The Language of Life: speaking of opposition to abortion

One of the most familiar refrains of the past week or so, i.e., during the run-up to the anniversary of Roe v. Wade and Monday's March for Life, was that we as Catholics, know that abortion is wrong.

I submit that this formulation is in all cases harmful to the cause of life, and in most cases indicative of a faulty understanding of how the Church teaches what She teaches.

It is most emphatically not as Catholics that we know abortion is wrong.

If real assent to the truth of revelation were necessary in order to recognize the intrinsic evil of procured abortion, then the pro-aborts would be right.

The data of revelation provide us with more information about human dignity (about its contents, about its source and about its end).

That, however, is entirely beside the point: human reason dictates that abortion is wrong. Not only: reason also shows that positive legal sanctioning of the practice is contrary to the essential ends of political power.

Said differently: there are some things that we know are true because the Church teaches them.

Examples are: that God is one Being in Three Persons; that He created the universe and all that is ex nihilo; that He took on human nature in order to redeem it and to save the whole world.

There are other things that the Church teaches because they are true.

Examples are: that the universe has an intelligible structure; that human reason is capable of penetrating that structure and arriving at true and certain knowledge of the source of all that is; that the moral order is an integral part of the stucture of the universe; that the direct, deliberate destruction of innocent human life violates the moral order that is built into the universe.

If it were otherwise, i.e., if it were rather the case that human reason is incapable of knowing that the direct and deliberate destruction of innocent human life violates the moral order that is built into the universe, then one of a series of alternatives would necessarily obtain: either the universe would be lacking in an intelligible structure, or human reason would be - on principle - incapable of understanding the structure of the universe.

If the former, i.e., if there were no intelligible structure to the universe, then there would literally be no universe (no cosmos, as the Greeks so neautifully called it). If the latter, then every society of human beings would be nothing more than an external power structure, in which the strong lord it forever over the weak.

As things stand, however, there is an intelligible structure to the universe, and we know it: when human beings first turned their gaze to the heavens, they found something wondrous in their ability to measure the stars in their courses. They found community between Earth and Heaven, where they expected only vacuous infiinity between God and man.

This discovery had consequences: people who made it could no longer pretend that their attempts at ordering their lives together on Earth were a matter of indifference to the universe, or to the author of the order they had begun to discover.

So, they began to study the heavens, to search for the ultimate reason behind the movements of the heavenly bodies - and this, with a view to ordering their own lives together in concert with the heavenly order.

The attempt to measure the movement of the heavens is physics, and the attempt to penetrate the source of order behind the movement is metaphysics - but the attempt to order our lives together is politics, and the attempt to understand how best to do so according to measure and reason is political science (episteme politike).

In other words, our political (social) life - remember that Cicero translated Aristotle's zoon politicon as animal socialis - is governed ultimately not by force, but by reason, and this is a fact of history, empirically verifiable: not a conjecture.

So, we are left with an alternative: either abortion is wrong, or nothing is.

But, if abortion is wrong, then it is wrong by the same reason that gives birth to stars: one can know this reason without knowing that the author of it was a Jewish carpenter born during the reign of Caesar Augustus in the Roman province of Palestine.

It is our ability to know the reason, which makes us capable of living together in society.

Mary's Ultrasound

Tip of the hat to Fr. Zuhlsdorf:

A Tale of Two Doctors

Briefly, my consideration for the Nobel Committee is this: if Dr. Edwards' in vitro technique is medicine, then so were the experiments of Dr. Mengele.

Just sayin'.

LD

Cccf's latest is of especial interest to readers from the nutmeg state.

LD

Abortive Attempt to Reform Health Care

I recently had an exchange with an old and dear friend, who, as a result of a comic case of mistaken identity, engaged me in a discussion of abortion, its legality, and the best way to help assure that abortions do not happen.

My friend encouraged me to support adoption, rather than decry abortion, saying that time and resources are better spent in positive rather than destructive work.

Below is an excerpt from my reply, revised and expanded for present purposes:

Dear ________,

I share in your dismay over many pro-lifers' incessant and often seemingly exclusive desire to condemn, decry and denounce.

I do believe that people who hold in the sanctity of life have a duty to allow their conviction to inform their action.

I often find myself saying to fellow pro-lifers: "Well, why would you expect the folks on the other side of the issue to listen to what you have to say, after treating them as you have? Are you generally well disposed to total strangers who accost you on the street and call you a murderous monster? Screaming and shouting invective may make you feel better for five minutes, but if what you want from your pro-life advocacy is a fleeting feeling of righteousness, or worse, a permanent sense of moral superiority, then I am afraid I cannot come with you."

The thing is, the vast majority of pro-life people see it as I do, and act accordingly. You and most folks hear only the loudest, and not the best or most representative voices in our chorus. This is very sad, for it leads many people, as it has apparently led you, to believe that people in the pro-life camp are angry, self-righteous prigs perpetually in peril of tumbling permanently into full-blown hypocrisy. When you have for your interlocutors such people as I have described, and only such as I have described, it is easy to avoid asking yourself whether the position they espouse may have some small grain of merit, their convictions a crumb of truth.

Too easy, if I may.

More important, however, and much more disappointing, is your apparent inability to distinguish the question of personal witness, which is essentially private, from the essentially public question of policy, and the debate of the relative merits of various public policy positions, and the more basic issues on the ground of which those questions of policy are debated.

Take Roe, for example: I think it is a bad opinion, and ought to be overturned. I think it ought to be overturned in a way that returns the question to the states, where the power to police the medical profession has traditionally been and generally is lodged in our system.

I think Roe is bad because it is based on the notion that the absolute liberty of opinion, which we have by nature and in which we are protected under fundamental law, circumscribes a whole area of conduct and segregates it from the oversight and regulation of legislatures - and so on grounds that the area is "private".

There are two problems with this:

1. Nothing involving more than one person is private: abortion involves at least the pregnant woman and a doctor. The claim to protection under privacy constructions, even granting these last, mus appear to you to be utterly absurd, when you consider that abortion clinics and providers are subject to all public health laws.

2. While it is true that no man-made law can compel a person’s assent to a given opinion, yet a government must be able to regulate conduct in order to fulfill its duty to protect life; in a regime such as the American one, where the power to make law rests with elected legislatures, such bodies must be assumed not only competent, but duty-bound to enact laws based upon the informed consensus their members reach regarding opinable questions such as the proper age to drink, the maximum permissible speed at which a motor vehicle may move, and when human life begins.

Now, you may not ever come to agree with my way of thinking. You may not dismiss it as religiously motivated, let alone as the raving of a religious fanatic.

Let me offer the following appeal to everyone involved in public policy debate, and especially to those in public intellectual life: as we engage each other, let us always remember to ask our interlocutors to share their their position(s), and let us never foist personal caricatures upon our interlocutors.

The Latest from the CCCF Blog

I posted about this new pro-life web resource awhile back.

Here is a link to their latest.

You can always find them on my sidebar - and I encourage reading bloggers to add the cccf to their rolls and feeds.

LD

Health Reform Passes House with Stupak

Erica Werner's write-up for the AP is below:

House votes strict ban on abortion subsidies

By ERICA WERNER (AP) – 1 hour ago

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan House coalition voted Saturday to prohibit coverage of abortions in a new government-run health care plan that Democrats would establish to compete with private insurers.

The 240-194 vote on an amendment by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., was a blow to liberals, who would have allowed the Obama administration and its successors to decide whether abortions would be covered by the government plan. Sixty-four Democrats joined 176 Republicans in favor of the prohibition.

Stupak's measure also would bar anyone from getting federal subsidies to help cover their premiums for private insurance polices that would include abortion coverage.

"Let us stand together on principle — no public funding for abortions, no public funding for insurance policies that pay for abortions," Stupak urged fellow lawmakers before the vote.

The amendment would bar the new government insurance plan from covering abortions, except in cases of rape, incest, or where the life of the mother is in danger. The Democrats' original legislation would have allowed the government plan to cover abortions, if the Health and Human Services secretary decided it should.

The amendment also would prohibit people who receive new federal health subsidies from buying insurance plans that include abortion coverage.

The Democrats' original bill would have allowed people getting federal subsidies to pay for abortion coverage with their own money. Abortion opponents dismissed that as an accounting gimmick.

Abortion rights advocates called the measure the biggest setback to women's reproductive rights in decades.

"Like it or not, this is a legal medical procedure and we should respect those who need to make this very personal decision," said Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo.

Some Republicans considered voting "present" in hopes that might unravel support for the underlying health care bill among anti-abortion Democrats, but only one did, Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz.

"If I felt that the (health overhaul) bill could be killed by not advancing the Stupak amendment then it seems it would be prudent to vote in such a way that wouldn't advance the bill, but it doesn't appear that that's a possibility," Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., said before the vote.

The National Right to Life Committee and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops lobbied lawmakers in both parties on the abortion measure. The bishops said they would oppose the bill if it lacked a strict prohibition on any federal funding for abortions.

Stupak's language applies to policies sold in a federally regulated insurance exchange that would be set up in 2013. The overhaul bill envisions both private companies and the government offering policies in the exchange.

Under the Stupak amendment, people who do not receive federal insurance subsidies could buy private insurance plans in the exchange that include abortion coverage. People who receive federal subsidies could buy separate policies covering only abortions if they use only their own money to do it.

Companies selling insurance policies covering abortions would be required to offer identical policies without the abortion coverage.

Abortion-rights supporters say private insurers will not likely offer policies with abortion coverage in the exchange because many potential buyers will be getting federal subsidies.

Around 21 million people are expected to get coverage through the exchange by 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The majority of Americans who get their insurance coverage from their employers would not be affected.

Abortion-rights supporters say the restrictions in the amendment go further than current law.

A law called the Hyde amendment — which must be renewed annually — bars federal funding for abortion except in cases of rape, incest or if the mother's life is in danger. The restrictions apply to Medicaid, forcing states that cover abortions for low-income women to pay for them with state revenues. Separate laws apply the restrictions to the federal employee health plan and the military.

Currently abortion coverage is widely available in the private market. A Guttmacher Institute study found that 87 percent of typical employer plans covered abortion in 2002. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey in 2003 found that 46 percent of workers in employer plans had abortion coverage. The studies asked different questions, which might help explain the disparity in the results.

Abortions in the first trimester typically cost between $350-$900, according to Planned Parenthood.

A health overhaul bill pending in the Senate also bars federal funding for abortion, but the language is less stringent. Discrepancies between the House and Senate measures would have to be reconciled before any final bill is passed.

USCCB MESSAGE TEXT

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
3211 FOURTH STREET NE WASHINGTON DC 20017-1194 202-541-3100 FAX 202-541-3166

USCCB NATIONWIDE BULLETIN INSERT
Tell Congress: Remove Abortion Funding & Mandates from Needed Health Care Reform Congress is preparing to debate health care reform legislation on the House and Senate floors. Genuine health care reform should protect the life and dignity of all people from the moment of conception until natural death. The U.S. bishops’ conference has concluded that all committee-approved bills are seriously deficient on the issues of abortion and conscience, and do not provide adequate access to health care for immigrants and the poor. The bills will have to change or the bishops have pledged to oppose them.

Our nation is at a crossroads. Policies adopted in health care reform will have an impact for good or ill for years to come. None of the bills retains longstanding current policies against abortion funding or abortion coverage mandates, and none fully protects conscience rights in health care.

As the U.S. bishops’ letter of October 8 states:
“No one should be required to pay for or participate in abortion. It is essential that the legislation clearly apply to this new program longstanding and widely supported federal restrictions on abortion funding and mandates, and protections for rights of conscience.
No current bill meets this test…. If acceptable language in these areas cannot be found, we will have to oppose the health care bill vigorously.”

For the full text of this letter and more information on proposed legislation and the bishops’ advocacy for authentic health care reform, visit: www.usccb.org/healthcare.

Congressional leaders are attempting to put together final bills for floor consideration. Please contact your Representative and Senators today and urge them to fix these bills with the pro-life amendments noted below. Otherwise much needed health care reform will have to be opposed.

Health care reform should be about saving lives, not destroying them.

ACTION: Contact Members through e-mail, phone calls or FAX letters.

 To send a pre-written, instant e-mail to Congress go to www.usccb.org/action.

 Call the U.S. Capitol switchboard at: 202-224-3121, or call your Members’ local offices.

 Full contact info can be found on Members’ web sites at www.house.gov & www.senate.gov. MESSAGE to SENATE:

“During floor debate on the health care reform bill, please support an amendment to incorporate longstanding policies against abortion funding and in favor of conscience rights. If these serious concerns are not addressed, the final bill should be opposed.”

MESSAGE to HOUSE:
“Please support the Stupak Amendment that addresses essential pro-life concerns on abortion funding and conscience rights in the health care reform bill. Help ensure that the Rule for the bill allows a vote on this amendment. If these serious concerns are not addressed, the final bill should be opposed.”

WHEN: Both House and Senate are preparing for floor votes now. Act today! Thank you!

USCCB BULLETIN INSERT ON HEALTHCARE REFORM

The USCCB has an initiative for this weekend, regarding health care.

It is a one-page insert explaining the bishops' position on the reform package making its way (or not) through Congress.

Here is a link for a PDF with the insert.

Folks, this is a big deal: the bishops have been advocating for health care reform since before this blogger was born.

They would not lightly oppose the plan coming through Congress.

This needs to be taken seriously.

LD

New Pro-Life Initiative in Connecticut: a Connecticut Catholic defends the weakest and most vulnerable

The name of the organization is CCCF, which stands for Concerned Catholics for Connecticut, & Friends.

The founder is an old family friend, the paterfamilias of a family, which lived around the corner from us when I was growing up.

One of his daughters is Maria, a grade school classmate of mine with a terrifying loveliness about her that I have since learned is typical of Irish daughters, and the peculiar birthright of the youngest of these.

But I digress.

Below is an explanation of the initiative, in the founder's own words:

This is my blog site on Late-Term D&E Abortion of Viable Babies:

www.cccf.wordpress.com

The first or second “post” (which means article) lists the headings of the articles I have posted in the past few months.

I keep adding as research progresses, and have to add some more news as soon as I have time.
cccf stands for “concerned Catholics for Connecticut, & Friends”...I include in the “friends” unconcerned Catholics, and all others who are non-Catholics but could be concerned about this infanticide.

My purpose is to try and get someone in Connecticut (or more than one) elected to high office in Washington who would be pro-life for a change: And secondly, to get a movement started to ban Late-Term D&E Abortion of babies post 21-weeks gestation, on the precedent of the Federal Ban Act on Partial Birth Abortion (D&X).

I hope you send this blog site to all your friends.

I hope you readers spread the word about this initiative, and also about the peculiar barbarity of D&E and D&X procedures.

I am firmly convinced that both procedures would be absolutely and without exception illegal, if only more people knew what they are: cutting a fetus into little bits while it is still inside the womb and then vacuuming out the parts (D&E); inducing dilation of the cervix and then deliberately maneuvering the fetus into a footling breech, and then, when everything but the head is out of the uterus, plunging a scissors into its neck, severing the spinal cord, inserting a vacuum into the inside of the head, sucking out the brain and collapsing the skull (D&X).

When Stenberg v. Carhart (opinions at FindLaw) (Wikipedia article) was decided, I remember being appalled by the way in which the five justices of the majority so carefully avoided looking at the basic issue: a state's competence to police the medical profession. "You cannot understand what D&X is," I recall saying out loud, "and then decide that a state legislature is not competent to ban the procedure. If you decide that a state legislature is not competent to ban that procedure, it can only be because there is no police power as such in the state."

Said simply: if a state legislature cannot ban partial birth abortion, it cannot ban anything.

The Federal ban on D&X survived (5-4) a challenge before the SCOTUS (Gonzales v. Carhart) I ought to have pointed this out, myself.

Please, add the cccf blog to your rolls, and maybe even drop the folks there a line showing your support.

Best,
LD

Deal Breaker...

If the folks at FactCheck.org (a non-partisan research outfit affiliated with the Annenberg Public Policy Center) are right, then Catholics need to step up. Via the blog of Catholic radio host Al Kresta, I learn that the folks at FC have published their findings regarding the abortion question, here.

Remember what Michael Sean Winters said at the start of the season, and has been repeating regularly, most recently here?

Now, the NRLC fellow quoted in the FactCheck analysis probably overstates things when he says that the House leadership version mandates abortion coverage. The quoted language is not that of a mandate. Nevertheless, with the POTUS's views of the matter widely known, and Kathleen Sebelius in charge at HHS, it were imprudence approaching folly to think that the federal plan would not include abortion.

If the POTUS claims that, stricte sensu, the law neither mandates nor allows federal funding for abortions (the HHS regulations implementing the legislation would do that), he cannot claim that the federal subsidies for private plans would not.

Remember, the issue is not whether the proposed reform package would mandate federal funding for abortions. The issue is whether the proposal contains provisions for federal funding of abortions.

This blogger believes that the proposal, as it stands, does contain the practical equivalent of a mandate, though an explanation as to why will have to wait. It is nearly 5AM and I must be about business.

LD

Did Justice Ginsburg Really Say What it Looks like She Said?

In an interview to be published in this coming Sunday's print edition of the New York Times Magazine, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has the following exchange with interviewer Emily Bazelon (hat tip to Ed Whelan on NRO's Corner blog):

Q: If you were a lawyer again, what would you want to accomplish as a future feminist legal agenda?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that had changed their abortion laws before Roe [to make abortion legal] are not going to change back. So we have a policy that affects only poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don’t know why this hasn’t been said more often.

Q: Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae — in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.

Did Justice Ginsburg actually lament the failure of Roe to require government funding of abortion for undesirable classes of people?

On the most charitable reading, according to which Ginsburg is not lamenting, but only recalling, critically, her own impressions of things at the time, the observation is appalling.

Usually, there is some edulcoration or pseudo-justification offered, along the lines of "easing the burden" of poor women.

Such a frank admission of the expected eugenic utility of Federal funding for abortion as a motivating factor in people's advocacy for the policy and for the judicial mandating thereof, is surprising, even refreshing: the chill reminds me I am alive.

For Information on ND Coverage...

And, what's infinitely more important, for an example of the proper spirit with which to approach the whole matter, go visit The Weight of Glory.

LD

Sweden Approves Gender-based Abortion

Amy has more over at her place, the via media.

Please: pray, fast and do penance.

LD

This may very well be even better than the first one.

Tip of the hat to the author of fallible blogma:



There you have it.

Catholic Democrats Deplore Mary Ann Glendon

They are, at the very least, extremely disingenuous about it.

Their Press Release here:

Below is a reproduction of what I wrote in the combox at Fr. Zuhlsdorf's place, to whom I tip my hat.

****************************

The Catholic Democrats are being extremely disingenuous here.

When this whole scandal erupted, I was in the minority of voices, saying, “hold your horses,” while a great deal of vitriol was being spouted from many quarters. I was willing to give ND the benefit of the doubt, and say, “Is it really as bad as all that?”

Well, ND’s handling of the fallout has shown beyond a shadow of doubt that, however innocent their decision to invite the POTUS, their intention in granting the honorary degree was to honor the man, Barack Obama. Since Barack Obama is the most radically pro-abortion person ever to stand in, let alone be elected to the Oval Office, it is quite clear that honoring his person were in direct and complete disregard for and even contempt of the USCCB’s statement on Catholics in Political Life.

ND’s supposed consultation of canon lawyers, or rather ND’s decision to follow their lawyers’ supposed counsel, only aggravates ND’s failure to think with the Church in this matter.

I still maintain that, had ND said right from the get-go that theirs is a standing invitation to newly-elected presidents and their award the traditional honor the university bestows on the officeholder as such in recognition of the dignity the presence of the office brings to the occasion, then they might have avoided this whole sad episode.

Instead, they dug their own grave.

More later.

Amy Welborn Has Liz Lev on Ambassador Glendon's Decision

To renounce it, therefore, is not the lightest of matters. Professor Glendon has spent a month thinking, consulting, and given her deep faith, praying about this decision. (This, for those of you who don't know, means asking God to help one put aside one's own personal concerns and act in the way that will produce the greatest good). (Kaitlynn) Riely's dismissive "thanks, no thanks" rendering of her decision, while pithy, is reductive.

Read the rest here:

See Amy's page here:

Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon

Has declined the Laetare medal, and has written a letter explaining her motivations.

It is a fine piece of writing.

There will be an LD gloss at some point, though I cannot say when.

The letter is, as it were, a game-changer.

Full text as published on the First Things website (no link, since I assume readers know how to get there, and am certain their site is sorely stressed as it is):

April 27, 2009
The Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.

Dear Father Jenkins,
When you informed me in December 2008 that I had been selected to receive Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal, I was profoundly moved. I treasure the memory of receiving an honorary degree from Notre Dame in 1996, and I have always felt honored that the commencement speech I gave that year was included in the anthology of Notre Dame’s most memorable commencement speeches. So I immediately began working on an acceptance speech that I hoped would be worthy of the occasion, of the honor of the medal, and of your students and faculty.
Last month, when you called to tell me that the commencement speech was to be given by President Obama, I mentioned to you that I would have to rewrite my speech. Over the ensuing weeks, the task that once seemed so delightful has been complicated by a number of factors.
First, as a longtime consultant to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, I could not help but be dismayed by the news that Notre Dame also planned to award the president an honorary degree. This, as you must know, was in disregard of the U.S. bishops’ express request of 2004 that Catholic institutions “should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles” and that such persons “should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.” That request, which in no way seeks to control or interfere with an institution’s freedom to invite and engage in serious debate with whomever it wishes, seems to me so reasonable that I am at a loss to understand why a Catholic university should disrespect it.
Then I learned that “talking points” issued by Notre Dame in response to widespread criticism of its decision included two statements implying that my acceptance speech would somehow balance the event:
• “President Obama won’t be doing all the talking. Mary Ann Glendon, the former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, will be speaking as the recipient of the Laetare Medal.”
• “We think having the president come to Notre Dame, see our graduates, meet our leaders, and hear a talk from Mary Ann Glendon is a good thing for the president and for the causes we care about.”
A commencement, however, is supposed to be a joyous day for the graduates and their families. It is not the right place, nor is a brief acceptance speech the right vehicle, for engagement with the very serious problems raised by Notre Dame’s decision—in disregard of the settled position of the U.S. bishops—to honor a prominent and uncompromising opponent of the Church’s position on issues involving fundamental principles of justice.
Finally, with recent news reports that other Catholic schools are similarly choosing to disregard the bishops’ guidelines, I am concerned that Notre Dame’s example could have an unfortunate ripple effect.
It is with great sadness, therefore, that I have concluded that I cannot accept the Laetare Medal or participate in the May 17 graduation ceremony.
In order to avoid the inevitable speculation about the reasons for my decision, I will release this letter to the press, but I do not plan to make any further comment on the matter at this time.
Yours Very Truly,
Mary Ann Glendon

CNA: New Homeland Security Report says some Abortion Opponents a Threat to Security on par with White Supremacists

The CNA story may be found here.

There is, as usual, discussion underway at Fr. Zuhlsdorf's place.

If CNA's treatment of the report accurately and fairly represents the tone and structure of the report, then there is some cause for alarm.

Radical abortion opponents are not generally the moral equivalent of white supremacists, though some of the Homeland doc's langtuage, as reported, would tend toward such an equivalence.

That said, there may be something to the report's substantial claim.

Recent political developments, coupled with present economic circumstances may, in concert with other factors, contribute to radicalization and recruitment into several different kinds of potentially violent organizations with more or less clearly criminal modus operandi.

The grain of truth would make the fuzzy tendency toward false moral equivalency more, rather than less dangerous.

Catholic Bishops, please remember that if you exclude yourselves from the political process, as distasteful, unglamorous and emotionally unsatisfying as it often is, all the faithful will be deprived of a powerful tool in the effort to save innocent life.

Faithful, remember that we are under a Petrine disciplinary prohibition from engaging in violence against abortion providers and those who work for them.

I am pointing this out, not because I think the readership of this blog needs to hear it, but because we may all find ourselves in need of offering others this reminder.

In the meantime, let us all comport ourselves in such a way that they will say of us, "Surely these are the salvation of the Republic," and ask, "what is it that makes them so?"

Some More Thoughts on the ND Debacle

Note to Readers: this started as a response to an observation in one of the com-boxes, and grew into something more. - LD

UPDATE: I have fine-tuned this post. Changes in Blue - LD

I have been monitoring developments in the ND debacle pretty closely, and have seen nothing in the way of new argument. All I have seen is repetition of the old argument, peppered with greater or lesser doses of outrage and vitriol.

I have been especially disappointed with the many bishops' letters and statements.

Pastors afraid to discipline the pro-abort politicians in their own dioceses who blithely present themselves for Communion on Sunday and then vote to fund infanticide at home and abroad the next day, have complained to and fulminated against a priest who is not under any of their jurisdictions; what is worse, they carry their criticism of his actions right into the realm of condemnation - a realm into which the bishop under whose jurisdiction ND falls quite carefully and tactfully refused to enter.

There is also an appalling inconsistency in the condemnations, themselves.

Suppose Fr. Jenkins' decision is really worthy of the worst of the condemnation it has received, and that ND's standing to claim the title, "Catholic" in a meaningful sense has really been impeached; then Bishop D’Arcy is a coward – or worse – a hypocrite for encouraging Ambassador Glendon to do what he will not, i.e. attend the Commencement, and to accept an award that must be tainted with ND’s treachery.

Suppose Fr. Jenkins' decision is really worthy of the worst of the condemnation it has received, and that ND's standing to claim the title, "Catholic University" in a meaningful sense has really been impeached; how, then, can the Cardinal President of the USCCB coherently claim that the invitation ought to stand, simply because to dis-invite the president would be "bad manners"? If things really are as bad as those on the other side of this debate say, then we are engaged in an all-out war for the soul of Our Lady’s University; if so great and terrible a battle really is joined, then we really have moved beyond questions of etiquette and protocol.

So much for the arguments, such as they are, or at least seem to me.

There is a much more serious consideration, one that really is a matter of life and death

More to this: in behaving so ungraciously toward the President of the United States, they have burned bridges that needed to be there in order for the bishops to engage the President effectively in the REAL fights that there will be over conscience clauses and institutional exemptions.

Our ability to prevent the gratuitous destruction of real human lives at home has been seriously reduced – our ability to influence policy at the highest levels is effectively destroyed, and as a result, more people are going to die.

That is just what there will be at home.

A priest or a bishop gets arrested in China, Vietnam or North Korea? Which of the bishops will have the president's ear?

The rights of the Church in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, the Caucasus, or South Asia need to be pressed? Who shall press the President to press them? Would the bishops then - now, as it were - rely on the president's upright sense of justice and native appreciation of the sanctity of life?

I could continue, but I will break off for now.

LD