Pro-lifePunditry

A step in the right direction

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

I am tempted to go all Mark Shea “on the thing that use to be conservatism”.

I started noticing a bunch of links to a video of Anderson Cooper taking on Debbie Wasserman Schultz and some claims towards Gov. Romney. There was a lot of excitement over Anderson Cooper disputing her.

Finally seeing the video myself I can almost weep. I  wish that Debbie Wasserman Schultz was right in her allegations. The short summary is that she was claiming that it was Romney who was driving the language on abortion in the GOP plank. That despite Romney’s abortion exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother that he was the force behind the plank which does not mention such exceptions.

How conservatives can see this video as a victory of any kind I just don’t see.

“Debbie Wasserman Schultz is lying about the fact that our candidate doesn’t support intrinsic evils when in fact he does! It is so much worse for her to lie about it than for our candidate to support intrinsic evils. Yeah team.”

The other day I had posted on progressive Catholics straining gnats while swallowing camels, and the same is true about those who call themselves pro-life while swallowing the camels of exceptions to direct abortion.

On the Hugh Hewitt show the other day one of the callers called in quite upset about Romney’s exceptions for abortion.  Mr. Hewitt waived this aside as a ‘prudential decision” since the country is not onboard with anti-abortion stance that excludes these exceptions. I have heard others defend these exceptions “as a step in the right direction.”  First off it certainly is a prudential question on the part of voters to limit evil to choose one candidate over the other because there stance is less evil.  For Gov. Romney is is not a prudential decision but formal cooperation with evil.  The support of murdering the innocent because of the circumstances they are conceived in come down ultimately to the same arguments pro-abortion advocates use.   Once circumstances are part of the equation the exception grows.  Just like how “life of the mother” has been broadened way beyond cases involving double effect.  Once you allow for exceptions to direct abortion you undercut the defense of life and weaken the intellectual arguments behind it.

That we keep having presidential nominees who are either full pro-abortion or pro-abortion by exceptions is such a tragedy.  The so-called pro-life GOP since Roe v. Wade keep nominating people who are at odds with the plank and we are suppose to shut up and put up with it because they are not nearly as pro-abortion as the other guy.  Something has to change within the pro-life community and to shut down pro-abortion in some cases politicians in the primary process.  Those that support intrinsic evils of any form simply should not be supported, yet the pro-life movement has provided cover for these candidates.  We let things go until the nomination is made and then reason we have no other choice but to pick a lesser evil.  We have become so use to compromising on this for an election that we have forgotten to revolt during the initial process.

So how do we get ourselves out of this rut?  First off while more and more Americans are calling themselves pro-life it is often not a pro-life conviction with a morally consistent understanding. No exception for rape and incest seem a hard teaching and one that has been shied away from in the public square.  This view is branded as extremist and refuting this has not been much of a priority.  When Gov. Romney was on EWTN with Raymond Arroyo there was no question about Romney’s support of intrinsic evil for supporting the murder for those condemned for the crime of their father.  A rather softball interview that allowed punch-card answers by the governor.  The pro-life question was answered by “I will appoint a strict constructionist”  with the robotic tone of somebody programmed to say the same thing over again in response to input A.

I would certainly like to be charitable in accepting the Gov. Romney did have some form of conversion towards the pro-life cause that wasn’t just politically motivated.  Living though in Florida where we had Charlie Crist who was pro-abortion, than announced he was pro-life before his Governor run, and now back to pro-abortion and recently endorsing President Obama.  It makes it harder to believe a pro-life conversion when he supports IVF and has advocated for unlimited IVF insurance.  He would allow for the use of experimentation with embryos resulting from IVF.  This is another area where the pro-life cause is severely weakened and the amount of persons killed due to IVF is an area hardly mentioned as it is usually seen as a Catholic thing instead of something foundational to the pro-life movement.  Gov. Romney will likely not touch the subject since some of his own grandchildren are the result of IVF.  So even if he had some pro-life conversion he can not be called pro-life. St. Teresa wrote “You cannot be half a saint; you must be a whole saint or no saint at all.” You can’t be half a pro-lifer either. To the extent you support direct abortion you are not pro-life.  As long as we pretend otherwise we are fooling ourselves.

Though I feel quite the hypocrite writing in such terms myself.  President Obama must be defeated.  I almost wish that I lived in some heavily Democratic state where I could feel satisfied in voting for a Don Quixote candidate and I could tilt at the voting booth.  I didn’t vote in the primaries because there was no candidate I could endorse with my vote. I was drawn towards Sen Santorum but his “me too on torture” eliminated that.  Yet here I am contemplating pulling the lever for Romney on election day not for fooling myself about Gov. Romney being an ardent pro-lifer, but in knowing the evil of the Obama administration in its ardent attacks on life and on religious freedom. But I can’t be happy about such a choice and I won’t be jumping up and down with a Romney win like “Yeah I limited evil!”

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Other

Sex, Drugs, Desire for the infinite, and Rock n’ Roll

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

RIMINI, ITALY, August 22 (CNA/EWTN News) .- Rock ‘n’ roll is innately religious and expresses a desire for the infinite, according to one of Ireland’s leading music journalists.

“This music is generated in the heart of man and is therefore fundamentally of the religious need, which is the fundamental original need of man; to know who made him, who he is, where he is bound,” said John Waters in an Aug. 21 interview with CNA.

Waters is the creator of a new exhibition entitled “Three chords and a longing for the truth; rock ‘n’ roll as a seeking for the infinite.” The display is proving to be hugely popular at the 33rd Rimini Meeting, an international gathering organized by the lay Catholic movement Communion and Liberation.

“The media always present rock ‘n’ roll simply as some kind of extravaganza of sensation and noise and stardom and narcissism and ego mania. But we are saying that within this shell of superficiality there is a hard core of fundamental content which is really the cry of man expressed in a modern idiom.”

Beyond the 800,000 visitors to this year’s Rimini Meeting, Waters wanted to offer his hi-tech, interactive exhibition to one person in particular – Pope Benedict XVI.

“When he was elected in 2005, all the hostile journalists dug back through all of his articles and speeches and tried to find things that would discredit him,” Waters said, recalling how the media finally unearthed a 1996 article in which Cardinal Ratzinger had opined, in the words of Waters, that “rock ‘n’ roll only appeals to the lower emotions of man and was therefore dangerous.”

Waters believes that Pope Benedict “is right in a certain sense,” that our modern culture only wants rock ‘n’ roll to be about “exaggerated sexuality, self-indulgence and narcissism.”

But he also wanted to show the pontiff a deeper reality.

“I wanted in a way to take the Pope by the elbow and lead him into this music and say, ‘come, there’s more, look at these artists, look at Bob Dylan, listen to what he is saying, listen to Leonard Cohen, listen to U2, see the sincerity of these people with the great questions that face man. And don’t be taken in by the exterior, by the noise, by the sensation, by the headlines.'” [Source]

Even as a headbanger myself you really have to do a pretty selective cherry-pick to say “Rock ‘n’ roll is innately religious and expresses a desire for the infinite.” More accurately this is true of the human person and it sees it’s expression in music as in other activities.

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Book Review

The Secret Life of John Paul II

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

The Secret Life of John Paul II is a book recently translated into English written by Lino Zani a friend of the late Pope. The title promises more than it delivers, but it does present some nice behind the scenes look at Blessed Pope John Paul II. The title though sounds more like a tell-all book, but that might help more people read it. I remember once hearing a story from a Protestant women who is the sister of a rather famous anti-Catholic who saw “The Confessions of St. Patrick” and thought it would shine a negative light on a Catholic saint she knew little of. Instead it put her on a path to conversion to the Catholic Church.

Lino Zani was born and raised in the Italian Alps and acted as a guide and ski instructor. And avid adventurer and mountain climber he relates his first contact with Blessed John Paul II when he comes to vacation in the secluded mountain lodge owned by his parents. This meeting led to a lifetime friendship for hime and his family with the Pope.

It confirms many stories I have read about the Pope concerning his personalism and the way he talked to people as individuals and with undivided attention. A phenomenal memory helped him remember people he had met shortly years earlier. When he first meets the Pope and acts as a guide he writes about the Pope’s intense prayer life which he combined with being an active outdoorsman.

The books details the many encounters he has with the Pope and a historic theme that provides a theme to these encounters. An old cross that marks the remembrance of the dead in this mountains from battles that occurred in WWI provides an intriguing link to both the history of this area and to the life of the Pope’s father. The history of these battles provides a backdrop that is built on in their interactions and becomes something more than just history. The story of this weathered cross and how it gets replaced with a memorial in cooperation with the Pope and a seeming connection with the 3rd secret of Fatima provides some interesting reading. The connection with Fatima seems like a real possibility and not some wild-eye projection at making connections where there are none.

This book as told through the authors eyes provides both a story of his life, but something of the holiness of Blessed John Paul II. Lino Zani was not always the most faithful Catholic and a bit of a woman-chaser and he makes no excuses for this and relates how the Pope chastised him over this flaw. Yet it was a flaw he finally did overcome. There is certainly plenty of interest here which includes the authors attempts at placing Papal blessed crosses on mountaintops across the world. There are also some fun stories involving the Pope and the people that travelled with him including one involving the President of Italy at the time.

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HumorPunditry

Before and After

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

 

Here we see two iterations of Elias Garcia Martinez’ Ecce Homo: the original painted nearly 100 years ago in the Sanctuary of Mercy Church near Zaragoza, Spain, and the pitifully botched restoration done over the original by some random yo they hired because she had an art degree from Frank’s College of Knowledge.

Zaragoza city councilor Juan Maria Ojeda had this to say about the situation:

“I think she had good intentions. Next week she will meet with a repairer and explain what kind of materials she used. If we can’t fix it, we will probably cover the wall with a photo of the painting.”

No doubt she will be getting calls from Catholic Churches all over the place and will be hired on by one of the groups of wreckovators where before and afters such as this are the goal.

Via I Fixed That

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News

U.S. court rules priests are not Holy See employees

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

The U.S. District Court in Portland clears the Vatican of any responsibility for a priest who was pronounced guilty of acts of paedophilia during the 1960s
ANDREA TORNIELLI
vatican city

On Monday, 20 August in Portland (Oregon), U.S. District Court judge, Michael Mosman, ruled that the Holy See “cannot be considered an employer” of members of the clergy and consequently cannot be held responsible in civil proceedings for sexual abuse committed by priests. Therefore each case should be judged individually and being a priest does not automatically mean the person in question should be treated in the same way as a company employee. In this specific case, the judge ruled that there was a total absence of any “employment relationship” between the Holy See and the priest who committed the abuse.

The AP stated it another way:

The Vatican won a major victory Monday in an Oregon federal courtroom, where a judge ruled that the Holy See is not the employer of molester priests.

It is hard to consider anything good news in regards to priestly abusers, but going after the Vatican in regard to this was totally wrong and it is good to see that has been nipped in the bud for now.

Via Father Z

 

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Pro-life

Filipino bishops: We will strip Catholic status if schools defy Church teaching

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

MANILA, Philippines, August 20, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Catholic schools that fail to uphold Church teaching may be stripped of their affiliation with the Church, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) warned last week.

“If we are a Catholic school, we should not teach anything contrary to the official teaching of the Church,” Archbishop Jose Palma, the CBCP’s president, told CBCPNews, the conference’s official news service.

Stressing that parents who send their children to Catholic schools expect the schools to be faithful to the teachings of the Church, Archbishop Palma, who heads the Cebu archdiocese, said, “They are hoping that their children will learn the Catholic teaching and also the Catholic formation. It will be a contradiction if we will bombard them with ideas which are against the official teachings of the Catholic faith.”

Against a background of contention created by the clash between the Church’s defence of traditional Filipino morality and the government’s push to mandate sex education in schools and subsidized contraceptives in its controversial Reproductive Health (RH) Bill, Archbishop Palma remarked that teachers in some Catholic schools have already sided with the government.

Nearly 200 professors of the Ateneo De Manila University (ADMU), a Catholic school run by the Jesuits, have backed the Church-opposed RH Bill after the government passed a motion on August 6 to end the 14 years of contentious debate on the Bill and proceed with deliberation on amendments to it.

Bishop Leandro Medroso, chairman of the Episcopal Commission on Canon Law of the CBCP, warned Monday that the professors could be fired.

“That has to be investigated. The first principle of Canon law about this matter is that we don’t allow teaching that is against the official teachings of the Church,” he told the Church-run Radio Veritas. “Now, if there is somebody who is giving instructions against the teachings of the Church, then they have to investigate immediately.”

The ADMU administration has clarified that notwithstanding the position of some of its teachers, the school conforms to the official teaching of the Church, according to the CBCP. [Source]

The way the Filipino bishops have fought the government on this and instructed the faithful has been rather inspiring. Though who would have thought they would be having problems with a Jesuit institution – go figure.

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Pro-lifePunditry

Pro-Life Waivers

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

(CBS News) MANCHESTER, N.H. – Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s strong views on abortion took a back seat to his new boss’s view in a Romney-Ryan campaign response to a Missouri Senate candidate’s controversial remarks about rape and abortion.

The statement on behalf of Ryan and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney said the pair would “not oppose abortion in instances of rape.”

Specifically Romney campaign spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg wrote:

“Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan disagree with Mr. Akin’s statement, and a Romney-Ryan administration would not oppose abortion in instances of rape,”

One of the hopes of some pro-lifers was that the Ryan pick would help firm up Gov. Romney in regards to the pro-life cause. As an optimistic-pessimist I hoped that was true, but wouldn’t have been surprised if it was just some pro-life veneer lacquered onto Gov. Romney.

So I would guess if Ryan were asked about this personally we would get some version of “I’m personally opposed to abortion in the case of rape but …” statement. Plus what the hell does “would not oppose” mean? If the Supreme Court actually overturned Roe does it mean he would sign legislation allowing abortion in the case of rape? Though with politicians the weaselly words mean nothing other than dodging an issue for political expediency.

Though this has always been a problem with those who call themselves pro-life. If somebody said they were against racism except for the case of Inuits, would anybody say they were not racist? If somebodies says they are pro-life and then say except in the case of rape or incest they have become pro-life with exceptions as if you could get waivers for pro-life status. The same goes for people who say they are pro-life and have no problems with IVF. I guess this is American Exceptionalism where exceptions are made that are totally contrary to what they propose to be.

This is not a case of brandishing “I am more pro-life than thou”, but a complaint against a definition of pro-life that excludes persons. Direct abortion is always intrinsically evil, yes even during political campaigns. Direct abortion always kills an innocent person. The distinction of direct abortion is used because of the cases where double-effect would apply in moral theology which as the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia summarizes:

The principle of double effect in the Church’s moral tradition teaches that one may perform a good action even if it is foreseen that a bad effect will arise only if four conditions are met: 1) The act itself must be good. 2) The only thing that one can intend is the good act, not the foreseen but unintended bad effect. 3) The good effect cannot arise from the bad effect; otherwise, one would do evil to achieve good. 4) The unintended but foreseen bad effect cannot be disproportionate to the good being performed.

I find Rep. Ryan joining along with this just plain cowardly. That political heat because of idiotic and a bit insane comments by Representative Todd Akin invoke not a teaching moment, but a runaway moment. The issue of abortion and rape is highly emotionally charged and I can understand on an emotional level why so many how call themselves pro-life do this. When I became a “pro-life” atheist I also made the same exception and it was only when I became Catholic that I first heard explained a defense against these exceptions. Most Americans would be totally against affixing the crime of a father to a child, yet in the case of rape they would have the child killed and the rapist just sent to prison for an average of time served as 5.4 years. We very naturalize sympathize with the victim of this horrendous crime, but adding another victim does not diminish the crime. Rep. Ryan has been able to articulate the faith in the past despite political pressure and the sound bite mentality, that he choose not to stand up for the truth demonstrates why there are so few martyrs who were also politicians. Now they can’t even weather a political storm without buckling.

What they end up doing is undermining the pro-life cause. When you make exceptions based on circumstances then pretty much you are saying “all life is precious’ just not in so-and-so circumstance. The integrity of the pro-life stance is gutted for emotional appeals instead of clearly explaining the truth. Sure a lot of people don’t want to hear the truth, but they will never hear it if we keep making excuses for political expediency. Instead we will only hear arguments about why Romney is more pro-life than Obama. Well if you want to play moral limbo than yeah Obama can dance under a very low moral bar. If somebody said they were less for genocide than their opponent we would laugh at such a ridiculous statement. Yet we seem to swallow that argument every election and not learning the lesson in the next candidate go-around. Sure I totally understand incrementalism and political realism. Unfortunately the child who is slaughtered in the womb will not live long enough for such nuances.

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Punditry

Straining for gnats while swallowing a camel

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

One of the indicators of progressive or whatever pre-fix label Catholicism is the trend to dogmatize the prudential and prudentialize the dogmatic.  If there is some letter by a subcommittee of some Bishops’s conference that agrees with some point it trumps all of Church teaching on the same subject  however magisterial.

For example the document  1978 document “Environment and Art in Catholic Worship” was treated as if passed down from the hands of Moses regardless that it never had any force of law or was ever even voted on by the American bishops.  Yet this document had a massive (negative) impact on Church architecture and the liturgy.  This pattern is evident over and over again.

Back in April and May Bishop Stephen Blaire of Stockton, Calif., the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice, Peace and Human Development critiqued the budget proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan.  For example in this letter.  As a result of course progressive Catholics are saying Ryan has a “Catholic Problem” and of course the Nuns on a Bus also made this a central part of their tour.

So you have a statement issued by the head of a committee speaking on behalf of the USSCB.  Later at  the USCCB meeting in Atlanta there were some concerns about this statement.

“There have been some concerns raised by lay Catholics, especially some Catholic economists, about what was perceived as a partisan action against Congressman Ryan and the budget he had proposed,” said Bishop Boyea. That statement “didn’t really further dialogue in our deeply divided country.”

In his view, statements that endorsed specific economic policies revealed a lack of “humility.” He told the assembly, “We need to learn far more than we need to teach in this area. We need to listen more than we need to speak. We already have an excellent, fine Compendium [of the Social Doctrine of the Church].”

Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kan., agreed that the committee was “at times perceived as partisan” and neglected the principle of subsidiarity, which calls for solutions that can be provided close to people in need.

Archbishop Naumann suggested that drafters of the statement needed to rethink a tendency to advocate for government assistance, and he said that the conference’s proposals should not ignore the ballooning national deficit.

“Sometimes we’re perceived as just encouraging the government to spend more money, with no realistic way of how we’re going to afford to do this,” he observed.

A third statement, by Archbishop Allen Vigneron of Detroit, echoed Archbishop Naumann’s suggestion that the proposed document focus more on the family as the central social institution and spoke of how the “disintegration of the family” had fueled the demand for government assistance.

This is of course the problems that result when the USCCB wade into prudential questions in application of Church teaching. Bishop Blaire’s statements had the implication that these problems were mandated to be acted upon at the Federal level and with this understanding any cut in any social program was a detriment to the poor. It was also not helpful that his statements didn’t actually quote from the Church’s documents or show how the Ryan budget actually contradicted any of these teachings.

This is not to say that Paul Ryan made perfect prudential decisions in balancing what programs needed to be cut. This is an area where Catholics in good faith can argue about how best to apply the Church’s social teaching and treating the poor as Jesus himself. There is the temptation to solve everything at the Federal level since that seems to be the easiest way to lobby an idea. Federal budgets when they make cuts on some programs don’t detail how the slack is to be taken up. Subsidarity gets short shrift and very little gets done at the local level and States/Cities are unwilling to step in. These are of course problems that budgets can’t solve and the outsourcing of charity to other people’s tax money diminishes us all when we don’t personally answer the Gospel call.

I don’t object at all to any critiquing of the Ryan budget in regards to application of Catholic social teaching. What I object to are those that say Ryan has a “Catholic problem” and they would not make the same claim about Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Sec. Sebelius, VP Joe Biden. This is just totally unhelpful partisan crap that advances nothing. Complaining about prudential application and dismissing outright support of intrinsic evils is really straining for gnats while swallowing a camel. This cafeteria Catholicism makes it easy to ignore a message that might contain valid criticisms. Thought that is the problem on both sides with the faith gets trumped by party “nationalism”. A temptation I must constantly fight and evaluate myself.

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Link

Kevin O’Brien as Dom Stanley Jaki

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

I recently watched Kevin O’Brien of Theater of the Word, Inc doing a performance as Dom Stanley Jaki the Hungarian Benedictine and Physicist who wrote on the subjects of the philosophy and history of science. I really enjoyed this performance that gives some idea to the late Fr. Jaki’s thoughts. This was recorded at The third session of the second day of the 2012 Portsmouth Institute conference, “Modern Science, Ancient Faith.”

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News

Catholic Speaker Month

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller
I want to tell you about a new project I launched called Support a Catholic Speaker Month 2012. The idea came from Matt Warner, who did something similar in 2009, and it’s designed to do three things:
  1. Promote great Catholic speakers, who are so important to the life of the Church.
  2. Introduce many new and unfamiliar names who deserved a bigger platform.
  3. Give bloggers a chance to connect with their favorite speakers while building traffic to their own websites.
Over the last couple days we compiled a list of 250 Catholic speakers, with the eventual goal of narrowing it to 100 by next Thursday (8/23). This morning we opened up the vote, inviting people to choose their favorite 15 speakers. The voting will end next Thursday (8/23), and then Catholic bloggers will choose one speaker to write about. Whether they compose a biography, an interview, or something else is totally up to them, but the goal is to connect 100 bloggers with 100 speakers and promote everyone involved.
So here’s where I need your help: I’d like you to SHARE “Support a Catholic Speaker Month” with your followers, encourage them to vote, and vote yourself! Then check back next Thursday and choose a speaker you’d like to connect with.

I cast my vote for Fr. Benedict Groeschel though it is hard not to support pretty much every name on the list. I love Fr. Benedict Groeschel for his wry wit, humility, and his preaching of the truth.

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