that we are “scandalized” when we are really only shocked and offended by behavior that we are not in the least likely to repeat any time soon. Actually, technically, we may be in a related sense scandalized, though not in the sense we imagine, if we proceed to judge others uncharitably for what we consider their shocking and offensive behavior.
I don’t quarrel with your feeling uncomfortable with words like “civil,” “impressive” and “decent,” though they seem reasonable to me. FWIW, the phrase “a great man” does not appear to be used here (Obama’s supporters are congratulated on accomplishing “something great,” which, suitably defined in scope and meaning, seems to me a fair statement).
Beastly:
Let’s avoid this sort of thing, please.
cath mav:
Governments are uniquely responsible for the welfare of those persons who are members of their own communities. Abortion both kills some members of the community and makes others into murderers. Please see Evangelium Vitae (and my Part 2 post) for the moral and civil logic on this.
You just now quoted me and then immediately went on to address “you.” There is such a thing as context, and in this context “you” here is clearly understood to function as second person singular, referring to me. Yet, strangely, you don’t now quote my actual response to the interlocutor’s question, which is as follows:
Um, SDG, you are included in “you”; it’s just that that “you” is plural, inclusive of you and others too. And you don’t need any fancy context to know this; you need basic knowledge of the inherent meaning of “you” which is not non-standard at all and also of basic grammar:
“It is noteworthy that, apparently, when it was suggested prior to this election that the election of Obama would be a step forward for black Americans, you did not lift a finger to affirm that and in fact you, apparently, maintained that it wasn’t with some even asserting that it would be a step BACKWARD for black Americans for various reasons.”
Maybe if I had written “with some of you” you would have seen it more clearly. This construction, bolded above, as is, entails that the “you” in that bolded construction is plural. It would not be possible for that “you” to be singular since one could not extract a proper subset from “you” were it single.
I am sure you are intelligent enough to see this now that it has been pointed out to you. I won’t hold my breath waiting for your apology though since in the other thread you promised an apology for saying I was a non-theist on which supposed fact your criticism of me was predicated and even spoke of how you would rejoice if you learned I was a theist, but then declined to actually apologize for saying I was a non-theist, indicating only that you would be happy to do so should you have occasion to actually to do so … at least that is how I would interpret your remark there if I were to employ the same obsessive critical spirit you have employed here with respect to me. In evangelical Christian circles, this obsessive critical spirit is considered by some to be demonic.
I am open to joining a Christian community btw. However, I am not open to joining a Christian community which says that you can’t be a member while being pro-choice. I know a woman who was raped and whose experience has shaped her pro-choice views. She is dear to me and I could not bring myself to betraying what I know in my heart to be true. Fortunately, the church does not teach that not enforcing laws against abortion is intrinsically evil or that voting for the same is intrinsically evil. It is abortion itself that is thought intrinsically evil, not the toleration of it by civil authority. I know you know this.
Being pro-choice for reasons of civil prudence while believing that abortion is murder is not a position considered heretical or excommunicable or exclusory. We need more pro-choice Catholics. I hope people are not deterred from becoming Catholic for fear that they would have to abandon their pro-choice values. We need also more Catholics and priests who realize that Jesus is not and has never been God. Saying Jesus is God is like saying a mosquito is God. THe gap between the created human nature of Jesus — Catholic theologians acknowledge the human nature is itself created, a creature as such — and the divine reality that is God is an infinite gap, a gap comparable between the gap between a mosquito and God. As blasphemous and as outrageous it is to say that a mosquito is God, so too it is to say that Jesus is God. To put it another way it would be like saying that a bacterium is a human person … except that gap though great is finite, so the only analogous thing is to say that a mosquito is a divine person. I suppose some Catholic theologians might defend the ability of God to in principle to effect a hypostatic union with the created nature of a mosquito such that the non-rational hypostasis a mosquito ordinarily would be associated with is not present at creation, replaced with the rational hypostasis of God. That would maintain consistency but it would confirm the absurdity.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24568784-5006786,00.html
This priest is in good standing with the church. He is not under any censure AFAIK. As a priest — this is something Catholic converts or JPII generation Catholics may not know — he is actually part of the magisterium though in a way different than bishops. “Magister” means “teacher” or “master” and a priest as a coworker of his bishop truly shares in the teaching office of the Church and benefits from the attendent charism.
SDG,
I’ll take a look later. But, I don’t think it plausible to say that a zygote in the womb of a woman is a member of the community. That’s what your argument rests on.
What social function does it have? Countless zygotes every day die of natural causes. If fertilization was when personhood began, why would God set up nature such that persons in the natural course of events in the majority of cases don’t live a single day outside of the womb? Are all these countless zygotes going to Limbo? I mean, is the natural, matter of course, non-induced abortions of these countless zygotes a punishment of the fall by God? Something that Lilith, the rejected woman of Adam, whom Rabbis in their midrash know of and point to Genesis’ discrepant account of creation as evidence of the existence of, effects? (Lilith btw is actually explicitly BY NAME mentioned in later canonical scripture — in the Roman Catholic canon as well as the Protestant canon … so she does exist according to the Bible)
As an aside, my hero Bill Maher was on Mike Huckabee’s show on Fox News recently. Huckabee said he liked Bill Maher, admired him, etc. Bill Maher said he liked Huckabee too and wouldn’t be on his show if he didn’t. Maher also gracefully and politely indicated his opinion to Huckabee upon questioning that he viewed most religious beliefs including Christian belief as a “neurological disorder.” Huckabee continued to be just as polite and just as dazzling in his smile.
On a more relevant aside, in am ambiguous comment, Pat Buchanan said that the economic crisis in view of a new second equity market crash that hit after the election would be “first and foremost” as an issue for the new President. It SEEMED he was stating that this is at should be. So even Buchanan knows that when your house is burning you don’t stay in the church to pray; when the economic health of the nation the president is sworn to serve is in crisis condition, you don’t try to outlaw abortion, defend traditional marriage or pursue social issues. Those can wait. You have to know that the vast majority of Americans even those who support traditional marriage and some restrictions on abortion feel this way. It is only a small fervent minority that feel differently.
Charel Weng,
You have my pity and my prayers….
Take care and God bless,
Inocencio
J+M+J
Beastly,
Those things you mentioned as counterexamples to subsidiarity involve things:
1. Morally unconscienable.
2. Related to 1, subject to the jurisdiction of civil society, i.e. the state.
If abortion were truly comparable to say the Holocaust as you and other pro-lifers contend — SDG apparently thinks the Holocaust was more evil or at least he gives that impression — then there is a moral inconsistency in what pro-lifers say and do. This is not even addressing the moral inconsistencies as regards punishing a woman who, abused by her husband, hires a hitman to kill him — most pro-lifers still think such a woman should be given jail time, but most pro-lifers do not say women who hire abortionists to kill their “children” should be given jail time. Most pro-lifers also do not when asked how many children they have count the one they are pregnant with as one of them. Nor is the day one is conceived, if known in rare cases, considered significant by most pro-lifers; generally in those cases, it is uncomfortable for obvious reasons to think about it.
Anyway, the inconsistency is this. Pro-lifers — most anyway — condemn abortion clinic bombings, even ones that involve or would involve no loss of life but only destruction of property. They condemn also things like computer-based attacks on abortion clinics and the like. In the Wild West of the Internet you see talk now and then of secularists wanting to do such virtual cyber attacks against organizations they deem bad, but none from the mainstream of pro-lifers (or any actually that I know of). Now let’s go to the Holocaust which pro-lifers liken abortion to. Pro-lifers often join in critizing the Allies for not bombing some of the facilities or infrastructure used to slaughter Jews or transport them. Pro-lifers also would, had this then be relevant, support computer-based attacks on those facilities, even if the U.S. had not declared war or been at war. Pro-lifers give support to hypothetical Germans bombing the death camps or destroying property associated with the camps or to Germans who kill the officers who, in conformity with German law, carried out orders in slaughtering innocents just as abortionists are in conformity with American law.
Yet when it comes to attacks on life or mere property or computer-based attacks, pro-lifers are either reluctant to be forthright or deny — in most cases sincerely — that they support such things.
Most don’t have a good intellectual response to the inconsistency. Those that do, say that the difference is that the German regime could not have been changed for the better by peaceful means working within the legal system whereas the American one can. Does that mean then that if Roe v Wade (described as “settled law” by J. Roberts) stands the test of time, and like Miranda, accumulates such stare decisis inertia (which inertia depends not solely on time passed but on its being repeatedly reaffirmed as J. Roberts noted with respect to Roe has been the case as well as on some other factors) that realistically abortion as a regime would continue just as realistically it would in Germany that then all these intellectually honest pro-lifers should be immediately suspected of national disloyalty and watched for violent acts and other illegal (such as computer crime) acts?
I believe so. This is why it is critical that the culture become more and more pro-choice. The next pope will surely be a liberal one. Most cardinals are not happy with Benedict’s liturgical traditionalism etc.
There is a myth that the newer generation of priests is traditional. The priest who denies Jesus was God and who is in good standing with the Church i.e. not under any censure and is free to celebrate mass, has faculties to hear confession etc.,
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,444715,00.html
was ordained in 1990.
That’s the so called JPII generation of priests. And no it is not the exception that proves the rule.
CT,
My apologies for the crack pipe comment. It was rude and not helpful.
As for your objections to my examples, I would counter that abortion is also morally unconscionable, and that all people living within a state’s borders can be considered to be within the state’s jurisdiction, including those who still live in utero.
There are, in fact, “pro-lifers” who think that bombing abortion clinics is just peachy. Those of us who disagree with them generally do so out of an understanding of the principles of the just war doctrine. In order to be considered licit, such acts need to fit all the following criteria:
I hope that answers your question and makes sense to you.
I don’t understand what you mean when you say that “it is critical that the culture become more and more pro-choice.” Are you talking about American culture, global culture, or the culture within the Catholic Church?
As for the heretical priest, heresy does not strip someone of their ordination, nor does it invalidate any sacraments he administers. I question why such a priest still wishes to remain in the Church, but I’ll leave his pastoral care to his bishop and his neighbors. In any case, Church doctrine is not going to change, regardless of how liberal the next Pope may be. I haven’t heard any cardinals complaining about BXVI’s liturgical traditionalism; care to point me to a link?
CT,
We need also more Catholics and priests who realize that Jesus is not and has never been God.
As far as I can tell, Jesus’ divinity is the central mystery of the Catholic faith. Without it, everything else falls down, and loses any significant distinction from, say, secular humanism or Taoism. This was a hard one for me to swallow for awhile, too. But everything of value in the faith is based on that truth. You say you’re a theist; pray about it for awhile, and ask for some understanding in the matter. Billions of people claim to believe that Jesus is God; are we all just stupider than you, or is it possible you’re missing something? The Church you want to join is an empty shell; without the Holy Trinity inside, there is nothing there for you that you cannot find in any New Age bookstore. The real and actual Church is not going to change her doctrine to make room for you and all your ideas, but she is ready to take you in when you are humbly receptive to what she really has to offer. I guarantee you it’s a thousand times better than what you’re asking for.
Beastly,
First, I know you took that from the Catechism, but traditionally and this is implicit in the context there, just war must also include the blessing of a sovereign (i.e. the state). So a battalion can’t go off and fight its own private war in South Ossettia however just it may be. They need to be authorized by the chain of command to go there. And not just professional soldiers but private security firms can’t morally speaking just go off on their own and fight wars they deem just even if they be otherwise just; they need to be approved by the President if they are acting in a war-fighting capacity. This is Aquinas, etc. Classic Catholic doctrine. Just war theory there in that exposition is presupposing that.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15546c.htm
“The right of war lies solely with the sovereign authority of the State.”
Second, for the above reason just war doctrine doesn’t really apply here. But let’s leave that aside for the moment. If civil war is something that would be a result and that evil is graver than the evil of abortion … then well let’s compare that to historical results. The U.S. civil war was the bloodiest American war in terms of American deaths. But far more lives have been lost to abortion in American than lost in that war. So your argument there seems fragile and frankly purposed to just get you out of becoming a radical. Further, many pro-lifers when presented with a hypothetical regarding if they would still favor enforcing laws against abortion were doing so to cause civil law, say that they would, contradicting their would be response here. On preventing abortions, wounding a Nazi doctor with the aim of stoping gruesome medical experiments would in your view then be unjustified if another doctor were in line to replace him? I hope and urge no one to become a radical as an intellectually consistent pro-lifer would become; I urge people and hope that they become pro-choice and reject radicalism.
OK, now as I was saying just war doesn’t apply there per above (since a pro-choice state is not going to bless war against itself or its own blessed institutions). What is relevant is this text in the Catechism:
2243 Armed resistance to oppression by political authority is not legitimate, unless all the following conditions are met: 1) there is certain, grave, and prolonged violation of fundamental rights; 2) all other means of redress have been exhausted; 3) such resistance will not provoke worse disorders; 4) there is well-founded hope of success; and 5) it is impossible reasonably to foresee any better solution.
I hope you will have the humility to correct your understanding per above.
So, as I mentioned previously, Catholics with a good intelectual response in consonance with this catechetical text while they may acknowledge that a few lives may be saved (so (4) is satisified in that respect) they hang their non-radicalism on (2), (3), and (5).
But denying (3) is though not inconsistent with, in tension with the claim that abortion is an issue which dwarfs any other potential issue. And on denying (2), you already made note of something there above but with 16 years of pro-choice presidents possible to come, (2) may be satisfied by then and SCOTUS may have repeatedly declined to revisit Roe by then or affirmed it a few more times with even a 7-2 or 8-1 majority.
As for what my comment was supposed to mean.
Well, the fact you apparently consider yourself in principle open to radicalization should circumstances change makes you to be frank a potential threat to society. To mitigate against that threat, it is critical that we as a society in all its elements become more and more pro-choice. Pro-lifers like yourself are a ticking time bomb insofar as the longer the pro-choice justice is the settled law of the land the more settled and set in stone it is and as you have acknowledged the more possible it becomes for pro-lifers like yourself to be thus radicalized. The longer Roe stands and the more it is affirmed, the clearer it becomes that it will never be reversed; the longer attempts at a HLA fail, the clearer it becomes that that avenue is also exhausted … so what to do? You can be dishonest and try to make pro-lifers be moderate and inconsistent or you can be like the columnist Michael Kinsley and expose the inconsistency (I forgot to give credit to him; I believe my idea is drawn originally from him) and hope that it will cause some pro-lifers to become pro-choice.
If pro-lifers really believed what they believe, then why do pro-life women mourn greatly when a child dies, and even mourn some when a more developed fetus or embryo dies in miscarriage, but don’t mourn at all when learning of the fact that it is likely that (given a particular case and frequency of intercourse) hundreds of their zygote children were killed in the natural course of events, as the fate of nature befell them, prior to implanatation?
I mentioned this, but I don’t think you understood it. Maybe you are in disbelief
But here’s the problem: The fact that a collection of cells starts to develop when that sperm hits the egg doesn’t make that collection of cells a person, or the moral equivalent of a born human being. I think most people would agree — an acorn is not a tree, a seed is not a plant, and a zygote is not a person, even if a seed is a necessary precursor to a plant and a zygote is a necessary precursor to a person. The fact that about half of fertilized eggs don’t implant — ending the potential development of those early “lives” — coupled with the fact that there is no “pro-life” concern for all those billions of fertilized egg-deaths belies the idea that pro-lifers really believe a zygote is the moral equivalent of a born human being. The anti-choice view has always been more about controlling women and controlling sex than saving lives.
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2008/09/08/thanks-joe/
About half of the persons created by God according to pro-lifers die in a natural abortion; they don’t even implant. This is not due to some contraceptive. This is nature. A woman taking no chemicals will have about half of her zygotes not implant and die. Yet pro-lifers do not mourn these deaths even when these are deaths of supposedly their own children. Ever hear of a pro-lifer who did? Do you if you are a father or mother of these hundreds of your zygote children lost to pre-implanation miscarriage? Do you now that you know? Of course not. Case closed.
O and yes that was a blog but it expressed the fact well. Here’s wikipedia:
“A related issue that comes up in this debate is how often fertilization leads to an established, viable pregnancy. Current research suggests that fertilized embryos naturally fail to implant some 30% to 60% of the time.”
with these as references:
Kennedy, T.G. Physiology of implantation. 10th World Congress on in vitro fertilization and assisted reproduction. Vancouver, Canada, 24-28 May 1997.
Smart Y, Fraser I, Roberts T, Clancy R, Cripps A (1982). “Fertilization and early pregnancy loss in healthy women attempting conception”. Clin Reprod Fertil 1 (3): 177–84. PMID 6196101.
My error in haste; it’s not “hundreds”; it’s about equal to the number of children they do have (presuming they have never engaged in contraception).
Again this is not failure to implant due to induced abortion, abortifacient or contraceptive. This is nature. 30-60% of the persons God creates fail to implant. Being pro-life is the fast track ticket to atheism since only God’s non-existence could explain that if personhood begain at fertilization.
CT,
First, I know you took that from the Catechism, but traditionally and this is implicit in the context there, just war must also include the blessing of a sovereign (i.e. the state).
[snip]
this text in the Catechism:
2243 Armed resistance to oppression by political authority is not legitimate, unless all the following conditions are met: 1) there is certain, grave, and prolonged violation of fundamental rights; 2) all other means of redress have been exhausted; 3) such resistance will not provoke worse disorders; 4) there is well-founded hope of success; and 5) it is impossible reasonably to foresee any better solution.
I hope you will have the humility to correct your understanding per above.
Pardon me, but didn’t you just prove yourself wrong? The just war doctrine (as outlined in 2309 and in 2243) applies to wars waged with state approval as well as those without. (Point 5 in 2243 seems to me essentially a restatement of 2, and the two sets of criteria are otherwise identical.)
But let’s leave that aside for the moment. If civil war is something that would be a result and that evil is graver than the evil of abortion … then well let’s compare that to historical results. The U.S. civil war was the bloodiest American war in terms of American deaths. But far more lives have been lost to abortion in American than lost in that war.
True, but that doesn’t mean that the death toll of a new civil war would be the same. I also can’t predict how many more lives will continue to be lost to abortion if we don’t resort to a civil war. In any case, the point is moot because such an insurrection would have no chance of success.
So your argument there seems fragile and frankly purposed to just get you out of becoming a radical.
I’m not afraid of the radical label. I just don’t want to kill my fellow man without very good cause.
Further, many pro-lifers when presented with a hypothetical regarding if they would still favor enforcing laws against abortion were doing so to cause civil law, say that they would, contradicting their would be response here.
Having never heard this question posed, I can’t really argue with you. Perhaps this is something you can link to evidence of? In any case, whether or not “many pro-lifers… say” what you claim, I said no such thing.
Also, it’s one thing to pass a law that may provoke violence from others. It’s another to start the shooting (or the bombing.)
On preventing abortions, wounding a Nazi doctor with the aim of stoping gruesome medical experiments would in your view then be unjustified if another doctor were in line to replace him?
Sure. If my doing violence to my fellow man does no one any good, then I have no reason to do it.
I hope and urge no one to become a radical as an intellectually consistent pro-lifer would become; I urge people and hope that they become pro-choice and reject radicalism.
Once again, your misunderstanding of the views, thoughts, and beliefs of others has led you to erroneous assumptions. Your assumption that “an intellectually consistent pro-lifer would become” violent is incorrect. I urge you and hope that you become pro-logic and reject mischaracterizations and faulty assumptions.
So, as I mentioned previously, Catholics with a good intelectual response in consonance with this catechetical text while they may acknowledge that a few lives may be saved (so (4) is satisified in that respect) they hang their non-radicalism on (2), (3), and (5).
For starters, 4 is not satisfied; I have no good reason to suppose that I could save anyone’s life by bombing an abortion clinic or shooting an abortionist. And even if I did, 2, 3, and 5 are reason enough for me to stay my hand.
But denying (3) is though not inconsistent with, in tension with the claim that abortion is an issue which dwarfs any other potential issue.
Is it really inconceivable to you that civil war in America could result in a greater slaughter than the holocaust of the unborn?
And on denying (2), you already made note of something there above but with 16 years of pro-choice presidents possible to come, (2) may be satisfied by then and SCOTUS may have repeatedly declined to revisit Roe by then or affirmed it a few more times with even a 7-2 or 8-1 majority.
Maybe. I don’t make a habit of killing my fellow man for maybes. As far as I can tell, only the first condition is fulfilled. While I can conceive of the second and third being fulfilled as well at some point in time, the fulfillment of the fourth and fifth are beyond my imagining, and you have not addressed them at all.
Well, the fact you apparently consider yourself in principle open to radicalization should circumstances change makes you to be frank a potential threat to society.
You mean “a potential threat to the established order.” That is, perhaps, true. I submit that every conscious person in the country is a potential threat to the established order, given the right circumstances.
To mitigate against that threat, it is critical that we as a society in all its elements become more and more pro-choice.
Because becoming more and more pro-life wouldn’t keep me from doing violence to my fellow man?
Pro-lifers like yourself are a ticking time bomb insofar as the longer the pro-choice justice is the settled law of the land the more settled and set in stone it is and as you have acknowledged the more possible it becomes for pro-lifers like yourself to be thus radicalized.
So what you mean is not that the culture needs to become more and more pro-abortion, but that I need to. That we’ll never be safe until everyone thinks in unison. There’s some truth to that, but (a) it’s never going to happen that we become completely ideologically homogenized and (b) attempts to ensure such homogeneity are never pretty.
The longer Roe stands and the more it is affirmed, the clearer it becomes that it will never be reversed; the longer attempts at a HLA fail, the clearer it becomes that that avenue is also exhausted … so what to do? You can be dishonest and try to make pro-lifers be moderate and inconsistent
CT, it’s you being dishonest here. If you would simply read my responses and take them as they’re written instead of trying to invent ways to circumvent the requirements for a just war, you’d understand my position. It’s not complicated. The cost/benefit ratio of violence in this situation seems preposterously high to me. I think there are better ways of ending abortion, and armed conflict would impede those other ways.
or you can be like the columnist Michael Kinsley and expose the inconsistency (I forgot to give credit to him; I believe my idea is drawn originally from him) and hope that it will cause some pro-lifers to become pro-choice.
Great tactic, except that (a) the nonviolent anti-abortion approach is not inconsistent, and (b) if it were, we would have seen our second civil war in 1973.
But here’s the problem: The fact that a collection of cells starts to develop when that sperm hits the egg doesn’t make that collection of cells a person, or the moral equivalent of a born human being.
That’s a statement of opinion, not fact. It is your opinion, and not mine, and therefore a lousy place to start an argument.
I think most people would agree — an acorn is not a tree, a seed is not a plant, and a zygote is not a person, even if a seed is a necessary precursor to a plant and a zygote is a necessary precursor to a person.
You’re talking semantics now. The definition of “plant” may or may not include the seeds of the plant. I think that’s debatable, but it doesn’t really concern me; the definition of “person” concerns me very much. Whether you think most people would agree that a fertilized human egg is not a person also does not concern me. If your definition of “person” does not include all human beings, including unimplanted, fertilized eggs, then your definition of “person” is not useful in terms of defining human rights, including the right to life. In any case, it is my firm belief that it is objectively proper and good to respect, honor, and protect the lives of all human beings from conception to natural death. A zygote may be a precursor to an adult; it is certainly not a precursor to a human being.
The fact that about half of fertilized eggs don’t implant — ending the potential development of those early “lives” — coupled with the fact that there is no “pro-life” concern for all those billions of fertilized egg-deaths belies the idea that pro-lifers really believe a zygote is the moral equivalent of a born human being.
Even supposing your fact is true, it is understandable that I wouldn’t be terribly distraught at the thought of losing a baby I never knew I had. How can a mother be upset when she doesn’t even know that she was pregnant? Unimplanted babies are lost before the parents even know about them; how can you fault the parents for failing to grieve? If my grandfather dies in a distant state, and I am not informed, I won’t cry, wear black, or attend any funerals. The degree of distress will also usually have a lot to do with how well one knows the deceased. I mourn the deaths of foreigners and unborn babies in the abstract, but it’s a far cry from how I mourn the deaths of close friends and family members. I imagine the same is true of an unimplanted baby and a baby who dies after his mother has held and nursed him and looked into his eyes. It’s a subjective matter, not proof of an objective difference of kind.
The anti-choice view has always been more about controlling women and controlling sex than saving lives.
Why do you post here, CT? Do you have so little regard for my (and other Catholics’) intelligence and humanity? Do you really believe that our ideological difference is based on my desire to control women and the lives of others? If so, is there any point in continuing our conversation whatsoever? How do you expect to get anywhere in our conversation when you’re more interested in telling me what I believe than in my own explanation of my beliefs? I can understand the pro-abortion position: You start from the premise that a fetus is not person on the same level as an adult, and so does not need to be accorded the same human rights. Given that assumption, abortion can be thought of as unhealthy, but perhaps a matter of personal choice sort of like smoking or sniffing glue. I understand your point of view here, and I don’t ascribe pretend motives to you that have nothing to do with your actual views. Kindly do me the same service. Or, if you’re convinced that my compassion is really just a mask for my misogyny, then perhaps you can explain to me why you bother to converse with me at all.
I remain pro-choice but I’ve decided to go to confession this weekend and be reconciled with the church and God.
I also remain unorthodox in my doctrinal beliefs, but since Pope Benedict has embraced a diversity of sheep in the flock, I think we the church are moving in a direction true to me. I don’t believe in some of the bible but since as the NCR’s John Allen has reported some bishops believe in a restricted inspiration and inerrancy I feel confident my views can be tolerated. If they tolerated a priest who denies that Jesus is God, I don’t think the liberal priest I know will reject me when I sit down with him. Karl Rahner even said whether Jesus is God depends on what you mean by “is God”. I also don’t worship God; I don’t think he wants to order me around and for me to feel bound to obey his every word. I think rather he wants me to blossom as the sun and rain want a flower to blossom and to freely grow beautiful and sparkle in the wind. I love God and since God is nothing but love, there’s not some part of him made out of something other than love, indeed he is love itself, I think that’s all we need to do. As Augustine said, Love and do what you will or Love and do as you please. So love and if it feels good, do it. So love and indulge yourself. Love and be wanton in your appreciation of all that is good, including pleasure and material things.
I’ve decided also to end my participation on this blog. I will trust the Preacher to the Papal Household that the whole content of biblical revelation, indeed of revelation is contained within the sole sentence “God is love”. Thus, though confession is something I feel inspired to do, I don’t think it is necessary. Besides I believe as a priest has told me that mortal sin is rare and few if any people commit mortal sin. Let me leave you with the Preacher to the Papal Household’s thought:
“Yes, God is love! It has been said that, if all the Bibles of the world were to be destroyed by some cataclysm or iconoclastic rage and only one copy remained; and if this copy was also so damaged that only one page was still whole, and likewise if this page was so wrinkled that only one line could still be read: if that line was the line of the First Letter of John where it is written that “God is love!” the whole Bible would have been saved, because the whole content is there.”
http://www.cantalamessa.org/en/predicheView.php?id=76
and also with my own:
F(J,MM) []-> UIDE(MM, J, “Lord, I want to please you”)
Top 2 signs of spiritual health:
You believe God doesn’t take himself too seriously and can laugh at himself.
You make jokes about God knowing that God’s not going to punish you for it except by making his own jokes about you.
Top 2 signs of religious abuse:
You have been led to believe that God takes himself seriously and wants you to take him seriously to the point of not being able to make jokes about him.
You almost want to make a joke about God, it’s a yearning, but your religious instinct of fear leads you to suppress it.
Why you shouldn’t get down on yourself for “impure” thoughts or deeds in two words:
Jesus’ intercourse with Mary Magdalene in a gospel.
… for the ignorant, intercourse is defined by dictionary.com as
1. dealings or communication between individuals, groups, countries, etc.
The secondary definition is:
2. interchange of thoughts, feelings, etc.
In my absence, may your own intercourse find inspiration in the aforementioned intercourse between Mary Magdalene and Jesus in which I personally see a Kant-like ethic of being at the loving attention of an individual person instead of utilizing the individual person for some supposed greater purpose. Jesus sought Mary Magdalene’s happiness in his intercourse with her more than he sought to teach his disciples, the crowd, or anyone else, including us. And in response, inspired by that example of love in all its human form, Mary Magdalene sought to please Jesus to the maximum, not merely to his glory nor to his greater glory but per Maximilian Kolbe to his greatest glory and likewise not merely to please him nor to please him a lot but to please him in an overabundent way so that Jesus cannot contain his joy but must in heaven we can imagine break out in a joy that encompasses laughter, that laughter that Chesterton thought He chose to keep hidden from us for so intimate a laughter Chesterton thought it to be.
If you wish, pray I have a good confession this weekend.
cath mav,
FWIW, I worked in language education for several years, during which time I worked on the development of one of the standard grammar series in the field. I was informally considered one of the two top grammarians in my department. I am also, as you know, a professional writer, and I’m pleased to say that, in my experience, my craft as a stylist enjoys high regard among my peers and editors.
Your grammatical comments are without merit. (Is this addressed to you yourself, or to you and a bunch of other people? Only your hairdresser knows for sure!) In modern English “you” encompasses both second person singular and second person plural; context, which is not “fancy” but an entirely pedestrian and foundational dimension of language, is determinative (or not, in which case you have grammatical indeterminacy).
I find the lines presently under discussion a bit awkward, as your sentences occasionally are; but in no sense can it be maintained that the construction “entails that the ‘you’ in that bolded construction is plural,” since in fact “some” is not clearly or obviously a subset of “you.” I agree it’s a bit awkward, but it’s awkward either way, and there’s nothing terribly unusual about encountering awkward constructions in your posts.
(For example, perhaps it was a mere inadvertency that you write in your present post “She is dear to me and I could not bring myself to betraying what I know in my heart to be true.” But what can you mean by “Fortunately, the church does not teach that not enforcing laws against abortion is intrinsically evil or that voting for the same is intrinsically evil”? To what referent would “the same” refer? Etc. I don’t mean to pick on you. But don’t tell me I owe you an apology for misunderstanding you when I’m working harder to understand you than most, and feel free to parse that deliberately ambiguous construction either way you like.)
Context, I repeat, is determinative. In this case the natural reading of “you,” determined by the direct quotation of my words and the absence of further determinative context, is second person singular. I have no doubt that, conservatively, upward of 90 percent of the relevant reading population would in fact give it that sense. You can stick to your guns if you like, but you have no case.
That, too, would be incorrect. You use the provisional subjunctive in your summary. I used the provisional subjunctive before you clarified your stance w/r/t theism, to express my willingness to apologize if circumstances warranted; after your clarification, I switched to simple present, performative of an actual (willing and cheerful) apology. Sorry you missed it.
Perhaps you’ve lost track of it, but in our present discussion, at every level — micro (grammatical), intermediate (moral or intellectual inconsistency), and macro (morality of the Church’s pro-life stance) — you are prosecution, I/we defense. And now there is a fourth, meta-level, my (possibly demonic?!) “obsessively critical” treatment of you. This seems hilariously topsy-turvy. Project much?
Your other comments are a trivial assault on Evangelium Vitae without actually engaging the structure of the Holy Father’s thought. At this level, the Gospel of Life needs no further defense from me.
Charel Weng,
You are and remain in my prayers.
Lord, Have mercy on both our souls.
Take care and God bless,
Inocencio
J+M+J
SDG, can we get a formal ban please?
CT/CW/Catholic Maverick tipped his/her hand some time ago. They have no motivation except to attack Christianity – and Catholicism in particular – by any means at hand.
This person does not argue or discuss in good faith, and should be banned before his/her commentary again clogs the combox like kudzu.
CT,
God be praised! This makes me very, very happy, CT. I hope your search for truth leads you Home!
I will certainly add my prayers for you.
Know that you will always be welcome in the Church as a child of God, but please do not compound your sins by receiving the Eucharist while obstinately holding heretical beliefs. Time enough to present for Communion when you can recite the Profession of Faith in all honesty, acknowledging that you are receiving the body and blood of our Lord.
One final note on pleasure: while God does give us plenty of beauty and pleasure in life, please don’t think that God approves of everything we do, even if we get pleasure from it. God is love, and love demands justice, mercy, and moral flourishing for the beloved.
Beastly, thank you for your prayers; I believe not in traditional prayer. My view is that prayer should be reinterpreted as simply an exercise of expressing one’s desires. God, as Jesus points out, knows what we need and desire before we even ask him for it. So prayer is for our own spiritual journey and not to beg things from God. I was taught similar things by many priests and not just liberal ones.
It looks like my priest friend wants me to make a special appointment with him since I’ve been away for so long and due to my particular circumstances. So I won’t be able to receive reconciliation from him before I go to Mass on Saturday/Sunday.
Beastly, I believe I am able to recite the Creed in all honesty. You may interpret some parts of the Bible literally; others more poetically or metaphorically. The same is true here. Besides, I don’t think you need to join in all the responses to be able to licitly receive Communion. Since it’s been a while, unless I am reading from the text, I’ll probably have to remain silent mostly anyway as I don’t remember it as I used to.
And have no fear on acknowledging that the bread in the language of the liturgy is the body and the wine, the blood of both Jesus. I believe in the Real Presence. Many Roman Catholics don’t know this but transubstantiation is not a Catholic dogma; the mystery of the Real Presence is. Transubstantiation, as many more Eastern Catholics know, is a Western formulation based on Aristotelian philosophy. Eastern Catholics (or Orthodox in Communion with Rome) do not subscribe to transubstantiation with maybe a few heavily Romanized Churches being exceptions. Eastern Orthodox Catholics (i.e. not in communion with Rome) also of course do not believe in transubstantiation. You can verify this on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transubstantiation#Eastern_Christianity
The Eastern Catholic, Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox Churches, along with the Assyrian Church of the East, agree that the bread and wine truly and actually become the body and blood of Christ. They have in general refrained from philosophical speculation, and usually rely on the status of the doctrine as a “Mystery,” something known by divine revelation that could not have been arrived at by reason without revelation. Accordingly, they prefer not to elaborate upon the details and remain firmly within Holy Tradition, than to say too much and possibly deviate from the truth. However, they do speak clearly of a “change” (in Greek μεταβολή) or “metousiosis” (μετουσίωσις) of the bread and wine. Met-ousi-osis is the Greek form of the word Tran-substantia-tion.
As well as on the ewtn.com expert forums if there Eastern Catholicism expert is still there. As you know Eastern Catholic Churches are in full communion with Rome and their theology is fully approved by Rome, as by the way is a liturgy of a Church where the words of consecration (institution) are absent; the Vatican ruled that still constituted a valid liturgy and valid effecting of the Real Presence; Jimmy Akin sharply, fairly transparently, and respectfully disagreed with this Vatican ruling on the radio at the time … I don’t understand why it would be OK to disagree with the Vatican on a matter of the Eucharistic liturgy and sacramental validity but not OK to disagree with the Vatican’s opinion to a Cardinal about whether being pro-choice was OK (a letter I think is misinterpreted btw) … anyway I am glad you for one wouldn’t exclude me from returning to the Church because I am pro-choice.
Anyway I won’t go into all the nooks and crannies of my view of the Real Presence, but the inspiration for my view is transignification. Wikipedia currently unfairly gives this view the label of “modernist Roman Catholic.” It is Roman Catholic but it definitely is not “modernist.” Modernism involved a variety of propositions; some of the Roman Catholic theologians advancing transignification as an alternative to transubstantiation do not subscribe to that set of propositions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transignification
“Transignification is an idea originating from the attempts of modernist Roman Catholic theologians, especially Edward Schillebeeckx, to better understand the mystery of the Real Presence of Christ at Mass in light of a new philosophy of the nature of reality that is more in line with contemporary physics. The concept of transignification was ultimately rejected by the Catholic hierarchy, and is now more prominent in some Anglican and Protestant circles. Transignification suggests that although Christ’s body and blood are not physically present in the Eucharist, they are really and objectively so, as the elements take on, at the consecration, the real significance of Christ’s body and blood which thus become sacramentally present.”
It’s not true that the concept of transignification was “ultimately rejected by the Catholic hiearchy”. The only rejection cited in the article is a passing comment by Paul VI which is not a rejection at all but the mere statement that transignification is not enough; that it is not enough to leave the mystery at that level. I agree. As Eastern Catholics like to point out, the Mystery of the Real Presence exhausts our understanding and formulations; and as I said Eastern Catholics generally do not assent to transubstantiation; they don’t touch that with a ten foot pole; the Orthodox with a fifty foot pole. Also just as, as Jimmy Akin has pointed out, Humanis Generis did not rule out the possibility for the church to embrace, accept or leave be polygenesis (i.e. that humans came from a group rather than from a progenitor couple) (he said that the pope didn’t “close the door” on it completely), I think while the language here is different that a similar thing can be said too and even more so, since the discussion of polygenesis was a little more extensive there then the passing comment not even a sentence long here. And to import legal analogies, while the opinion on polygenesis may arguably be taken to be more than dicta and as true binding precedent, in this case the passing comment on transignification is clearly mere dicta. Also there is more than one theory of transignification. As Jimmy Akin likes to point out w/r/t many magisterial documents, including the Council of Trent, this means that whatever criticism contained there and the force it has is applicable only to the particular ones that were had in mind.
Anyway, since I believe in something similar to transignification, or a version of it, I feel that your admonition on Communion reception need not be heeded. I consider the bread to be as really and truly the body of Jesus as a kiss blown by a lover is really and truly a kiss by the lover even though no lips make contact. The blown kiss is really and truly a kiss because of the meaning it has in the sacred language of love and the personal non-local (see the wikipedia link for an explanation) presence it has on one’s receiving lips. The same is true of the sacred language of the liturgy. But when a kiss is blown we think not of these philosophical formulations; likewise in the eucharistic liturgy we think not of transubstantiation or transignification. Rather, we, or we should, just love and then be free. Leave the philosophy and theology and doctrine and politics to the theologians and politicians and bishops. Let religion flourish in your heart.
This was just to update you and clarify that for you. It’s not intended for debate; if debate follows, I won’t participate in it.
Maybe I’ll email you Beastly with an update after Mass on Saturday/Sunday or after my confession appointment.
cath mav,
Again, I’m glad you consider yourself a theist. Discussion about sacramental theology, the morality of abortion and the nature of prayer is, however, very much jumping the gun at this point.
The fundamental question before you is: What sort of significance, if any, do you see in the historical phenomenon of the life and mission of Jesus of Nazareth, and in the belief, message and growth of early Christianity? Is the life and mission of Jesus and the shape of early Christianity revelatory of the divine? If so, how?
In particular, is the place of Jesus of Nazareth and the early Church in human history something in some way unique and definitive, or is it of relative significance only?
Bishop Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph (MO) talks about “a great persecution” under FOCA if it passes. The implications frankly scare me.
A few easy points off the top of my head:
Of course we don’t celebrate our anniversaries of conception; we don’t know them down tot he day, unlike our dates of birth. However, many cultures do count the newborn as a year old or nine months old. In China, one is traditionally a year old at birth and another year older at every new Year — so, a child born yesterday, if today were Chinese New Year, would be considered two years old. They aren’t suggesting you have been a living human being for two years. It’s a convenient rounding off. We prefer exactness on something irrelevant to approximation on something more to the point in Western society, and therefore celebrate pinpointed, documented birthdays, instead of approximate real ages. Some cultures measure age from the child’s first word, rounded to the nearest change of seasons. It has nothing to do with how long a person has been a person.
The percentage of babies who don’t grow to viability due to natural miscarriage is unknown, but whether it happens after or before implantation, when the mother knows about the loss of life she usually does grieve. Perhaps she doesn’t feel free to go into public mourning, because public mourning is not socially acceptable for those whose loved ones have died in the modern world, but a little mourning may be doen for prominent public figures. But one of the most desolate plaintive statements a friend hears is “I lost my baby.”
I never hear anyone cry, “I lost my ovum. I’m short a blastocyst.” It (He? She?) was no longer an ovum, and the subdivisions of the time from conception to toddlerhood are subcategories within the category “baby” in common usage, even among pro-choice liberals I know. It’s a very radical prochoicer who won’t mourn miscarriage and won’t call the being that results from conception a child and a baby.
Of course, the implications of basing anybody’s right to live or to be protected by law upon that individual’s abillity to contribute to society or express herself/himself need no explication.
Charel Weng,
Do you own words mean anything? You have said multiple times you will not comment anymore. And yet you keep coming back.
What do you call someone who keeps repeating something that is untrue?
Since you can’t be truthful about your non-participation in this blog no one should give any weight to your run-on-and-all-over-the-place-silly-comments. Not that I think many do….
You have my pity and prayers, truly you do.
Take care and God bless,
Inocencio
J+M+J
SDG, for the first time, I have to strongly disagree with you. I agree with much of what JohnD said.
For all who objected to “Bush Derangement Syndrome”: Be aware that Obama Derangement Syndrome now waits in the wings
There is no equivalence between BDS and whatever you’re referring to as ODS. I once made the mistake of describing an unfamiliar flowering plant to a very liberal but otherwise normal and intelligent woman who then subjected me to a full ten minute harangue that I can never say the word “bush,” that I should say “shrub” instead. It carried over to the next time I saw her. That’s derangement.
Plus the more than one comment from otherwise normal intelligent people that it was unfortunate that Bush or Cheney hadn’t been killed. I have not heard anything even close to either about Obama.
the McCain campaign appears to have used similar tactics
No, actually the McCain campaign didn’t try to sic the Department of Justice after those who asked tough questions.
not everything that was done by Obama advocates was necessarily sanctioned by Obama himself.
To whatever extent that’s true, if Obama can’t control his campaign staff, imagine what will happen when he becomes POTUS.
I do agree with you that people in public positions such as the Pope and a newsjournal need to have a working relationship with Obama.
Nor am I impressed with Obama as a “role model,” but that will have to be another post as my wrist is making typing difficult.
Mary Kay,
When you agree or disagree, you do it with class. I think SDG would agree. 🙂
P.S. Sorry about your wrist. 🙁
He won’t be president elect until and unless the Electoral College votes for him.
A kind and decent man does not insist on infanticide by exposure, sic lawyers upon those who donate to opponents, use legal tricks and law-breaking to get opponents removed from ballets so that he could run unopposed, support abortion, calling babies “punishment” and so forth.
In the blog post I link to above, Bishop Finn says in part:
“The Freedom of Choice Act will mark the beginning of a great persecution against religious liberty, because it will require tax payer money to be used for abortions. You and I will be faced with this legal trial: whether we should pay our taxes making us participants in the slaughter of Innocents or be liable for jail and fines.”
Thoughts anyone? How would a tax protest such as Bishop Finn is suggesting even be implemented? Most Americans have their taxes withheld from their paycheck, and I think you would probably run up against a brick wall trying to get it stopped.
SDG, I take the view of some of the Asian Bishops and theologians on those questions. The NCR’s John Allen has covered this off and on with many Asian Bishops not comfortable with the Western approach you espouse.
Like Phan, Chia said that the FABC’s emphasis is on mission in an overwhelmingly non-Christian context. He cited the example of the theme of the 1998 Synod for Asia, which was chosen by the Vatican: “Jesus Christ the Savior and His Mission of Love and Service in Asia.” When the FABC organized its plenary meeting in 2000, the bishops decided they wanted to continue the discussions from the synod. They did so with the theme, “A Mission of Love and Service.” In other words, they deleted the specific reference to Jesus.
I don’t feel I have to adopt your theology or politics to be Catholic. To answer your question though I do feel Jesus’ contribution to revealing God was unique, but I believe that about everyone. Everyone is unique and everyone reveals God in a unique way not reproducible in any other person. When Jesus is seen transfigured with Elijah and Moses, Elijah and Moses are not seen bowing before Jesus or laying prostrate; they are all three erect in equal position. Jesus is a friend we remember in the liturgy, a friend whose meaning to us is unique.
Serena, you didn’t understand me there. I know most don’t because among other things most don’t know, though it would be possible to have a symbolic date and no one does … why not? Anyway, what I was speaking to was those rare occasions of people who DO know their conception day. It’s rare but it happens. I don’t think I need to explain to you how it may be some might know. Let’s take an example, if a man is home just for a day or two and then is back off to war and then 9 months later you are born, then if your mother or father told you this story and the date involved, you would know when you were conceived. There are people in situations like this including famous ones actually yet none of them AFAIK celebrate the day of their conception.
Anxious to be reconciled, I was able to catch another priest and tried to go to confession with him. Unfortunately things did not turn out well. When I mentioned my business relationship with a gentlemen’s club, the priest did not seem ready to give me absolution. He seems to, among other things, want me to end or intend to end this business relationship as a condition of receiving absolution. But I’ll just go to my priest friend who being liberal won’t worry about that, probably. If he too ends up witholding absolution, then I’ll guess I’ll just priest shop until I find someone who doesn’t care about it or just not mention it. I don’t get why my business relationship there is sinful. People have a business relationship of sorts with Apple if they purchase iPhones and we know Apple contributes to the “homosexual agenda”. I’m not going to miss out on lots of profit just to return to the church. In a few years, my business relationship will end so even if this is a true obstacle now, I guess I can return to the sacraments at that time just as people waiting for annulments on their marriages do while they continue to have illicit sex … none of which goes on in the gentlemen’s club; it is a very upstanding establishment.
In other words, apparently, you reject a historical assessment grounded in the beliefs, symbols, praxis and stories of the second Temple Judaism of Jesus’ day and of the world of early Christianity.
Your East-vs-West dichotomy is a red herring. The historical evidence for the character of Jesus’ self-understanding and the character of early Christianity is not a creation of Western philosophy.
none of which goes on in the gentlemen’s club; it is a very upstanding establishment
Are you using “gentlemen’s club” as a euphemism for an establishment that displays bare breasted women?
CT,
True, to a point. However, in order for the word “Catholic” to mean anything, it has to have limits and boundaries. The word has a meaning, whether you accept it or not. The Church has a real membership and a real doctrine, or it has nothing. Simply claiming that your beliefs are “Catholic” does not make it so.
In other words, no.
He wants you to be able to honestly recite the act of contrition, CT. In any case, I don’t think you’d be receiving a valid absolution if you don’t genuinely repent. Your liberal priest friend won’t change the reality, even if he does give you “absolution.”
I am not entirely certain that you’re reinterpreting prayer there; just ignoring part of its efficacy. Remember also that Jesus has told us to ask before we receive, to knock before the door is opened. God wants us to petition him with prayer. To my mind, the primary good of prayer is the development of a personal relationship with God. He wants us to know him, which is why he came to live as one of us.
Fair enough. Just please do not receive Communion while embracing heresy.
By all means return to the Church exactly as you are! Go to Mass every day if you like! Just please do not receive the Eucharist until you accept the truth of Christ’s divinity free from any semantic wrangling.
It is startling indeed to read this from you, of all people.
My invitation to email me remains open.
Aside to labrialumn: No one has called Obama “kind,” AFAICT, just as no one called him “a great man” as someone else seemed to think. There seems to be some embroidery going on around the edges of the positive comments that have been made.
Mary Kay,
Give it time. To continue the horticultural imagery, BDS has had eight years to take root and flower, and the soil has been well fertilized, in no small part (I would contend) by Bush’s blunders.
Now, deranged Palin hatred is another matter entirely. That was instantaneous, visceral, foaming at the mouth and nearly satanic. BDS is a different animal. We aren’t there yet with Obama. But among the most dangerous words in the English language are “It couldn’t happen here.”
AFAIK, McCain did have his own legal and law-enforcement backed efforts to oppose public criticism. Ugliness and cynicism figured in the arsenals of both campaigns. I’m not making any claims of parity one way or the other. I’m just saying it may not be as cut and dried as some might suppose.
Not everyone trying to get Obama elected was part of his campaign staff either.
I should have added that, as I once heard someone put it, Obama can sound almost Cosbyish when he talks about the black family — talk that, IIRC, earned him that infamous verbal emasculation from Jesse Jackson. Anything that tics off Jackson like that has got to be worth something. ;‑)
CT,
One final word. If you expect to receive something from the sacraments, you must remain receptive. Think of it like attending a literature lecture or a training session in a dojo. You will learn very little if you assume that you already know more than the instructor. Not that I think it won’t be salutary anyway, but I think you can receive all the more grace if you ask for it in humility.
Charel Weng,
As I have said before your long-winded post seem to be some sort of stimulation to you. The more offensive you can be to Catholics while pretending to discuss the topic the more you please yourself. Pretending to hide behind dictionary definitions so you can write trash is pathetic.
The more you post the more I pity you.
Take care and God bless,
Inocencio
J+M+J
I weakly took one side of this debate before, so I think I’ll weakly take the other side now as a counterbalace.
While Obama stands for a lot of evil policies, as well as in my opinion several dangerously imprudent ones, the fact remains that he has been elected President and during this time of transition we should be sure to stand up for what we believe in but also adopt, at least for now, a bit of a spirit of cooperation. Not to the point of selling our souls, but if the lefties see us not as the voice against progress, the voice of that which is being transcended, but as one voice of many saying what we think real progress would be, what our concerns are in this period of change, then our points may have a little more impact. Maybe it’s a fine distinction, but it is important not to be excessively polarizing, at least at this time of a fresh slate.
Erm, I missed that there was a second page. I hate this new typepad formating thing.
Does anyone know why typepad re-did their formatting? Perhaps it was to make smaller blogs load faster? The P. Z. Meyer post took forever. This way, new visitors would be able to see the first fifty comments without having to wait forever to decide that they really didn’t want to read those comment, after all. Unfortunately, old visitors wind up clicking through twenty-five pages to get to the end of the posts. 🙁 Why can’t typepad give the blog owner the option of choosing continuous or forwarded posting (DO YOU HEAR ME, TYPEPAD!)?
The Chicken
ohhhhhhh, I didn’t realize comments now are in multiple pages.
David B, thanks :^)
SDG, out of time for response, but until then I’ll leave you with
http://tinyurl.com/64uvvt
Heh. Funny and well-written. But I’m not a big fan of fear-mongering. Post-mortems on the U.S. under Obama are about as convincing as post-mortems on post-Obama conservatism, or on — well, okay, not as unconvincing as post-mortems on the Catholic Church, but there’s a similar sense of ideology overriding realism and frankness at work.
SDG:
I am duly impressed with your measured, chartiable response to my last post. Thanks in particular for not devolving into sarcasm, which seems to be all too common. You have retained my respect.
I do not like “agreeing to disagree.” Thus, I wish to ask you for a couple of things:
1. Three examples of ways that you believe Mr. Obama demonstrates decency, civility and impressiveness.
2. An argument as to why you find it reasonable to use these words to describe him in light of the obvious problems we and many others have with his positions on life issues of various sorts.
3. In congratulating him, why you/the Register avoid consideration of the circumstances surrounding his achievement when you/the Register surely agree that a moral act does not simply involve consideration of the object alone. I know without a doubt you/the Register have been diligent about defending life and arguing against Mr. Obama’s positions on life issues. Yet, it seems to me that congratulating him for the achievement is isolating the achievement from the circumstances (the platform, his voting record, his determination to undermine so much of the pro-life pedigree, etc), and the achievement should not be recognized as a good thing under the circumstances.
I think your point about scandal is correct in the most technical sense. However, derivation of meaning in words according to custom is important. I recall St. Paul’s example of advising his hearers to avoid certain activities good or indifferent in themselves, if those activities were a stumbling block to their neighbors.
I understand your intensity about the improbability of avoiding any and everything that might cause scandal to someone, somewhere. However, maybe an important point to consider is whether what one is proposing to do, say, write, etc., really needs to done, said, written, etc. for some greater good or whether the supposed good is not that good and needs to be sacrificed for the sake of “the weak among us.” Thus, I see little gain for the Register in offering congratulations.
I will happily withdraw the word “hounded.” It was probably too strong. I meant to convey that I think there will be a great deal of negative response from readers. As exemplied by my posts, I think any confusion or feelings of betrayal will be understandable, even if they are not warranted.
If the Church lets a priest who denies Jesus is God remain in the priesthood, celebrate and administer the sacraments, then I’m sure the Church is OK with me who also denies Jesus is God receiving the Eucharist. Unless things have changed, around Christmas time there should be general absolution available. I will wait til then. Communal celebration is more in line with the early church anyway. Communal celebration can also take place without general absolution.
It is not just pro-life (he seems to display hints of a pro-choice anti-abortion position) Kmiec who supports Obama and parts or aspects of Obama’s anti-abortion approach. There are other prominent pro-lifers and pro-life Catholics in particular who also testify to Obama’s anti-abortion courage. For example, Nicholas Cafardi, also like Kmiec, a lawyer, who was apparently pressurred to resign from the fundamentalist Catholic Franciscan University of Stuebenville due to his endorsement of Obama.
A great sign of hope is the ratio of Catholics who voted for Obama versus for McCain is greater than the ratio of the general population that did so. So, Catholics voted more Obama or more “pro-choice” than the general population. (For the general pop. the vote was 52.6 versus 46.1 so the ratio is 526/461 there; for Catholics the ratio was about 52 versus 43, so the ratio is 52/43 which is greater than 526/461).
Most encouraging tidbit:
“One of things you have to keep in mind about Catholics is that most aren’t opposed to abortion,” Smith said. “And of those who are, most don’t see it as a particularly important issue.” Smith said a recent Pew survey showed that fewer than one in four Catholics said they oppose abortion and see it as a politically important issue.
[link below]
When one excludes those Catholics who might have voted against Obama for cultural reasons (i.e. whites as exit polls in W. Virginia indicated during the Democratic primary as reported by the media), then an even more, overwhelming majority of Catholics voted for Obama. When one excludes both whites and blacks, still a decisively overwhelming majority of Catholics voted for Obama.
Obama did better amongst Catholics than Kerry did in 2004.
Misleading blogosphere headlines notwithstanding, it was only a “vocal minority” of bishops that engaged in the transparently partisan attacks on voting for Obama or a candidate with Obama-features:
“Catholic voters ignored the instructions of a group of vocal bishops,” Jesuit Fr. Thomas J. Reese wrote in a post-election news release for Woodstock Theological Center where he is a senior fellow. “Although these bishops were a minority of the U.S. bishops, they received much attention in the media because other bishops kept silent or simply referred people to their 2007 document, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship.”
http://ncronline3.org/drupal/?q=node/2430
All this of course was scandalous — btw, needlessly causing your brother to be in an occasion of sin, whether the action that brings him to that occasion is itself sinful or not, is the sin of scandal; SDG doesn’t seem to be aware of this Catholic doctrine or if aware, seems to reject it. We all want to be cool like NT Wright (whose Christology among other things is unorthodox btw) or be able to sound as reasonable as possible to our secular buddies, but even as an unorthodox catholic, I appreciate a lot of the traditional Catholic doctrine on this. Anyway:
“It appears transparently partisan,” Wallis said. “It’s hard to respect somebody’s consistent ethic of life when they only talk about abortion and not the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, poverty, genocide.”
[link as above]
The reason why many conservative Catholics don’t support this notion of “consistent ethic of life” is also b/c they just don’t agree with it. They support the Iraq war, etc. But instead of acknowleding the role this plays in their calculus they resort to misleading politics.
I’d like to step back for a moment and say that it is possible for two people to have the same information and then just honestly disagree. I find it rather arrogant that many fervent Catholics have this notion that if you are not Catholic or have rejected Catholicism that it must be b/c you just don’t know Catholicism that well or that if you did know it well and still rejected it then it must be b/c you have a heart of stone. Um… why should this be true? Should an economist who considers the theory behind whether Basic Income is a good idea and then rejects it be assumed to have done so b/c he had a heart of stone? My idea of Catholicism is that it does not have a monopoly on truth. Some thing might be revealed in another person, idea, religion that is not so revealed in us. If we can learn about God from the “book of nature” as medievals thought, through telescopes and observing the stars, why not from other religions? Ditto for pro-life v. pro-choice.
We can be thankful for one thing. Palin is not in the White House. She did not know which countries were in NAFTA and may have not realized Mexico was part of N. America (to be fair, you can consider it culturally not part of N. America; some continents have more of a cultural definition than a geographically sustained one; for ex. Europe). She also did not know that South Africa was a country and thought it referred to the southern region of Africa the continent or perhaps even the southern region of Africa, a country (of course there is no country by that name). We know this b/c she more or less admitted it. When asked about these allegations she did not categorically deny them and seemed to affirm that there was a substantial core in each that was true but that some were observations taken “out of context.” So for example, it’s possible that she knew Africa referred to a continent but perhaps she also thought there was a country by the same name. Or perhaps she knew there wasn’t but thought that South Africa referred to the southern part of Africa like south Florida does with Florida; in that case she would have been ignorant of the existence of South Africa, the country.
We can also be thankful that McCain is not in the White House. McCain is a manic craps player. The media pointed to that as an explanation for the Palin pick. We don’t want someone with that proclivity as Commander in Chief. Obama on the other hand is a “pretty good poker player.” Many Americans and Hollywood educated folk are ignorant of this but poker is the subject of serious mathematical study and study in the computer sciences. Just as aritificial intelligence projects tackled chess, so also are they tackling poker as well as other “games of imperfect information” (chess is one of “perfect information”), like bridge. Whole teams of dozens of researchers are working on this. The mathematical field of game theory is being applied too. I’ll leave you with this thought and hope it will lead you to be grateful to our God that Obama, not McCain, is, irrespective of what he might do on abortion, our Commander in Chief … he himself alluded to this perhaps in the O’Reilly interview where he said he didn’t want to show “all his cards” to Iran before becoming President:
“From what I’m told by intimates, Obama’s poker skills bode well for a potential leader of the free world. He is versatile, but shuns unnecessary risks; he wants to be holding premium cards before he even thinks of getting involved; the only gambles he takes are very closely calculated. America would be mad to pass up a potential leader of such acumen. In a world so fraught with danger, a leader of such visionary powers will surely restore his country’s tarnished reputation.” This moved Time magazine to reveal two months later that John McCain is, by contrast, a manic craps player…. As this comment bobbed all over cyberspace, I stuck doggedly to my theme: Which would you rather have as president? A skilful, calculating poker-player taking highly calibrated risks, or a craps obsessive content to let the dice fall where they may (viz. the Palin pick)? Well, quite. I rest my case.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-11-06/card-shark-in-chief/
I noticed that no one here seems to think Obama is a brilliant man. In economic policy too, his backgound could prove useful:
http://www.forbes.com/2006/12/10/business-game-theory-tech-cx_th_games06_1212harford.html
If you are not prejudiced you should acknowledge Obama is brilliant IMO.
maverick, your long post reminds me of a conversation I had with a Catholic Obama supporter on another website who said she wasn’t going to change her politics just to suit religion. Spoke volumes about what she valued most. Your lengthy post is by far more about politics than the Catholic faith.
…that many fervent Catholics have this notion that if you are not Catholic or have rejected Catholicism that it must be b/c you just don’t know Catholicism that well…
and in your next sentences, demonstrate the truth of that “notion”…
My idea of Catholicism
ah, but Catholicism is not up for private interpretation
is that it does not have a monopoly on truth.
perhaps you are unaware of the teaching that Catholicism has the fullness of truth
Some thing might be revealed in another person, idea, religion that is not so revealed in us. If we can learn about God from the “book of nature” as medievals thought, through telescopes and observing the stars, why not from other religions? Ditto for pro-life v. pro-choice.
heart of the example that you don’t know your Catholic faith as well as you think you do. Full explanation will have to wait til this afternoon.
Patrick, I couldn’t have said it better! I agree with all your posts.
I want to make note of confirmation from a former Palin advisor that she did indeed ask “who was in NAFTA” which to the objective observer would suggest a betrayal of ignorance as to who was in NAFTA:
On not knowing what countries are in NAFTA, Biegun was part of the conversation that led to that accusation and it convinces him “somebody is acting with a high degree of maliciousness.” He was briefing Palin before a Univision interview, and talking to her about trade issues. He rolled through NAFTA, CAFTA, and the Colombia FTA. As he talked, people were coming in and out of the room, handing Palin things, etc. She was distracted from what Biegun was saying, and said, roughly, “Ok, who’s in NAFTA, what’s the deal with CAFTA, what’s up the FTA?”—her way, Biegun says, of saying “rack them and stack them,” begin again from the start. “Somebody is taking a conversation and twisting it maliciously,” he says.
[National Review online, “the corner”]
This comports with Palin’s only non-denial denial … or rather non-denial admission
“If there are allegations based on questions or comments that I made in debate prep about NAFTA, and about the continent vs. the country when we talk about Africa there, then those were taken out of context,” she said. “That’s cruel, It’s mean-spirited. It’s immature. It’s unprofessional and those guys are jerks if they came away with it, taking things out of context and then tried to spread something on national news. It’s not fair, and it’s not right.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081107/ap_on_el_pr/palin_clothing
She’s saying “if there are allegations ….” which there are, so we can scratch the “if” part and extract the truth that “In questions or comments that I made in debate prep about NAFTA, and about the continent vs. the country when we talk about Africa there, those questions or comments were taken out of context.” No one has come forward with an explicit defense (spin) of Palin on Africa as a “continent vs. the country” the way one former advisor has with NAFTA (he says he wasn’t present for whatever transpired with the Africa thing so that may be why he can’t; those present may be can’t b/c they are the leakers or b/c it’s hard to defend her or spin it to defend her).
Anyway, these leakers did a great service to their country. At least now Palin is out of the national picture for president. It is unfortunate however that as Fox’s Carl Cameron reported, they kept this information on background until after the election. So Cameron knew about all or some of this before the election. I guess you cannot expect the leakers to be super heroic.
If as the bible teaches we should be thankful in all circumstances, for all things, then we should thank God for Obama’s presidency and leave it at that.
I thought you quit posting here, pro-choice catholic basher.
cath mav: If you want to convince me once and for all that your participation on this blog is entirely disingenuous and intended to be noxious, so that I have no choice but to disinvite you from participating, keep up the sophistry and passive-aggressive behavior. My patience with you is at a low ebb.
I take it then that you do subscribe to some of NT Wright’s ideas, ideas which seem echoed in your description of Jesus’ religion as distinct from Christianity, using phraseology remarkably similar to NT Wright. It is my opinion that NT Wright’s Christology is unorthodox. It is your opinion, evidently that his Christology and his view of how Christianity came to be is orthodox. God bless you and peace be with you. I don’t care whether I am part of this blog or how you choose to use your power. I care only about pleasing Jesus and because of that I again wish you blessing and peace.
Update for Beastly,
I have been reconciled with God and the church in the sacrament of penance ministered by a priest over the phone. I had been trying as best as I could do find reasons not to return to the Catholic faith and the sacraments, but found all my arguments against the faith unconvincing and all the arguments for the faith very persuasive. I am still pro-choice though. To my surprise my liberal priest friend also wanted me to end my business relationship with the gentlemen’s club. Equally to my surprise, in what must have been a moment of supernatural grace, I decided to amend my life there and work toward that end; it was so consoling to hear his words of absolution:
“May your sins be forgiven”
And, as I made the sign of the cross, I felt Catholic again and at home.
I thank God for his victory through the Cross in my life in my healing. I’ve had some bad experiences with some priests including at a tender age, but forgiven by God of my own sins I am freed to forgive others of theirs.
I am thinking of also making a pigrimage to Nevada to some legal brothels there. I have never engaged in prostitution, but I have of course done things that almost every human has in terms of objectifying women. My hope is to purchase time with some women there and during that time use it to simply be kind and if the occasion arises, evangelize.
If you could, please also pray for a special intention.
SDG,
No need to disinvite me. You have my word that this will be my last post. If I post again, then disinvite me. I may disagree with your choice but I will respect it and based on my experience I know this post will be interpreted by you in your psychoanalysis as “sophistry and passive-aggressive” behavior. FWIW, I have a background in psychology and have actually worked as part of psychology research teams (specifically in the field of cognitive psychology). IMHO, Catholic to Catholic, it is not spiritually healthy to react to someone based on a perceived personal slight. God is powerful but he is not powerful in a way that you and I imagine. St. Anselm asked why if God is powerful he is not able to do evil and Anselm responded that it is because the power to do evil was not a true power. The power of God is the power of loe, the power manifested on the Cross. You may think this an affectation to Catholic piety or some hair-brained scheme to embarass your earlier dismissal of the possibility of my conversion, but for your own good let me take the effort to let you ponder this: Do you think it not possible that I came here because I had doubts about my past rejection of Catholicism and yearned to return to the Church and was seeking to see if the best arguments against the Faith could be met? FYI, they were not met here, but they were met elsewhere. This is your blog and yours to do as you please in our secular society, but as a Catholic I appeal to your conscience not with respect to me, since as mentioned this will by my last post — you have my personal word — but with respect to how you treat others who may in the future come here and may be similarly situated epistemically and spiritually. If people who are actually sincerely seeking the truth, albeit in disagreement, external and internal, with you are dismissed as not being sincere, then that is the sin of scandal. You may think that the sin of scandal refers only to those things that are already sinful apart from the scandalous effect, i.e. the effect of leading to an occasion of sin for another, but that is not the traditional Catholic doctrine; the sin of scandal traditionally refers to any action which without just reason, whether that action is otherwise innocent or good or not, that needlessly (i.e. without just reason) puts another in an occasion of sin. This is the definition that for example, Fr Heribert Jone uses. Perhaps it is not the one your favorite moral theologian uses. Perhaps you disagree with me that your definition is not traditional Catholic doctrine. But that doesn’t mean my disagreement is insincere or is sophistry or is passive-aggressive behavior. I know b/c some have told me this that some, though they won’t say this to you, are afraid of your power as a moderator. I can see why. You feel free to tell someone that their definition is not traditional Catholic doctrine but when someone does the same with you, you threaten disinvitation. In my opinion you do reject some traditional Catholics just as in your opinion I reject some (such as in my being pro-choice). Why should you have some special immunity there? I speak not for me but for those who have expressed similar feelings in analagous situations. Ad hominem attacks are not spiritually healthy and since I have just gone to confession please do not bring up my past life. At the end of my confession, I told the priest:
“I am sorry for these and all the sins of my past life.”
Though I know it suffices to just confess and receive absolution, let me say to all of you that I am sorry for any sins I may have committed against you.
If you wish to converse with me, you can email me at:
Peace be with you, Tim J and SDG. Peace be with each of you. I thank any of you who whether you intended to or not, may have, whether known to me or not, by your example, words, or prayers occasioned God’s blessing for me today.
I know SDG, that you said that were you to learn that I was graced with conversion you said you would rejoice. I saw no rejoicing from you since and I don’t expect any now. You would say that there would be no way for you to know that I in fact did covert as opposed to trying to embarass you by feigning conversion or your would say that you do know that I am feigning. But my happiness is not found with you or this blog. Giving up lots of profit was a big sacrifice, giving up this blog compared to that, is nothing. Sometimes one’s self and one’s activity is not as not as important as one might in pride think them to be; in your spirit I have left this “construction” “deliberately” “ambiguous.”
Anyway, I know that even though Beastly has been the only one to truly rejoice in my progress thus far and even though he is probably the only one, if any, to rejoice in this miraculous conversion, that as I said I am content in God who alone satisfies. As a bonus, I know that the angels in heaven rejoice. May they too bless you all.
My prayers are extended also to all those in the blogosphere and their readers who may be struggling with their Catholic faith or estranged from it or while solid in their faith may be having many difficulties, not necessarily adding up to a doubt per Newman and the Catechism. My own recommendation is that they read The National Catholic Reporter, especially John Allen’s writings there which are oft cited with admiration by Jimmy Akin here and whose books also are sometimes recommended by him. The NCR and John Allen in particular has been most helpful in my return to the church. Here’s their website
http://ncronline3.org/drupal/
Now that I have given SDG my personal word that this will be my last post, let me pray in conclusion that your intercourse amongst yourselves sing in beautiful praise to God in my permanent absence.
Pax.
If you could, please also pray for a special intention.
Will do.
It is my personal request — in no way an exercise of administrative authority — that posters inclined to honor my personal request avoid addressing parting shots to cath mav on the occasion of his ostensible departure.
Yes, I know. I would prefer to let it lie. Thanks to all.
If I can find a priest who agrees to confession by phone, is it valid? That would be nice.
The Church’s answer is no. Physical presence is important, and the recipient of a sacrament must be physically present to the celebrant (or, in the case of the Eucharist, the minister); sacraments can only be administered in person.
And I remember having read that this has been debated by the Church by the time the telephone was invented.
By the way, this post, as well as others from the post-election craziness, could very well have its last-page comment link.
For the record, I remembered this:
(SOURCE)
Sigh. I’m sorry, but Obama is not changing things. Look at who backed him early on: Ted Kennedy, the oldest of old guard liberals. Look at those he has thus far picked for his staff: People from the last Democrat() administration.
You can say I’m engaging in fear mongering here, but to me it’s just the facts: unless Obama does a 180 (and I would be thankful for that), his will likely be the most liberal presidency yet. The media today is report how Obama will probably issue executive orders to overturn Bush on ESCR, Abortion, permission to drill for oil, etc. I hope and I pray that he will realize the political suicide it would be to engage in these acts (such as fighting 7 out of ten blacks on Prop 8) but we can’t underestimate the power of willful blindness.
We, as Catholics, should not be congratulating Obama, we need to be praying for him. With the election of Obama we face the signing of FOCA into law. The Freedom of Choice Act will lift any and all limits on abortion. It will allow persons who are not licensed physicians to perform abortions. (How does that protect the life and health of the mother?) It will eliminate any parental notification or involvement when a minor choose to have an abortion. In short, it will be all abortion, all the time, for any (or no) reason. Is that what we truly want for this country? See http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/16236/
If you voted for Obama and plan to “protest” his signing of FOCA, you are too late. He is beholden to the pro-abort community.
We will see Planned Parenthood (in some form) as “health care providers” in our public schools. We will pay for abortions around the world through our tax dollars.
Pray, pray, pray.
Was ist das?