"The dragon wishes to devour 'the child brought forth'"

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.

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:

RT if you stand w the 99% of women who have used #birthcontrol at some point in their lives. #NotMyBossBusiness pic.twitter.com/tu67LMdFD9
— ACLU National (@ACLU) March 24, 2014

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:

Paying for someone else’s abortion pills is 100% not healthcare. #ReligiousFreedomForAll #SCOTUS pic.twitter.com/YDEnorDiau
— AllianceDefends (@AllianceDefends) March 25, 2014

The sloganeering of the day was an interesting facet, with the trending tag #NotMyBossBusiness carrying most of the pro-abortion and pro-contraception messaging... which kind of annoyed me on a couple points: because, well, #NotMyBossBusiness is #NotGrammaticalCorrect; and...

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:

Awesome shot by @ReproRights' Federal Policy Counsel, Kristine Kippins! #NotMyBossBusiness pic.twitter.com/67DDeyMXqY
— Ctr for Repro Rights (@ReproRights) March 25, 2014

The prerequisite crass signs were on display, too (and happily spread around the internet by Planned Parenthood):

It may be cold out but this crowd is bringing it! #NotMyBossBusiness! pic.twitter.com/b4NSYCWJYC
— Planned Parenthood (@Latinos4PP) March 25, 2014

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:

#NotMyBossBusiness at the Supreme Court! pic.twitter.com/P89W1d5B8J
— Planned Parenthood (@Latinos4PP) March 25, 2014

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.'"]

Couldn't have said it better ourselves. #notmybossbusiness pic.twitter.com/Paij6rf7vs
— Planned Parenthood (@PPact) March 25, 2014

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But there were, as I said, plenty of folks were out from both sides.

I created and posted this image on Facebook earlier today because what it says seems to me strikes to the heart of the issue: This is an issue that impacts us all! We're all the Defendants now.

And I wasn't the only one reasoning thus... (and kudos to the #ReligiousFreedomForAll organizers or whoever made these signs which very nicely counter the "not my boss's business" meme):

Not partisan, just human. #NotMyBossBusiness #ReligiousFreedomForAll pic.twitter.com/JqZdZO5Tlc
— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) March 25, 2014

But above all, it was good to me to see - on this Feast of the Annunciation - that prayer was a part of the demonstrations, because prayer is very much needed in this fight.

Prayer is needed because, as Blessed John Paul II reminded us in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae - first published exactly 18 years ago today - the fight is not just between flesh and blood, but involve higher (and lower) realities:

Mary thus helps the Church to realize that life is always at the centre of a great struggle between good and evil, between light and darkness. 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 rejection of human life, in whatever form that rejection takes, is really a rejection of Christ. 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).

While what was ostensibly being discussed - at least in the courtroom - today was a question of constitutional rights and authority, the real matter cuts much deeper:  Quid est homo? What is man? What is he for? 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?

These are questions which we all need to ponder more deeply - some of us very direly.

We are the 99% of Catholic women who have used #birthcontrol. #NotMyBossBusiness pic.twitter.com/dLI2Gk7Y1E
— Catholics for Choice (@Catholic4Choice) March 25, 2014

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 is that Gospel, is 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 us, His disciples, His messengers, to snatch that precious word from the clutches of the dragon.

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.

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. 

Grant that all who believe in your Son may proclaim the Gospel of life with honesty and love to the people of our time. 

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

Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ, Who is Life itself: Pray for us. 

Why I March: Because of Her

[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: we are all involved and we all share in it, with the inescapable responsibility of choosing to be unconditionally pro-life.

 - John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae 28

Why, You DO Hate Babies!

[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.]

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"Why do you hate babies?"

... or puppies, or kittens, or rainbow, or flowers, or any and all things good?

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 ad hominem type attacks or to convenient non sequiturs.

Thus, for example, if in a public forum (such as on my Facebook timeline), 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:

I DARE criticize SO-AND-SO?!? [NB: ALL CAPS are a useful tool for this type of commenter.] What have I 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!... and so on, ad nauseam. 

On Trolling Planned Parenthood (and You Can Too!)

[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, trolling Planned Parenthood. 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, my strategy in dealing with Planned Parenthood focuses on promoting the truth by revealing their lies. And that is a strategy I'd recommend to be more widely adopted.]

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When I'm bored or suffering writer's block, I troll Planned Parenthood on Twitter. They are pretty dependable for putting their foot in their mouth for those who can read between the lines.

Thus, for example, way back in May, they posted this sanctimonious and diabolical B.S., for which I gave them a hard time:

Don't get me wrong, I was as happy as anyone that Philadelphia "House of Horrors" abortionist Kermit Gosnell - 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...

But it seemed to me at least 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 the three first-degree murder charges for killing babies born alive in botched (illegal) late-term abortions.

It was this shady tweet that first got me interested in trolling @PPact and their subsidiaries on Twitter.

"Even When Kids Grow Up" (You Mean, When They Have the Chance?)

... That is what I think when I see creepy tweets like this one from Planned Parenthood:

We love Moms, and they always know best—even when kids grow up. Talk to them about how to #getcovered: http://t.co/89p4Li7Oak #momknowsbest

— Planned Parenthood (@PPact) January 9, 2014

... 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.

Nationally Syndicated Columnist: "Those @#$% Catholics Even Worse Than The @#$% Jews!" [UPDATED]

[NB: I'm appending to this piece a caveat, for what it's worth. Evidently, The Catholic League is calling for Stiehm's dismissal 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.] 

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Yep, you read the headline right.

That is, effectively, the upshot of this wild screed by Jamie Stiehm in U.S. News and World Report.

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:

She cray-cray, as the kids say.

Sotomayor's blow brings us to confront an uncomfortable reality. More than WASPS, Methodists, Jews, Quakers or Baptists, Catholics often try to impose their beliefs on you, me, public discourse and institutions. Especially if "you" are female. [...]

Catholics in high places of power have the most trouble, I've noticed, practicing the separation of church and state. 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 a clear religious bias 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. He deeply distrusted the narrowness of Vatican hegemony.

Right and Wrong Thinking People Getting Things Wrong and Right (or Wrong?)

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.)

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.

The two unrelated articles seem to be sourced from opposite ends of so many spectra, but I really think they have more in common than first is apparent, both a falsis principiis proficscendi.