It looks like Catholic Online has gone pro-Kerry, if recent columns, like this clumsy defense of being pro-Kerry and lame and error-filled attempt to claim the Kerry would be better at ending abortion than Bush are any indication. I’ve already responded to the latter with a critique based on a Population Research Institute article. Basically, Stassen’s stats and conclusions aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.
As for Henline’s silliness, it’s a clumsy attempt to justify moral equivalence by trotting the hoary old chestnut that we shouldn’t be one-issue voters. When the one issue is whether children should be killed or allowed to live, then that’s the only issue that matters. I wouldn’t vote for a KKK grand wizard even if I liked his economic policies, and I’m not going to vote for a pro-abortion candidate either.
And her claim that no one is really pro-abortion is just dumb. The baby being aborted in the womb doesn’t care if you’re “personally opposed, but ...” or that you don’t personally perform abortions, you just don’t want to outlaw it. He’s still just as dead at the end of the day. Jesus made it clear that failing to take action when you could can be just as bad as doing the deed itself. Just ask the “goats” thrown into the fires of Gehenna.
I’m sorry Henline is tired of everyone talking about abortion all the time (evidently she thinks the lives of trees should be just as important as the lives of children), but when there’s a holocaust going on around you and everyone seems numb to it, it’s just as bizarre that people don’t want to talk about it.
Like I said at the top, I’m suprised that Catholic Online would provide a platform to such badly reasoned, immoral, and heretical tripe. They were once known for being a source of Orthodox Catholic writing. This makes me wonder.
There are those in Americant_author_email>jok@anent.com
63.65.99.146
2004-10-29 12:24:38
2004-10-29 16:24:38
First of all, there are people who are pro-abortion. I met one. I showed him a picture of my sister being dragged away from an abortion clinic by the police after a peaceful protest and he said that if he’d been there he’d have kicked her as she went by. He wanted free sex and that was that. And he didn’t look like a monster; he looked like the guy in the next cubicle. He may be extreme but actually I think he was just honest.
Second, there are many people who think they are against abortion until it hits home for them or often, their kids. “I’m not going to be embarassed this way, we’ll just get a quiet abortion and never mind that we’ve always been against it.” Personally I think the embarassment factor is way underrated.
Third, the presence of abortion means that if people have problems with their kids they are simply scorned by many. “Why didn’t you abort if you are so overburdened” is the fundamental cry. People like Henline are obtuse about how much pressure there is on women to conform. (Yes, I know she’s a woman.)
Dom, thanks for the tip about Catholic Online.
We used to get homilies that addressed the sin of abortion, but I have noticed that for several years now, we get homilies only on the “sanctity of life.” I assume that the latter includes trees and moribund frog species. Afterwards, we all buy carnations.
Like the two commanding officers of Yosarian in “Catch 22” many Catholics want to be liked. “Just like us,” might be their refrain. “We are tolerant, liberal folks who join others on such noble ventures as Crop Walk and we often share liturgies. And gosh, it’s rude not to invite everyone up for communion.”
So as moral distinctions blur into universal tolerance except for those that are considered Christian or Jewish fanatics, abortion becomes whitewashed into just another choice. Difficult, perhaps, but conveniently invisible to most. Like the German and Soviet concentration camps: out of sight, out of mind.
The bright side of all of this is that these kind of Catholics seem to be comprised of people around the Boomer generation mostly. Younger people have a much deeper interest and commitment to real life values and some of the older Catholics never were hoodwinked by the neo-Wiccan-Anglican movement so prevalent among many of our priests and bishops.
Fr. Benedict Groeschel gave a homily at the Mass. for the Canonization of Sr. Faustina at the Divine Mercy Shrine in Stockbridge Mass(April 2000). He stated that Abortion was/is the Greatest Holocaust of the 20th century (now 21st century). And yet pols. who support it still receive Holy Communion across this country! Until Orthodox Catholicism is actually taught, defended and practiced privately and publically the killing of preborn children will continue!
I had seen that article and thought it was so goofy it’s not really worth dissecting. There are some other “op/ed” articles in the same vein. I actually thought I had gone to the wrong website. Do they let anyone submit anything?
With them, will it be “please pray for the repose of the soul of “Teddy the TitMouse?”
I may be mistaken however because this pantheist may not believe in Purgatory.
I’m with Dom. Whoever vets writers on CO is clearly asleep at the switch: Henline is neither Catholic nor a writer in her op/ed on abortion.
Get a clue: When one writes “Abortion is evil” without adding “as evil as murder is evil” one is reducing the killing of the unborn to the level of any other trivial evil such as supporting the harvesting of trees from the national forests or improperly disposing of used chewing gum.
Perhaps people wouldn’t be lecturing Ms. Henline as she complains if she were not so arrogant in her ignorance.
Abortion, it’s non-negotiable.
Speaking of saving trees and logging (we were, weren’t we…?) Jay Nordlinger of NRO mentioned a bumper sticker that someone saw in northern Michigan:
“Earth first – we’ll log the other planets later”
I got a kick out of that…
Interesting about Catholic Online. I’ve noticed that National Catholic Register has picked up CNS and seems to have dropped CWN, and the overall tenor of the paper is, well, softened. Am I imagining?
Out here in the west the other bumper stickers are:
Earth first – we’ll strip mine the other planets later
and
More people have died in Ted Kennedy’s car than in nuclear power plant accidents.
my contribution
You can’t simultaneously love nature
and commit crimes against her.