tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91391213578043325112024-03-05T03:25:27.794-05:00It's A Hard Rain's A-Gonna FallThe personal musings of a dedicated Catholic and Chestertonian.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger108125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-52307128473984239702015-04-06T12:22:00.003-04:002015-04-06T14:43:21.426-04:00Just Bake the Stupid Cake?Once, in a fit of optimism that anyone who knows me can testify is not natural to me, I baked a cake.<br />
<br />
Having printed out elaborate instructions from the internet and arrayed various pieces of equipment and ingredients across every inch of the ample counterspace in my apartment kitchen, I set to the task with gusto and soon was complimenting myself on the discovery of new talents, like fishing bits of eggshell out of a mixing bowl with a fish fork.<br />
<br />
The profanity that filled the kitchen that evening was worthy of a Quentin Tarantino script, and indeed the scene before long looked like not unlike a mash-up between a Pillsbury Doughboy commercial and one of the <i>Saw </i>movies. The flour strewn everywhere was, I aver, more than had been in the bag to begin with; and I hope this miraculous event - the multiplication of the loaves redux - is noted in my hagiography one day.<br />
<br />
Several hours later, the fruits of my labor sat on my countertop: a messy and knife-gouged lump of chocolate smeared with a watery mess of icing that had run down the sides and pooled around it like a moat.<br />
<br />
It tasted wonderful.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Better than mine.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
All of this is by way of setting up a <i>resume </i>of my adroitness in the confectionery arts. Noting this experience, and combining it with my regular viewing of Food Network, you can basically say I'm an expert.<br />
<br />
Silence, then, to those critics who would say I lack the qualifications to comment on the matters I wish to address in this post. (Incidentally, as regards the other subject matter implicated - same-sex marriage, religious liberty, LGBT rights, and moral concerns - you might also say that I have earned the right to speak with some authority, perhaps even more deservedly than in the former matter.)<br />
<hr />
So, first things first: if you've been living under a rock lately, you might not have heard about Indiana's RFRA, in which case you won't understand some of what's to follow. <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-eclipse-of-religious-liberty/" target="_blank">Here's a piece about it.</a> <i>Tolle, lege.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Now, let me assure you: we're not going to go down the rabbit hole on this one on this Easter Monday morning, so breath easy. No; I want to only address one particular aspect of this matter.<br />
<br />
As the Indiana kerfuffle began to boil over and the internet lit up over it, I tried my best to follow all of the various opinions. Some of it has been downright surreal, as in <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/into-the-christian-closet/" target="_blank">the case of Memories Pizza</a>. Or in the case of my overhearing, from the TV playing in the background yesterday morning, ESPN commentators deciding to speak about it because <a href="http://www.indystar.com/story/opinion/2014/03/31/ncaa-universities-exploit-college-athletes/7115143/" target="_blank">#MarchMadness</a> has some tangential connection to the matter. They wanted to assure everyone that the most insightful things said about Indiana so far (they weren't kidding, they were really claiming this) have been said by Charles Barkley.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This guy.</td></tr>
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The issue is complex, to say the least. It'd be impossible to deal with everything it entails in a single post. I'll admit up front that I think the handling of the matter by the Indiana legislature and the Governor has not been very adept. But it should also be noted that the media has spun it out into a hysteria and <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/416250/cut-his-mic-kathryn-jean-lopez" target="_blank">actively silenced saner voices</a>.<br />
<br />
But as I said, I want to address one particular facet of this issue. On social media, at the height of the hysteria over the Indiana law, I found some commentators lamenting that we were fighting "the wrong battle." We'd chosen the wrong hill upon which to take a stand in the very important fight for religious freedom, because the case-in-point plays so poorly in the media, they explained. At the end of the day, there are bigger fish to fry.<br />
<br />
The hypothetical used is of the wedding cake baker. In this scenario, a Christian business owner is approached by a homosexual couple and asked to bake them a wedding cake. The business owner feels he or she cannot do this in good conscience, believing that marriage is a sacred institution and solely the union of one man and one woman, and so declines service.<br />
<br />
The Indiana RFRA is supposed to protect a business owner in such a case from facing legal action for discrimination. It does not (as some have claimed) make discrimination legal and allow a business to turn someone away solely on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity.<br />
<br />
But I was shocked to see several people who themselves believe in the Christian meaning of marriage and in the value of religious freedom attacking this hypothetical business owner for foolishly provoking a fight they didn't need to fight. The upshot of their criticism was this: there is no "there there," in a moral analysis of the situation. Your religious freedom is not being infringed upon; your conscience needn't be troubled. In short, they said, to the Christian business owner...<br />
<br />
<i><b>Just bake the stupid cake.</b></i><br />
<br />
The ensuing discussion on Facebook threads and in comboxes was a casuistic analysis of the moral situation and the requirements upon an individual regarding material and formal cooperation in evil. According to the analysis, these same commentators found that there was insufficient proximity in the whole affair to require the Christian to demur: simply baking a cake, they argued, did not constitute a participation in sacrilege or sin. The baker wouldn't be affirming homosexual acts that the Bible deems wrong; he or she wouldn't be lending a formal witness to the redefinition of marriage. The individual would be morally in the clear to simply provide the service and wash their hands of the matter. And to draw a line of protest unnecessarily upon the point would be imprudently provocative, it would be rash and foolish. Scripture calls us to be wise and serpents and innocent as doves, and in this case one would be neither. Underlying it all, albeit perhaps unsaid, was the assumed premise: <i>It's just a stupid cake. </i>No bid deal.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's just a stupid cake.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Accordingly, the conversation along these lines prescinded from addressing the substance of the Indiana RFRA and the question of whether it was good law. That may be the case, it was admitted. But it was a lamentable fact that the go-to hypothetical scenario was an unnecessary confrontation and put us on a weak footing right out of the gate. The <i>dramatis personae </i>made for a bad story. The couple were automatically the sympathetic victims; the business owner the antagonist, and a scrupulous worry-wart who was embarrassing us all, dammit.<br />
<br />
Well, I disagree. What I want to argue is not only that this <i>isn't </i>a bad battleground whereupon to make a stand, but that it indeed may be ideal - if approached correctly - for convincing moderates and those who disagree very much with Christians regarding sexual orientation and gender identity issues or the definition of marriage. The religious liberty sphere provides a great meeting place to find some common cause with people from various sides of the other areas of contention, and "the butcher, baker, and candlestick maker" set-up might be the ace-in-the-hole, rather than the losing off-suit card that kills an otherwise respectable hand.<br />
<br />
In order to argue thus, I want to get out of the realm of the hypothetical and take a concrete case instead as the starting point: <a href="http://www.adfmedia.org/News/PRDetail/8700" target="_blank">the case of </a><i><a href="http://www.adfmedia.org/News/PRDetail/8700" target="_blank">Masterpiece Cakeshop</a>. </i>The case involved baker and business owner Jack Phillips of Colorado. The Alliance Defending Freedom, who represented Mr, Phillips in his litigation, describes the gist of the case in this way:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit; line-height: 19px;">Two men filed a complaint with the state of Colorado after a cake artist declined to use his artistic abilities to promote and endorse their same-sex ceremony even though other cake artists were willing to do the job.</span></blockquote>
The couple that sued Mr. Phillips (whom one of the pair compared to a Nazi, because #tolerance), won a decision in front of the Colorado Administrative Law Court in December of 2013. The defendant was fined, ordered to "cease and desist from discriminating against [the plaintiffs] and other same-sex couples by refusing to sell them wedding cakes or any other product [he] would provide to heterosexual couples" and was issued by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission a mandate for "re-education" of himself and his employees. (It was <a href="http://www.adfmedia.org/News/PRDetail/9479" target="_blank">later revealed</a> that a member of that same Commission likened Mr. Phillips to a slave owner and a Nazi on the basis of the fact that the institution of slavery and the Holocaust were "situations where freedom of religion has been used to justify discrimination" - which is ironic, because, first of all, well, not really, and also because on the basis of such a tenuous connection one might easily make a similar comparison to Commissions that hand out "re-education" mandates... but I digress.)<br />
<br />
Reading the Administrative Law Court's <a href="http://www.adfmedia.org/files/MasterpieceDecision.pdf" target="_blank">decision</a> in December of 2013, I was struck by one particular finding by the Court in explaining its rationale for ruling against Phillips - and this is the important point on which I will base my argument:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The undisputed evidence is that Phillips categorically refused to prepare a cake for Complainants' same-sex wedding before there was any discussion about what that cake would look like. Phillips was not asked to apply any message or symbol to the cake, or to construct the cake in any fashion that could be reasonably understood as advocating same-sex marriage. After being refused, Complainants immediately left the shop. For all Phillips knew at the time, Complainants might have wanted a nondescript cake that would have been suitable for consumption at any wedding. Therefore, Respondents’ claim that they refused to provide a cake because it would convey a message supporting same-sex marriage is specious. The act of preparing a cake is simply not "speech" warranting First Amendment protection.</blockquote>
</blockquote>
Now, note first of all that this part of the decision has nothing to do with a claim on the basis of religious liberty. It has to do with Phillips' defense on the basis of <i>another </i>First Amendment right, the right of freedom of expression.<br />
<br />
Second of all, note that the Judge's reasoning here seems to have the same basic premise as the commentaries noted above: <i>it's just a stupid cake.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>This is the substance of my contention that this case is far from an embarrassment to the cause of religious liberty and that it is, on the contrary, a potential meeting place for those who disagree about the deeper issues: <b>This part of this decision sets a dangerous precedent that should make all of us - gay and straight, liberal and conservative, agnostic or religious - cringe.</b></i><br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<b>The court here has set itself up as the arbiter of what constitutes artistic expression in the exercise of a craft. </b>(Incidentally, if we don't want Courts doing <i>that </i>kind of arbitration, <i>a fortiori </i>we do not want Courts deciding what is "real" religion or not - something which the most liberal of the Judges on the present Supreme Court has also noted.)<br />
<br />
I baked a cake once. A lot of effort went into it. I won't be histrionic and say "blood, sweat, and tears" went into it - but then again, I won't say either that it was a very good achievement in the field of cake-baking.<br />
<br />
But watch Food Network's "<a href="http://www.foodnetwork.com/shows/cupcake-wars/600-series/cake-wars.html" target="_blank">Cupcake Wars</a>" sometime. Watch <a href="http://www.foodnetwork.com/chefs/duff-goldman.html" target="_blank">any show with Duff Goldman</a> on it. Watch any culinary T.V. show, for that matter, or simply go out to eat at a nice restaurant once in your life. <i>And then try to tell me that this isn't an art and a legitimate form of expression.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
One of the great ironies is that this decision was celebrated by the ACLU and by liberals throughout the culture and media. One would think that a liberal would be the first to protest, though, at hearing a judge say to a baker of his finely-honed craft, in effect, "It's just a stupid cake."<br />
<br />
"But," some may object, "this is mixing apples and oranges. The Judge makes the very point that the baker denied the couple outright and the question of the artistic elements of the cake hadn't even yet been addressed."<br />
<br />
And I call B.S. Walk into a Michelin star restaurant sometime and ask for a replica of a Big Mac. Ask them to make sure to duplicate it exactly, with wilted lettuce, a semi-soggy bun, grade F beef, bland sauce, soft onions, and the whole works. See how that goes, and when they object, protest: "C'mon, man, it's just a @#%$ing burger." That's about the sum of what's happening when a baker specializing in event cakes who pours his artistry into every project can be compelled to bake "a non-descript cake" suitable for any purpose.<br />
<br />
In fact, thought, the cake that would've been demanded in the end would've almost certain been recognizable <i>as a wedding cake</i>. Thus, the Judge's point seems to amount to saying that, "It wouldn't necessarily have been recognizable as a <i>gay </i>wedding cake" - and the Judge seems to think this is the rub. Well, yes, it is, in fact, the rub - but not in the way the Judge intended.<br />
<br />
The Judge's own reasoning undoes itself: if the cake is "a nondescript cake that would have been suitable for consumption at any wedding," then it's a wedding cake; and if the man is forced to make a wedding cake for use at a same-sex wedding, then how can his making that cake not be seen as an act of recognition of same-sex marriage?<br />
<br />
All of this is ultimately beside the point, though: the point being that a Judge is here setting himself up to dictate to an artisan what constitutes that artisan's "expression" in the exercise of his craft.<br />
<br />
What prevents this model from extending to other scenarios one would think should fit under protected First Amendment freedoms?<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>You're a baker? <b>Just bake the stupid cake.</b></li>
<li>Are you a wedding singer? <b>Just sing the stupid song.</b></li>
<li>Are you a composer who writes custom tunes for the bride and groom to dance to at their reception? <b>Just compose the stupid tune.</b></li>
<li>Are you a writer or poet or dancer or practitioner of any of the sundry arts that routinely become involved in the celebration and solemnization of a marriage? <b>Just do that stupid thing you do.</b></li>
</ul>
<div>
This is the question, then, for those I saw on Facebook and elsewhere taking the stance that the cake here was not a formal and material cooperation in anything illicit and that this was the wrong battleground for a fight: If you will say to the baker, "just bake the stupid cake," then you must say it to these others as well. Are you prepared to do that? </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Finally, let me address one last possible objection. It may be urged that I've pulled a bait and switch. The issue at hand in the Indiana RFRA is <i>not </i>a freedom of expression claim, but a claim about the rights of conscience and the exercise of religion.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In answer to that, I will make the observation that really was the first thing that troubled me when I saw the "bake the damn cake" stance first being taken: Is it really a good idea to compartmentalize "religion" any more than we've already done, especially in a culture that seems to want to squeeze it further and further from public life?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I baked a cake once in my life, and though I may have been swearing oaths at times during the proceedings, I will admit that I can't say the experience didn't constitute an exercise of worship for me. But that doesn't mean it can't be <i>- or that it shouldn't be</i>. In fact, all things considered, it probably ought to be the norm, rather than the exception, that when a butcher or baker or candlestick maker goes about his or her work, that it is done as an act of prayer, as an offering of one's talents back to the Lord, as a means of worship to sanctify daily life and to give greater glory to the One who gives us these talents in the first place. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">He who bakes prays twice?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
G.K. Chesterton once wrote: </div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink. </i></blockquote>
He probably would've said grace before baking a cake, too. And how right. This, to me, fits in with the spirituality of that great prayer by St. Augustine:<br />
<br />
<i>Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit, that my thoughts may all be holy. Act in me, O Holy Spirit, that my work, too, may be holy. Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit, that I love but what is holy. Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit, to defend all that is holy. Guard me, then, O Holy Spirit, that I always may be holy.</i><br />
<br />
It would seem very difficult, for one truly living this prayer, to "just bake the stupid cake."<br />
<br />
<b>Bottom line is this:</b> I don't want to live in a country where a judge, or anyone else, can tell me that the song I sing is just a stupid song; or that the prayer I pray is not a true prayer; or that anyone - ever - for any reason - who has talent and skill and artistry to bake and decorate cakes such as I can only dream of having, and who dedicates these services to the Lord as a return for the gifts He has bestowed, should <i>ever </i>be told - under penalty of personal financial ruin and the assassination of their character - that they should<i> </i>"just bake the stupid cake." <br />
<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-25935161999508048692015-01-21T09:03:00.000-05:002015-01-21T23:03:32.754-05:00Disparate Thoughts on a Wednesday<p dir="ltr">I don't really keep up with blogging anymore, but decided to throw something up here today only because what was running around in my mind seemed like the makings of something more than would fit into a standard Facebook post.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Last night was the <a href="http://www.npr.org/2015/01/20/378680818/transcript-president-obamas-state-of-the-union-address">State of the Union address</a>.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I tried watching, but couldn't. I make no apologies for giving up. The empty posturing and partisan buffoonery gets to be too much for me. Anyway, I'd DVR'd <i>MasterChef Junior </i>and wanted to see who made the cut before turning in for the night. I think I chose the better part: #SOTU: Same Old; The Usual. #MasterChefJr: Cutest thing ever.</p>
<p dir="ltr">During the speech, though, while watching the other show, I followed social media. A Facebook page or group which I followed once and forgot about, or to which I was added without asking, was posting some thoughts <i>vis a vie </i>a "pro-life" perspective. The speech gave a platform for reminding people about tomorrow's fateful anniversary: <i>Roe v. Wade</i>, the crime against humanity disguised as a Supreme Court decision which has allowed for the unjust slaughtering of so many millions of unborn children since the winter of 1973. I can't remember whether it was the page's post or a comment, but one of the points made was that <i>"this is why elections matter." </i></p>
<p dir="ltr">And that's true.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I went out this morning for coffee with all of this on my mind, and right at the corner of the main drag on which I live intersecting with the other main drag that runs close by was a makeshift memorial comprised of a bunch of t-shirts on a PBC-pipe-built makeshift display. Each shirt contained a name and a date, and an age to go along with the name. A sign notified passers-by of what the memorial recognizes: victims killed with illegal guns in Philadelphia. The memorial is being hosted by an African American church.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Arriving back from my coffee run, I checked social media again and found another post by the same outlet mentioned previously. It had a link to a DC weather forecast for tomorrow, and noted the chilly weather that those attending the annual <i><a href="http://marchforlife.org/">March for Life</a></i><i> </i>could expect.  It encouraged people to bundle up, and also had some language celebrated the undaunted courage and resilience of those who undertake this public witness every year in spite of all kinds of adverse weather. And yes, I admit, it is admirable.</p>
<p dir="ltr">But this reminded me of another thing I'd seen - or, well, really hadn't <i>seen</i>, alas - while out on my coffee run this morning. The route took me by several places where street people set up. One gets so used to seeing it that one doesn't really notice it. But had I been more sensitive and been paying greater attention, I'd have seen: the blankets on the ground against a wall to protect from the wind where someone slept last night.</p>
<p dir="ltr">And all of these thoughts came together in my mind, without a conscious effort really, but instinctively, with a sort of raw sardonic force, coalescing around a single phrase: <b><i>"This is why elections matter."</i></b></p>
<p dir="ltr">And though it was a daunting prospect, I determined to try to get these thoughts <i>out </i>of my head and onto a page, even if I couldn't do justice to what it was that I really thought and felt about it. There's a lot there to take in, to be sure...</p>
<p dir="ltr">But truly this is "why elections matter" - <b>all of it.</b> And it's good to be reminded of that, at times like this; yes, even on the eve of the anniversary of <i>Roe, </i>and even on the day after the State of the Union. But those two events do make it hard to say anything intelligible without seeming to elide certain facts, or getting things out of proportion and proper order. One fears that it will all seem like sound-bites.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Because maybe this will come off as just one more cliche warning against being "single issue voters." Perhaps this will get misconstrued as tied up with the politics. </p>
<p dir="ltr">But, well, so be it. Because, well, this: <br>
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/kylecupp/2015/01/house-gop-drops-plans-to-debate-vote-on-anti-abortion-bill</p>
<p dir="ltr">It all matters. #BlackLivesMatter - it isn't just political, it matters. And shoehorning it into the abortion debate? That doesn't help. It matters that, while many people will brave the cold to protest abortion tomorrow, there are many people who sleep outside every night in that cold. Their lives matter. Some kids in this country go to bed at night shivering because their mom and dad can't afford to keep the heat on. Or go to bed hungry, because mom and dad can't afford to feed them. That, too, matters. </p>
<p dir="ltr">I started typing this post in the morning and let it simmer all day to figure out if I could maybe say something better than I was saying it. But I don't know that I can. All I want to say is that all of this matters, and THAT'S why elections matter. A people of life will recognize that, and take that knowledge with them into the ballot box and onto the streets to protest. And as long as they do, I'll be there alongside; but the minute they forget it, then count me out.</p>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-74548949379734663182014-11-26T01:38:00.001-05:002014-11-26T02:11:27.219-05:00Ferguson and the Media<p dir="ltr">Here's my final thought on Ferguson for the time being. (The rest are <a href="http://www.fb.com/JoeyG2001">on Facebook</a>, incidentally, if you're accessing this through the blog and wondering,  "Last of what series?")</p>
<p dir="ltr">I've watched/listened to probably something like six hours of coverage in the last 36 hours.  One of the developing tropes, coming out of yesterday's press conference, is the role of the news media in all of this. I want to say something about that. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Let me admit up front that I have a natural affinity for, and probably even bias in favor of, journalism and journalists. This might, however, shock some readers who see me often decrying "the media" and especially "the mainstream media" as complicit in terrible things. But that's because I make a distinction when I speak of "the media" - and there's the rub. It wants elucidation.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I have in mind here especially the 24 hour news channels, but also the major wall-to-wall coverage engines that can now be managed online by everybody from the likes of HuffPo down to the local ABC affiliate that knows how to do on the Twittface.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I will repeat. I've tuned into about 6 hours of the last 36 hours of coverage. <b>That's one sixth of the total coverage</b> (#Maths). But during that time, I've seen a whole lot of the same things repeated over and over again.</p>
<p dir="ltr">When CNN and MSNBC and FOX get frustrated about being accused of shallow coverage, I can understand the frustrations of the journalists. They are often doing their jobs fairly decently. It is the editors and producers and consultants for marketing and all the rest of the managerial sort involved in making 24 hour news that are failing miserably.  </p>
<p dir="ltr">Repition is the mother of study. We learn through repetition - especially in this meme-filled, RT'ing, Buzzfed world. And if you take note of what the major 24 hour networks repeat, versus what is unique, it is fascinating. The repeated things are always the sensational things, the outrageous or scandalous things. Heading into every commercial break and coming back from it, we are hit with footage of burning cars and protestors shouting, tear gas being fired, and banners evincing a sense of urgency and crisis and Armageddon brought to you by Sears.</p>
<p dir="ltr">In between, you sometimes get treated to insightful commentary, but often these segments are framed around the same boilerplate. Each expert guest or leading figure is asked to comment on the clip we've seen a thousand times, of the political hack blathering at the podium or the angry step-father screaming amidst the crowd. And while the expert or leading figure might have something interesting to say, it only barely "informs" us because it's the sixth different opinion we've heard on a controversial matter. The image or soundbite itself, however, is firmly seared into our minds at least, and it keeps us hooked like a drug. We want to see what the next special person is going to say about it.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The whole style of presentation of all this is, overall, patronizing in the cheapest of ways. The anchor switches between every segment to greet the viewers who may have just tuned in with a "Breaking News Alert," which is actually an alert about news that broke five or six hours ago. The viewer who <i>has</i> been tuned in somehow falls for the trick each time, like a child when grandpa pulls the quartwr out from behind our eye - exactly like that, in fact, because we know it isn't magic, but grandpa is fun. So we fool ourselves into expecting that maybe they'll finally say something new, when - lo! - it seems to be just that the on-location reporter has moved to a different part of the street with a different car on fire of which we need so urgently to be informed, and said reporter goes on to tell us the same shit he told us twenty minutes past. The upshot for those who are, in fact, just tuning in is that they're too stupid to know why they're turning on a 24-hour news station at 8:42 PM and might really be shocked to find something happening somewhere, or at any rate too stupid to catch up <i>in</i><i> media res</i>, because it isn't like they have words flashing all over the screen and a scrolling banner at the bottom telling you exactly what the hell is going on.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Now, some will say that it has to be this way or that's the market or whatever - and I say, "Bullshit."</p>
<p dir="ltr">Here's what should've been repeated during the 6 hours I spent watching Ferguson on the news lately: </p>
<p dir="ltr">- statistics about how many young black men that encounter cops are shot by cops, annually; compared to whites; and cross-referenced to relevant demographic data; (in fact, they'd find this data nearly impossible to gather, because somehow it is a big mystery how many cops even shoot people each year nationwide - so, yeah, media, about that job you're supposed to do...?)</p>
<p dir="ltr">- facts about how grand juries work, and how they are statutorily managed in the state of Missouri;</p>
<p dir="ltr">- facts about what civil disobedience means, citing relevant laws and court cases;</p>
<p dir="ltr">- handy tips on what are a person's rights regarding detention by police;</p>
<p dir="ltr">- facts about how protests work, and how they're governed under law - hell, you might even find cause to actually quote the First Amendment verbatim!</p>
<p dir="ltr">... but what, some may ask, would any of this accomplish? What would quoting the First Amendment verbatim do to inform us about what's happening in Ferguson?</p>
<p dir="ltr">Nothing. But neither does the shit it would replace. It would, on the other hand, educate us - which cannot be said for what it would replace. </p>
<p dir="ltr">If the First Amendment had been quoted *half the times* I saw the same pictures of tear gas and burning cars over those six hours; and if the number of black men aged 18-34 pulled over by cops last year in a given representative area were presented the other half of the time - then I'd go to bed tonight with those things solidly memorized, seared into my mind and forming germs for constructive thought. And I have a shrewd bet that, besides teaching me those two actually useful things (and maybe some more besides) they could've still found time to show me the same damn soundbite of Obama twenty or thirty times as well as twenty or thirty camera shots of the same damn car burning. I don't think I'd miss the other 150 helpings of each.</p>
<p dir="ltr">In short, media - please be journalists. Please, for the love of God, inform the public and educate the public and give them tools for productive democracy. </p>
<p dir="ltr">And repeat. Repeat for the sake of news, and leave repetition-as-entertainment to Hollywood and the creators of the Umpteenth rendition of SpiderMan. Repeat the useful stuff, and ease up on the things that add shock value (and distraction). Repeat even facts that have finer points that are debatable: be discerning, be partial, pick a fact and repeat it. Repeat at the expense of debate even: because the "dialogue" you present us in debating controversy is often nothing other than a trading back and forth of useless talking points constrained to the smallest point and the end result is just as liable to be stilted in partiality anyway by the anchors. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Repeat what is useful, I say again. (See what I did there?) And maybe, better informed and less distracted by infotainment static, our country will find a way not to repeat the tragic mistakes and failings that seem continuously to fill our 24-hour news cycles.</p>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-81826988034815832302014-10-13T15:25:00.001-04:002014-10-13T15:25:10.196-04:00Meh. (Or, #Synod2014 and Me) I'm off the Synod.<br />
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I liked the idea for a while once. It was a Monday, as I recall.<br />
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But now I'm off it, and would more-or-less rather it not be happening, I think. But it is. And so I'm going to say something about it and then shut up.<br />
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Today the Vatican <a href="http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2014/10/13/0751/03037.html" target="_blank">published something</a> I don't care a whole lot about.</div>
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The ultra-liberal online brain-crap generator <i>Think Progress </i>promptly swooned with the headline, "<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2014/10/13/3579292/a-pastoral-earthquake-catholic-church-proposes-extraordinary-shift-on-gays-and-lesbians/" target="_blank">A ‘Pastoral Earthquake’: Catholic Church Proposes Extraordinary Shift On Gays And Lesbians.</a>" Its readers took to the comboxes to cheer this great and progressive step, saying (in effect) that now all that needs to happen is for all those $@#%ing Christian's to die and then things'll finally be swell, because #tolerance.<br />
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On the other hand, Patheos blogger Fr. Longenecker <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/standingonmyhead/2014/10/homosexuals-have-gifts-to-offer.html" target="_blank">decried</a> some of the same rhetoric from today's document-that-nobody-should-care-about that had gotten T.P. all exercised:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community: are we capable of welcoming these people, guaranteeing to them a fraternal space in our communities? Often they wish to encounter a Church that offers them a welcoming home. Are our communities capable of providing that, accepting and valuing their sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony?</blockquote>
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Fr. Dwight called this "sentimentalist, wishy washy, secularist nonsense."<br />
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And there was more, <i>ad nauseam</i>: my news feed full of progressives celebrating, traditionalists lamenting, the sky falling, the smoke of Satan wafting <i style="font-weight: bold;">fab-u-lous-ly </i>into the Sistine Chapel, and Henry VIII being canonized or something.<br />
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As for me, I'm taking a deep breath and saying my word on the Synod before, as promised, shutting up.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Meh.</b></span><br />
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That's my word on the Synod.<br />
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There's a term I haven't used in a while: Cafeteria Catholicism. </div>
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I haven't used it because I've somewhat repented of it as a useful description.</div>
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I get what it is meant to mean: it is meant to indict relativism, and to condemn those who would choose from the Church's Doctrine the parts that they like, and ignore the parts they don't like.</div>
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But Catholicism is more than Doctrine. [<i>Oh, man, </i>some of you are thinking, <i>he sounds like Pope Francis! Ugh... -- </i>chill out, k?]</div>
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Catholicism <i>is </i>more than Doctrine. And, frankly, a lot of what Catholicism is about other than Doctrine - which is nonetheless related to and of a piece with Her Doctrine - <i>is </i>kind of like a Cafeteria.</div>
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Think of the alternate image to the Cafeteria: the Church as mother saying, "Eat your vegetables and like it." Now, that's all well and good. Yes, the Church knows what's good for us even if we don't, and it does "serve" us what we ought to eat. </div>
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But I don't like this image. I don't think it fits. The Church is like a great buffet, a rich offering of everything good. If I don't like some vegetables, there are other vegetables there that will get me the nourishment I need. It isn't just "what's being served that day." </div>
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[Ironically, this is more of a true mothering image, too. A mother will often consult the family about what they would like to eat. A mother knows her children and is better than anyone usually at getting the kids to eat their veggies, because she knows those sprouts just need some bacon bits and brown sugar and then Timmy gobbles 'em up. But the quintessential <i>Cafeteria </i>-- the school cafeteria -- isn't a buffet for the choosy, but a rigid and dictatorial offering like one finds in a prison. Today is meat loaf and mashed potatoes. Don't like it? Tough. And <i>nota bene</i>, the meat loaf and mashed potatoes, while certainly loaf and mashed, contain neither meat nor potatoes.]</div>
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Now, what does <i>any </i>of that have to do with the Synod? </div>
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Well, because I'm not havin' it.</div>
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Not because I think it lacks nourishment or is wrong in any deep or intrinsic way. But it's not to my taste. And that's okay. Because I don't think it was made for me...</div>
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[Now others of you are scratching your head and saying, <i>But wait, you can't do that - you're no different from the X, Y, and Z-defending folks who ... </i>-- and you need to be quiet inside your head and keep reading, k?]</div>
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It wasn't meant for me. I'm not divorced and remarried. I'm not in a wounded marriage. I'm not a homosexual. I don't struggle with the Church's teachings on chastity or contraception. I'm not a polygamist. I'm not a confessor or pastor. </div>
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I'm just a guy with an apostolate and an awesome dog.</div>
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So, I'm not going to hang on with baited breath to every pronouncement from the Synod, because it's liable to give me heartburn. I like less fatty, less sugary fare. </div>
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<i>But </i>- if push comes to shove, I will endeavor defensively to demonstrate to any such who need demonstration that the pastoral guidance (n.b.: that's what we're getting here; not new Revelation; not even doctrinal development or definitive teaching; just pastoral guidance) of the Synod Fathers is not in opposition to the deposit of faith or the moral theology handed down through the ages.</div>
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To take an example: I get Father Longenecker's wariness about today's unimportant document's wording regarding the unique gifts of homosexuals. But let's look more closely at the language:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community: are we capable of welcoming these people, guaranteeing to them a fraternal space in our communities? Often they wish to encounter a Church that offers them a welcoming home. Are our communities capable of providing that, accepting and valuing their sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony?</blockquote>
Note, first of all, that you could, without changing the meaning of the sentence, insert "just like everyone" at any point in the first clause. There is no reason to read this as having <i>any </i>kind of exclusivity: that is, as implying that homosexuals have such gifts and qualities <i>precisely having to do with their homosexuality. </i> But I'm going to tease out the "what if?" -- What if it <b>did </b>mean this?<br />
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If we're serious about the orientation being merely disordered and not a sin in itself, then why can't we "accept and value" this and see how certain kinds of gifts and qualities might arise from this? Doesn't Saint Paul speak beautifully of the mystery of how his areas of weakness become his areas of strength? Isn't our mystical tradition redolent with images of the shining wounds of Christ? We say that disordered sexual desire is suffered, borne as a Cross. Why is it hard for us to imagine boasting in the Cross on this particular issue, when we celebrate -- as we just recently did with Saint Jerome in the case of his (in)famous anger--the way that holiness takes and transforms one's trials into one's testimonies?<br />
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Well, of course, I know why we don't like it. I don't like it myself, as I think I've made clear: We don't like it because "Religion Reporters" in the mainstream media are either idiots or pathological fibbers. We don't like it because it does make the job of some of us in the trenches a lot harder, and sometimes we feel like the Generals who issue the orders are listening to all the wrong advisers. We don't like it because <i>Think Progress</i>. Because what will be reported as a "pastoral earthquake" is experienced by us more like an uncle who's had a bit too much to drink at Thanksgiving making a mess in the dining room and making everyone feel uncomfortable with his flatulence and bad jokes before he falls asleep.<br />
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But I think we also don't like it -- at least a bit -- because we're "the older son." You know, from that parable. The one with the little jerk who goes off and acts like a little jerk, and then comes back and dad's all like, "Hooray," and we're all like, "What the hell?" (Cf., Luke 15:11-32; <i>New Revised Meh Edition</i>).<br />
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That is the only thing we must guard against. And it's okay if we feel challenged to put on a smiling face and attend the banquet. But there <i>are </i>leftovers in the fridge, and they're still good to eat, and we're welcome to 'em.<br />
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For my part, I will be revisiting the Catechism, and the Compendium of Social Doctrine, and <i>Humanae Vitae </i>and <i>Dignitatis Personae </i>and other sources of the Church's unchanging moral doctrine. But I'll be challenging myself to read them and find them new: find them fresh: find them "good news" for people who really do struggle with the Gospel's demands in such matters.<br />
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If I'm going to take the Synod's decrees with a grain of salt - as I certainly may - I must in fealty at least do this much, while I also pray for the guidance of the Spirit over the Synod Fathers and the whole Church. I must at least struggle with the very real questions that the Synod Fathers are trying to open their hearts and their ears and their minds to -- even if I would rather they kept their mouths shut.<br />
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So, that's my piece on the Synod. I'll be called a Cafeteria Catholic, a homophobe, a liberal, and a grumpy-pants, I'm sure.<br />
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I'm not married to my project of re-envisioning the term "Cafeteria Catholic" - in fact, it's probably a bad idea and would confuse people more than anything. (Interesting, though, isn't it, how that works? With the best intentions, too... Maybe we're all a bit like the silly Synod sometimes?)<br />
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I'm not a homophobe, so shut up.<br />
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I'm ... yeah, actually, that's fine, you call me liberal.<br />
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And I'm definitely a grumpy-pants.<br />
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But above all, I'm just a guy with an apostolate and an awesome dog who is, really, 100% okay with not being 100% thrilled all the time with everything that everybody in the Church does, ever. And all that means is that I'm a Catholic.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-18396110250838132622014-06-26T15:34:00.000-04:002014-06-27T10:28:41.062-04:00Monday is D-Day at SCOTUS - What I'm Watching ForI'm not a lawyer. I'm not a legal expert.<br />
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I'm a blogger and a sometime court watcher. And I'm someone who has followed with interest and engaged in activism regarding the Department of Health & Human Services' so-called "contraceptive mandate," a regulation enacted as part of the implementation of "Obamacare."</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN4bfzl7j4qzJLOKd2r-Ffnq4J6hcKRNqwTuFqV81szmgL15A_cb7ykbFaK66b8Uv4-mUVqpjJ7mIhYPpfcv_oCuzjR9IFrhebSK_vbmvbVwL3cz4yO1jdld1GAOsyt_PgoDiU1SrD8pI/s1600/Hobby+Lobby+March+25+Meme.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN4bfzl7j4qzJLOKd2r-Ffnq4J6hcKRNqwTuFqV81szmgL15A_cb7ykbFaK66b8Uv4-mUVqpjJ7mIhYPpfcv_oCuzjR9IFrhebSK_vbmvbVwL3cz4yO1jdld1GAOsyt_PgoDiU1SrD8pI/s1600/Hobby+Lobby+March+25+Meme.png" height="236" width="320" /></a>Surely my reader will be aware by now of the case pressed by Hobby Lobby stores and the owning family, the Greens, against this law. The case was heard, along with another similar case of a for-profit private industry, in March of this year. Now, everyone expects that this coming Monday - June 30th - will be "d-day" - decision day.</div>
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Those who follow my Facebook page, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/StandingWithHobbyLobby" target="_blank">Standing with Hobby Lobby</a>, will notice that I have gone more or less silent about this matter since the hearings in March. It is time that I explain myself on that score, which will deal with some of my expectations and apprehensions as Monday approaches and as we anticipate the decision of the Court.</div>
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First, a few facts of distinction:</div>
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<li>Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Woods are not what would conventionally be considered "religious organizations," but are for-profit privately held companies whose controlling interests are in the hands of confessional believers.</li>
<li>Cases are in the pipeline which concern religious organizations in the more conventional sense: religious orders like the <a href="http://www.becketfund.org/faqlittlesisters/" target="_blank">Little Sisters of the Poor</a>; and organizations like EWTN - a cable network founded by a group of nuns who sold fishing lures to fund their mission to evangelize through television. EWTN <a href="http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/ewtn-to-appeal-after-troubling-hhs-mandate-ruling-49169/" target="_blank">recently lost its case</a> in a lower court and is undertaking an appeal.</li>
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Now, first of all let it be said that if EWTN is not a religious entity, then the United States Army is a social welfare non-profit.</div>
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But, here's where I begin to be worried about Monday's decision. I don't think that the real trial for EWTN in proceeding court battles will be the question of whether it is or is not a "religious employer" -- whereas, for Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Woods, this was much more a contestable and thematic concern. Precisely for that reason, in the latter cases - which, in a way unfortunately, got the Supreme Court first - a lot of the weight of argument was focused on that issue and not on other issues that will come into play much more in the other cases coming up through the pipeline. And there is a danger that these other matters, since they were not argued well in the first HHS SCOTUS cases, will have opinions in force for later parties' suits which might result in a harder time for the later plaintiffs.</div>
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For example: during the oral arguments in the cases to be decided Monday, all parties - judges, plaintiffs and defendants - seemed to countenance the idea that some kind of "accommodation" might do the trick and clean up this matter.</div>
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This is dangerous for EWTN and others, particularly Catholic organizations and groups pressing suit, because the Government has shown itself unable and inept to provide a meaningful accommodation that can satisfy the requirements of Catholic moral doctrine. And I would not put it past the Roberts court to direct the Government to provide <i>these same accommodations </i>in this case (since they're already written) so that, when EWTN and other do come before them, the Court's own prior ruling could be a strike against them.</div>
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However, recognizing that these fears might deflate some people's hopes and expectations, and recognizing that they might not reflect everyone's interest in the issue before the court, I decided after the oral arguments - when these fears began to take shape - that I would simply say less about the matter publicly, and wait and pray.<br />
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<a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/669186586495504/" target="_blank"><b>So, with Monday soon upon us, I am inviting my readers to do just that - watch and pray with me. I invite you to wake every hour, on the hour, from 1:00 AM EDT Monday thru the moment of decisions being handed down at 10:00 AM EDT, and to pray a novena and concluding prayer to the Holy Spirit for wisdom and inspiration.</b> </a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiItPB2LnHVNdySnJnpCc8dEuxuIuZVX25-SVABhxZNCIYTBvbQgyTPMZo14MtFcO4eXRIXj_RL3EktFLKaqkehmltJspaW8bHrV0A-w1CWh_2ww9i9ICKjcuxLHv1TAheB30koLzmZraM/s1600/Veni+Sancte+Spiritus.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiItPB2LnHVNdySnJnpCc8dEuxuIuZVX25-SVABhxZNCIYTBvbQgyTPMZo14MtFcO4eXRIXj_RL3EktFLKaqkehmltJspaW8bHrV0A-w1CWh_2ww9i9ICKjcuxLHv1TAheB30koLzmZraM/s1600/Veni+Sancte+Spiritus.JPG" height="400" width="336" /></a>(To those who say prayer cannot "change" anything at this point, that the decision is already written, I would say, "That's not how it works," and that I frequently pray for good weather later in the same day even though presumably whatever is going to happen is already set in motion.)</div>
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I'm inviting you to pray with me because it is my expectation that whatever the outcome on Monday, this fight will continue, and that the more sinister issues surrounding this unjust law are yet to be examined in court - the Government's essential claim against certain Catholic agencies that un-elected secular bureaucrats understand Catholic theology better than the Bishops of the Church, for example.</div>
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So please let us pray together... watch and wait together... and together hope that a Spirit of Justice and a Spirit of Wisdom may guide our nation to protect the sanctity of human life and the values of free exercise and freedom of conscience.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-81641832017781351272014-05-25T11:17:00.000-04:002014-05-25T11:28:07.133-04:00What Happens When I Wake Up Really Early on a Sunday and Have a Productive Morning and Thus End Up With a Lot of Time to Kill?This.<br />
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This happens.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-21672714512880094002014-05-21T19:59:00.003-04:002014-05-21T20:36:29.387-04:00An Open Letter to Judge Jones21 May 2014<br />
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Your Honor:<br />
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You do not know me. As likely as it might have been that our paths should have crossed at some point over the years (both of us residents of the same anthracite-rich region), in fact we never <i>did</i> have such opportunity to become acquainted.<br />
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Thus it is that today I write to you as a stranger, just one more proud and concerned citizen of the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I am proud because of our state's legacy and history; I am concerned because I see it slipping away. Pennsylvania produces good stock in its citizens, and of course this something in itself of which to be proud. But it is the legacy of those not born here, but rather those who came just about three hundred and thirty years ago to settle, in which we find our greatest honor as sons and daughters of this land. Perhaps more than any of the other colonies that would one day become the United States, this land governed first under William Penn's Charter of Liberties prized and protected the value of religious freedom. Anyone who has been stuck behind a horse and buggy in Lancaster County knows that that spirit and commitment is as alive today. Or, well, I should say, <i>was </i>alive... until yesterday. Yesterday, a new document was laid atop Penn's great Charter as a new law over our land - a much less noble document (and much less prettily written, I might add) - a document bearing <i>your</i> signature.<br />
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You see, Your Highness - er, rather, Your Honor ... or, well, which do you prefer? A careful reading of your recent decision leaves me in doubt - I am one of those who believes that the institution of marriage is fundamental to the health of society, and that the family founded upon the union of husband and wife is the <i>sine qua non </i>of a healthy public order. I also believe that the "first of the firsts" of our rights as citizens - the right to free exercise of religion - is most threatened today by attacks upon this institution. Yet you, in your decision issued yesterday, wrote that laws defending this institution should be "discard[ed]... into the ash heap of history."<br />
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That was, by the way, a fabulous turn of phrase. Did you write it, or a clerk? I hope no overtime was spent on it, but I do know how evasive <i>le mot juste </i>can be and how easy to rationalize can be one's attempts in tracking it down. I note especially your careful avoidance of the more standard idiom - pardon me, but I can't help observing the fact, having a Masters in English myself - that you chose not to reference the "dust bin" but the "ash heap." Of course, to non-British readers, perhaps "the ash heap" registers more readily. Or perhaps did you intend something more? There have been, after all, those in history who have suggested that laws attested in Holy Writ be ultimately relegated to "the ash heap" - and perhaps you meant purposefully to ascend to their ranks?<br />
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Yet your suggestion is far less modest than the quaint Bible-burners of old. No, you would also toss out the teachings of Aristotle and Plato, of every major world religion, of every respectable political philosophy prior to the 20th century. In my minds eye, I can barely conjure the size of the pyre you would build to discard the notion of marriage to the ash heap of history - every copy of the most re-printed book in history, the Bible, and so many other tomes besides - climbing higher and higher to heaven, reminiscent of the mythical Tower of Babel (another great image for your project that I'd commend to your use, if you haven't considered it already). Once gathered altogether, would you, yourself, like to provide the ignition by lighting the match? I only ask because you have already seemed to keen to provide the wind necessary for the combustion to ensue... I hope, at any rate, that you will carefully scour your own domicile for any remnants of this age-old mythos and contribute it personally to the bonfire to produce your hoped-for ash heap. Perhaps you have a family Bible you'd like to lay near the logs at the base of the fire? I doubt you're using it, anyway.<br />
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You write further in your decision that '[w]e as a people are better than what these laws represent" - with "these laws" referring to enactments such as Pennsylvania's Defense of Marriage Act, passed in 1996. Here, I'm afraid, I must beg to disagree. Saint Paul tells us that marriage between a man and a woman is a type of the relation which Christ has to His Church. Whether you agree with me that that Man was divine, you must certainly admit that there's a certain beauty to Saint Paul's assertion in this regard. Yet, as I look around the world today, I don't see that beauty reflected in marriage. Men and women don't seem to bear the same manner of commitment in approaching marriage as Christ bore on his way to the Golgotha. They don't seem to be willing to commit 'til death do them part, or to the sacrificial and self-giving love exemplified in Christ's outpouring on the Cross. They seem much more apt to prefer their own advancement, their own good, than the good of the other - to say nothing of the good of the only-as-yet-imagined others that might spring from their sexual union, their children. Sex is for their benefit first, and not ordered toward the good of others. And so when it results unexpectedly in a new life, it seems to be the case that often one or the other - and I'm ashamed to say, it is most usually the man - will run from the obligation implied in the act of depositing his or her seminal biological potential into an equation outside of his or her complete management. Thus, we have "dead-beat dads" and so many other social ills.<br />
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In the face of such problems, I am inclined to think that we need, if anything, to bolster the notion that sexual congress demands commitment, that responsibility to the consequences of one's sexual actions are demanded by the choice to engage in those actions. I am also inclined to think that we grow stronger as a society to the extent that men and women accept such responsibility and do not look at the first opportunity to pass it on to the broader population. And I am finally inclined to think that there is no better way of maintaining and communicating such expectations than promoting the institution of marriage.<br />
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In short, I think that - far from we as a people being better than "what these laws represent" - we are worse, and studiously worse, than what these laws represent. We, none of us, "deserve" marriage. We are <i>called </i>to it. It represents a shining ideal to which we must battle against the world and flesh to conform. It is not something that serves us, but that we serve. And in return, when we serve it faithfully, and as one, it repays us a hundred fold, packed together and overflowing.<br />
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But you seem to look at the situation upside down. You seem to see marriage as our slave, rather than us as its servants; and accordingly you have sought to subdue and conquer it. (That it shall rise up in vengeance, I have no doubt.) Nevertheless, for the time being, your judicial decree shall be the law that governs my home state, and marriage as reconstructed above your signature will no longer draw any of us upward from our individual and wonton desires, but will instead be cheapened and mocked by being reconfigured to our own base inclinations.<br />
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In your decision, you (at least implicitly) place a high premium upon the judgment. But even if we allow that history will be our judge, is it better to be judged by history not yet written, or by our own history? After all, we shape the stories of those that come after us by our decisions; it is only those that come before whose place is firm and fixed, against which we may compare ourselves.<br />
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In the long run, thought, the judgment of both will be the same. For my part, I first avow Tradition, that Chesterton called "the democracy of the dead." I look first to the past in order to decide what the future may bring. And looking into the deep annals of the past and the treasury of Tradition, I find a figure whom you may want to contemplate as you (no doubt proudly) re-read the conclusion to your fateful decision to yourself tonight. It is the figure of Solomon, the Wise Judge. He stands, stony and serene across the ages, standing poised with his sword above the disputed infant between the two women claiming to be its mother. The infant a fact, writhing and wailing for want of its own mother's love, Solomon knew that one or the other of the women must be judged true, and the other false. Both could not justly claim the child, or the child would die. Well, Your Honor, yesterday you stole the sword from Solomon's hands, and severed the infant in half in order to appease both of those who claimed to be its mother. And the judgment of truth will find out the truth of the matter, and name its figures accordingly: the false claimant, the sorrowful parent, the injured progeny, and an unjust judge.<br />
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Respectfully Yours, etc.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-90885705394456206262014-04-15T22:23:00.001-04:002014-04-15T22:23:45.074-04:00Make RoomToday, Tuesday of Holy Week, while surfing around on Facebook, this irreverent and flippant (and funny) meme popped up:<br />
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And, well... it got me to thinkin'. Scripture is neat that way: often even a sidelong and casual glance at it will burns a reflection into the mind. <i>Is not my word like fire?</i> (Jer. 23:29).</div>
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You see, it <i>is </i>Holy Week, and someone thought this was an appropriate post for the occasion. And that is because, in all of the synoptic accounts of the events of Christ's final entry into Jerusalem and His passion and death, this event - the "Cleansing of the Temple" - is placed in the very days leading up to the climax of the story.</div>
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But what is interesting is that, in John, the incident is placed quite early - in chapter two, in fact.</div>
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So, what gives?</div>
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Well, of course, details in the narratives, and particularly timing - and especially in John, who includes weighted little descriptors like "and it was night" - can be theologically significant. Anyhow, though, we won't digress into debates of the synoptic problem and all that. After all, it is as likely as not - in the present case - that the placement of the synoptic accounts of this particular event corresponds to the historical fact: indeed, the ruckus caused in this scene not only provide motive for those who would petition Christ's death, but also a rationale for the Roman government to quell a known rabble-rouser.</div>
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What's interesting to me, though, is that this scene comes in the narrative of this week - and what it might mean for each of us.</div>
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Of course, it's always worthwhile in these matters to consult The Fathers.</div>
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Jerome reminds us why this exchange trade was going on in the Temple in the first place [emphasis added]:</div>
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It should be known that in obedience to the Law, in the Temple of the Lord venerated throughout the whole world, and resorted to by Jews out of every quarter, innumerable victims were sacrificed, especially on festival days, bulls, rams, goats; the poor offering young pigeons and turtle-doves, that they might not omit all sacrifice. <b>But it would happen that those who came from a distance would have no victim.</b></blockquote>
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<b> The Priests therefore contrived a plan for making a gain out of the people</b>, selling to such as had no victim the animals which they had need of for sacrifice, and themselves receiving them back again as soon as sold. <b>But this fraudulent practice was often defeated by the poverty of the visitors, who lacking means had neither victims, nor whence to purchase them. They therefore appointed bankers who might lend to them under a bond.</b></blockquote>
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Now, Jerome's interpretation of this passage, as with most Patristic commentators, seems basically to be that it contains a moral for priests and bishops and others who minister in God's sanctuary.<br />
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But, if I may, I find something fascinating in the background Saint Jerome chooses to give here - how potentially packed with meaning it is! <b>Think about it:</b> people too poor to provide a victim to satisfy... and laid upon them, by those supposed to help them gain atonement, a kind of double-debt on top of the first debt of the Law.<br />
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This is all of us: for humanity, on its own, is so impoverished, and also so doubly-in-debt: <b>we need both a true Victim and a true Priesthood.</b> And in the events of the same week in the Gospel, Christ presents Himself as both, and initiates in the same Last Supper the two sacraments that shall re-present Him as Victim and Priest to all the baptized until the end of time: the Eucharist and Holy Orders<i>.</i><br />
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On top of this, Origen saw in this passage even more meaning still, applying it equally to us all and not just to our ministers:<br />
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Mystically; The Temple of God is the Church of Christ, wherein are many, who live not, as they ought, spiritually, but after the flesh; <b>and that house of prayer which is built of living stones they make by their actions to be a den of thieves.</b></blockquote>
Yes, other reflections on this wonderful scene have been offered, and will continue to be. Of course, it has also to do with issues of avarice and greed, and the relative blessedness of the poor - after all, immediately after we see iniquity chased from the Temple, we see the lame and the crippled invited in to be healed. But I offer that we shouldn't press any social justice reading of this too far: after all, of all the Gospel accounts, the tersest and in some ways least interested comes from Luke, who is usually identified as the Evangelist most concerned with the plight of the poor.<br />
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<b>Instead, I offer that the central motif here is one of MAKING ROOM: making a space ready for a new thing to be ushered in. </b>Therefore, it is somewhat incidental to us whether this historical event happened in that first historical Holy Week or earlier in Christ's ministry - (or, as Augustine and others suggest, it happened twice). For us, in any case, there is a great spiritual merit to making it part of <i>our</i> Holy Week <i>now</i>.<br />
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<i>We are the Temple of God.</i> Indeed, beyond what Origen here observes, we should also be reminded that <b>each </b>of us is <i> "A Temple of the Holy Ghost"</i>. (I might also commend to your reading this week, along with this passage, Flannery O'Connor's brilliant story by that title.)<br />
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<b>In order to "make room," as it were, for <i>His </i>Victimhood, <i>His </i>Priesthood, and <i>His </i>Rites of Atonement, Christ first had to clear out what only foreshadowed these, and imperfectly.</b> Furthermore, He made it clear clear that the New Covenant demanded a break from all worldly thought: no hedging bets and conniving would have any place. Christ's rebuke to Peter - "You are thinking as man does, but not as God" - comes back to us here this same aspect of meaning as Christ's demonstration in the Temple. This was a merciful act, and an act of love: these things had to be cleared out, for they were passing away: the animal sacrifices and the dealings and the calculations were all to fade away under the shadow of The Cross. That Cross was the one and only payment that could be made, and we must bind ourselves over to it and to no other debt.<br />
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<b>Holy Week provides us a last and urgent opportunity to "make room," even if all of our Lent has been squandered.</b> It gives us a chance to clear out the old ways from our life, to abandon our compromises and our bets, and to cancel all our debts to falsehood.<br />
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<i>We are the Temple of God.</i><i style="font-weight: bold;"> </i>And we might find ourselves sometimes very much a den of thieves. But the True Victim and the True Priest, He Whose Temple it is... well, this is what He does. He rebuilds and restores the Temple. He cleansed the Temple once (or twice) upon a time. He restored the Temple (of His body) after three days following its destruction. And He rebuilds us, however broken from sin we may be, each and every time we fall - indeed, each and every day, with His Grace. <b>We just need to make room for Him to do what He does.</b>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-55579216571341782222014-03-25T16:52:00.001-04:002014-03-25T16:59:19.058-04:00"The dragon wishes to devour 'the child brought forth'"<div class="tr_bq">
Today has been an interesting day watching social media, as dueling opinions met both inside the chambers of the Supreme Court and outside on its steps to discuss whether people of faith in America should be forced by the government to compensate for morally objectionable services through the health care provided to their employees.</div>
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First, on social media, the ACLU and others declared their stripes by way of allusion to the 'Occupy' movement - because the politics of class war and race war and #waronwomen are all out of the same rule book:
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RT if you stand w the 99% of women who have used <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23birthcontrol&src=hash">#birthcontrol</a> at some point in their lives. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NotMyBossBusiness&src=hash">#NotMyBossBusiness</a> <a href="http://t.co/tu67LMdFD9">pic.twitter.com/tu67LMdFD9</a><br />
— ACLU National (@ACLU) <a href="https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/448129588468531200">March 24, 2014</a></blockquote>
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The folks at Alliance Defending Freedom - the firm representing the Hahn family's Conestoga Woods Specialties, one of the two companies in court today against the mandate - came back with this clever riposte:
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Paying for someone else’s abortion pills is 100% not healthcare. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ReligiousFreedomForAll&src=hash">#ReligiousFreedomForAll</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23SCOTUS&src=hash">#SCOTUS</a> <a href="http://t.co/YDEnorDiau">pic.twitter.com/YDEnorDiau</a><br />
— AllianceDefends (@AllianceDefends) <a href="https://twitter.com/AllianceDefends/statuses/448519400686358529">March 25, 2014</a></blockquote>
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The sloganeering of the day was an interesting facet, with the trending tag <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NotMyBossBusiness&src=hash" target="_blank">#NotMyBossBusiness</a> carrying most of the pro-abortion and pro-contraception messaging... which kind of annoyed me on a couple points: because, well, <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NotMyBossBusiness&src=hash" target="_blank">#NotMyBossBusiness</a> is <a href="http://badinternetgrammar.ytmnd.com/" target="_blank">#NotGrammaticalCorrect</a>; and...<br />
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Despite bad weather outside of the Supreme Court, both sides were out in force. Perhaps the Instagrammish filter over this image from the Center for Reproductive Rights (don't get me started) was meant to lure people out because, wow look it's like sunny:<br />
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Awesome shot by <a href="https://twitter.com/ReproRights">@ReproRights</a>' Federal Policy Counsel, Kristine Kippins! <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NotMyBossBusiness&src=hash">#NotMyBossBusiness</a> <a href="http://t.co/67DDeyMXqY">pic.twitter.com/67DDeyMXqY</a><br />
— Ctr for Repro Rights (@ReproRights) <a href="https://twitter.com/ReproRights/statuses/448471732157157376">March 25, 2014</a></blockquote>
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The prerequisite crass signs were on display, too (and happily spread around the internet by Planned Parenthood):
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It may be cold out but this crowd is bringing it! <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NotMyBossBusiness&src=hash">#NotMyBossBusiness</a>! <a href="http://t.co/b4NSYCWJYC">pic.twitter.com/b4NSYCWJYC</a><br />
— Planned Parenthood (@Latinos4PP) <a href="https://twitter.com/Latinos4PP/statuses/448471042340970496">March 25, 2014</a></blockquote>
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And the hand-in-glove relationship between the gay rights community and the pro-abortion lobby - a phenomenon which demands greater discussion and reflection - was also evident:
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<a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NotMyBossBusiness&src=hash">#NotMyBossBusiness</a> at the Supreme Court! <a href="http://t.co/P89W1d5B8J">pic.twitter.com/P89W1d5B8J</a><br />
— Planned Parenthood (@Latinos4PP) <a href="https://twitter.com/Latinos4PP/statuses/448429684393803777">March 25, 2014</a></blockquote>
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And there was this gal, very proud of her sign evidently. ["Psst: You forgot to add, between 'crafts' and 'cabinets,' a checked box for 'employing your ass at a decent wage in the first place when neither you nor they have been forced into that arrangement.'"]
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Couldn't have said it better ourselves. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23notmybossbusiness&src=hash">#notmybossbusiness</a> <a href="http://t.co/Paij6rf7vs">pic.twitter.com/Paij6rf7vs</a><br />
— Planned Parenthood (@PPact) <a href="https://twitter.com/PPact/statuses/448478030739279872">March 25, 2014</a></blockquote>
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But there were, as I said, plenty of folks were out from <i>both</i> sides.
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I created and posted this image on Facebook earlier today because what it says seems to me strikes to the heart of the issue: <b><i>This is an issue that impacts us all! We're all the Defendants now.</i></b><br />
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<a href="https://www.facebook.com/StandingWithHobbyLobby/photos/a.321811601260799.69477.321555124619780/506846549423969/?type=1&stream_ref=10" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5k7m2h0IvmqPs9mDhfYypnnAf_YNKEBDaY5UqyxpjMnx2ACTWCDXK2IfHeYIOj8-u1vrBHksEUGnBTOz6ao9O58XjP8xFVtWJ9L4gyX8qNKdVMjgg8feZViS8imadBjbAAMMD680pnlU/s1600/Hobby+Lobby+March+25+Meme.png" height="295" width="400" /></a></div>
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And I wasn't the only one reasoning thus... (and kudos to the <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ReligiousFreedomForAll&src=hash" target="_blank">#ReligiousFreedomForAll</a> organizers or whoever made these signs which very nicely counter the "not my boss's business" meme):<br />
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Not partisan, just human. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NotMyBossBusiness&src=hash">#NotMyBossBusiness</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ReligiousFreedomForAll&src=hash">#ReligiousFreedomForAll</a> <a href="http://t.co/JqZdZO5Tlc">pic.twitter.com/JqZdZO5Tlc</a><br />
— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) <a href="https://twitter.com/Heritage/statuses/448471489843429376">March 25, 2014</a></blockquote>
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But above all, it was good to me to see - on this Feast of the Annunciation - <a href="https://twitter.com/Priestsforlife/status/448467927214219264" target="_blank">that prayer was a part of the demonstrations</a>, because prayer is very much needed in this fight.<br />
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Prayer is needed because, as Blessed John Paul II reminded us in <a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae_en.html" target="_blank">his encyclical <i>Evangelium Vitae</i></a> - first published exactly 18 years ago today - the fight is not just between flesh and blood, but involve higher (and lower) realities:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Mary thus helps the Church to realize that <b>life is always at the centre of a great struggle between good and evil, between light and darkness</b>. The dragon wishes to devour "the child brought forth" (cf. Rev 12:4), a figure of Christ, whom Mary brought forth "in the fullness of time" (Gal 4:4) and whom the Church must unceasingly offer to people in every age. But in a way that child is also a figure of every person, every child, especially every helpless baby whose life is threatened, because - as the Council reminds us - "by his Incarnation the Son of God has united himself in some fashion with every person". It is precisely in the "flesh" of every person that Christ continues to reveal himself and to enter into fellowship with us, so that<b> rejection of human life, in whatever form that rejection takes, is really a rejection of Christ</b>. This is the fascinating but also demanding truth which Christ reveals to us and which his Church continues untiringly to proclaim: "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me" (Mt 18:5); "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me" (Mt 25:40).</blockquote>
While what was <i>ostensibly</i> being discussed - at least in the courtroom - today was a question of constitutional rights and authority, the real matter cuts much deeper: <i style="font-weight: bold;"> </i><i>Quid est homo?</i><i style="font-weight: bold;"> </i>What is man? What is he <i>for?</i> What does our nature, our sexuality, the special union of man and woman that creates new life really mean for us? And what does it mean when we misuse that nature?<br />
<br />
These are questions which we all need to ponder more deeply - some of us very direly.<br />
<center>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
We are the 99% of Catholic women who have used <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23birthcontrol&src=hash">#birthcontrol</a>. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NotMyBossBusiness&src=hash">#NotMyBossBusiness</a> <a href="http://t.co/dLI2Gk7Y1E">pic.twitter.com/dLI2Gk7Y1E</a><br />
— Catholics for Choice (@Catholic4Choice) <a href="https://twitter.com/Catholic4Choice/statuses/448443355606024194">March 25, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script></center>
<br />
It is sad to see the Gospel of Life rejected by so many, especially by those invited to fullest communion with Christ's Mystical Body through membership in His Holy Church. Christ Himself <i>is </i>that Gospel, <i>is</i> that Word of Life - something we are reminded of so profoundly as we reflect on the very beginning of it all, the Angel's visit to Mary. But the forces of the Evil One are seeking to destroy that Truth, to silence or distort the Word of Life. With God's grace, it is for <i>us</i>, His disciples, His messengers, to snatch that precious word from the clutches of the dragon.<br />
<br />
So may we all strive to do better in proclaiming that Gospel, and doing the Works of Mercy - such as instructing the ignorant, counseling the doubtful, and admonishing the sinner. But let us, most of all, lift up to prayer those who have wandered astray or who are lost, that they may be converted to the Truth and so come into eternal life.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVpbEjJrOhQH_S7ZV_95_ZZs3qN1Psw4wASrwJivHVT3vyKq49ecmMFOK1N2oLnSXVzMo0Lq9PHSrLQ7ssgT9dyA52uAk1l_BTfatO6agblp_Xm_8S4nhf8oLhTHZJesfb2lNx-TzaWTk/s1600/Tanner's+Annunciation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVpbEjJrOhQH_S7ZV_95_ZZs3qN1Psw4wASrwJivHVT3vyKq49ecmMFOK1N2oLnSXVzMo0Lq9PHSrLQ7ssgT9dyA52uAk1l_BTfatO6agblp_Xm_8S4nhf8oLhTHZJesfb2lNx-TzaWTk/s1600/Tanner's+Annunciation.jpg" height="254" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<blockquote>
<i>O Mary, bright dawn of the new world, Mother of the living, to you do we entrust the cause of life. Look down, O Mother, upon the vast numbers of babies not allowed to be born, of the poor whose lives are made difficult, of men and women who are victims of brutal violence, of the elderly and the sick killed by indifference or out of misguided mercy.</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>Grant that all who believe in your Son may proclaim the Gospel of life with honesty and love to the people of our time.</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>Obtain for them the grace to accept that Gospel as a gift ever new, the joy of celebrating it with gratitude throughout their lives, and the courage to bear witness to it resolutely, in order to build, together with all people of good will, the civilization of truth and love, to the praise and glory of God, the Creator and lover of life. -- Bl. J.P. II</i></blockquote>
<b>Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ, Who is Life itself: Pray for us. </b></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-27603469666102216982014-02-15T16:50:00.002-05:002014-02-15T17:11:05.342-05:00Poisoning the Water Cooler (Conversation)In the headlines, in the articles, and in the comboxes, the indignation was palpable when the news took over the internet this week that a "homophobic" mother had taken the occasion of a 7-year-old's birthday party invitation to express her disapproval of the lifestyle of the two men raising the child.<br />
<div>
<span id="goog_137459292"></span><span id="goog_137459293"></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From the K-98.3 Facebook post that started it all.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The headline in the <i>Huffington Post</i> <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/12/gay-dads-birthday-invite_n_4776658.html?view=print&comm_ref=false" target="_blank">article </a>by James Nichols screamed, "<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/12/gay-dads-birthday-invite_n_4776658.html?view=print&comm_ref=false" target="_blank">Mom Writes Horrifying Response To Birthday Party Invite From Kid With Gay Dads</a>."<br />
<br />
The article explained the above image thus:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Originally posted on the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/KJOY98.3" target="_blank">K-98.3 Facebook page</a>, the heartbreaking note allegedly written by a disapproving mother on an invite to <i>a birthday party for a 7-year-old</i> is certainly a testament to the work that still has to be done to overcome homophobia in our society.</blockquote>
Today, then, the news breaks that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/15/gay-dad-birthday-invite-hoax_n_4794437.html?&ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000067" target="_blank">the entire thing was made up</a>.<br />
<br />
From <a href="http://www.k983.com/morning-show/2014/02/14/a-message-from-steve-leeana" target="_blank">the "message" on the radio station's webpage</a>, posted by the hosts of the show that broke [i.e., fabricated] the story:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
On Wednesday, we told you the story of Sophia's birthday party, and one parent's objection to the same-sex household of Sophia's parents. We also posted the invitation on our Facebook page, and invited comments from our followers.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This story was, in fact, totally fictitious, and created by the two of us. This was done without the knowledge of K-98.3 management or ownership.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
We were attempting to spur a healthy discourse on a highly passionate topic.</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<i>"Attempting to spur a healthy discourse..." </i> I cannot imagine a more complete image of utter failure in that respect.<br />
<br />
<b>And I want to be clear before getting into this any further: this makes me absolutely furious.</b><br />
<br />
Now, of course, <i>HuffPo </i>has updated its original story:<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8XsI23lpfeZ1h-_GZFcRNTgaR-kMYgT5zKOKI3fNUYIoq3dk0Sau2l0f5TVvHW9EILO5D0B2DPfqLgnacsVbtS2FRxtKCkQuWts0FgMOUNZpM0Mmba6RMi2eJM6LmjyhXahqMy7LNSkE/s1600/Retraction.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8XsI23lpfeZ1h-_GZFcRNTgaR-kMYgT5zKOKI3fNUYIoq3dk0Sau2l0f5TVvHW9EILO5D0B2DPfqLgnacsVbtS2FRxtKCkQuWts0FgMOUNZpM0Mmba6RMi2eJM6LmjyhXahqMy7LNSkE/s1600/Retraction.JPG" height="200" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It now "appears" that way?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
And how do you like that for a retraction?</div>
<br />
Some might say a retraction isn't needed. But remember Nichols' original story? Let me quote a line once more.<br />
<br />
While Nichols wrote that the note was " <b><i>allegedly </i></b>written by a disapproving mother," he then, in the very same sentence, went on to say that it was "<b><i>certainly </i></b>a testament to the work that still has to be done to overcome homophobia in our society" [emphases added].<br />
<br />
Allegedly... certainly. And therein, my friends, lies the problem.<br />
<br />
Everyone who uses Facebook has had it happen to him at one time or another that he clicked that"share" button and re-posted something, perhaps with a bit of emphatic, outraged commentary, only to find out later that it was untrue. I've had it happen myself, personally. And each time it's a reminder I need to be more diligent... to mind my sources... to double-check things... to verify and look for a source of better repute when a claim seems outrageous. And, all else failing,<b> <i>to issue a retraction when, despite all my efforts, I am duped.</i></b><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>
But Nichols? From all I can tell, <i>there was no due diligence whatsoever in the reporting of this story. </i>Did he bother even calling the radio station to confirm? Did he try calling the phone number of the mother which was written right there, plain to see, on the invitation? If he did, he might have said so in his article: think about it, how often have you read, "A call placed to such-and-such was not returned as of press time" or something of the sort.<br />
<br />
But we've grown lazy in our news consumption, and we don't look for statements like that anymore and prize them the way we should. We skim, comment, and share, and we fail to be as outraged as we should when these sorts of scams are perpetrated.<br />
<br />
Let me be clear: <a href="http://blog.joegrabowski.com/2014/01/nationally-syndicated-columnist-those.html" target="_blank">I've written before about journalists being lazy and stupid and slanderous and I've deliberately distanced myself from the knee-jerk reactions of calling for people to be sacked</a>. I don't want anyone to mistake me as wavering from that stance. In most cases, that will still be the way that I feel. In fact, I'm even willing to cut Nichols a break for his <i>HuffPo </i>piece here, shoddy and sloppy and stupid as was his work in the matter.<br />
<br />
<i style="font-weight: bold;">But I will be positively outraged if these radio hosts are not IMMEDIATELY fired. </i>There's a difference between being stupid and offensive and sloppy and just making shit up. If our media culture is going to preserve any ideal of integrity, these two need to be thrown to the curb - NOW.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizgNoMgAO2JbX1-vVTScU_dc842lA4XicGYccnhJRnDCf700sU_4W3jWiZFQvplMX84osDUiQGpXp9YCBFFcau0loBRnnGfszsJL2nSu-MzUoS8BVXuNaTiaH8rrnI5Ig_BzuXf2zFQVE/s1600/meme.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizgNoMgAO2JbX1-vVTScU_dc842lA4XicGYccnhJRnDCf700sU_4W3jWiZFQvplMX84osDUiQGpXp9YCBFFcau0loBRnnGfszsJL2nSu-MzUoS8BVXuNaTiaH8rrnI5Ig_BzuXf2zFQVE/s1600/meme.jpg" height="400" width="318" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">True story.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
And to revisit Nichols: I said above that I thought a fuller retraction and an apology were in order. Let me elaborate on that a bit.<br />
<br />
A casual observer might think that it isn't needed in this case. The story was fictitious, so there's really been no harm: no one was hurt, because no one involved really existed.<br />
<br />
<i>But that misses the wider issue</i>.<br />
<br />
The public discourse in this country is already in a disgraceful state, especially as regards LGBT issues. Anyone who dares take a stance against issues like same-sex 'marriage,' or who announces that the gay lifestyle is incompatible with their religious beliefs, is quick to be shamed, ridiculed, and condemned.<br />
<br />
This fake story was, in effect, the LGBT equivalent of race-baiting. It generated a heated context for a debate right off the bat, loaded with <i>pathos </i>that already was stilted and favoring to one side of the discussions that would ensue.<br />
<br />
I remember reading a very early comment on the story, a person expressing that he felt sorry for the woman's little boy being raised in such a way. And thus the thing very quickly became not about <i>what </i>the mom had said or <i>how </i>she had said it, but <i>that </i>she said it <i>at all </i>- nay, that she even dared <i>think it</i>.<br />
<br />
Most of those who took to comboxes to voice their outrage made it very clear that the real issue was beyond the hurtfulness of the note and its rhetorical daftness: <i>the real issue was that this woman was fundamentally wrong-headed for her beliefs in the first place</i>, and her choice to raise her child according to those beliefs was very early - and subsequently as the discussions proceeded very often - <i>likened to child abuse</i>.<br />
<br />
And so <i style="font-weight: bold;">that </i>was the environment into which Christians and others were lured by this prank.<br />
<br />
Some waded in to say that they thought it would have been better for the mother simply to demur and to keep her child home: a simple "Regretfully, no," would have sufficed.<br />
<i style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></i>
<i style="font-weight: bold;">But they were told that </i><u style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">wouldn't</u> <b><i>have sufficed</i>. </b><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>No, nothing would suffice but that she let her little boy go to the party and get over her bigoted and hateful prejudices.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
So, you see, that is why I think Mr. Nichols owes <i>us all </i>an apology. Because there's already poison enough in the water cooler conversations around this country any time the topic touches upon this issue; and it's only getting worse; and we deserve better from journalists than for them to carelessly parrot nonsense that increases the already lethal levels of toxicity.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-8989836396593683442014-01-23T21:26:00.000-05:002014-01-23T21:26:55.446-05:00A Moral Quandary, a Logical ImpasseI don't know what else to say.<br />
<br />
I come back from the March for Life each time I attend with this same though beating down doors in my mind: this same struggle in my heart and my soul.<br />
<br />
I March, I make a stand, I speak out... and then I go home, and it seems business as usual.<br />
<br />
The Civil Rights marchers didn't rest. They didn't stop sitting in, riding the buses in defiance, marching in another city when they'd finished with one.<br />
<br />
But here I am, having marched in what I believe is a fundamental and vitally important civil rights issue - indeed the most fundamental we have ever faced - here I am, in my living room, in my recliner.<br />
<br />
And the stone in my stomach rolls over, and that pervasive question that haunts me every year returns. And I'm still not satisfied I have anything like an answer.<br />
<br />
It is something weird, Orwellian. I feel like I must skip into double-think. I try to convince myself instead that it is perhaps Augustinian really. Is this the reality of the spiritual warfare? Does this question bring me really to an unseen a plane of division that makes all the difference...? Is the answer somehow a dual "yes-in-different-ways"?<br />
<br />
I find it hard to believe so.<br />
<br />
But then, I can't even properly articulate the concern as a question. Instead it is felt in the weight of a logical contradiction. Two statements seem to be equally true and yet seem logically opposed such that both cannot be true.<br />
<br />
And here are those statements, those dual realities I must confront every time I return from having Marched for Life and go on with my own life...<br />
<br />
Statement one: "If I knew there was a building down the street in which children were brutally being murdered every day, there'd be nothing for it: I literally could not rest, and I'd abandon everything until it was ended."<br />
<br />
Statement two: "I do know there is a building down the street in which precisely that is happening. Yet I do rest. I don't abandon everything."<br />
<br />
Can both be true? Or must it be that I am a liar with respect to the first, since the second is not conditional but fact?<br />
<br />
This is an odd blog post for me because this is where it ends... well, almost.<br />
<br />
I don't know the answer. And I want to. And I think many more might feel the same way.<br />
<br />
But maybe it isn't a question with an answer. Maybe it is a problem with a solution.<br />
<br />
Would we - could we - face that problem and give that solution? I won't even say what it is because I think you, dear reader, can easily enough imagine it. Is this the upshot? Is not another rationale needed, but rather a choice? I ask it humbly, and trembling, because I truly don't know if I have the strength to make that choice.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-62046442049986630862014-01-18T13:49:00.001-05:002014-01-18T18:59:43.388-05:00Why I March: Because of Her<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[W]e are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between good and evil, death and life, the "culture of death" and the "culture of life". We find ourselves not only "faced with" but necessarily "in the midst of" this conflict: <b><i>we are all involved and we all share in it, with the inescapable responsibility of choosing to be unconditionally pro-life.</i></b></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: right;">
- John Paul II, <i>Evangelium Vitae </i>28</blockquote>
<br />
<a name='more'></a>On Wednesday, January 22 of this year, I will join tens of thousands other pro-lifers for the <a href="http://www.facebook.com/events/381468408647692" target="_blank">41st Annual March for Life</a>.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/us/politics/40-years-after-roe-v-wade-thousands-march-to-oppose-abortion.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLVefMMnWgRd__ATIi91LdI-0AvG8koJsjhnlFoQync51w5sFvL8_Nu5X8JPHR0cOBt-o-k6JVSdH0-kyAUL7pAmyoiYdooKV3gsHZMuIZbmFEGLSynil8rB7nEE-RgzK8OgeIEP0C0ZQ/s1600/MFL.jpg" height="265" width="400" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">2013 March for Life<br />
Photo credit: <i><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/us/politics/40-years-after-roe-v-wade-thousands-march-to-oppose-abortion.html" target="_blank">Drew Angerer, New York Times</a></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
As I prepare to attend the March this year, many reflections - musings and memories both - fill my mind. Since the March for Life Education and Defense Fund is calling on people to share on social media <a href="http://marchforlife.org/media-center/whywemarch-social-media-campaign" target="_blank">#WhyWeMarch</a>, I figured I would share some of my own reflections here.<br />
<hr />
As I think of how to answer the question, "Why do you March for Life?", there are certain memories that surface involuntarily: memories not of previous years' Marches, but of those rather lonelier and more sober affairs, morning prayer vigils on the sidewalks outside abortion clinics.<br />
<br />
One such occasion comes first to mind for the impact it made on me. There was nothing momentous about the day itself, nothing observably different from any other such affair. But that, precisely, was what ended up sticking in my mind, heart, and soul.<br />
<br />
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It was winter; a very cold and grey Saturday morning. All dressed in black - a seminarian at the time - a black topcoat and black scarf and knit cap over a black suit - looking surely very Mormon, I knelt on the pavement outside the Philadelphia Women's Center Clinic at 8th and Appletree trying to ply my rosary beads with increasingly sensation-less fingers and thumbs. The event organizers, a group called the <a href="http://www.helpersphilly.org/html/vigils.html" target="_blank">Helpers of God's Precious Infants</a>, led the prayers, and the trained sidewalk counselors among them gently offered literature to the young women going into the clinic.<br />
<br />
Trying to focus on the words of the <i>Aves </i>floating by, I remember coming quickly to my senses at one particular point and realizing that I'd been staring at something. Some<i>one</i>. And she stared back.<br />
<br />
My eyes had become locked with the eyes of a young girl with short cropped hair standing opposite. She wore an orange safety vest designating her as a volunteer. She and a young man volunteering alongside her would approach the women coming to the clinic once they crossed a certain threshold or perimeter that was apparently known by instruction because no visible demarcation existed; and they would proceed to walk, one on either side of the girl, over to the entrance of the clinic, seeming very much like body guards.<br />
<br />
I had only been staring absentmindedly, literally devoid of any conscious thoughts, dumbly numb with the cold, and somehow this girl's eyes had become my focal point. And when suddenly my mind did return from wandering and I began to see consciously again, I was literally jolted by what I saw in the eyes staring back into mine.<b> It was <i>hatred</i>: angry, direct, and very personal hatred.</b><br />
<hr />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU8ezVLs4KsWEwgiWOrA4P8qDSRSDwUAJA345JCMrGP09tvEmMIRGsfyyXpV-ZWSlgWftDWnGNbBSGRnSPZ3Ptx3iTZieh2aLPI0a3HxgHw63Qcve8KDlIhCMpM3Pc4bSGqZJPo3S4Kng/s1600/hqdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU8ezVLs4KsWEwgiWOrA4P8qDSRSDwUAJA345JCMrGP09tvEmMIRGsfyyXpV-ZWSlgWftDWnGNbBSGRnSPZ3Ptx3iTZieh2aLPI0a3HxgHw63Qcve8KDlIhCMpM3Pc4bSGqZJPo3S4Kng/s1600/hqdefault.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a>I want to be very clear about something at this point.<br />
<br />
<b>I believe with the utmost sincerity that the vast majority of those people who might be called <i>agents </i>in the abortion industry - the doctors, nurses, clinic workers and administrators - are not malicious. </b><br />
<br />
I have long given benefit of the doubt in consideration of such that there are probably any number of contributory factors to explain their presence in such places and their doing the work they do there... reasons besides a fully rationalized ill motive. There can be trauma, pain, ignorance, or confusion. Indeed, in many cases, I believe they are themselves <i>victims </i>- of lies, propaganda, ill treatment, and a host of other injustices.<br />
<br />
<b>And if this is true, as I believe it is, of such as these... then how much more can, <i>must</i>, it be believed true of those poor women I have watched entering these clinics on days such as the one I'm describing!</b><br />
<hr />
It is this belief, in fact, which gave the element of such sincere shock to my sudden realization that behind the eyes of this young girl - who couldn't have been much older than 21 - there was unmistakably a very deep <i>hatred</i>, and a hatred <i>toward me!</i><br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggXp7GA1vliiZQ4fo4UisqMnt-5HLMOFIBkG4GMwcVY-bQEz8tyvznZFa-p6l1fDEX-wqN7btbbVWFJw1OFe6xhjhek0fp6Hv6eH1HD_T0cOHgWkbpBgSelmyxU_Sj-l1RkRe8DpJEAtg/s1600/SmileDerpBlackSS.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggXp7GA1vliiZQ4fo4UisqMnt-5HLMOFIBkG4GMwcVY-bQEz8tyvznZFa-p6l1fDEX-wqN7btbbVWFJw1OFe6xhjhek0fp6Hv6eH1HD_T0cOHgWkbpBgSelmyxU_Sj-l1RkRe8DpJEAtg/s1600/SmileDerpBlackSS.png" height="189" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Probably how I looked.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>'What have <b>I</b> done?' ... </i>When a shock like this occurs, the mind will immediately begin seeking explanations. My first theory was that I, perhaps, had unwittingly offended her. Maybe my unconscious staring had given a wrong impression. Who could tell, after all, what emotional implication might have unintentionally been communicated by my glazed-over and unseeing eyes? Or all that while, what had been the expression on my face...? '<i>Ah! That's it!' ... </i>and so I smiled, my best attempt at a gentle, conciliatory smile.<br />
<br />
In response, her eyes narrowed - <i>ever so slightly</i>, almost imperceptibly - and the daggers grew only sharper. The message of dislike grew still more intense.<br />
<br />
Finally, '<i>stop staring, idiot,</i>' my mind chided. And I immediately averted my eyes, looking down at the pavement for a minute or so.<br />
<br />
Looking up again anon, I found her eyes directed elsewhere: yet their expression had not changed. Now she was looking around at the crowd of those gathered, the same vicious glint on her pupils... almost (it seemed) as if looking for another set of eyes she could stare into and make sure they got the message: <i>"I despise you."</i><br />
<hr />
There are a few other observations I recall from that morning regarding this same young girl, and they will be important to my answering the question, "Why do I March for Life?"<br />
<br />
Nearly each time after walking a new client into the clinic, she and her male volunteer counterpart would exchange some banter. Somehow, I felt that I <i>recognized </i>them both during these moments - but that's because I was recognizing the interaction, not them personally. As I watched these exchanges, it became more and more evident to me that they were very contrived, very deliberate, very self-aware - both on her part and his.<br />
<br />
The body language (shuffling feet, moving the shoulders over the hips in a very slightly exaggerated nonchalance), the too-emphatic eye contact and attention on one another, the sure inclusion of one burst of laughter literally every time... all this was staged, I realized.<br />
<br />
There's nothing all that remarkable in this, really.<br />
<br />
The way I had been able to recognize these interactions for what they were is because I've acted on stage. This behavior was unmistakably that same sort of hyper-conscious interaction (meant to maintain the pretense of casualness) that one must employ when acting upstage as a disinterested crowd member during a scene with a separate downstage focus. (I think I remember being told that mouthing the words "watermelon juice" at different tempos and in different combinations gave the best and most believable impression of actual speech.)<br />
<br />
Of course, reflecting that these two weren't merely pantomiming. <i>Nevertheless, their casual, nonchalant, good-humored interactions were definitely <b>acted</b>, even if only subconsciously.</i><br />
<hr />
Now, the whole point of recounting this interaction is this: <b>I have remembered this girl. </b><br />
<br />
It remains in my memory as vivid a meeting as any other I can recall in my entire life, and we had spoken not a word.<br />
<br />
Indeed, for the few days following this, while I lay on my bed drifting off to sleep and my mind did its nightly circumambulation and sorting out, it would return to me the vivid image of this encounter, like a cat coming back from its last time out for the night with a dead rodent as a present for master.<br />
<br />
I wanted to just forget it, since I had trouble making any sense of it. But I couldn't forget. <b>I can't, even now, forget. </b><i>Why?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Finally, after so many years, I've been able to find a reason for why this scene had become seared so powerfully into my memory and weighed so heavily upon my heart. And for that reason, it has - at least for where I am <i>now </i>in my spiritual journey - become a big part of the reason why I will once again March for Life. (I'd marched before, with other reasons before, and those reasons certainly still attain; but this reason now is what renews my personal commitment to the "inescapable responsibility" of being pro-life.)<br />
<hr />
When I started from reverie and comprehended a look of hatred being directed specifically and deliberately at me, my first reaction was shock.<br />
<br />
My second reaction a kind of dismay.<br />
<br />
My third reaction a struggling confusion.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>My fourth reaction, and the one that lingered, <b>was the temptation to hate in return.</b></i><br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
The more over the years I sat with this memory, the more my confusion at the way it affected me would turn into a kind of resentment, frustration, or anger toward this girl.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Who the hell was she, anyway? She didn't know anything about me. How could she just hate me for kneeling there praying a rosary?</i>... and so on went my thoughts, taking the path of least resistance along the mixed-up wiring of wounded sinful nature.<br />
<br />
<b>It was the most natural way to respond. </b>It made psychological sense. It seemed to offer a kind of comfort or relief. It nursed my sense of woundedness, catered to the egocentricity of indignant victimhood. What's more, it could be safely rationalized, if it came to that: <i>Sure, I might be giving in a bit to hatred toward her now... but at least <b>she </b>isn't here to suffer it: I'm not hurting <b>her</b>,<b> </b>or staring her down the way <b>she </b>did to <b>me</b>.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
And then it hit me: this was why this mysterious thing had been allowed to happen in the first place. In a way, it's not about her. Honestly, I don't know if I could say whether it had even been she herself or a demon that had stared at me with such sensible hatred and vitriol that day: indeed, perhaps in the final assessment all of it <i>had </i>been merely in my perception. Nonetheless, the memory and the effect remained the same.<br />
<br />
But ultimately this was a challenge, from Our Lord to me: <b>"Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you."</b> As Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Borglio (now-Pope Francis) applied this message directly in this context: <i><b>"Defend the unborn against abortion even if they persecute you, calumniate you, set traps for you, take you to court or kill you."</b></i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFiWaf8d5qaF5ZF8y7tYTrgxdRlLknfyPO4uyoJjeUCx4bcgn6SW8lWjbYBR09kUe7CIQcMfIPFUYwPSzpJEl1FpVAATrRcKDlbvuvHnQAJVIhX4m0zKYxOYDIrVFgIRttbVzpmSt3TcQ/s1600/love-your-enemies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFiWaf8d5qaF5ZF8y7tYTrgxdRlLknfyPO4uyoJjeUCx4bcgn6SW8lWjbYBR09kUe7CIQcMfIPFUYwPSzpJEl1FpVAATrRcKDlbvuvHnQAJVIhX4m0zKYxOYDIrVFgIRttbVzpmSt3TcQ/s1600/love-your-enemies.jpg" height="196" width="400" /></a></div>
I'd been laid a trap, and I for many years fell into it.<br />
<br />
As often as I would remember that day, I would first force my mind <i>away </i>from the look of hatred I'd encountered, and remember instead those interactions spoken about above, between this girl and the other volunteer. I'd recall how - right after walking young girls in through that door to commit an act that broke my heart even to imagine it, an act that sent shivers down my spine merely to conceive of it - they would stand there and joke around and laugh nonchalantly, like walking through the park.<br />
<br />
And only then, after detouring in my remembrances, would I allow myself to consider again that look. And thus I would come prepared and armed with my own rationale for hatred, with an extra sense of indignation and what I saw as "just" anger. And I would meet her remembered stare with my own in my mind's eye, and shoot back the message: <i>I despise you, too. </i><b>It was, in a very literal sense, "an eye for an eye."</b><br />
<br />
<b><i>"But I say unto you: Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you."</i></b><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>
After years of standing by abortion clinics praying, it is reasonable to assume that I've unwittingly been present at the loss of <i>scores </i>of unborn lives. Two persons walking in, one walking out: time and time again I've witnessed it, my heart rending, and I've tried to grapple with the sheer horror and magnitude of the thing.<br />
<br />
Despite that fact, it has always been <i>this </i>memory that has stood at the center of all, getting caught up in all the other emotions and sadnesses and outrages that my encounters with the abortion industry have afforded me.<br />
<br />
God magnified <i>this </i>event for me, and allowed it to become so central, for a very specific and very shocking reason: <b>in the midst of all that atrocity and death, children's lives lost and women's lives shattered, <i>this is what God wanted to be most topically focused and intensely felt for me: I <u>cannot</u>, I <u>MUST NOT</u>, hate that girl.</i></b><br />
<i style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></i>
<span style="font-weight: bold;">This is that "</span><b>enormous and dramatic clash between good and evil, death and life, the 'culture of death' and the 'culture of life'" of which John Paul II wrote, and this is part of what he meant when we said we are "in the midst" of and intertwined with that clash. <i>We are "in it" because, to a large extent, <u>it is "in" us - in our hearts, in our minds, in our souls.</u></i></b><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>
For all I know her banter with her fellow volunteer might have merely been a kind of defense mechanism and shyness: a way of coping coping with their own sense of being "on display" in front of all these praying activists - they the only two volunteers, standing in bright orange vests in front of a crowd of rosary-murmuring protesters. For that matter, her look of hatred toward me might have been another version of the same. But all of it was moot when it came to interpreting the clear message Our Lord wanted to convey to me through the bright recollection: <b>God loves her still, and so must I.</b><br />
<hr />
I'll close with one final observation.<br />
<br />
I am not trying to prove any grand thesis here. There <i>are </i>agents of evil in the abortion industry. There are, it can truly be said, <i>evil people </i>working there, as within other mechanisms of the Culture of Death. To acknowledge the woundedness and hurt and pain that often lies at the root of why people get to be where we find them <i>does not</i> whitewash the fact that there <i>are </i>simply some who have given themselves over to the Enemy and willfully live lives of diabolical depravity.<br />
<br />
The point of this story is that <i>one <b>personal </b>encounter</i>. And the <i>personal </i>part is the key. I <i>can't </i>stretch this point out to generalities. First of all, we would run into those difficult cases just mentioned, where it's hard to feel <i>anything </i>like love. But secondly... even if I <i>could </i>successfully generalize my point here, that would simply make the Gospel's radical and revolutionary command to love our enemies <i><b>too tame, too facile.</b></i><br />
<br />
These words of Christ's, like most words of challenge, are <i>easier said than done:</i> and <i>doing </i>requires an <i>encounter</i>, a reification of what the words index. The challenge cannot be met in abstraction. It must be met in lived reality.<br />
<br />
So, in closing, please understand that I am not riding some moral high horse off into the sunset amidst triumphant music. I am not claiming that I succeed in loving all of the agents who work as the enemies of life (and, by the by, if actually calling them "enemies," even in the most egregious cases, makes the challenge more difficult to us then we probably had better not).<br />
<br />
I am not even saying I succeed merely in <i>trying </i>most times to love them, as (for example) I see this or that spokesperson on the news decrying "anti-choice" laws.<br />
<br />
No; I am a sinner. I struggle. I slip all too easily and fall into anger and hatred still.<br />
<br />
But I don't in this one case, anymore. Not for <i style="font-weight: bold;">that girl</i>, anymore. And <i>that </i>is my point. <b><i>I love her.</i></b> I love her <i>because God loves her.</i> And <b>THAT</b>, right now, is the renewing element reviving all the many reasons #WhyIMarch:<b><i> I march because I love her.</i></b>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-39033229835509800432014-01-14T18:59:00.003-05:002014-01-14T19:00:50.927-05:00Why, You DO Hate Babies!<span style="color: red; font-size: x-small;"><b><i>[EMPHATIC CONTENT WARNING: Some of the content in this post might be disturbing to more sensitive readers, so proceed with caution. It's nothing that will get you fired or anything, but it could leave you heavy-at-heart.]</i></b></span><br />
<hr />
"Why do you hate babies?"<br />
<br />
... or puppies, or kittens, or rainbow, or flowers, or any and all things good?<br />
<br />
So goes a meme or trope or whatever you want to call it that frequently is bandied about among my friends in internet conversation. It's mean, of course, to parody those whose failure to engage in rational discourse leads them inevitably to <i>ad hominem </i>type attacks or to convenient <i>non sequiturs.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<a href="http://www.quickmeme.com/img/6a/6a64132b1d882dfe388e25d435b18de897c5a1470689587b9cbd1cbd4b011f93.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="202" src="http://www.quickmeme.com/img/6a/6a64132b1d882dfe388e25d435b18de897c5a1470689587b9cbd1cbd4b011f93.jpg" width="320" /></a>Thus, for example, if in a public forum (such as on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/JoeyG2001" target="_blank">my Facebook timeline</a>), I were to criticize the actions of a certain type of pro-life activist whose tactics were offensive for some reason, there is a certain other type of pro-life who probably before long would come speeding in with a line of accusations. None of these accusations would be based in any reasoning or facts; none would follow in any logical way from my criticisms. But the probability is so high as to appear a necessity that sooner or later in any thread of the sort, the following sorts of comments will be made:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I DARE criticize </i><i style="font-weight: bold;">SO-AND-SO?!? </i>[NB: ALL CAPS are a useful tool for this type of commenter.] <i>What have <b>I </b>done for the pro-life movement, that I should talk? How @#$%ing DARE I be so UNCHARITABLE? Why, I am aiding and abetting the entire abortion industry myself! I might as well be performing abortions with my own hands! I just DON'T CARE, I guess, about the poor innocent BABIES!</i>... and so on, <i>ad nauseam. </i><br />
<a name='more'></a></blockquote>
And having seen this pattern enough to be able to predict its instant likelihood at the onset, my friends and I will tend to preempt such idiocy by jumping in first on one another's potentially provocative threads with the question: "Why do you hate babies?"<br />
<br />
So fun has it been that it's morphed into sundry other forms. One of us dares diverge from lock-step with the Republican Party as the only way forward for preserving anything that is good? <i>"Why do you hate good?"</i><br />
<br />
A version can of course also be used to lampoon the same unreasonableness in those who are opposite on the principles (in addition to those who are bunkered off our right flank): thus, should anyone of us post something that dares question the wisdom of the State radically altering the definitional basis of marriage and family, he could be asked,<i> "Why do you hate love?"</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
It's fun, and a way to laugh away all the ignorance out there. But some crazy can't be so easily shaken off...<br />
<hr />
Behold... <a href="http://www.refugees.bratfree.com/" target="_blank">Bratfree</a>!<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzkB7AWyuL_84kt7Dx4PZsjj3_9KkUEIjIyo9nHTZXe1oWKIkWJil1xNJTY4YGK7dZJzzR3tTgkd68eBJmXSMWEykYf0aN6sysBTTmgN6pzNw9TpsmZnIITi6hT0eKeFXOUlrvfWmHzkk/s1600/baby+hate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzkB7AWyuL_84kt7Dx4PZsjj3_9KkUEIjIyo9nHTZXe1oWKIkWJil1xNJTY4YGK7dZJzzR3tTgkd68eBJmXSMWEykYf0aN6sysBTTmgN6pzNw9TpsmZnIITi6hT0eKeFXOUlrvfWmHzkk/s320/baby+hate.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
This is a forum that allows "for the child-free to post rants and discuss world events as they relate to being child-free." You won't find that description on the website linked above, however: it's from a Google search result for an apparently now-defunct version of the forum. It would seem that these vile losers have already been kicked off various other hosting platforms and had former versions of the forum shut down.<br />
<br />
Still, they're back, and from the sheer numbers and rate-of-posting (and replies - e.g., average posts garnering hundreds of views, scored of replies, running onto several webpages of text - results I'd be thrilled with!) it isn't your average nutter's club. <i>Oh, how I wish I could say it were - a point I'll elaborate upon further down.</i><br />
<br />
But what sorts of things "relate to being child-free" such that they inspire such frequent "rants" and (ahem, I use the term lightly) "discussion," you ask?<br />
<br />
Well, how about that pesky trend of <a href="http://www.refugees.bratfree.com/read.php?2,120364,page=1" target="_blank">Babystalking</a>! [I can't make this shit up, honestly.]<br />
<br />
A thread started by username "SlumSlut" (I can't wait to see my Google analytics), complained that... bah, what they hell, here, see for yourself!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAVUcIb0Kg9FD3a9KKIOBX0H-hjHyG-ThIgi618JXvaKyW7v-Ga4Tjbft_6Nh_EcQqMz0_bJekVtHc6h-MruVnSILRYA2oGuM2IOh2bx6OhYySILT80lmABLu1mf_Rpd2hwbjXxK8grDc/s1600/babystalking1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAVUcIb0Kg9FD3a9KKIOBX0H-hjHyG-ThIgi618JXvaKyW7v-Ga4Tjbft_6Nh_EcQqMz0_bJekVtHc6h-MruVnSILRYA2oGuM2IOh2bx6OhYySILT80lmABLu1mf_Rpd2hwbjXxK8grDc/s400/babystalking1.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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A BABY WAS BABBLING AT ME!!! THE HORROR, THE HORROR!!!</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtTEODJwwko2yXWjwdXUEamrLsJJoF15jtXu1vqSrYU1EbKquwWrZvvFVHNprmwjrsp40989BKkHzbO3n_S7VsfmuoM9bOv3hjgbq0-CdKlAjl2-aRJqywGcKaGK0sFob4o68X-tZil2w/s1600/kurtz.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtTEODJwwko2yXWjwdXUEamrLsJJoF15jtXu1vqSrYU1EbKquwWrZvvFVHNprmwjrsp40989BKkHzbO3n_S7VsfmuoM9bOv3hjgbq0-CdKlAjl2-aRJqywGcKaGK0sFob4o68X-tZil2w/s320/kurtz.jpg" width="242" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"I hope I don't get babystalked today."</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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But "SlumSlut" is not without her sympathizers. Nooooo... there's <i>thirty freakin' pages worth of 'em.</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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Like this charming person who wishes mothers would "Keep a short leash on [their] feral brat[s]" and keep them from "want[ing] to say hello to [her]."</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9Rz8Zud1rb0pnGtDP_NCtrNxMPgjVTpWcn574U4Ul-t_ZF6TyPUM7iR2M0-t_LEHUwHhd09LGQ5Pg6IXGEOvm6fMR3mnj8EbnmMU0jTm-gA_IK6pLav18d3hyphenhyphenzWbgN_zUp8L9leMNOag/s1600/babystalking.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9Rz8Zud1rb0pnGtDP_NCtrNxMPgjVTpWcn574U4Ul-t_ZF6TyPUM7iR2M0-t_LEHUwHhd09LGQ5Pg6IXGEOvm6fMR3mnj8EbnmMU0jTm-gA_IK6pLav18d3hyphenhyphenzWbgN_zUp8L9leMNOag/s400/babystalking.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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Yep. These people really are that gross.</div>
<hr />
"But what has brought this on?" [Okay, let's be blunt, you're asking "Where the hell does he <i>find </i>this crap?"]<br />
<br />
Well, as you may know (hold on for what might seem a topical whiplash), next week is the <a href="http://www.marchforlife.org/" target="_blank">March for Life</a> in Washington, D.C., somberly commemorating that dark day in our nation's history when the Supreme Court's decision in <i>Roe v. Wade </i>was handed down and a bright dawn broke for the would-be Bratfree.<br />
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The March for Life initiative was begun by one of my personal heroes, a woman I admire above many other great Americans more vaunted or celebrated: <a href="http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/remembering-nellie-gray-on-the-one-year-anniversary-of-her-death" target="_blank">Nellie Gray</a>. As the link there will tell you, this outstanding figure passed from this life in August of 2012.</div>
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As I was researching for a post on the March for this blog, I decided maybe I'd focus on Gray herself. But high in the results of my searches were the reactions of the folks at Bratfree. And, yes, they're as despicable and as disgusting as you'd expect. <i><span style="color: red;"><b>[I REITERATE HERE MY DISTURBING CONTENT WARNING].</b></span></i></div>
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Here are just a few of the most offensive reactions among literally hundreds upon the death of a woman who, throughout her life, "prayed for conversion of people who didn’t have the same views[<a href="http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/remembering-nellie-gray-on-the-one-year-anniversary-of-her-death" target="_blank">*</a>]" and whose work was inspired by the legacy of the Civil Rights movement[<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/16/us/nellie-gray-anti-abortion-activist-dies-at-88.html?_r=0" target="_blank">**</a>].</div>
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I'm not posting a link to this thread because it's honestly that hard to stomach in any greater helping than this.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimvZmXj3tqB3XBzYJywAp2RfHtHtEpOinGjFa-nZMaPAqt2wOD0V_AD2IAFjXMCkJOelBEaZlwiuHjTtsakV2dqGDbdDoqaPit1ifyY0d3FWRPdoRbcu6wlao8kPrspT6RAZR9b0JuHcA/s1600/nellie+gray1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimvZmXj3tqB3XBzYJywAp2RfHtHtEpOinGjFa-nZMaPAqt2wOD0V_AD2IAFjXMCkJOelBEaZlwiuHjTtsakV2dqGDbdDoqaPit1ifyY0d3FWRPdoRbcu6wlao8kPrspT6RAZR9b0JuHcA/s400/nellie+gray1.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz2cg4xs9Q4Q4JWDwtuNwVp0ikeOoEl0z90ua27U2adY20dHe6UUlF6AKnGYaXuPI2e0aKmn8lG08LPmSeYU8Z5u7xaf7VXem7gCye5h7Gq7tkFFWobumC0d63SETWB5l1SvH220_NBPc/s1600/nellie+gray2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="102" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz2cg4xs9Q4Q4JWDwtuNwVp0ikeOoEl0z90ua27U2adY20dHe6UUlF6AKnGYaXuPI2e0aKmn8lG08LPmSeYU8Z5u7xaf7VXem7gCye5h7Gq7tkFFWobumC0d63SETWB5l1SvH220_NBPc/s400/nellie+gray2.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOEQ7lP2Rt6mOEQu591Me64kgJkd65I6cc1WlOCb86EruvXZrmjtCcVdeWYDTzvmjvMjdLG99bx-LtEjxhyvlPZgh9gOzPVXR7s-Mbm2SvMAXP84CLkkKj_G64ECXGtt6kVQ-DVgBfVwU/s1600/nelliegray3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOEQ7lP2Rt6mOEQu591Me64kgJkd65I6cc1WlOCb86EruvXZrmjtCcVdeWYDTzvmjvMjdLG99bx-LtEjxhyvlPZgh9gOzPVXR7s-Mbm2SvMAXP84CLkkKj_G64ECXGtt6kVQ-DVgBfVwU/s400/nelliegray3.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1yWOElTGiwiwTBRDjQXJmg99HKHxg2_51zmtA2jNYC85wU0l4wzRKvANW_WecRHPVYhf0cQUqS07tBrcqij3FRQ_QMeSjBOV-lU763_cro3VUg5zR3xh6Trv4zgk5y5aVZ8qWBzCGD-w/s1600/nelliegray4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1yWOElTGiwiwTBRDjQXJmg99HKHxg2_51zmtA2jNYC85wU0l4wzRKvANW_WecRHPVYhf0cQUqS07tBrcqij3FRQ_QMeSjBOV-lU763_cro3VUg5zR3xh6Trv4zgk5y5aVZ8qWBzCGD-w/s400/nelliegray4.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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And yes, that is a user with the moniker "SatansBitch" followed by one with an avatar picturing a baby (and, by implication, perhaps, since this is Bratfree(!), <i>all babies?</i>) as... Hitler.</div>
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But I'm not just going through this exercise to be a downer.<br />
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No, I <i>do </i>have something like a thesis here, and it's this: my friends' and my rhetorical joke depends upon the widespread if not universal significance of "baby-hatred" as an inherently irrational and morally objectionable thing. And yet, this fringe exists. And just as the irony and the juxtaposition, the reversal of ordinary sanity, are what give our joke its punch and value and meaning... so does the existence of this fringe, and its diabolical hatred for a woman simply on the basis of her opposition to abortion (and its willingness to liken <i>babies </i>to <i>Hitler</i>)... so does that fact throw into relief in a startling and powerful way just how deep is the bottom of the evil of abortion, how irrational and ugly it is at its dankest and most firmly dug-in roots.</div>
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No - I'm not straw-manning here. I know this is a <i>fringe</i>. I've called it one myself. The <i>vast </i>majority of abortion supporters are ignorant, or duped, or injured, or all of them, or suffering any number of other causes that mitigate the evil of the choice to support such a terrible crime.</div>
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No, this is a <i>fringe</i>. But its baby-hating ethic is not <i>all </i>that far removed from the impulse to remove sex from its natural consequences, or marriage from its fundamental purposes, or the natures of men and woman as male and female from their biological design and supernatural destinies. The culture of death consists of a sowing and reaping, and even if this particular ugly weeds pop up all aligned in a row, some of those same seeds blew wide during the planting, and hints of the same aroma can be caught wafting up from throughout all the neighboring rows.</div>
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My concern in writing this post is also to combat a popular lie told by the abortion lobby: the lie that all the extremists are on the anti-abortion side.<br />
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There are such extremists, to be sure. And I have no truck with those who would turn to violence to attack those people whom I have noted above are as likely as not merely ignorant or confused or wounded themselves already.</div>
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But in all the years I've gone to the March for Life, I have seen very little of that. Certainly I've seen no violence in my trips there. But I mean even just the belligerent signs or the obnoxious guys with megaphones are pretty few and far-between.</div>
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Much more prominent, noticeable, and aggressive are the counter-protesters I've seen there. The same is true of all my times praying on sidewalks near clinics. In all those times, <i>on every occasion </i>there were untoward and hateful words or actions on the part of either clinic workers or volunteers toward us who were praying there. <i>Only once</i>, on the other hand, can I recall anyone on our side being out of line: it was a guy with a sandwich board that was offensive and stupid. I was in the seminary at the time, and wearing clerical garb. And so I was bold enough to walk up to him and tell him his message wasn't welcome there, and that he should leave. He did.</div>
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And so, finally, here is my point with this whole post: <b>Bratfree </b>exists: a whole forum dedicated to people who hate babies. And, since I can't help but think it is relevant to the pro-life cause and to pro-life work, I'm going to be sitting with that over the days leading up to this year's March for Life, and pondering a question I've uttered as a joke so many times before, now searching for a real answer: <i>Why do they hate babies?</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-29721827326658836212014-01-14T01:22:00.000-05:002014-01-14T01:22:35.195-05:00Is the Jury Still Out on Vaccines? Recently on Facebook, I posted an article regarding <a href="http://www.generationrescue.org/resources/vaccination/" target="_blank">the new trend of anti-vaccination</a> and offering a rebuttal. It was <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/life/family/2014/01/growing_up_unvaccinated_a_healthy_lifestyle_couldn_t_prevent_many_childhood.html" target="_blank">a pretty poor article</a>, I realize in hindsight, and I'd only skimmed it at the time. But I posted it in the interest of getting a conversation going. It, er... well, it worked, let's just say.<br />
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A lot of people posted a lot of things; some facts and documentation on both sides combined with anecdotal and authoritative experiential accounts, also on both sides. As with the original article, I sloppily skimmed all this material, and now (as with the original article) I'm hastily posting my own thoughts on the matter. I am, if you haven't noticed, A Guy With A Blog.<br />
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But before talking about vaccines, first I want to talk about jury duty.<br />
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Today I called the jury overlord people in Philadelphia to ask to defer for a second time my summons to report for jury duty. My reasons, I explained, are myriad. It would frankly be both a personal and a professional hardship at the present time, and next month would be better. Something is in the mail, they told me, and so I'm hoping it is a new questionnaire and not a citation for contempt of court.<br />
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G.K. Chesterton was famously sanguine about juries, you may recall, a facet of his long-suffering faith in democracy. Specifically, he contrasted the wisdom of a lottery-selected jury of peers with the modern fetish for specialism:<br />
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<span style="color: #666666;">Our civilisation has decided, and very justly decided, that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. It wishes for light upon that awful matter, it asks men who know no more law than I know, but who can feel the things that I felt in the jury box. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.</span> </blockquote>
To quote Samwise Gamgee, "I like that."<br />
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I like that, but...<br />
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There's also part of me that consistently struggles with my philanthropic core, part of me that wonders about the central impulses of democracy. There are some good reasons for this.<br />
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Also, I work in politics. I work in one of the most contentious and emotionally-charged issues in politics. And I know first-hand how stupid the average person can be. But even beyond that is the worse problem of the simply disengaged persons: the ones who can't even be bothered to think about learning something, let alone <i>actually </i>learn something, about the issues.</div>
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So, I started off by saying there was this conversation about vaccines on my Facebook timeline. These were people who were informed about the issue, and had their opinions and beliefs, and seemed to believe passionately about them.<br />
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But as I was distracted most of the day with work, and so unable to participate in the debate I'd baited; and as instead I watched it unfold with periodic checking-in and lurking; and as I cringed at some remarks, smirked at others, furrowed my brow at times when clicking through to a linked source... suddenly I began to realize maybe this wasn't the debate I'd wanted at all.<br />
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The argument seemed to have categories lining up in opposition to each other like checkers: provenness, effectiveness, utility vs. provability, effects, necessity - the first lot proceeding under the banner <i>SCIENCE </i>and the opposing set parrying under a belligerent jolly roger <i>INTERROBANG. </i>But to an observer like me, admittedly rather poorly informed on the subject except in one particular aspect (which we'll get to) a lot of the artillery on both sides seemed to be over-firing. Speaking from the point of view of someone who has studied logic but neither medicine nor homeopathy, it seemed at times like both sides were asking the other side to disprove a negative, thus setting up an impossible task: <i>"What about X number of deaths which would have occurred without vaccines?"</i> or <i>"If vaccines had been used Z complications would've prevailed: what say you to that?</i><i>"</i> These are, at least, typical examples of the discourse more generally, and if not there <i>per se </i>in the particular conversation in my wall, operative anyway in implicit ways. And of course, it is impossible. You can't <i>prove </i>any number of kids would have died absent anything, any more than you can <i>prove </i>a particular supposed side-effect not-present would've been present absent something. But all this is a digression, and to a very narrow point (if any of it seem too broad or ungenerous): the point being, this wasn't the debate I'd wanted at all.<br />
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I didn't know it at all myself. I'd posted the article I'd posted but it was too aggressive, too self-serving, too polarized in the field. It set up the match, and the thing was played out before it started as people came with their heels dug in. But is there no common ground?<br />
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Relevant here, I need to reiterate from my interlude about jury duty, are two sentiments (or presentiments) that need, I think, to be held in tension: here, first, that part of me that struggles up through my rationalism and cynicism, that faith in humanity and confidence in the common sense of common men. Second, the true and undeniable value of specialism and expertise, which I guard in my own fields are jealously as any <i>periti </i>do among the diverse arts and sciences which we must, in unity, divide in order to conquer. Also relevant is the notion of <i>overdetermination </i>in a system. Briefly, for those unfamiliar, overdetermination is deemed in analysis when it would appear that two or more distinct and separate causes attain to an effect and each is sufficient to the effect (the question of necessity adding a whole other mind-boggling wrinkle to the affair). Catholics, if I may say, tend oftentimes to groove with this pretty happily, being all about <i>et... et</i> rather than <i>aut... aut </i>(i.e., "both/and" and "either/or") , to which the phenomenon of overdetermination at least <i>feels </i>analogous if it is rarely analytically so.<br />
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With the present issue we're talking about a bone of bitter contention at that precise intersection between the common man's wisdom and the specialist's trained knowledge. And to make matters worse, the bone is being chomped on by a rabid dog of overdetermination hopped up on bath salts.<br />
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The specialist, for his part, seems (in my analysis) to have some good solid facts and data on his side. The science in the larger frame seems pretty settled upon the point that vaccines have done a lot of good for society generally. On the other hand, the common sense of the common man has going for it the perception of something rotten in the den of Merck (see what I did there?). This latter perspective (when care is taken to avoid fanaticism, which-alas!-is care too seldom taken) sees and acknowledges the positive aspects, albeit perhaps not as appreciatively as the specialist with his training, but also sees the gaps which the specialist may miss being quintessentially too close to the thing to observe them. "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle," Orwell noted -- or, simply, to not have it in front of your nose.<br />
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Here, then, is the debate I suppose I wanted (but did not realize I wanted, choosing the dumb article that I did), on vaccines. It would look at:<br />
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<li>The frequency and amplitude of administration of vaccines: could they not be evaluated differently, paying attention to factors like risk, environment, lifestyle, and the like? The true levels and likelihoods of communicability <i>in the event </i>of infection, for example, are topics that could potentially be better analysed and at least add to our cultural understanding.</li>
<li>Education and information: how to set up a good network for this which is trustworthy and disinterested. If something of a culture of distrust has arisen regarding, say, the CDC, it seems there are very reasonable causes - <i>a fortiori </i>major pharmaceutical companies. If you watched TV today, chances are you've heard this phrase at least once: "Ask your doctor is X is right for you." <i>Think about this for a moment. <b>It's weird.</b></i></li>
<li>Hygienic (in the broadest sense) advancements having been made or able to be made moving forward: are there certain holistic improvements that need to be made in an already quick-to-medicate culture (especially given the foregoing point)? The debate and controversy over Gardasil comes to mind in this respect, certainly, and bring up another aspect: there might also be improvement that needs to be made in the care-giving community on a micro-level so that recommending life-style changes rather than writing a script, indeed <i>refusing </i>a script absent those changes, is seen as true care and not being a busy-body. And I do believe there are vaccine-cases where this is relevant, too, if it seems I'm just talking about antibiotics here.</li>
<li>The economics angle: woaaah nelly. Let's face it: there is, deep down at the root of this thing, <i>at least a sense </i>that certain economic interests and impulses are corruptive of the culture of pharmaceutical care; and <i>at the very least this perception </i>corrupts the culture of trust that ought to characterize good relationship between medical caregivers and consumers of the same. <b><i>This, for me, is where that rabid dog of overdetermination snarls most angrily</i>. </b>This goes everywhere, like mercury on the lab floor. The journals that publish the vaunted studies, the government grants, the care guidelines from insurers... all the way to the food we eat and the fuel we put in our car. And if you think this sounds tin-foil-hatted, you're entitled to that view, I'll warrant. But I live according to simple beliefs, one of which is that money corrupteth, and where there's big money there's big corruption. Another of which principles is, "by their fruits you shall know them" - which is to say, <i style="font-weight: bold;">the corruption is already there. </i>Which is my next point:</li>
<li>Certain indisputable institutional corruptions in the pharmaceutical industry (such as unethical research and development practices which use human children as mere material resources) demand real reform, and like yesterday. This is a complex facet of the issue, but the one most in my wheelhouse and also the one most of concern to me. The Vatican has given firm guidance on this matter, and I'll cut to the chase and say that it is two-fold: (1) it is permissible to use vaccines originating from repugnant sources for a good reason; however (and this is often elided) (2) we are morally duty-bound to seek alternative sources for those vaccines (and I would say the implication here is also that we should analyze-by which I really mean we should have more medical professionals more willing to analyze-pretty scrupulously how necessary and how serious the reasons are for complicity and participation in a medical procedure that involved at some point the willful destruction of innocent human life: a trade of destruction which continues and is as dependent on supply and demand issues as any other economic reality. (And once again, this truly does put <i>integrity </i>questions on the table, and I say this not for me or for other - let's face it - mere ignorance <i>consumers </i>of health care, but I say this more so - and emphatically - for healthcare workers, scientists, and the like: we need <i>you </i>to break this structure of sin apart. We'll trust you to know better than us when it comes times to face the knife or the needle, but do us the favor of using that better knowledge to find the weak points of the system and to inform us so that together we may break it apart.)</li>
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And so that's the debate on vaccines I think worth having, the debate I'd have liked to have had. I titled this post with a question: "Is the Jury Still Out on Vaccines?" I think the question deserves a kind of "both/and" answer, a no and a yes. The jury might have moved past (or, let's hope, is able to move past) certain questions. But there are some very much still worth deliberating.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-60661869035788371982014-01-11T14:10:00.000-05:002014-01-13T07:53:54.155-05:00On Trolling Planned Parenthood (and You Can Too!)<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>[This post is occasioned by a conversation in which I was asked to defend one of my strategies for engaging in pro-life work: to wit, </i><b style="font-style: italic;">trolling Planned Parenthood. </b><span style="font-style: italic;">There was, to this, an implicit moral angle and I do respond to that here, although somewhat tangentially. But I want to foreground one point which is only ancillary and not directly related to the outline of my tactics given below. It, nonetheless, expresses what truly is one of my motivations in all of this, and part of what you might call a "test case" approach. You see, <b>my strategy in dealing with Planned Parenthood focuses on promoting the truth by revealing their lies. </b>And that is a strategy I'd <a href="http://blog.joegrabowski.com/search/label/Truth%20and%20Lying" target="_blank">recommend </a>to be more widely adopted.]</span></span><br />
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When I'm bored or suffering writer's block, I troll <a href="https://twitter.com/PPact" target="_blank">Planned Parenthood on Twitter</a>. They are pretty dependable for putting their foot in their mouth for those who can read between the lines.<br />
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Thus, for example, way back in May, they posted this sanctimonious and diabolical B.S., for which I gave them a hard time:<br />
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Don't get me wrong, I was as happy as anyone that <a href="http://whoisgosnell.com/" target="_blank">Philadelphia "House of Horrors" abortionist Kermit Gosnell</a> - who operated mere blocks from my home, and whose "clinic" I would travel past on a regular basis (with a shudder) - was found guilty for his crimes...<br />
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But it seemed to me <i>at least</i> a bit disproportionate (if not positively disingenuous) to report on the verdict focusing on the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter (for the death of one of his female patients) while being silent on <a href="http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Gosnell-Murder-Deliberations-Stretch-into-10th-Day-207178491.html" target="_blank">the three first-degree murder charges</a> for killing babies born alive in botched (illegal) late-term abortions.<br />
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It was this shady tweet that first got me interested in trolling <a href="https://twitter.com/PPact/" target="_blank">@PPact</a> and their subsidiaries on Twitter.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY-AVPWCfUFxNffa-I2xorzMvQIams0RALygUyUDiMgfhrQ_CDO7DzOhiTrDHClGsDEXEm4vFioa4LTQmY-RzzvASK5JhWELecaHBzDeo6HdxS9xHevf83kmiLe4nQ31-NV0TDlizRijg/s1600/PPTrollMeme.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY-AVPWCfUFxNffa-I2xorzMvQIams0RALygUyUDiMgfhrQ_CDO7DzOhiTrDHClGsDEXEm4vFioa4LTQmY-RzzvASK5JhWELecaHBzDeo6HdxS9xHevf83kmiLe4nQ31-NV0TDlizRijg/s1600/PPTrollMeme.png" width="200" /></a></div>
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The first real reward of my intent came when a Colorado branch of Planned Parenthood offered pro-lifers and conservatives generally a veritable Easter egg by responding to one of the now-infamous Obamacare ads being produced in that state. With other ads glorifying raucous and irresponsible college living and keg stands and the like, it is telling that this one stood out particularly in its stupidity.<br />
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So stupid was it, in fact, that <b>Planned Parenthood of Colorado assumed that it was a parody made up by enemies of Obamacare and not one of their fellow government-funded Obamacare shills.</b><br />
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I crafted a Facebook meme for my <a href="http://www.standwithhobbylobby.com/" target="_blank">Standing With Hobby Lobby</a> page to call attention to the embarrassing blunder. Again, as with the tweet back in May regarding Gosnell, there was the same sanctimonious tone, here aimed at "anti-obamacare folks" who Planned Parenthood assumed to be "slut shaming" with the ad.<br />
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But the moral high ground couldn't long be maintained when they realized that it wasn't anti-Obamacare folks at all but <i>pro-Obamacare </i>folks who crafted the message. And their intent wasn't to "slut-shame" at all but to appeal to young people. The ad, though, remarkably manifests the implicit disregard for the intelligence and integrity of young people that characterized the entire pro-Obamacare campaign in Colorado. And when @PPVotesColorado realized its error and decided to "clarify" their message, not the least remarkable thing in their follow-up was that they demonstrated more of the same condescending and patronizing presumption toward their audience.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwQUy-qhGXGmgurLvYq8lBgFc_Ba10mIrzJTNiIHh786G003_nXAU4vlB1hk3Bn3L6Q45cMHoDe8yNdjYM1xHKxjDqQsA1NtXTTXam1AAEy1-R2XFPgGNCKiiahSKcvuGhtAhL9wX-VTc/s1600/DoublingDownAgainstPP.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwQUy-qhGXGmgurLvYq8lBgFc_Ba10mIrzJTNiIHh786G003_nXAU4vlB1hk3Bn3L6Q45cMHoDe8yNdjYM1xHKxjDqQsA1NtXTTXam1AAEy1-R2XFPgGNCKiiahSKcvuGhtAhL9wX-VTc/s1600/DoublingDownAgainstPP.png" width="400" /></a></div>
I say that these were "not the least remarkable" aspects of Planned Parenthood's follow-up, but they also weren't the <i>most </i>remarkable. The most remarkable was the way the condensing of one of their talking points into a 140-character message helped reduce the matter to its basic premises in a logical nutshell: <b>to Planned Parenthood, this Tweet made clear, <i>pregnancy is disease.</i></b><br />
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I screen-captured and added some commentary on the tweet and tried to get this message, too, out on Facebook and Twitter.<br />
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By this point, <b>a definite trend was becoming obvious to me.</b><br />
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<b>One of the most compelling ways to argue against the culture of death, I found, seemed to be simply <i>listening </i>to the messages that culture offers in its own propagation and self-defense.</b><br />
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I had known long before this that the pro-life world-view was inherently the more rational and the more reasonable, and wondered often how others could manage to see things otherwise. But it was becoming painfully and regrettably clear (and I do mean what I say by both those modifiers) that those hoodwinked into trusting Planned Parenthood and their like weren't so much seeing things differently as they were <i>not seeing things at all</i>. How else to explain how such easily-dismantled logical houses of cards managed to be maintained and to stand so long? <b>Like many card houses, the secret to success was the <i>cheat</i>, the lie, the glue of willful ignorance that held the whole edifice together.</b><br />
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So I committed myself further to paying greater attention, to hearing and seeing and taking my opponents in the culture war at their own word, in order to show how their own words turned back against them time after time after time.<br />
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Now, I want to take a brief detour here to explain something which is often misunderstood, about me and about Catholicism generally: we must bear in mind always that <b><a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04394a.htm" target="_blank">admonishing the sinner</a> is one of the <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10198d.htm" target="_blank">Spiritual Works of Mercy</a>.</b> And <i>the attitude of mercy </i>and <i>the spirit of Christian charity</i> must always be at the heart of this work.<br />
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In this respect, for those unfamiliar with her work, <b>I really must commend someone I believe to be one of the most powerful, compelling, and <i>merciful </i>voices in the entire pro-life movement: <a href="http://www.abbyjohnson.org/work-at-pp/" target="_blank">former Planned Parenthood employee Abby Johnson</a>.</b><br />
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When I attack Planned Parenthood with some guerrilla social media hits, I am attacking its well-crafted and misleading public relations machine, its euphemistic rhetoric, its systematization of grave evil and strategy of calling good evil and evil good. <b>I am not attacking the persons involved - indeed, I am trying to offer them fraternal correction so that they may turn to the truth and be saved.</b><br />
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I try - and we all must do - to be mindful that there are <i>human agents</i> working within that structure - <a href="http://blog.joegrabowski.com/search/label/Truth%20and%20Lying" target="_blank">lest we fall into fundamental error</a> and end up degrading <i>their </i>fundamental worth and dignity, which is <i>a very non-pro-life thing to do</i>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5T21JGqOZuOvEh2VjXJy8D3NJ603pLNF9aJLvRuMVZIrHMPbeU7dYqLiIfsppvRO-GJeYTFRcLenstPlnNrvMMbQPaDgJhGxdyZT-Id93eWvv13Y4ZZwAZvnMwGayWAkkScWYsi0lJeo/s1600/TrollinPP2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5T21JGqOZuOvEh2VjXJy8D3NJ603pLNF9aJLvRuMVZIrHMPbeU7dYqLiIfsppvRO-GJeYTFRcLenstPlnNrvMMbQPaDgJhGxdyZT-Id93eWvv13Y4ZZwAZvnMwGayWAkkScWYsi0lJeo/s1600/TrollinPP2.png" width="256" /></a>This detour has been important, because most recently, <a href="http://blog.joegrabowski.com/2014/01/even-when-kids-grow-up-you-mean-when.html" target="_blank">one of Planned Parenthood's tweets</a> not only offended for its logical gaps, but cut close to the sensitivities of the issue we're engaging here. Indeed, seeing it the first time, something settled like a stone in my stomach. I almost wondered whether I should, or even <i>could</i>, respond. Certainly, no tongue-in-cheek had its place here, nor any of the attitude of mischief-making that frequently accompanies "trolling." </div>
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I was pleased to find that there's actually a somewhat somber-looking "troll" face available out there (isn't the internet wonderful?) which I felt reflected the spirit in the response I wanted to fire across the bow this time. For Planned Parenthood to Tweet about how the vocation of motherhood is life-long and extends even into the adulthood of the child, when they deny that motherhood is vocational at any point prior to the birth of the child, both angered me and saddened me. Here was more of that blindness, that inability to see the logical holes. <b>And the same week (this was just this past Thursday) still more of the same was on display.</b></div>
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Planned Parenthood, along with other activists groups, is fighting a proposal to limit federal <a href="http://www.washingtonian.com/blogs/capitalcomment/local-news/congressional-republicans-renew-efforts-to-restrict-abortion-in-dc.php" target="_blank">grant-funding for abortion services</a>. As an article on the proposal explains [emphasis added]:</div>
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[The] “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” ... <b>would prohibit states from using federal grants to pay for abortion services</b> sought by low-income pregnant women. </blockquote>
Planned Parenthood <a href="https://twitter.com/PPact/status/421736571461586944" target="_blank">responded by tweeting </a>that this "latest anti-abortion bill especially targets low-income women."<br />
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<b>But there are other aspects in the full picture here that Planned Parenthood elides.</b> For instance, the statistical links between race and poverty. (And, to be clear, I think it is more than merely a statistical link but an operative process: actual racism in America combined with the lasting effects of past systematic racism are material causes contributory to and determinative of poverty.] <b>The upshot of which is that the abortion industry especially targets black women in America.</b></div>
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<a href="http://blackdemographics.com/health-2/abortion/" target="_blank">The data exists:</a> "Women who live in either poverty or have low incomes have 69 percent of all abortions.<b> Just over 60% of African American households live in poverty or have low incomes compared to just 36% of all American households</b>" [emphasis added]. <br />
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Also, while "African American women have 30% of all abortions... Black females make up less than 14% of the female population of the United States." [<a href="http://blackdemographics.com/health-2/abortion/" target="_blank">SOURCE</a>]</div>
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And, if you want a corroborating source, <a href="http://blackdemographics.com/health-2/abortion/" target="_blank">the CDC found</a> in 2009 that "non-Hispanic black women had the highest abortion rates (32.5 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years) and ratios (477 abortions per 1,000 live births)."<br />
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<b>These are the hard truths Planned Parenthood will never tell.</b> These are the facts the organization covers with its lies. (And, as a side-bar, still another lie was in the news this week: <b><i>on the very same day</i></b> that abortion advocates were decrying the limitation of federal funds for abortion services <b><a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2014/01/supreme-court-to-mull-right-to-lie-in-political-ads-180995.html" target="_blank">other liberal media news outlets were calling the idea of federal monies paying for abortion services "a lie."</a> </b>The liar's paradox, maybe?)</div>
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Back, then, to the main point: <b>the systematic lies and misinformation perpetuated by the agents of the Culture of Death are a house of cards. </b><br />
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Scrutinized closely - if all you do is <i>watch </i>and <i>listen</i> - the glue, the cheat, the lie holding it all together is easy to spot, and the illusion fails to impress.<br />
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But as long as so many in our society and unwilling or even unable to watch and listen closely, the process of revealing this trick needs a little help and cannot be left to happen on its own. <b>Trolling Planned Parenthood gives us the opportunity to apply a little bit of heat to those joints in the house of cards and melt the glue holding it all together.</b></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-19546370582244390912014-01-11T12:24:00.000-05:002014-01-13T07:59:02.398-05:00Check it out!I am grateful to Nancy Brown and <a href="http://www.chesterton.org/" target="_blank">the American Chesterton Society</a> for graciously reproducing my lecture from this past summer at <a href="http://www.iiculture.org/" target="_blank">the International Institute for Culture</a> on Chesterton's <i>What's Wrong with the World </i>as an episode of the <a href="http://www.chesterton.org/explore-the-acs/multimedia/podcasts/" target="_blank">Uncommon Sense podcast</a>.
If you like, you can <a href="http://uncommonsense.libsyn.com/who-are-hudge-and-gudge-with-joe-grabowski" target="_blank">download the podcast directly</a> or, if you do the iTunes thing, <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/uncommon-sense/id331155720" target="_blank">subscribe there</a> - there is a load of other good content that you're missing out on if you don't subscribe already.<br />
<br />
Both the <a href="http://www.chesterton.org/" target="_blank">ACS</a> and the <a href="http://www.iiculture.org/" target="_blank">IIC</a> are organizations about which I care deeply and which are on the front lines of the much-needed mission of re-evangelizing our culture. Please give them your support!<br />
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<a href="http://www.chesterton.org/donate" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj950ZH29tRUdPqbEVKOfCVh1BcjsE3cg9cZ_koKab9n8Sx6AiiOQ_LKMtdg3cIjheUAW9j2z245t2s-vGta6vJrUq5glPGaB7yCD1Lf-8KU4XJwlvYCxOSpg0w13TvgOxOOrgyrPkOOjI/s320/GKCad.JPG" /></a>
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Thanks again!</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-86470300394081007022014-01-09T14:52:00.000-05:002014-01-09T16:16:08.524-05:00"Even When Kids Grow Up" (You Mean, When They Have the Chance?)... That is what I think when I see <a href="https://twitter.com/PPact/status/421364698005512192" target="_blank">creepy tweets like this one</a> from Planned Parenthood:<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>We love Moms, and they always know best—even when kids grow up. Talk to them about how to <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23getcovered&src=hash">#getcovered</a>: <a href="http://t.co/89p4Li7Oak">http://t.co/89p4Li7Oak</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23momknowsbest&src=hash">#momknowsbest</a></p>— Planned Parenthood (@PPact) <a href="https://twitter.com/PPact/statuses/421364698005512192">January 9, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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... especially when their primary motive in shilling for Obamacare is tied up in their lobbying interest for promoting their booming business interests in abortion and abortifacients.<br />
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-79560749490685884852014-01-08T14:43:00.002-05:002014-01-13T07:56:02.397-05:00Nationally Syndicated Columnist: "Those @#$% Catholics Even Worse Than The @#$% Jews!" [UPDATED]<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">[<b>NB</b>: I'm appending to this piece a caveat, for what it's worth. Evidently, The Catholic League <a href="http://www.catholicleague.org/syndicated-writer-must-go/" target="_blank">is calling for Stiehm's dismissal</a> from Creators Syndicate as a result of her worthless and stupid column. I want to distance myself from that in a public way. I think she should be engaged, disproven, shamed, and pilloried for her bigotry and unreasonableness. But I am a bit off the trend of getting people fired for failing public discourse because I think that such actions themselves represent an equally egregious failure of the same.] </span></i><br />
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Yep, you read the headline right.<br />
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That is, effectively, the upshot of <a href="http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/Jamie-Stiehm/2014/01/07/the-catholic-supreme-courts-war-on-women" target="_blank">this wild screed by Jamie Stiehm in U.S. News and World Report</a>.<br />
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F'realz. Don't believe me? Writing about Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor's recent grant of an injunction protecting the Colorado-based Little Sisters of the Poor (L.S.P.) from enforcement of the H.H.S. Mandate through the imposition of penalizing fines while they pursue a case in federal court alleging the Government's "accommodation" still requires them to violate their conscience, Stiehm laments:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd65i8uKcjfY6Qk9YpoXdyUN9yLfK1gvYX4QPY-9WGNXVXQRw2jY-LzVguW_yBltXlm0c8VWL-m-vK0yAROAFiI-gDpUGC9edUYBNRHVAiksnVao0SF5rM6zA0uyx3j1XBUZYGUzWWZwQ/s1600/Sotomayor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd65i8uKcjfY6Qk9YpoXdyUN9yLfK1gvYX4QPY-9WGNXVXQRw2jY-LzVguW_yBltXlm0c8VWL-m-vK0yAROAFiI-gDpUGC9edUYBNRHVAiksnVao0SF5rM6zA0uyx3j1XBUZYGUzWWZwQ/s1600/Sotomayor.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">She cray-cray, as the kids say.</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #666666;">Sotomayor's blow brings us to confront an uncomfortable reality. <b>More than WASPS, Methodists, Jews, Quakers or Baptists, Catholics often try to impose their beliefs on you, me, public discourse and institutions.</b> Especially if "you" are female. [...]</span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><b>Catholics in high places of power have the most trouble, I've noticed, practicing the separation of church and state</b>. The pugnacious Catholic Justice, Antonin Scalia, is the most aggressive offender on the Court, but not the only one. Of course, we can't know for sure what Sotomayor was thinking, but it seems she has joined the ranks of the five Republican Catholic men on the John Roberts Court in showing <b>a clear religious bias</b> when it comes to women's rights and liberties. We can no longer be silent about this. Thomas Jefferson, the principal champion of the separation between state and church, was thinking particularly of pernicious Rome in his writings. <b>He deeply distrusted the narrowness of Vatican hegemony.</b></span></blockquote>
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All that's lacking is an accompanying illustration by <a href="http://www.printmag.com/illustration/nast-irish/" target="_blank">Thomas Nast</a>. Substitute "Republican" for "Democrat" here and the primitive Irishman with some sort of hateful portrayal of a Latina and you're on point with Stiehm's rhetoric.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-Wz3ukLrDxPA4FnNFZgQwDBO7W98QA2b_11YCny1Q33-vzzf1YM-0f3o9OGGhshUonZGrraYLURZ6aiQCLw0hGeRnseO4D3AAGEWPUvCD62zPyhQjZD5E7KS-fwXJvM7ffx3cremouRA/s1600/Nast06_irish+clergy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-Wz3ukLrDxPA4FnNFZgQwDBO7W98QA2b_11YCny1Q33-vzzf1YM-0f3o9OGGhshUonZGrraYLURZ6aiQCLw0hGeRnseO4D3AAGEWPUvCD62zPyhQjZD5E7KS-fwXJvM7ffx3cremouRA/s1600/Nast06_irish+clergy.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Democratic party?! Remember <i>those </i>days?</td></tr>
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I'm not the only one reminded of Nast. <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/deaconsbench/2014/01/great-moments-in-journalism-the-shocking-bigotry-of-u-s-news-world-report/" target="_blank">Deacon Greg Kandra over at Patheos had a similar reaction</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I would have a hard time not finding hate, dislike or malice in Stiehm’s essay.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Rather than taking issue with one justice’s opinion, or attempting to dissect the legal thinking behind it, Stiehm takes the bigot’s way out: it’s because she’s Catholic, dammit, and you know how those Catholics are.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I find Jamie Stiehm’s essay objectionable and offensive—as a Catholic, but also as a journalist. It comes perilously close to hate speech, and betrays an attitude toward Catholicism that harkens back to the crude cartoons of Thomas Nast and the anti-Catholic nativism of the 19th century.</blockquote>
</blockquote>
But Stiehm is maybe just hanging in with what is becoming a trend of socially-acceptable anti-Catholic bigoted bashing.<br />
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Witness <a href="http://on.msnbc.com/JI1B9T" target="_blank">MSNBC announcing</a> (and I quote): <b>"This latest threat to the nation's Health Care law... <i>these ladies</i>:"</b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="http://on.msnbc.com/JI1B9T" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="359" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJz-xwBvv1qApjlmlFCUQyY58v5AOnMsHKATEmFOyb3MWRKNkXD0Jtc_Ppg2oO1PlUJd5ghoDC_WrQuRt_YPQPaXz2jYgcEpBuSG0858JJlPhKh8BQAFnNQpNZ3pt0OVlNzMRVr4EBTHc/s1600/theseladies.JPG" width="640" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://on.msnbc.com/JI1B9T" target="_blank">A clear and present danger.</a></td></tr>
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And a mighty threat they appear, don't you think?<br />
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Of course, MSNBC wouldn't just go and designate the L.S.P. such a noteworthy threat to the very lives of women without a fair-minded discussion of the issue! No! They went ahead and assembled <a href="http://on.msnbc.com/JI1B9T" target="_blank">a diverse and worthy panel</a> consisting of Planned Parenthood President Celine Richards and former Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean. I guess <a href="http://goodjesuitbadjesuit.blogspot.com/2013/11/fr-thomas-reese-sj-liberal-commentator.html" target="_blank">Father Thomas Reese</a> was unavailable?<br />
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Meanwhile, as Stiehm laments "that Sotomayor's stay is tantamount to selling out the sisterhood" and wans that "sisterhood is not as powerful as it used to be, ladies," my head continues to swim in the topsy-turvydom of a culture where "a Colorado nunnery" (as Stiehm calls it) is conceived as more of a threat to women than Planned Parenthood -- <a href="http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/Jamie-Stiehm/2012/02/07/susan-g-komens-good-girl-image-and-hardball-abortion-politics" target="_blank">which Stiehm says</a> "stemmed from [Margaret] Sanger's larger vision of women's health for all of us" but <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Woman-New-Race-Margaret-Sanger/dp/1162717629/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357748036&sr=1-1&keywords=woman+and+the+new+race" target="_blank">really stemmed from Sanger's vision</a> of "a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring."
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<b>UPDATED</b><br />
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Elizabeth Scalia has <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theanchoress/2014/01/08/fisking-stiehms-bigotry-at-us-news/" target="_blank">a very fine fisking of the article online here</a>. Check it out!<br />
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Also, <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/yimcatholic/2014/01/bigotry-watch-chuck-norrisor-u-s-news-and-world-report.html" target="_blank">check out Frank Weathers doing how he do, and bringing in Chuck Norris to get a piece of the action</a>!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-19161783135086824692014-01-07T15:18:00.003-05:002014-01-07T15:59:41.098-05:00Quick Invitation and Call to PrayerIf you're at all like me, you may have groused, groaned, mumbled, grumbled, or even uttered an oath upon stepping out of doors into the extreme cold these past couple days.<br />
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I don't guilt myself with that, nor do I think you should, but I do see an opportunity in it for growth in virtue and for efficacious prayerful offering. And so that's what I'm going to do, and I decided I'd invited you to do the same.<br />
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As Wednesdays are a traditional day of fasting and penance anyhow, and as it will still fall at least somewhat in the cold snap for most of us here in America, <b>I'm inviting my friends and readers to make tomorrow, Wednesday, January 8, a day of fasting and prayer for the less fortunate.</b><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbDdTgqJePQxVp3t6EA_5OMK03EgGldEvy_lDJnahSef_uB_-aCbCsjDfqxkYzB-QQBS2wDaJyImlGs_tfB8-LGrP0ZaU0ySPgEfm7G1jPErKaWXD587IlBnGcdRsaW7P0HLxrP8pxMzo/s1600/christ+of+the+homeless.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbDdTgqJePQxVp3t6EA_5OMK03EgGldEvy_lDJnahSef_uB_-aCbCsjDfqxkYzB-QQBS2wDaJyImlGs_tfB8-LGrP0ZaU0ySPgEfm7G1jPErKaWXD587IlBnGcdRsaW7P0HLxrP8pxMzo/s1600/christ+of+the+homeless.jpg" height="320" width="312" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Christ of the Homeless" (1982) by Fritz Eichenberg</td></tr>
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In addition to the ordinary means of fasting by abstinence from meat and reduction in victuals, I'd also recommend trying to make a spiritual offering of the suffering involved in encountering such cold weather - and yes, it is a kind of suffering, and maybe for some of us (depending on various conditions we might have and the like) a greater suffering than for others.<br />
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But of course we can also take the opportunity to pray through this experience as well, reminded as we are by this suffering of the cold that there are many more less fortunate who suffer much more terribly, without shelter and proper clothing, dependent upon the charity of others. (And, needless to say, while I won't go so far as to challenge us to go looking tomorrow for an opportunity for charity, I hope we will hold ourselves ready to act upon such an opportunity should it arise.) All of which is to say, there should be no lack of substance for meditation and reflection as we imagine what it must be to lack shelter on days such as this: <i>Hospes eram, et collexistis me</i> (Mt. 25:35).<br />
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<b>So, I hope you'll join me in making a special offering of suffering this cold weather tomorrow (Wednesday, January 8th), adding to it prayer and fasting, offering any part of our discomfort through it all up in prayer to God, calling for His generous blessings upon the less fortunate and acting in reparation for whatever sins of mankind might be contributory to making them so unfortunate.</b><br />
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+ A.M.D.G.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-68879512869985934412014-01-03T10:11:00.000-05:002014-01-07T16:00:00.721-05:00Truer Words Were Never Spoken: "But Now We're Hurting Them"Proving once again that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) should consider renaming itself People Ethically Tantamount to Animals (PETA), a couple gals called "Lettuce Ladies" <a href="http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2014/01/02/petas-lettuce-wearing-ladies-to-brave-cold-temps/" target="_blank">took to the streets in Minneapolis yesterday</a> to risk frostbite for the furtherance of some bullshit point about why we shouldn't eat animals even though eating animals is awesome.<br />
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<script src="http://CBSMIN.images.worldnow.com/interface/js/WNVideo.js?rnd=589827;hostDomain=video.minneapolis.cbslocal.com;playerWidth=500;playerHeight=281;isShowIcon=true;clipId=9689684;flvUri=;partnerclipid=;adTag=News;advertisingZone=CBS.MINN%252Fworldnowplayer;enableAds=true;landingPage=;islandingPageoverride=false;playerType=STANDARD_EMBEDDEDscript;controlsType=overlay" type="text/javascript"></script><a href="http://video.minneapolis.cbslocal.com/" title=""></a></center>
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When I first heard the female news-anchor's "ugh" upon the first footage of the "ladies" I wondered whether it was ethical abhorrence or just empathetic horror about the cold temperatures. I'm not sure she has thoroughly reasoned through her sentiment in the final assessment. Nonetheless, I was struck by this quote: "I understand wanting to be ethically accountable with animals, but we're now hurting <i>them</i>." <i>Them </i>being the ladies.</div>
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This is nothing new for PETA, of course, if you're familiar with their method of calling attention to abuses in the fur trade. (I'm not posting the link because, well, the lettuce video is salacious enough and I'm not about leading people into the near occasion of sin.)<br />
<br />
Yet another example of <a href="http://arthuringlewood.blogspot.com/2014/01/between-woman-and-her-doctor.html">the questionable ethical cogency of modern progressives</a>.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-13210622278994719022014-01-02T23:58:00.002-05:002014-01-13T07:54:45.142-05:00Between a Woman and Her Doctor<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPwzdSmHlsj9tvqPZpY5LbGB06Qi7_g1RwOpAvQ3x8TyqHJ4i8PMci97wQDnQPlr9iJPbGYRV_VxHQDpj_1ZrV-GOoAx1dVGt6kPBW6VUSojnKcu7Bn9qEHYgwnlk5CAA1uECdnMva_4Q/s1600/walso.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPwzdSmHlsj9tvqPZpY5LbGB06Qi7_g1RwOpAvQ3x8TyqHJ4i8PMci97wQDnQPlr9iJPbGYRV_VxHQDpj_1ZrV-GOoAx1dVGt6kPBW6VUSojnKcu7Bn9qEHYgwnlk5CAA1uECdnMva_4Q/s320/walso.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An historian's artistic rendering of the 4th Lateran Council. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
G.K. Chesterton famously observed in <i>Orthodoxy</i> that when he came finally to look critically at Christianity in light of so many charges leveled against it by so many of its critics, he realized that "<b><i>[i]t looked not so much as if Christianity was bad enough to include any vices, but rather as if any stick was good enough to beat Christianity with.</i></b>"<br />
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This insight comes back to me frequently nowadays in internet debates (especially on social media), where it seems that for every authentic representation of a particular Church figure or a particular Church teaching there abound besides legion straw-men and bogies, such that in the end finding the Truth becomes like an ideological "Where's Waldo."<br />
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Among the more annoying convenient cudgels exploited by moderns who would denigrate or challenge the Church specifically in the matter of Her teaching on birth control (and I give benefit of the doubt that ignorance prevails in many of these cases rather than malice) is the canard about the Church "<i style="font-weight: bold;">coming between a woman and her doctor.</i>"<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
Now there's a multitude of problems that I have with this particular argument, and as this (attached, of course, to the Church's presumed problem of misogyny generally) came up in a recent debate online, I decided I'd make a few observations about it.<br />
<h4>
<b><u><span style="color: #783f04;">Believe It Or Not, Not All Religious Persons' Reasons are "Religious Reasons"</span></u></b></h4>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht6T0vMiQ2ccueBYJ7MT2Vo007KMgPHDP8DEc5oHeTEU6ETRfrMvkUTpXGWuktNhG6___vwkrbfx0Bgrgq8wZBH_Sr-Gp_AKXKXrWeipCE49s2O5KXzqJ5mNg7-TAn0V3w2Jgv9RVpjYo/s1600/Bad_Medicine_(song).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht6T0vMiQ2ccueBYJ7MT2Vo007KMgPHDP8DEc5oHeTEU6ETRfrMvkUTpXGWuktNhG6___vwkrbfx0Bgrgq8wZBH_Sr-Gp_AKXKXrWeipCE49s2O5KXzqJ5mNg7-TAn0V3w2Jgv9RVpjYo/s1600/Bad_Medicine_(song).jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Even <i>worse </i>than this... <i>that </i>bad.</td></tr>
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Again and again in debates about the Church's position on artificial contraception you'll hear it argued that Church folk have every right to believe what they believe but they don't have a right to force that belief upon others. More bluntly, you'll hear it argued that while it may be all well and good for Mrs. Churchmouse to choose for herself not to take birth control, <i>the Church shouldn't come <b>between a woman and her doctor </b>and deny her birth control <b>for religious reasons</b>.</i><br />
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But here's the problem: not all of the "reasons" the Church uses in Her reasoning are "religious reasons," nor are all of the reasons employed by members of the Church who adhere to Her doctrines. In short, a Catholic doctor might not <i>wish </i>to prescribe birth control not because he thinks it bad (although, presuming he is a good Catholic, he <i>does </i>think it's bad) but just as much because he thinks it <i>bad medicine.</i> He might recognize, for example, the links between hormonal oral contraceptives and the risks of various cancers, from cervical to breast cancer. He might recognize that these risks which result from the chemical elements at play are further exacerbated by lifestyle factors which also induce greater risk (such as, for example with breast cancer, delay of a woman's first pregnancy).<br />
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Now, bring these things up in argument, and you're not out of the woods yet - ooooh, no, you aren't. Especially when you mention the last parenthetical tidbit there re: breast cancer and pregnancy age, you'll probably run into accusations of your personal misogyny (as one interlocutor once put it colorfully, of seeing women as nothing more than "brood mares"). I beg you, be like me: be cool with that. The thing is, we <i>have </i>to be cool with that in order to keep the argument on track and emphasize the primary point at this juncture: leaving aside whatever ways those reasons might offend, the point is that <i>they are not <b>religious </b>reasons. </i>[Even then, you're not out of the woods quite, though - because *poof* everybody's a friggin' doctor now.]<br />
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Wrestle them back to the home court, and keep on at it: even if they are <i>wrong </i>medical reasons, the point is that the origin of these kinds of reasons for the doctor do not derive from belief, from the tenets of faith, but from his or her reasoning about medical science.<br />
<h4>
<b><u><span style="color: #783f04;">No, Beyonce: Not <i>All </i>the Single Ladies. Go Home, You're Drunk.</span></u></b></h4>
In addition to <i>doctors </i>who could reason in such a way, would you believe that there may be - in fact, there <i>are </i>- <i style="font-weight: bold;">women </i><i>who reason this way?</i> Yes, believe it or not, there are indeed women who deliberately seek out Catholic doctors and Catholic healthcare plans and providers and even Catholic employers so as to live their lives in keeping with the teachings of the Church.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMPtciEv1HUSuMgAdWjXIib-V03kYJ8nrxdkFOI_OIw7ln4Yceed5GBwkGjlYWTF24y-moTwh6LR_Y4rdEEZFV6JtTquGPK5i4UHjqevrRf4-Ju-Y2Cacn5C8k0y9MvAoucveZRIdHyW0/s1600/twerkin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMPtciEv1HUSuMgAdWjXIib-V03kYJ8nrxdkFOI_OIw7ln4Yceed5GBwkGjlYWTF24y-moTwh6LR_Y4rdEEZFV6JtTquGPK5i4UHjqevrRf4-Ju-Y2Cacn5C8k0y9MvAoucveZRIdHyW0/s320/twerkin.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yet nuns are less comprehensible in our culture somehow.</td></tr>
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See, these women might decide - either for their own personal reasons, for reasons of faith or privacy, or reasons arrived at in consultation with their trusted physician - not to elect a certain course of treatment or care for X indication. And so they've sought out care they know they can trust. They don't want to worry the insurance will force the doctor's hand, perhaps with threats to refuse or delay payment for a later potentially needed procedure, unless what they deem are the "proper protocols" have first been followed. So, the question is: <i style="font-weight: bold;">do they have that right not to worry? </i>Or now, may the insurance, perhaps the Government-plan insurance, insinuate itself <i>between the woman and her doctor? </i>Between her and her doctor deliberately chosen and trusted on the basis of his medical knowledge and expertise which <i>happens</i> to coincide with the Church's moral teachings? Remember above all: her reasons for trusting the doctor are her own and may not (just as we saw above with doctors) be wholly religious at all. Yet somehow when the shoe is on the other foot this way, the will to keep outside forces (like Big Pharm Bought-and-Paid-for Politicians) from getting between a woman and her doctor is suddenly diminished. What's <i style="font-weight: bold;">that </i>all about?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW5mK7DUwwGkAuo3l5ZCgwiv2SXYO3HO4VDz-SGbwbO7djYcoXaj4l-Arj-Vc5oKq0aDxYsZxmD5fPjv5B9VGiLwqvPnMKGnMivQ5eZyMwkTHHyc7z3LIyL5292vBi_wujNyqEBtac_Mo/s1600/1151016_380383278755013_706321278_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW5mK7DUwwGkAuo3l5ZCgwiv2SXYO3HO4VDz-SGbwbO7djYcoXaj4l-Arj-Vc5oKq0aDxYsZxmD5fPjv5B9VGiLwqvPnMKGnMivQ5eZyMwkTHHyc7z3LIyL5292vBi_wujNyqEBtac_Mo/s200/1151016_380383278755013_706321278_n.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">F'realz. They <i>don't</i>.</td></tr>
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I'll tell you what it's about: it's about the refusal of the Church's naysayers and critics to critique themselves. Perhaps there is no secular wisdom equivalent to the Gospel teaching that you should "remove first the plank from your own eye," but it's good advice and they may want to take it. See, at the end of the day, these anti-dogmatists can be frightfully dogmatic themselves. And one of the worst tenets dogmatically and assiduously held by those who constantly clamor about the spectre of the <i>Church </i>getting between a woman and her doctor is <i style="font-weight: bold;">the presumption that they speak for all women. </i><a href="http://womenspeakforthemselves.com/" target="_blank">When, in plain fact, they don't.</a><br />
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Not all women subscribe to the sexual revolution. Not all women see the Church as a patriarchal and misogynistic historical construct, but as the living and matronly Bride of Christ who is of one flesh with Him... and they think that's pretty groovy. Not all women believe that taxpayers should have to pay for what is construed as a woman's choice to abort the living viable embryonic human being growing inside of her. In short, not all women see a dichotomy in the Church coming <i>between </i>her and her doctor when they actually believe that the her and her doctor are <i>in </i>the Church. They exist, these ladies. I know them. That's how they roll, and that's why they rock.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">#Progress. #DownWithPatriarchy.</td></tr>
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But perhaps in the final assessment there's no coming to terms in such a debate when one side admits to being dogmatic but also reasons thoroughly and the other reasons very shallowly and denies their even more restrictive dogmas. Nevertheless, I'm determined to try to burn down as many strawmen as these critics of the Church will build while seeking as often as possible to transfer the burden of proof to my opponents. I will <i>not </i>submit the Church to being on trial. Let's have this as a <i>civil </i>suit (in all the valences of that term) and let's make it clear that if the Church is charged with misogyny, we Her children are counter-suing our culture on that point and leveling back at it the same charge: <i><b>It is the forces of radical feminism, corporate greed and consumerism, absolute individualism, servile statism, and a host of other bourgeois fetishes - and <u>not</u> <u>the</u> <u>Church</u> - which are misogynistic.</b></i><br />
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Those blinded by ideology and dogma and no longer reasoning in a universally accessible way are... well, those who pilfer piffle like the <a href="http://factcheckme.wordpress.com/2010/12/24/a-continuum-of-woman-hatred/" target="_blank">thesis that "all heterosexual sex is misogyny."</a> (No, really.) Okay, to be fair, the author of the essay expounding the theory actually specifies she's talking about "PIV" heterosexual sex. I won't translate the acronym. You can click the link to find out. Or, well, I could simply say that Catholics have a name for it, too: and that is just "sex."<br />
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But perhaps such blindness is the just deserts of a thoroughly pagan culture. And perhaps the only witness that can ever break through such blindness, in such a culture, is the witness of martyrdom. I began this venting my frustrations at the bleeding-heart dramatics of those who yell about the Church coming between a woman and her doctor. Of course, ultimately, that's all hysterics and show and #firstworldproblems, an imagined veil over an insidious underlying ideology and agenda. But deadly serious, on the other hand - and worth praying about and contemplating - is a spectacle we've seen plenty throughout history, which is all too real (although it also veils an underlying Reality) - and that is what can come to pass when anybody tries to get between a woman and her Church.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-75847059326323324062013-12-27T10:14:00.000-05:002014-01-07T16:01:54.017-05:00Friday Frivolity: This NPR Lady Did This Great Satire of Same-Sex Marriage Without Even Knowing ItThe story's title is, "<a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/12/26/256586055/when-the-supreme-court-decided-tomatoes-were-vegetables" target="_blank">When The Supreme Court Decided Tomatoes Were Vegetables.</a>"<br />
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In a recent show, we talked about an importer that sold pillows shaped like stuffed animals. Or maybe they're stuffed animals that can be used as pillows.</blockquote>
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It turns out, this distinction — is it fundamentally a pillow or a stuffed animal? — is important, because there's a tariff on pillows but not on stuffed animals.</blockquote>
</blockquote>
She explains how this is not unprecedented, referencing a 19th century Supreme Court case on the identity under law of the tomato:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>In the Supreme Court decision, the justices distinguished between science and everyday life. </b>The justices admitted that botanically speaking, tomatoes were technically fruits. But in everyday life, they decided, vegetables were things "usually served at dinner in, with, or after the soup, fish, or meats ... and not, like fruits generally, as dessert."</blockquote>
Justice Anthony Kennedy would later famously write, "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life…." Apparently, he was just following a long tradition of jurisprudence and extending its application to human beings.<br />
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At the heart of liberty, you see, is the right to legally decree that "Apples and Oranges" indexes a distinction without difference.<br />
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How do you like them oranges?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-9182114375365917332013-12-24T12:44:00.000-05:002014-01-07T16:02:46.230-05:00Right and Wrong Thinking People Getting Things Wrong and Right (or Wrong?)<div class="tr_bq">
Two completely unrelated articles came across my news feed today, and somewhere in my brain alighted a tenuous connection between the two, but when I tried to grasp hold of it the bird had flown like the tricky minx in "Norwegian Wood." Good thoughts, like women, can be elusive that way. (And women can be a cause of reasoning going all crosswise, too - yet another connection worth exploring if only one could find the ends of the strand. But I digress.)</div>
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Despite my inadequate grasp of what I'm thinking, I'm going to try to express it anyway - and this, itself, will maybe end up seeming an irony in light of the subject I plan to explore, as we shall see.<br />
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The two unrelated articles <i>seem </i>to be sourced from opposite ends of so many spectra, but I really think they have more in common than first is apparent, both <i>a falsis principiis proficscendi</i>.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Now that isn't just a gratuitous dropping of a random Latin phrase, but a lead-in to a joke. [The phrase means "setting forth from false principles," by the by.]<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-becker/advocate-pope-francis-person-of-the-year_b_4468118.html" target="_blank">first article</a> is given a Latin title, and was penned by <i>HuffPost </i>'Gay Voices' Managing Editor John Becker: "<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-becker/advocate-pope-francis-person-of-the-year_b_4468118.html" target="_blank">Ego Te Absurdo: Francis is <i>Advocate</i>'s 'Person of the Year'.</a>"<br />
<br />
If Jar Jar Binks studied Latin... but again I digress.<br />
<br />
... still, though...<br />
<br />
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<br />
Anywho, what I want to call attention to is the <i>content </i>of the article. Here are some snippets [emphasis in original]:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #666666;">Let's pretend there's a person who works for a religious organization that fights LGBT rights across the globe. Said person has a history of making degrading comments about same-sex marriage. He's called it "a scheme to destroy God's plan," a "total rejection of the law of God," "a move from the Father of Lies" (i.e. Satan). He's even gone further, implying that the loving marriages of same-sex couples are <i>evolutionarily inferior</i> to opposite-sex marriages ("a real and dire anthropological throwback"). </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #666666;">And just for good measure, let's pretend this man has also publicly claimed that gay adoption is a form of discrimination against children. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #666666;">[...] </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #666666;">Now pretend with me that this person began to slightly moderate his anti-gay views, even throwing in a few nice-sounding words about not "judging" LGBT people -- while still not apologizing for his previous hateful remarks and taking care to point out that he continues to believe that the sexual expression of gay love is sinful and disordered. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #666666;">Would you acknowledge and affirm what appears to be steps in the right direction? Absolutely. But would you breathlessly drape a pride flag around his shoulders and crown him a hero of the LGBT community? No way. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #666666;">Yet that's just what <i>The Advocate</i>, America's best-known LGBT magazine, did when it named that man -- Pope Francis -- its 2013 "Person of the Year."</span></blockquote>
Now, <i>HuffPost</i>'s 'Gay Voices' bloggers frequently manifest a real cultural myopia, a tendency toward angry projections, and a casual approach to fairness and honesty. And let's face it, even among mainstream media sources which across the board tend to be pretty daft regarding matters of religious, this particular outlet often lets its biases get even more in the way.<br />
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But when I first came across this article, it presented a conundrum to me. I half wanted to share it to Facebook and observe that finally here was a journalist getting Pope Francis "right." But of course, I wouldn't <i>mean </i>getting him "right" but manifesting something right in the very act of getting him wrong. [You can see why I said at the outset that my thinking on this struggled toward clarity.]<br />
<br />
The odd fact is that Becker gets what <i>The Advocate </i>misses but misses what Catholics get - and maybe misses what <i>The Advocate </i>gets, and gets what some Catholics are missing. Aaaand so on.<br />
<br />
It's a messy tangle, but to try to bring it all home to, ya know, an actual point, I'll leave this tangled bunch alone and see if I can't find the other plug end of what I believe to be the same strand of lights.<br />
<br />
That other end would be <a href="http://themattwalshblog.com/2013/12/22/i-cant-explain-why-we-shouldnt-murder-disabled-children/" target="_blank">an essay</a> by sometime radio-somebody and now fawned over conservative blogger Matt Walsh. The piece is entitled, "<a href="http://themattwalshblog.com/2013/12/22/i-cant-explain-why-we-shouldnt-murder-disabled-children/" target="_blank">I can’t explain why we shouldn't murder disabled children.</a>"<br />
<br />
Once again, right from the title, my skepticism was provoked: not, this time, due to shoddy Latin, but because W, precisely, TF?<br />
<br />
I'm not going to bother fisking the article too much in-depth. On the surface, Walsh <i>seems </i>to be trying to make a point about how it is vital and useful to order argument according to at least <i>some </i>shared principles, which is a very obvious point, so widely accepted that it is bound up in the idiom "for the sake of argument," but sadly (and here's where Walsh does have something of a valid observation) too much neglected today when interlocutors stand opposite one another and shout past each other like bag ladies yelling at traffic. Witness: almost any panel on any news network, ever, which touches upon Catholicism. (Except MSNBC, when there is usually agreement by everyone involved due to the careful selection of effete heretical Jesuits and butch apostate nuns.)<br />
<br />
But, the seed of a valid observation grows into an imaginary beanstalk of imagined insight and takes us up into the ethereal clouds. To wit, Walsh expounds:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #666666;">If it isn’t wrong to kill children, then it can not be wrong to do anything else. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #666666;">Let me say that again, because it’s a crucial point: </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #666666;">If it isn’t wrong to kill children, then it can not be wrong to do anything else. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #666666;">Literally anything else. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #666666;">Slavery? Genocide? How can they be condemned? Of what sort of moral standard have they fallen short? If the bar has sunken low enough so that infanticide can leap above it, then I doubt that any atrocity could find a way to limbo underneath. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #666666;">Believe it or not, even politically incorrect comments about homosexuality have to be excused if we are to believe that baby killing is a moral act.</span></blockquote>
Which, reading, I find to manifest all of the sequential power of logic involved in this:<br />
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<br />
And then there's this paragraph:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #666666;">So I sat down and intended to write about this case. I was going to explore all of the angles. I was going to point out, as a secondary issue, how these "wrongful birth lawsuits" (this one is hardly the first) will serve to make it even more expensive to have a baby at a hospital. Think of the liability issues involved if medical establishments can now be sued for not killing your baby. I was going to explain how this story is an inevitable side effect of the death cult philosophy which tells us that human life is worthless, and a parent’s right to convenience and comfort can trump a child’s right to the life God gave it. I was going to point out how the Nazis also murdered the disabled for the same reason we do: to rid society of those who might be considered a "burden."</span></blockquote>
Holy proslepsis, Batman!<br />
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<br />
I won't even mention the clear evidence of Walsh's non-membership in the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/236509751698/" target="_blank">Society for a Moratorium on the Use of Allusions to Hitler in Argumentation</a>. [See what I did there? <i>Proslepsis</i>. Learn it. Love it. <i>Don't do it.</i>]<br />
<hr />
<br />
Now, the point to all of this is that faulty (not to mention often uncharitable) reasoning plagues all sides of nearly all of the debates which trouble our culture.<br />
<br />
I mentioned at the outset that there was a bit of irony in my sitting down to toss off some half-baked thoughts about this subject, because that's the trend that I thought in the outset of writing that I wanted to criticize. But now, through the exercise of actually having written, I realize that that isn't it at all.<br />
<br />
It's about taking Matt Walsh's kernel of a criticism at the same time as maybe looking at <i>The Advocate</i>'s selection with a deliberate intent to find what might be favorable and true and good. It's about working to find that little spot of common ground which Walsh admits is crucial to find in order to say anything at all, but only before he then proceeds anyway to write about how it simply doesn't exist.<br />
<br />
I'm not so fatalistic yet. I think people can be reasoned with. I think that the True, the Good, and the Beautiful still have power to move minds and hearts.<br />
<br />
It isn't easy all the time to play by these rules, of course. And certainly it doesn't mean we don't call a spade a spade sometimes, admitting that "we're nowhere" to even begin arguing an issue. Then again, we can infer this from common sense and common experience. We've all heard that voice of common sense, in a situation when we know that someone's anger or anxiety at that moment makes it an impossible time to try to reason with him or her: the common sense that tells us instead to put off that argument for another day, maybe taking upon ourselves in the meantime some opprobrium, guilt, or embarrassment. It isn't a squishy modernist nicey-nice question, but a confessional interrogation to ponder: What better serves this person <i>right now</i>, that I convince them they are wrong or that I remind them they are loved?<br />
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<br />
<br />
But, it might be objected: <i>That's all well and good for pillow-talk, but what of the hugely important, hugely divisive, life-altering issues upon which Becker and Walsh have written? Gay marriage, abortion... we can't just defer those debates, can we?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
It depends what we mean by "defer" and what we mean by "the debate," ultimately. In this context, I'm referring to the man-in-the-street encounters (or audiences which some of us have the capacity to reach), the barroom banter, or even the family dinner table, when issues - yes, even <i>those </i>issues - come up. I think it eminently wise, and eminently Christian, to put first things first in those cases: to <i>see the other </i>and to try to know and understand him or her. To try hard to find the common ground, however far from our issue or our point in may be: to meet upon that tangential plane would be better than meeting not at all.<br />
<br />
This is how we begin from the right first principles: we begin with the other. And involved in this is an act of Faith and a recognition that the Truth is not ours, it is larger than us. (<i>Woah - relativism! What gives, Grabowski?</i>) No, you'd misunderstand me. I mean, if we have the Truth and believe the Truth, we need to be humble in that awareness when we approach those that we know (because of our relation to the Truth) are wrong. In other words, I don't mean "we don't own the Truth" so as to suggest we can all be right about things. But that there might be some part of the Truth that that other shares, and our job then is to meet the other <i>there</i> and bring them further into a shared experience of something which does not <i>come </i>from us.<br />
<br />
So, let us then be co-workers in the Truth (to quote our Pope Emeritus) and, when we argue and when we evangelize, let us start from the <i>right </i>first principles precisely by <i>starting from them together</i>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-27955047805404836552013-12-21T10:54:00.000-05:002014-01-07T16:03:10.203-05:00Revisiting the Duck Dynasty Kerfuffle: The Real Point for Me in All This...I <a href="http://arthuringlewood.blogspot.com/2013/12/what-duck-indeed.html" target="_blank">posted earlier in the week my first reactions</a> to the dust-up over Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson's remarks and the subsequent reaction by A&E executives, the media, and supporters of the Robertson family.<br />
<br />
I'm not backing down from those statements, but I want to make a few observations about how things have proceeded since then.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
First of all, I want to alert reader's to <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2013/12/converts-and-heretics.html" target="_blank">this fantastic piece by Mark Shea</a> that says so much of what I think, better than I'll manage to say it. <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2013/12/converts-and-heretics.html" target="_blank">Read it.</a><br />
<br />
I'll add this observation which I think is implicit in Mark's observations: as a Catholic, from the very beginning of all this, I've been wrestling with the Phil Robertson situation particularly in light of the examples and the words of Pope Francis on how we need as Christians to be more cogent and compelling in our work of evangelization, specifically as regards sexual issues. Anyone <i>not </i>wrestling with the implicit tension here <i>ought </i>to be. And that's all I'm going to say about that.<br />
<br />
Moving on, here's another couple of thoughts. Since A&E announced Phil's dismissal, many in the media have pointed to the other remarks Phil made respecting his experience growing up in the pre-Civil Rights era South. Again, <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2013/12/converts-and-heretics.html" target="_blank">Mark says about this much of what I would say</a>. But I want to also observe a very simple fact about how charity in logic and argument should work.<br />
<br />
The statement by A&E executives <i>could </i>be read broadly to be an indictment about <i>all </i>of Phil's remarks in the <i>G.Q.</i> interview. But I think that's a bit too generous. Let's review that statement again:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
We are extremely disappointed to have read Phil Robertson's comments in GQ, which are based on his own personal beliefs and are not reflected in the series Duck Dynasty. His personal views in no way reflect those of A&E Networks, who have always been strong supporters and champions of the LGBT community. The network has placed Phil under hiatus from filming indefinitely.</blockquote>
The first sentence, I'll grant, could be taken to be inclusive. But the second sentence refers back to it: "His personal views," the qualifier in the first sentence, becomes a subject of elaboration in the second sentence, where it is specifically noted that these views are distinguished from A&E precisely because the networks "have always been strong supporters and champions of the LGBT community." In other words, it was A&E who made the primary debate about the "homophobic" remarks and <i>not </i>about the allegedly "racist" remarks.<br />
<br />
Thus, I can agree that the remarks regarding the place of blacks in the 40s and 50s in Louisiana are myopic, tone-deaf, and frankly stupid. [Yet again, c.f. <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2013/12/converts-and-heretics.html" target="_blank">Shea</a>.]<br />
<br />
But my initial concern in this debate was the increasing extent to which a simple proclamation of Christian values and beliefs, including merely quoting from the plain words of Scripture, has become inadmissible in public debate, and is fast on its way to becoming the cultural and possibly even <i>legal </i>equivalent of "hate speech."<br />
<br />
Are Phil's other remarks pertinent to the judgment of his character, to an individual's decision whether or not to patronize his company, and possibly to the matter of whether the decision by A&E is a solid business move and ethically sound? Sure. But bringing it up<i> post hoc </i>and trying to impose it as the reasoning behind his decision when we <i>have an express statement of that reasoning from A&E </i>that indicates otherwise is simply unjust in argument and tries to change the parameters of the debate. The logical fallacy involved here is what's often called "moving the goalposts." I try not to do this when arguing with others about any subject, and all I ask is that they act in kind when arguing with me.<br />
<br />
And now to return to that original debate, about whether Phil's views have a place in the public discourse...<br />
<br />
Chances are, dear reader, that you are, like me, a "kreashunist." You might not even know that you are: it came as a surprise to me. But that's the breaks: that's what "they're" calling you.<br />
<br />
This is not a <i>non sequitur</i>. In this context, this observation carries significant meaning and weight. If you engage in a debate on topics similar to this (or, say, debate over the biblical meaning and definition of marriage) on the internet (and especially social networks like Twitter or Reddit) it will not be long before a pejorative sleight against "kreashunists" makes its way into the debate.<br />
<br />
"Kreashunist" is, of course, meant to be an insulting way of ridiculing the views of those who believe in the Biblical creation narrative. You can feel about that however you want: personally, I think it'd be uncharitable even if it were directed solely to literalist interpreters of that narrative and "young earth" folks, etc. But the point is <i>it isn't </i>limited to those people.<br />
<br />
I believe in a process of long term evolution. I have been given the right to reconcile evolutionary theories with my Catholic belief based on (1) the Church's articulated teachings on methodologies of Biblical interpretation and (2) the explicit statements of non-contradiction made by Bl. Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, and other magisterial authorities.<br />
<br />
But nonetheless, I will be called a "kreashunist." See, the point is it isn't denial of evolution that makes me stupid in the perception of my interlocutors: it's my belief in a "Purple Spaghetti Monster in the Sky" (to reference one disparagement of theism by the doyen of the New Atheists, Richard Dawkins).<br />
<br />
So, this is, as much as anything else, why <a href="https://actright.com/petitions/57" target="_blank">I continue to Stand with Phil</a>. The trend of intolerance and, frankly, meanness on the part of agnostics, New Atheists, and others, directed toward people of faith - <i>any faith</i> - is a troubling trend and one against which I will continue to fight. I want to point out that it is precisely the sloppy over-extension of clever insinuations like "kreashunist" that makes militant atheism and secularism (as manifested by, for example, the <a href="http://ffrf.org/" target="_blank">Freedom from Religion Foundation</a>) <i style="font-weight: bold;">just as dogmatic and fundamentalist </i>as any system of theistic faith around nowadays. Materialistic philosophy is held on to with all the religious fervor with which Biblical fundamentalists clutch and cling to their Bibles. It's unseemly hypocrisy and small-minded bigotry, plain and simple.<br />
<br />
This, then, is what the Phil Robertson situation ultimately represents, in my view. It represents whether I'm content to submit myself to being called a "kreashunist" and not call foul or protest against the illogicality of it. And that is simply something I will not do.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9139121357804332511.post-21664421971685722592013-12-18T23:38:00.004-05:002014-01-07T16:03:35.673-05:00"What the Duck?" Indeed<br />
Let's cut right to the chase. You've read <a href="http://tv.yahoo.com/blogs/tv-news/-duck-dynasty--star-s-anti-gay-remarks-spark-outrage-134231650.html" target="_blank">the news</a>. You've seen <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/glaad-slams-duck-dynasty-star-666585" target="_blank">the reactions</a>. But what are you to make of the dust-up over Phil Robertson's comments to GQ in a profile piece entitled "<a href="http://www.gq.com/entertainment/television/201401/duck-dynasty-phil-robertson" target="_blank">What the Duck?</a>"<br />
<br />
First things first, let's see his words in their complete originally reported form and context.<br />
<br />
Explaining that the Robertsons are "Bible-thumpers who just happened to end up on television," Phil urged his interviewer:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
You put in your article that the Robertson family really believes strongly that if the human race loved each other and they loved God, we would just be better off. We ought to just be repentant, turn to God, and let’s get on with it, and everything will turn around.</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEzz4BG3CrhB8J91piYpsJL3uIlWW5LpmoB9EhLG97YKfvk_Q-7bU5kinaZPw4yTT6nAm74eqz3OiQ5WlnSoa1KL2lO70_Nex-d3KgK6fUB0QHo8-5QpusJmldGTcuBmPhmK16gZJjpG4/s1600/phil-dd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEzz4BG3CrhB8J91piYpsJL3uIlWW5LpmoB9EhLG97YKfvk_Q-7bU5kinaZPw4yTT6nAm74eqz3OiQ5WlnSoa1KL2lO70_Nex-d3KgK6fUB0QHo8-5QpusJmldGTcuBmPhmK16gZJjpG4/s320/phil-dd.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a>Repentance matters to Phil, the article explains, because he is worried about the direction of our nation - which he believes to be have been founded in Christian principles - and hopes that the reality show is "a small corrective to all that we have lost."<br />
<br />
"Everything is blurred on what's right and what's wrong.... Sin becomes fine," is the reported analysis of our current milieu given by Phil.<br />
<br />
But then, when the interviewer asked Phil what's sinful, he gave the reply that has caused such a furor:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men,” he says. Then he paraphrases Corinthians: “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”</blockquote>
But Phil quickly cautions after these words: "<b>We never, ever judge someone on who's going to heaven, hell. That's the Almighty's job. We just love 'em, give 'em the good news about Jesus</b>—whether they're homosexuals, drunks, terrorists. We let God sort 'em out later, you see what I'm saying?" [emphasis added].<br />
<hr />
The reaction was swift and furious, with GLAAD and others calling for A&E to sanction the show as a result of these remarks.<br />
<br />
Phil rose to his own defense in <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2013/12/18/phil-robertson-suspended-after-comments-about-homosexuality/" target="_blank">a statement to a FOX affiliate</a>. But he didn't back down:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
My mission today is to go forth and tell people about why I follow Christ and also what the bible teaches, and part of that teaching is that women and men are meant to be together.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
However, I would never treat anyone with disrespect just because they are different from me. We are all created by the Almighty and like Him, I love all of humanity. We would all be better off if we loved God and loved each other.</blockquote>
</blockquote>
On balance, these do not sound like words of hatred. Nonetheless, A&E has suspended him, saying in its statement:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
We are extremely disappointed to have read Phil Robertson's comments in GQ, which are based on his own personal beliefs and are not reflected in the series Duck Dynasty. His personal views in no way reflect those of A&E Networks, who have always been strong supporters and champions of the LGBT community. The network has placed Phil under hiatus from filming indefinitely.</blockquote>
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Evidently for the producers of this "reality" show, shit just got a bit too real.<br />
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So what do we make of it?<br />
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Here's the bottom line as I see it.<br />
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You don't need to agree with Phil Robertson's presentation of the teachings of Christianity here. Personally, I find them sloppily rendered from Corinthians in a de-contextualized and then mashed-up way in his quotations, a way that is unhelpful precisely in the manner the Holy Father has warned us that speaking of certain moral teachings out of context <i>can </i>be unhelpful.<br />
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But you don't even need to agree with the teaching of Corinthians. You don't need to agree with the teachings of any religion. You can be out and proud and as anti-Christian or militant atheist as they come.<br />
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I say you don't "need" to hold these views. Need how? For what? You don't need to think any particular thing about <i>what </i>Phil said to think that he should have a <i>right </i>to say it and that we shouldn't immediate turn to the network to "sanction" him as if we need some kind of overseer's protection from unpalatable ideas.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZsh3pw7gFyoW7olm8OMHWiu9wOeBS0X3uwlBfWrNnWmD5oWbPfAKZTS18Cd3pySM-1DayxO3CHLTBnlaEdDbYxK2t3HdSWLXK454HwXoexWJfQGDbNzY1XLqspFwxdA6y6I9nx9WWvaQ/s1600/Hear-No-Evil-See-No-Evil-Speak-No-Evil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZsh3pw7gFyoW7olm8OMHWiu9wOeBS0X3uwlBfWrNnWmD5oWbPfAKZTS18Cd3pySM-1DayxO3CHLTBnlaEdDbYxK2t3HdSWLXK454HwXoexWJfQGDbNzY1XLqspFwxdA6y6I9nx9WWvaQ/s200/Hear-No-Evil-See-No-Evil-Speak-No-Evil.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a></div>
This is the same spirit that motivates the Freedom from Religion folks and others who just can't abide seeing X, Y, Z religious symbols set up... well, anywhere they might happen to go. They want those things behind Church doors, and that's their only place in those folks' views. But then are religious folks free from the religiously-held anti-theistic, anti-deistic value system of the other?<br />
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You see it's absurd. In a free society, with free discourse of ideas, even someone who hates Phil and everything he stands for should see his saying it as a victory for the rights we all cherish, and then use their own rights to organize boycotts and the like and use genuine consumer power (and not a high-powered behind-the-scenes lobby like GLAAD) to get a message across. Or, ya know, simply change the channel.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0exvetYBfGZtQ3RHv1HmzevdmrVGVMhfs2r6i9c-j8TtCkSI_iT8_yh0Pljt6IXM4hkR-ZwKmEKknVFvvBGZ-7n4oWieO52oa7UuC2zCOefZRXLa-DC34ul9XQ4rAIpHLZ2kCY4dW80s/s1600/keep-low-and-mind-your-head-2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0exvetYBfGZtQ3RHv1HmzevdmrVGVMhfs2r6i9c-j8TtCkSI_iT8_yh0Pljt6IXM4hkR-ZwKmEKknVFvvBGZ-7n4oWieO52oa7UuC2zCOefZRXLa-DC34ul9XQ4rAIpHLZ2kCY4dW80s/s320/keep-low-and-mind-your-head-2.png" height="320" width="274" /></a>I worry that America is becoming a real "Duck Dynasty" -no, not like the show. A duck dynasty in the sense that everyone walks around needing to duck all the time. We no longer scrape our knees in the schoolyard scuffle, or have to suffer to hear words that offend. We get our Big Government and Big Business bought-and-paid-for cultural overlords to protect us from anything that might challenge us to think, or feel, or in any way come out of the bubbles we would live in. We keep lowering the ceiling of free speech, and consenting to duck, until soon our knuckles must drag and we become mere primates that don't exchange ideas but just babble at one another and occasionally throw poo. And then we will keep ducking, and ducking, and ducking - ducking all the rights and responsibilities of man: to have a mind and to judge and discern and (yes) discriminate: until finally we writhe on the floor like the worms we've made ourselves.<br />
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But even that dystopian vision isn't the worst nightmare to come from this. No, because those who control the signs, those who surreptitiously lower the ceilings and bid us duck, will forever stay aloof. And one day they'll walk all over us in literal fact.<br />
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I'm not ducking. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/westandwithphil" target="_blank">I'm standing up. Standing up for Phil Robertson.</a> Not for what he said or how he said it necessarily: that's beside the point for me. But for his right to determine for himself when he should duck.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0