Protest is a form of education

Over the last several months, I have learned that if I write a pro-life post that mentions protesting and/or political action as part of the process, someone will write me a comment to insist that we should really just pray and work quietly at the local crisis pregnancy center.  Several years ago, after sending around an e-mail detailing the powerful experience of participating in a pro-life counterprotest in DC, I got several positive comments, and one, “Well, you shouldn’t have said anything at all; you should’ve just stood and prayed the rosary.”  The implication (even from many pro-lifers) is that the pro-abortion side is right: pro-lifers (or at least those obnoxious enough to protest or get politically active) don’t really care about the women hurt by abortion, they just want to make a point, when they should have restricted their actions to prayer.  As you may have noticed, I strongly disagree with this.

The last comment I got, several days ago, concluded that the pro-life movement should abandon politics and protest altogether and just focus on “educating” those women at risk of an abortion.

As I mulled over this, something hit me: protest is a form of education.

No, not in the sense of left-wing professors ordering their students to show up for the head count at some save-the-trees rally and calling it classwork.  The protest is not meant for the education of the protestors (although that may also happen), but for those seeing the protest.

Nobody does a protest (ok, almost nobody) just to make noise.  The entire point is to get noticed, preferrably by the media, because then more people hear your message, which is the whole point of a protest: to get your message heard.  A public protest is, by its very nature, an attempt to educate the public on an issue, or at least on the fact that some people think that the issue is important enough to take a public stand against it.

When people protesting British rule of India set themselves on fire in public squares, they weren’t just making an esoteric statement about their refusal to participate in what they viewed as a totally unacceptable situation.  That sort of statement could have been made in private.  The statement they were trying to make, I submit, was adressed to the British people living in Great Britain.  As one of my history profs once explained, the tactic worked because of the free press and because proper Brits sitting down to breakfast were appalled to open their paper over their tea and scones to find yet another photo of a college student kneeling calmly while burning himself to death in protest in India.  Whatever the Brits at home thought of the colonization of India, they were made painfully, shockingly aware that the Indians hated it.  The Indians did not think the benefits of being part of the Empire made up for their loss of sovreignty, they did not think it didn’t matter; they hated it enough to die an agonizing death to draw attention to the problem.

The Indians had thought and said this for a long time.  It was only their public protest that finally hammered the idea home to the majority of British voters and members of Parliament.

It is ignorant to argue that pro-lifers don’t care about stopping individual abortions or are just out for political power.  The pro-lifers are the ones praying and fasting for the end of abortion, operating the crisis pregnancy centers, staffing the post-abortion healing hotlines and retreats, begging money and donations for needy mothers, working at adoption agencies, and standing in all weather outside of abortion mills across the country trying to catch the ear and the attention of the women heading inside to authorize the murder of their babies.

Except for EWTN and other religious networks, these activities don’t make the news.  Heck, most diocesan newspapers would rather skip a ho-hum piece on the day-to-day operations of crisis pregnancy centers or (worse) sidewalk counselors at the local abortion clinic to instead highlight yet another self-agrandizing anti-nuke protest by the bishop outside the local military base (our previous bishop’s favorite activity, it seems, from what the diocesan paper reported.  If he really wanted to educate someone with power over the issue, he’d have travelled an hour the other direction and held the protest in front of the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol, or the White House.).

Frankly, good news doesn’t sell papers or TV news programs.  If you’re lucky, and it’s a slow news day, one of the more feel-good pro-life programs (like a program to help poor mothers, which can be spun to be more about poverty than pro-life work) might make the human interest spot at the end of the local nightly news.  But don’t expect any mainstream TV station to ever voluntarily broadcast the slightest hint that abortion has consequences, so a post-abortion healing retreat article is right out.

What does make the news, at least sometimes, is protests.

After complete ignorance of the existence of the other pro-life activities, some people will see pro-life protests on the news and ask, “What?  We’re still arguing about that?  Why are they so upset?”  And maybe they’ll listen for a minute and some of the horrific facts of abortion (and the immense pro-life work happening silently, invisibly in this country) will get through the “not my problem” shield and start to change someone’s mind.

We have been praying for thirty five years in this country for God to end abortion.  We cry out in despair and ask, “Why haven’t You done something?!?”

He did do something.  He sent us.  As St. Paul says, there are many gifts, but one Spirit who animates all of them.  All of us can pray and fast.  Most of us can make financial contributions.  Some of us will work in crisis pregnancy centers.  Some of us will work the phones and walk door-to-door to get pro-life politicians elected.  Some of us will step forward as foster parents and adoptive parents.  Some of us will publicly stand in protest.

Prayer is the expected minimum.  We are all called to do at least that.

But prayer is supposed to propel us to action.

 

I’ll give St. Augustine the last words.  One quote I went looking for, to check who it should be attributed to.  The second was in the list and seemed particularly applicable.

“Pray as if everything depended on God, then work as if everything depended on you.”

“Hope has two beautiful daughters.  Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are and the courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.”

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How to host a large holiday gathering

Ok, Thanksgiving is over.  In true ex-Navy fashion, it is now time for the “lessons learned” discussion.

Did you have a bunch of relatives over for Thanksgiving?  Did it go smoothly?  Did something get burnt?  Did you get to the end of the meal and suddenly realize that you’d completely forgotten to make your mother-in-law’s favorite casserole?  Did you finish the meal exhausted and frustrated and facing a pile of non-dishwasher-approved crystal and china with dried-on food?

Well, I have the solution for you!  It’s…

THE POLITICAL HOUSEWYF’S HOLIDAY MEAL CHECKLIST

1.  Plan ahead.  Sounds like a no-brainer, but think about this meal and write it down.  When I stripped and refinished my kitchen cabinets, I decided to do something different on the inside of the doors.  Instead of just revarnishing them, I used the frame of the cabinet to create a magnetic chalkboard area inside each door (both paints are available at home centers; put the magnetic paint on first, then the chalkboard paint.  The magnetic paint isn’t perfect; thin, strong magnets do best.).  I keep chalk tucked in the corners of the cabinets, and I use one of the doors for a to-do list, others for quotes, another for one of those magnetic poetry sets, etc.  One door is usually the menu list door for complicated dinners, like Thanksgiving.  Then, I can check things off as they are partially or totally finished, sent to the table, etc.

So, consider what your family loves as “old favorites.”  Is there a new member of the family who might like something different?  Does anyone have a dietary allergy or preference that needs to be considered (vegetarian, kosher, etc.)?  Would you like to add something new?  (Careful with that at holidays; some families are more sensitive than others about holiday meals being something specific, and nothing more nor less.  However, if you cover the favorite dishes, it’s easier to add something new.  And then, if it doesn’t turn out so well, you’re covered anyways.)  Make sure you cover meat, sides, vegetable/greens, bread, dessert, and drinks.

A few years ago, I scrapped the traditional sweet-potatoes-covered-in-marshmallows for a roasted sweet potato chunks recipe.  Very yummy.  And healthier (which is not something I can usually say about my cooking).  My family doesn’t seem to miss the marshmallows.  (Recipe: peel sweet potatoes and cut into bite-sized chunks.  Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper to taste, and something spicy.  (I use Penzey’s Northwoods Fire Seasoning; the person I got the recipe from used cayenne pepper.)  Spread out on a rimmed baking sheet or baking pan.  Roast at 400 degrees until potaotes are tender, at least thirty minutes.)

2.  Pull out the recipes and check the pantry.  Do you have everything you need?  Look at the recipes; you may have forgotten an odd ingredient here or there.  “Oops, that’s in there?  I forgot about that…” isn’t something you want to say the morning of the big meal.  (My incident was missing heavy cream for quiche for breakfast Christmas morning… I ended up with half-and-half from the 7-eleven after trying three different grocery stores that were closed.)  Add up how many eggs and how much butter you’ll need.  (Usually, I have more butter and eggs from my weekly dairy delivery than I can keep up with, but I had to get extra butter and eggs for holiday baking.  Pies and cookies take up a lot of both.)  Make a list and go shopping early, not the night before.

3.  Determine what you can do ahead of time.  I spent several nights earlier this week baking Christmas cookies.  The night before Thanksgiving, I baked the pumpkin pie (which always takes longer than the recipe predicts, tying up my oven), the jello and fruit mold, the crust for the honey tart, and the cornbread for eating and for the stuffing.  I also cooked the sausage and sauteed the celery, raisins, and Craisins (cranberries dried like raisins) for the stuffing, eliminating another spatter-likely process for the next day.

4.  Set the table.  Yes, the night before.  Make sure everyone has a seat.  Make sure your glasses are clean.  Take the time to fold the napkins.  Set out dishes and serving utensils for the dishes you’re planning to serve; that way, you know if you have to run the dishwasher or clean a platter before it becomes a last-minute problem.

5.  Run the dishwasher, wash the non-dishwasher items, and load anything that’s left into the dishwasher.  The goal is to have as much cleaned up as possible the actual day of the meal.  Trust me, clear counters and empty sinks make post-meal clean-up much, much faster.  And, while you’re at it, try to clear out the fridge, so that leftovers will be easier to stow without time-consuming fridge reorganization after the meal.

6.  The day of the meal, start yourself off right.  Eat rumballs for breakfast.  🙂  I know I enjoyed the cooking process a lot more than usual after a relaxing meal of cranberry juice and three or four chocolate rum balls rolled in confectioners’ sugar, scarfed in between chopping potatoes and filling pots with water.  Ah, the benefits of starting the Christmas cookies ahead of time.

7.  Determine what is left to do.  What will take the longest?  What dishes can be easily covered and left in the oven to stay warm (I use the oven’s lowest setting, about 150 degrees)?  Potatoes are good candidates for this, just make sure they’re covered, so that they stay moist.  Thanksgiving is pretty easy for this; I had mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, a rice/broccoli dish, and stuffing, all of which did well holding in the oven.  The honey tart I experimented with for this holiday was supposed to be served hot out of the oven, so I finished the filling, poured it into the prepared crust, and put it in the oven to cook as other things headed out to the table.  It finished about as we finished dinner.

Continue to get dirty dishes into the dishwasher and/or cleaned and put away.  Leave one pot or bowl, filled with soapy water, in the sink for silverware at the end of the meal.

8.  Once the dishes are starting to head to the table (room temp dishes first, then cold, then warm), clear a counter for dessert.  Set aside plates, forks, pie servers and/or knives, coffee cups, cream and sugar, and the coffee maker (set up before the meal; run it right before dessert).  Arrange the cookie plate, if applicable.  The idea is to be able to have everything in one spot, for an easy, quick dessert set-up with minimal futzing.

9.  Get people to the table.  Preferably, get assistance with this.  (My family usually takes multiple calls to actually get up from playing with the grandkids and come to the table.)  Start pouring drinks.  Make sure salt, pepper, and butter or margarine are on the table.  Does everything have the proper serving utensil with it?  Pull out your list and check it while looking at the table.  Did everything make it to the table?  I’ve been half-way through big holiday meals, when I suddenly realized that some dish hadn’t made it out of the fridge.

10.  Sit down, say grace, and enjoy!

11.  At the end of the meal (but not too quickly), clear all dishes to the kitchen and turn on the coffee maker.  Scrape scraps off the plates and stack dishes in the sink to soak.  (See?  I told you those empty sinks were important.)  Soak silverware in the bowl of soapy water.  Rinse glasses and leave in a safe spot next to the sink.  Do not start washing.  You worked hard for this meal; keep enjoying it.  The dishes will wait.  Clean all of the dinner stuff off the table, clean up crumbs and spills, but don’t sweat it, because there’s still dessert.  Pack leftovers away.  Whisk out the dessert stuff from its gathering point on the counter, grab your finished coffee, and settle in for dessert.

See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?

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Look to the stars

My apologies to my regular readers; I have been remiss in blogging lately.  I have not been too thrilled about the state of the world after the election, and I have been, frankly, cocooning.  As in burying myself in gardening and house cleaning type chores, with some early Christmas decorating thrown in on the excuse that my sister-in-law arrives Saturday, and this is “Christmas” for the in-law side of the family, since we’re all scattering for the real Christmas.  So I have a whole lot of little Italian lights to check and hang and boxes of faux sugared fruit and stuff to get out.  Not to mention the Nativity scene, which will definitely get at least one post all of its own.

In short, I’ve been looking to things that the election has not changed.  The knowledge that we have just elected the most rabidly pro-abortion candidate ever to the Presidency casts a dark pall on everything.  Instead of the number of abortions decreasing, as it has for almost every year of the last decade, the murders will increase.  (Yes, abortions happened when it was illegal; so do rapes and murders, but nobody has ever seriously proposed to “solve” rape and murder by making them legal.  When abortion became legal, it became “okay” in many individuals’ minds.  If abortion also becomes free, as in “federally funded”, the numbers will jump again.)  I feel like Lady MacBeth, staring at blood that has been physically washed away, but can never actually be removed.  No amount of scrubbing our collective national conscience by lauding the “racial progress” of electing our first black president will remove that blood.  No perfume of self-righteous welfare handouts and blanket amnesty for illegal immigrants will cover that stench.

But, as I said, there are things that remain unchanged.  There are even points for hope within history, where a defeat became the seed of the victory.  As J.R.R. Tolkien once explained, the greatest catastrophe, the death of God-made-Man on the Cross, was, in fact, the seed of the victory.  (Tolkien called it a “eucatastrophe”, a happy, unforeseeable turn of events.)

In our own country’s history, abolitionists had achieved some state-level success in protecting fugitive slaves by preventing slave trackers from crossing into free states.  Dominated by Southern legislators, Congress decreed that fugitive slaves could be tracked anywhere, anytime; the abolitionists’ hard-won successes were wiped out, and even free blacks were not safe from the fugitive slave hunters.  The abolitionists worked harder to smuggle escaping slaves to freedom and pushed harder to elect truly anti-slavery people to Congress.  Meanwhile, however, the slavery question had grown into a shooting war in Kansas, as debate raged as to whether Kansas should be a free or a slave state.

The debate in Congress heated up, including one incident in 1856 (which I’ve referred to in previous posts as a low point in Congressional debate) where abolitionist Congressman Charles Sumner called a pro-slavery Congressman a whoremonger for his position.  Since the Congressman in question was not in attendance that day, his cousin, Preston Brooks, also a member of Congress, took it upon himself to clear the family honor.  First, Brooks waited until all the women had left the public gallery (very dishonorable to do this in front of women) and then, taking his cane, he went up to Sumner, accused him of insulting his family, and proceeded to beat him with the cane (also a point of honor: one does not deign to duel a social inferior.  Low-brow abolitionists and slaves only deserved a good caning.).  The pro-slavery Brooks broke his walking stick while beating the abolitionist Sumner into unconciousness.  Dozens of Southerners sent Brooks new gutta percha canes, many with encouragement to go beat a couple more abolitionists.

Things, to put it mildly, did not look good for the abolitionists.  And, of course, it got worse: the Civil War was fought partially over slavery, partially over state rights, and partially over Southern ire at not being able to run Congress and the Presidency like it had done for decades (the final straw was the election of Lincoln, who wasn’t even on the ballot in the South; he was elected without a single Southern vote).  Like it will be with abortion, it took years of work after the war to make the illegal (slavery) also unthinkable (ending the Jim Crow laws, the Civil Rights movement).  But the darkening skies of war in fact presaged the beginnig of the end of the stain of slavery in our country.

 

J.R.R. Tolkien fought in WWI, in the slogging, unending horror of the trenches.  All of his closest friends died.  There is a highly applicable lament by Sam, despairing of things being made right again, after so much had gone so horribly wrong (which I cannot, at this moment, find, and I will not further massacre Tolkien’s eloquence with my poor paraphrase).  So, instead, I will refer you to the comment on transcendance.  Towards the end of The Lord of the Rings, Sam, slogging through the ditches and wastes of Mordor with Frodo, looks up wearily and sees a star glinting through the foul clouds.

… peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while.  The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him.  For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. 

(J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King, chapter 2)

I wonder if Tolkien is making a passing reference to Dante, or tapping into a deeper, Biblical sense of the metaphor of light in the darkness.  Each of the three books of The Divine Comedy ends with the word “stars.”  As the narrator finally stumbles out of Hell, the stars become something high, pure, and refreshing after the stifling madness of Hell.

We climbed [out of hell]… heedless of repose till on our view the beautiful lights of heaven dawned through a circular opening in the cave: thence issuing we again beheld the stars.

Dante, The Divine Comedy, “Hell,” lines 130-133

Which brings me back to the approach of Christmas.

Instead of a hope for the beginning of the end of the bloody stain of abortion on our nation, we face four years of agressive pro-abortion agendas in the White House (they’re already drooling over which presidential orders can be rescinded immediately to get the abortion money flowing, here and abroad).  Instead of a saavy veteran of both the military and politics, we’ve got the over-confident, inexperienced Chicago politician just begging to be tested by some sort of terrorist crisis.

But, in the history of the world, things have been worse.  The Christmas star shone on the fulfillment of God’s promise that we would not be left in our sins, in our broken world, in our repetitions of inhumanity century after century, forever.  As God told Adam and Eve as they were expelled from Eden, redemption was coming.  The Christmas star shone because the Light was coming into the world.

And I cling to the belief that everything, without exception, will somehow be redeemed by God in that Light.  So, I will look to the stars and be reminded of my Hope.

 

Kathy Mattea has put out several absolutely wonderful Christmas albums, which I highly recommend (nary a reindeer or sleigh in sight!).  The first is called Good News.  Before the second one came out, her father died.  The last song on Joy for Christmas Day is “There’s Still My Joy.”

One tiny Child can change the world

One shining light can show the way

Beyond these tears for what I’ve lost

There’s still my joy

There’s still my joy for Christmas Day.

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Why Isn’t the Supreme Court More Conservative?

A friend who reads my blog asked a question that I thought was very pertinent.  And then I spent time researching and answering the question, so I figured it would make a good post.  Rick’s last reply suggested that someone should send Joe Biden a copy of Archbishop Chaput’s new book on Catholics in politics, Render Unto Caesar, as a Christmas gift. 😀

Rick’s question: The Supreme Court is made up of mostly appointees from Republican presidents–there are only two (Ginsburg and Byeyer) who are appointed by a Democrat president (Clinton). I’m assuming all or most of the other 7 appointees are Conservative, except for maybe Justice John Stevens, who is considered a moderate (he took Rehnquist’s seat, I understand).That’s my knowledge of the Supreme Court.

So, we’ve had a conservative court for a long time with a conservative president. We (Pro-Life folks) vote for conservative presidents and senators to appoint (the pres) and approve (the Senate) conservitives to the Supreme Court in hopes that one day Roe v. Wade will be overturned. My question is–(and I’m assuming here that we have a majority of conservitives in the Supreme Court) why hasn’t this come up or what does it take to overturn this federal law? We had a conservative president for eight years and from what I understand, nothing has happend to overturn Roe.

PH’s Answer: The problem is that it isn’t quite as easy as Republican appointee= conservative justice.  Several of the Reagan appointees turned out to be not very conservative at all (or were swayed by the liberals).  (Justices listed by name (president who appointed them, and age))

Chief Justice John Roberts (GW Bush, 53), Samuel Alito (GW Bush, 58), Antonin Scalia (Reagan, 72), Clarence Thomas (GHW Bush, 60) – very conservative (as in “strict interpretation of the Constitution” aka Strict Constructionist or Originalist)

 

Anthony Kennedy (Reagan, 72) – the swing vote (and, with the four above, one of five Catholics currently on the Court)  In the 1990’s, he turned pro-abortion and pro-gay rights; conservatives were, to put it mildly, not happy.  A few years ago, he agreed with the liberal majority in the decision to allow a city to use eminent domain to seize private property to hand it over to private developers.  He has advocated the use of international law to interpret U.S. law. 

The five justices above upheld the Constitutionality of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban.  It was struck down by the Court previously, before O’Connor (very liberal) retired and was replaced by Alito.

 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Clinton, 75) – of “well, abortion has to be legal because women made decisions based on its remaining legal” fame.  Definitely pro-Roe v. Wade.  Way left.

David Souter (GHW Bush, 69) – leans mostly left

Stephen Breyer (Clinton, 70) – definitely left

John Paul Stevens (Ford, 88) – definitely leaning left, although he used to be “moderately conservative” and described himself last year as a “judicial conservative”

 

Reagan also appointed Sandra Day O’Connor, who was very liberal.  So, Reagan appointed one reliable conservative, one liberal, and one unpredictable justice who usually goes left on moral issues.  Not a great record on justices.  Ditto on GHW Bush: he gave us one conservative, one liberal.  Clinton got two liberals put on.  GW Bush got two conservatives. 

The problem seems to be that Republicans (specifically, Reagan and GHW Bush) try to “play fair” and appoint good judges, regardless of their specific views (or are forced into that position by Democrats refusing to accept non-pro-abortion nominees).  As McCain said during the campaign, he voted for Breyer, since he was a qualified judge, and, “Elections have consequences.”  i.e., it was Clinton’s prerogative to appoint who he saw fit, and the Senate should give the appointee an up or down vote based on their credentials only.

 

Democrats, on the other hand, will only appoint or approve pro-Roe vs. Wade judges.  As Biden said during the VP debate, he learned that it wasn’t just important to vote on whether the appointee was a good judge or not, one had to ask if they were pro-“privacy rights” (code for pro-abortion) enough or not.  The term “Borking” refers to the nasty smear campaign Biden led as the chair of the Judiciary Committee to discredit and abuse Bork, a conservative nominee (Kennedy was eventually approved for the spot instead). 

So, there’s the problem: yes, we have seven of nine justices appointed by Republican presidents, which would seem to say they should be conservatives/strict Constitutionalists/Originalists or whatever you want to call it.  But they aren’t.  Before O’Connor retired, you also had seven of nine justices appointed by Republicans, but five solid liberals and one usually liberal justice.

 

From what both Sen. Obama said during the campaign and Sen. Biden’s awful record on the matter, it is clear that only strict pro-abortion judges will be nominated by the coming White House.  The main hope at this point is that only liberals retire.

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What are we aiming for?

I read several things the other night that really made me wonder: what are we aiming for?

One was a submission to a weekly digest of Catholic blog posts.  In it, the author bemoaned the difficulites of standing up to the parish hierarchy when they “drew a line in the sand” over… something.  Apparently, she didn’t want to say what the issue was, although one could guess from some of what she said that the hard line was over abortion.  As in, her parish had the audacity to say, “You can not be pro-abortion nor vote for a politician who is and be a Catholic in good standing” and she complained to the pastor. 

The second item was one of the comments to the above-mentioned blog post.  “Oh, it’s so good to see another moderate Catholic out here!  Most bloggers are such hardliners!”  Um, that’s sort of the nature of blogging; nobody gets excited enough to blog about mush.  My knitting friend can rhapsodize at length about yarn dye lots, needle sizes, and knitting patterns.  She didn’t start a blog to say, “Well, I knit once in a while, and it’s kinda ok, so here’s my knitting blog…”

Finally, item #3, actually a collection of items, was several articles, both in the paper and online, asking is the Republican party dead?  Should it re-imagine itself (i.e. move left)?

 

To blogger of item #1: While I appreciate the difficulty of going against your parish hierarchy, I’m going to have to say she was in the wrong on this one.  Why do we consider it a virtue for our Church to be vague in what it believes?  If, as this blogger stated, she started as a “cafeteria Catholic”, but moved into a “fuller faith”, then why wouldn’t she want the Church saying what that “fuller faith” is?  Continual vagueness will not lead anyone out of a wet paper bag.  Eventually, you’re going to have to say where you’re going! 

And, to quote one of John Adams’ lines from 1776 (it’s a musical; really good, trust me.  You’ll never look at history as boring again.), “It’s a revolution, dammit, we’re going to have to offend somebody!”

To commenter of item #2: What the heck is “moderate” Catholicism?  Is that the kind that doesn’t really challenge anyone to change their life to conform to Christ?  Sort of a feel-good, no dogma, I’m-ok-you’re-ok thing?  We can disagree on what music we prefer in mass, what type of church architecture we find most welcoming and/or inspiring, whether we prefer to volunteer at the soup kitchen or the crisis pregnancy center… but what the commenter seems to be looking for is “niceness” defined as no hard-and-fast rules to be annoyed by.  Sorry to inform you, but that isn’t Catholicism.  Try Barney the purple dinosaur; he’s very nice and non-dogmatic.  Not very inspiring, though.

To the various pundits suggesting #3: What are we aiming for?

Are we just aiming for the middle of the population?  Does that mean the middle of what people practice or the middle of what they think the goal should be?  (For example, many women who have had an abortion have come forward to actively campaign against it remaining legal.  What they did and what they advocate are not the same thing.)  Are we aiming for the middle of the political spectrum?  By average or by mean?  Are we aiming for mere politeness?  Sort of a “let’s all be gray together so nobody is offended by black and white dogmas” tack?

 

I don’t know about you, but I am aiming for Truth.

Be what you are, be clear about it, be enthusiastic about it, and people will be inspired, whether your candidate is a mesmerizing young speech-giver or not.  Losing an election by 6% does not mean that conservatism is dead; it means that a significant percentage of the country, in spite of the swooning media adulation, the flood of money, and the draw of electing an “historic” president… still voted for the boring geezer who talked about policy, personal responsibility, and ideals with practical consequences instead of “hope” and picked a conservative, decisively pro-life running mate.

Truth is neither left nor right.  In religion, I like some Latin, but really dislike the all-Latin masses I have been to.  I enjoy both guitars done well and pipe organs done well (but, unfortunately, our parish is usually subjected to one or the other done poorly, which can be equally obnoxious, but in entirely different directions).  I think immigrants should be welcomed (and the USCIS desperately needs to be overhauled), but they should also be expected to respect the sovreignty and laws of the country they are trying to immigrate to.  I think abortion should be illegal, sex outside of marriage should be strongly discouraged, and that moms in unplanned pregnancies should be embraced and helped.  I do not find these positions contradictory, although some would be categorized as “liberal/left” and some as “conservative/right”.

Please note, that I said “aiming for Truth;” in this life, we are all only imperfectly on our way there.  Even the saints are quite aware of the faults they have remaining, tiny though those faults may look to us, slogging through our long daily lists of “usual” sins and failings.

I submit, however, that aiming for Truth and falling short is vastly better than aiming at the mushy middle and successfully sinking into it up to our ears.

 

As Catholics, we belong to a Church which is continually holding up the example of the saints.  (Other denominations do it, too, the process just isn’t as formal.)  We are all supposed to be aiming for that level of perfection: to follow Christ whole-heartedly in everything we do, in such a radical way and with such great love for God that it shines as an example before others, not to our glory, but to His.  Saints are not mushy people of indistinct convictions.  They are both loving and dogmatic. 

If you love someone, don’t you want them to find the Truth?  To do that, wouldn’t it help to give clear directions?

While political parties and individual politicians have their failings (as do we all), they should be judged against Truth, not left/right, liberal/conservative, and especially not “is he/she moderate enough?”  I would rather have people and churches solid in their convictions and ready to defend and explain those convictions with respect and candor than “nice”, waffly, “moderates” aiming for a can’t-we-all-just-get-along false consensus built on ignoring reality and our real differences of opinion to acheive a lack of conflict.

We should be aiming for Truth, not false peace.

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Who, me? *smirk*

I loved this article from Lifenews.com.  Sure, we’ll take your money, because the law requires it, but we’re going to do something with that money that you’d hate.

Sort of reminds me of something I read in a book about Tudor women.  Under the laws at that time, women did not own any property if they were married; it all belonged to their husband.  So, the husband would show up for the mandatory-on-pain-of-heavy-fine Anglican services… and the wife could refuse to go to make the point for the family that they did not consent to having their Catholicism ripped away from them by Queen Elizabeth and her government.  Sure, you could find the recusant wife guilty in court and fine her, but, legally, she didn’t own anything, even her pocket money… so the protest was made very publicly and no fine was paid.  The property law was there to help keep women “in their place” and incidentally gave them a loophole for protest and freedom.

Bott Radio Network Affirms Pro-Life Christian Values Donating Obama Ad Money
St. Louis, MO (LifeNews.com) — As part of his “outreach” to the Christian faith community, Barack Obama spent thousands in advertising on Christian radio stations, including an investment with our good friends at Bott Radio Network (BRN). Since the FCC requires that Bott accept paid advertising from “all bona fide candidates” for federal office, BRN complied. But instead of allowing Obama’s insincerity on family values to go unchecked, the network aired its own announcements contrasting the candidate’s claims with his own anti-life record. In a letter to the pro-life group Family Research Council, BRN explained another way it compensated for having to run the ads. “While we are required to air his paid advertising, we are not required to keep his money. We decided to ‘spread his wealth around’ by donating the proceeds from his advertising in those markets to pro-life organizations and crisis pregnancy centers which his policies would oppose.” We salute the Bott Radio Network for turning a play for votes into real help for women and their unborn children.

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Told you so…

Generally, when pro-abortion agendas are pushed, there is this unctuous insistence that, “Oh, no, we won’t go there,” wherever “there” is in the given instance.  Social and religious conservatives are mocked for being alarmist.  Too often, they turn out to be prophetic.

“Contraception isn’t for genocide or population engineering by government.”

“We will still respect the less-than-perfect, even though almost all of them (90%) are aborted when they’re discovered in utero.”

Yeah, right.

Australia Denies German Family Residency Because of Down Syndrome Baby
Sydney, Australia (LifeNews.com) — A German doctor and his family have been denied permanent residency in Australia because their son has Down’s Syndrome. Despite the shortage of medical practitioners in Australia and various initiatives by the government to encourage foreign doctors to immigrate, Dr. Bernhard Moeller will have to leave the country when his temporary work visa expires in 2010, unless his appeal reverses the decision.”A medical officer of the Commonwealth assessed that his son’s existing medical condition was likely to result in a significant and ongoing cost to the Australian community,” a departmental spokesman said in a statement issued by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. “This is not discrimination. A disability in itself is not grounds for failing the health requirement — it is a question of the cost implications to the community,” the statement said. Victorian Premier John Brumby has promised to support the appeal, as well as federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon. Other supporters of the Moeller family include Don McRae, director of clinical services at Wimmera Health Care Group, who recruited Dr. Moeller to come to Australia and work in their hospital in Horsham. “What is the cost implication to the community of a doctor shortage?” asked David Tolleson, executive director of the Atlanta-based National Down Syndrome Congress. “I assume the son had the same costs for the last two years and they were happy to have the family and use the dad as a doctor.”

 

The next warning is that, since “everyone is doing it, and it costs too much,” insurance companies will start demanding that “imperfect” babies be aborted, and threaten not to cover their medical conditions if they are born.  Sort of like how assisted suicide was legalized in Oregon, and now patients are being informed that their insurance won’t cover their cancer treatments, but will cover their suicide.

Netherlands Bill Would Force “Unfit” Mothers to Use Birth Control Two Years
The Hague, Netherlands (LifeNews.com) — Women in the Netherlands who are deemed by the state to be unfit mothers should be sentenced to take contraception for a prescribed period of two years, according to a draft bill before the Dutch parliament. The proposed legislation would further punish parents who defied it by taking away their newborn infant.  [emphasis added by PH]  “It targets people who have been the subject of judicial intervention because of their bad parenting,” explained the author of the bill Marjo Van Dijken of the socialist PvDA. “If someone refuses the contraception and becomes pregnant, the child must be taken away directly after birth.” London Guardian columnist Khaled Diab responded to the bill this way: When I see how some parents treat their children and come across adults who wish they’d never been born because of the abuse they endured as kids, I get some idea of where Van Dijken is coming from, but her proposed solution strikes me as far too draconian. Have we got the right to exercise pre-emptive “justice” – and could this be the first step towards a “minority report” approach to parental “precrime”? And, perhaps, given the Dutch penchant for social engineering, this could prove to be the prelude for the professionalisation of parenting, where in the distant future only certified and trained “fathers” and “mothers” would be allowed to raise children in special facilities.

 

Well, good grief, I have a less-than-perfect temper, I spank, I don’t subscribe to “black” magazines (contrary to social worker recommendations), we did the family bed (i.e. the kids slept in the bed with us as infants), and I’m a white woman with black kids.  According to most of the social workers I’ve known, these characteristics put me between possibly and definitely completely unqualified to be a mother, especially to these kids.

Determining fitness to give birth and seizing children at birth is not another line we need to be crossing, but, where Europe goes, the U.S. will probably go in another twenty years.  We’re already a little fuzzy on the concept that parents have the right to, well, parent their children, and that that job does not belong to the public school system or the government.

This is why we fight the “little” political pro-life and social/moral conservative battles now, so we don’t keep going down these paths.  Without legal checks on these agendas, we will eventually get to the logical conclusions… and we won’t like it when we get there.

“Hey, why is it so hot?  Where are we going?  And what’s with the handbasket?”

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Big Government and the Media

Sorry, I was out of town for a wedding, and my stupid Vista computer refused to associate with the hotel wi-fi.  Thus, no posts.  Besides, it looks like everyone is slowing down after the election.  So, in lieu of a real post (and, to my former boss, yes, I know that’s French, and no, it does not mean “because”), I’m cheating and forwarding some amusing fluff.

Some humor, via my sister-in-law:

And a note on the unbiased media coverage, borrowed from Lindy’s Blog (it was also at Townhall.com):

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Moving forward for LIFE

So, last night I sat and did a puzzle. 

For four hours.

My brain is pretty well toasted.

I’m usually pretty enthusiastic about politics, but between the Navy (can’t really be active in politics, especially as an officer, for concern of unduly influencing or intimidating subordinates (or any appearance thereof)) and small children, I hadn’t actively gotten involved before.  This time, the kids got to play with Grandma or got taken along for the ride.  Over the last few months, I organized a pro-life protest (made the local TV news and the paper), made hundreds of phone calls, baked dozens and dozens of cookies for the volunteers at the local Republican headquarters, hauled the kids to Adoration to pray (“Are we going to Adoration again? “), attended a rally, participated in teleconferences and a webcast, stuffed leaflets together for door-to-door walkers, joined a prayer siege at an abortion clinic, leafleted almost 1,000 cars at parish parking lots, hosted a Republican volunteer who came down from DC for a few nights and needed someplace to stay, and blogged copiously about what I think is wrong with the Democratic party and its stances on issues and what I think is right with the Republicans and their stances on issues.

And McCain still lost.

After listening to the Priests for Life webcast last night (and sitting at Adoration for an hour this morning), I’m in a slightly more hopeful mood.  (and we need to take back the word “hope”… it’s been mightily abused during this campaign.)  During the 40 Days for Life campaign leading up to the election, dozens of moms walked away from their abortion appointments and got help from crisis pregnancy centers.  Fr. Pavone and the other participants made the point that

1) we have had pro-abortion presidents before and the pro-life movement thrived in spite of, and even because of them, because they force us to unite and to rely on God, not politics,

2) all those moms and babies were saved over the last forty days without a single law changing (although changing the laws would certainly help),

3) there are many reasons for hope within the pro-life movement, including the increasingly pro-life stance of the youth, and

4) there are plenty of ways to get involved directly in making abortion unthinkable, even if the political side of things looks bad right now.

Fr. Pavone commented that yes, of course, we should pray for president-elect Obama to have a change of heart on abortion, but we should understand that that is highly unlikely, since, “He has no reason to move our way, except the state of his immortal soul.  And most politicians only worry about their souls after they’re out of office.”

 

One of the speakers in the webcast also gave a quote from the late Congressman Henry Hyde, an outspoken lion of the pro-life movement.  (see his obituary here; he didn’t think too kindly of waffling bishops, either)

“When the time comes as it surely will, when we face that awesome moment, the final judgment, I’ve often thought, as Fulton Sheen wrote, that it is a terrible moment of loneliness. You have no advocates, you are there alone standing before God and a terror will rip through your soul like nothing you can imagine. But I really think that those in the pro-life movement will not be alone. I think there will be a chorus of voices that have never been heard in this world but are heard beautifully and clearly in the next world and they will plead for everyone who has been in this movement. They will say to God, “Spare him because he loved us,” and God will look at you and say not, “Did you succeed?” but “Did you try?”‘

 

I do not do this for “brownie points” in Heaven.  I do this because to do less feels like cowardice.  I do this because I do not want to meet the aborted children in Heaven and say, “Um… I was too busy to help.  Someone might’ve thought badly of me for speaking out.”  So what if I make a gaffe in front of the news cameras (Thank God, I didn’t), get in trouble with my pastor, or annoy people who may think I’m being too extreme or too single-issue?  Nobody’s going to kill me for it, but thousands of babies die each day because of our silence as a nation, as a church, as a community.

I find Hyde’s image very encouraging.  Those aborted children are not just dead and gone.  They are in Heaven, praying for us, for their younger siblings in danger from the abortionists’ knives, and especially, I think, for healing and salvation for their mothers and fathers who aborted them.

Yes, I know, a lot of you reading this don’t “do” protests; six years ago, neither did I.  A group of prayerful, orderly, smiling pro-lifers, moms and dads and kids and teens and retired, holding signs out on the sidewalk, is nothing to be ashamed of.  Reviled as it is by the world and the media, the message is nothing to be ashamed of, either.  We need to be more concerned with what God thinks of us than what Man thinks of us. 

The abolition of slavery, women’s sufferage, and civil rights all happened because people prayed at home and in churches… and then stood up publicly to be counted.

 

So, pray, fast, join a prayer siege at an abortion clinic, pray some more, write your paper, visit your congressman’s office (they assume a lot of people are interested in a topic if someone actually bothers to show up at their office to voice their concerns), volunteer or donate to your local crisis pregnancy centers, pray, place an ad for your local pregnancy help hotline in your church bulletin, talk to your pastor, pray, plan on being at the March for Life in January (in Washington, DC; if that’s too far, there’s the West Coast Walk for Life, too, and multiple locations in between), and pray and fast some more.

Slavery was just an “annoyance”, too… if you weren’t the slave.  “It’s too divisive; can’t you just let it drop?”  “Sure, I’m against slavery, but it’s too entrenched to ever be ended.”  “Aren’t there more important issues facing the country?”

But slavery ended because people refused to let the stain on the nation’s soul remain unchallenged.

A hundred and fifty years later, we look back and wonder why on earth more people didn’t do more.

A hundred years from now, people will look back and wonder how we could have failed to do more.

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The election is over, and the children lost

If we deny the right to exist to the poorest among us, the unborn, with not even a thread of clothing to call their own…

then how will we respect the poor we can see?

If we allow the murder of unborn children “too likely” to grow up uneducated…

then how will we fix schools?

If babies can be aborted for being not perfect enough due to deformity, disease, or gender…

then who else is not perfect enough to be allowed to continue living: the old, the disabled, the terminally ill?

If we cannot welcome the stranger among us in the womb…

then how can we welcome the immigrant from another country?

If we refuse to acknowledge the right to life of the most innocent, the unborn child…

then how will we ever acknowledge the worth of the life of even the criminal on death row?

If our own children are not worthy enough to garner our protection…

then how will we work to minimize civilian casualties of war in foreign countries?

If we say that 50% of African-American babies dying by abortion is unimportant, even when that rate is drastically higher than the rate among the white population…

then how will we fight racial discrimination among the born?

All of the various social justice issues (like war, the death penalty, immigration reform, education reform, and poverty relief) are based on the idea that human life has intrinsic worth.  This worth is not based on how smart I am or may be, how rich I am, how useful, or how innocent.  I do not have to prove my worth in this sense; it is mine, purely as a human being.  If we say that some human beings do not have intrinsic worth, we open the door to include those who don’t quite “measure up” in terms of intelligence, usefulness to society, criminal record, national origin, disability, etc. 

We undertake all of the social justice fights on the premise that all human beings have dignity and worth, no matter how damaged or hard to see that dignity may be.  If that is not our premise, we are only doing the work because it gives us a fleeting sense of satisfaction… and, when we are distracted by something else, we will forget about it, because it was never really about them, anyways; it was about how the charity made us feel.  And if we think we can respect the dignity and worth of the born while trying to ignore the holocaust of the unborn, then we are fooling ourselves.

Either we all have inalienable human rights, or none of us do.

If we get abortion wrong, we get it all wrong.

 

America has serious problems of poverty, discrimination and homelessness.  But no Americans are poorer, or more discriminated against, or more homeless than the aborted babies- nameless, helpless, defenseless, penniless, naked, abandoned by their own parents, forced out of their uterine homes, forsaken by society, stripped of all legal rights, labeled as sub-humans, denied sacramental baptism, denied the last rights, denied anesthesia, tortured, murdered, cannibalized for their organs, denied decent burials, cremated or discarded with the trash, and then, totally forgotten.

Fr. Paul Marx, OSB
Founder and Past-President
Human Life International

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