Fr. Z explains why.
I'm sure a lot of you out there, like Fr. Z, like me, have gotten a lot of flack from your liberal Catholic friends, who get oh so squeamish about your statments and arguments on why voting for the Moloch Messiah, or Notre Shame awarding him an honorary doctorate -- and in LAW, of all things -- constitutes high treason against the Mystical Body of Christ.
And for pointing out the obvious, we are called counter-productive, divisive, spiteful, uncharitable, and so on. We're "single-issue voters" who don't care enough about other social issues, like the poor, justice, peace, and so on.
When I get into surly moods, my main reaction is that I don't really think that liberal Catholic Obama supporters give two shits for the plight of the unborn. They shed more tears for Tiller the Killer than for the babies he ripped to pieces, and tore from their mothers' wombs.
And when I'm not surly, I think pretty much the same thing: liberal Catholics who have no qualms about supporting the most pro-abortion president in American history really do not in the slightest care about the plight of the unborn.
So like Fr. Z, I'm not going to tone it down. Fr. Z's reasons are good enough for me:
First of all, there’s history. No matter how earnestly these Catholic friends of mine insist that they oppose abortion, when I think about what they want us not to do, I am forced to conclude that they just don’t see the symmetry between the abortion issue and other moral tragedies in recent history, such as the Holocaust and racial segregation.
My second reason for not toning down the rhetoric on abortion follows from the first. When and why did the abortion issue cease to be a “justice and peace” issue? Answer: when it became a women’s issue.
My third reason for not wanting us to tone down the rhetoric is a sense I have, a feeling not easy to pin down.
I am sensing a kind of Zeitgeist in the air which censures the use of “harsh rhetoric.”
Fr. Z goes into what he thinks the Zeitgeist is. I am not going to speak for him, but for me, the Zeitgeist adds up to, liberal Catholics who support Obama don't give two shits for the plight of the unborn, and hate it when the rest of us remind them of it. What else can you say about gasbags like Fr. John Jenkins, who blather about "responsible and reasoned dialogue," but who let 80-year-old priests get dragged off on handcuffs just for pointing out (a) the hypocricy of Fr. Jenkins and his ilk, and (b) the tacit support they give to the shattering crime of abortion. 
Monday, July 6, 2009
Should Catholic pro-lifers 'tone it down'? No!
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6 comments:
Nothin' better than putting up a good fight for a noble cause.
It is the very essence of what Catholic Faith demands and what History will remember us for.
The murder of holy innocents is an outrage and the damnation of our national conscience by the abortionists and their political and media stooges demands a loud and aggressive counter offense.
This isn't a job for wimps.
Tone it down? Nah...crank up the volume 'til it hurts and then crank it up some more...
there is a war to be won!
The most transformational space still exists between the Church and her body and it has become horribly barren and dry. Lifeless. Without a vigorous imperative behind it we allow secular culture to fill in the gaps, to teach us and our children about life and human sexuality and we've seen the moral utility that results from that process.
I'd put money on the fact that the Catholic friends Fr. Z is talking about don't know one thing about Catholic teaching through Humana Vitae or Theology of the Body. They dismiss the bottom line moral decisions on these matters because they don't understand the beauty of the whole.
Without the whole in context, the teaching seems brittle and hopelessly out of step.
A multi-pronged effort--we cannot attach too much hope to what happens in the political sphere when our own faithful are deprived of the beauty of the magisterium.
re: the above. A recent CNA poll reported that 79% of Catholics approve of artificial reproduction.
This is an enormous problem. And it reminds me of the mote and the log. I'm not criticizing the do not go quietly in to the night point of view expressed here. Rage, rage against the dying of the light, for certain.
I don't mean to criticize but abridge.
Don't allow political power to blind us to the housekeeping we have to do inside.
This is a plea to bishops: TEACH THE FAITHFUL.
So true.
MSN is my "home page" and every morning I read headlines beginning with "We..." think this or that, believe such and such, want (or demand) so and so. The basic premise of each and every headline starting with "we" being propaganda contrary to what our faith teaches us. It is like some secular mind washing conspiracy. It certainly isn't the "news."
I agree that it is imperative that our Bishops take the point position (and some have served admirably in this regard)and there is no shortage or great apologists on both sides of the grave (such as Chesterton and Kreeft among many others) but the high ground is won and the enemy's flag captured by ground pounding grunts.
Every trooper learns the basics to survive in boot camp. The Church's boot camps seem to be ineffectual to an alarming degree. IMHO, more of our Bishops need to trade in their mitres for D.I. covers.
well put, John.
I have had the opportunity to involve myself with Catholic women who are struggling with infertility, and some who suffer in the aftermath of abortion, or health consequences of artificial birth control.
There is a very sure way in which Catholics who support anti-Life practices can't even be held responsible for it, since they are so completely uneducated about what the Magisterium teaches. You should see the faces of some women when I tell them that, statistically they are having about two miscarriages a year if they are using the Pill.
If the Catholic population was educated and mobilized, whether or not abortion was legal or illegal would almost become irrelevant. The cultural disdain for the practice of harmful contraceptive practice, fertility, and abortive practices could become the greatest defense we have.
This can operate on multiple fronts and some of them secular--since the "natural" pro-Woman approach of Natural Family Planning appeals to so many inside and outside our belief system.
For inst: how about mobilizing the Environmentalist movement on the issue of estrogen toxicity in the water supply? There is an astonishing drop in male fertility and an increase in male obesity and it can be partially traced back to the fact that women's urine is saturated with estrogen from the use of hormonal birth control and hormone replacement therapies. When it gets into the ground water, it cannot be filtered from the water supply.
If this were advertised--particularly to that set which loves Jenny McCarthy and the alarm button of "My God our Children!"--and people realized their sons were getting estrogen poisoning from the drinking water, forever affecting their virility and fertility, what reaction would big Pharma get against their cash cow?
How about the link of abortions to breast cancer (hello Pink Ribbon Cov--ahem, Brigade), infertility, and death? Feminism can be completely mobilized here.
Thanks, Jennifer and John for your comments. This is all very insightful.
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