For this year, a list of things for which I’m thankful – in no particular order –
I am thankful for the health I have – the gift of senses – sight and hearing and touch and smell and taste – and the ability to feel emotions – compassion and love and joy and happiness – and even sadness and hurt and guilt and shame (for from these, too, I learn things if I’m willing to listen).
I’m thankful for smiles from checkers at the grocery store and the stories that patients share with me.
I’m thankful for the unconditional love of my family who I think sometimes could only love me unconditionally.
I’m thankful for the work I get to do and the co-workers with whom I get to work – sometimes they confuse me and annoy me and disappoint me and even hurt me (and yes, you can be hurt without your permission), but other times they cheer me up, the listen, they encourage me, they teach me, they make me smile, they share with me, they care, and I think, in their own way, some of them love me (not unconditionally, but inasmuch as is appropriate among co-workers).
I’m thankful for the gifts that God has given me – His Mercy, His Love, His Grace, His Charity. Goodness knows I rely on all of these in abundance.
I’m thankful for friends God has placed about me – some who – sometimes it seems – out of nowhere surprise me with a call or a letter or a smile or they just pop into a memory and offer me wonderful insight or an escape to some distant time of different hopes and dreams.
I’m thankful for this little place I call “home”.
I’m thankful for raindrops and snowflakes and mud and sunshine and rakes and brakes and streams and ponds and rivulets and lakes and oceans and swimming pools and running shoes.
I’m thankful for steering wheels.
I’m thankful for the understanding of people who see with a clarity of soul beyond the pale and veneer and for the depth of wisdom of human nature they possess and share.
I’m thankful for wood and stud-finders and laughter and TVs and computers and antennas and radios.
I’m thankful for pants and pens that write and pocketbooks and pencils and teacups and pencil sharpeners.
I’m thankful for chairs and pliers and spoons and stable tables and forks and nails and knobs and picnic blankets – that all do what they’re supposed to …
I’m thankful for dogs and fish and marbles and to a lesser degree cats (only because they make some people happy).
I’m thankful for the warmth of blankets on a cold night, fans when it is hot, good books and the ability to read, and electricity.
I’m thankful for the people that help me when I need it and I’m thankful for those who accept my help when I’m able to lend a hand.
I’m thankful for many, many, many, many things I all too often take for granted.
I’m thankful for a wonderful life that God has given me for which all too often it may appear I am something less than thankful.
This day of Thanksgiving is a miraculous day to give thanks to God – and this day is a gift unlike any other, Thank You, God!
Friday, November 26, 2010
Friday, November 5, 2010
Give It Back With Love
Take it easy, take it slow,
Take it as you may
Take it where the wind may blow
For another day
Words can bruise, words may wound,
By thoughtless word or deed
The tongue's a sword
And surely may lead a soul to bleed
Mistakes are made and bruises fade
This too shall pass, they say
Take it easy, take it slow
Then give it all away
The darkest night precedes what might
Be the dawning of
The day you take it in with pain
And give it back with love
Take it as you may
Take it where the wind may blow
For another day
Words can bruise, words may wound,
By thoughtless word or deed
The tongue's a sword
And surely may lead a soul to bleed
Mistakes are made and bruises fade
This too shall pass, they say
Take it easy, take it slow
Then give it all away
The darkest night precedes what might
Be the dawning of
The day you take it in with pain
And give it back with love
Friday, September 24, 2010
Heaven Scent
A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas as the doctor walked into the small hospital room of Diana Blessing. Still groggy from surgery, her husband David held her hand as they braced themselves for the latest news.
That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complications had forced Diana, only 24-weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency cesarean to deliver the couple's new daughter, Danae Lu Blessing. At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound and nine ounces, they already knew she was perilously premature. Still, the doctor's soft words dropped like bombs.
"I don't think she's going to make it," he said, as kindly as he could. "There's only a 10-percent chance she will live through the night, and even then, if by some slim chance she does make it, her future could be a very cruel one."
Numb with disbelief, David and Diana listened as the doctor described the devastating problems Danae would likely face if she survived. She would never walk. She would never talk. She would probably be blind. She would certainly be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to complete mental retardation. And on and on.
That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complications had forced Diana, only 24-weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency cesarean to deliver the couple's new daughter, Danae Lu Blessing. At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound and nine ounces, they already knew she was perilously premature. Still, the doctor's soft words dropped like bombs.
"I don't think she's going to make it," he said, as kindly as he could. "There's only a 10-percent chance she will live through the night, and even then, if by some slim chance she does make it, her future could be a very cruel one."
Numb with disbelief, David and Diana listened as the doctor described the devastating problems Danae would likely face if she survived. She would never walk. She would never talk. She would probably be blind. She would certainly be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to complete mental retardation. And on and on.
Monday, September 13, 2010
The Gift of a Smile by Ellie Braun-Haley
The transition from living in your own home and directing every aspect of your life to being confined to a wheelchair and being dependent on others for everything, is a traumatic change. Five months after mother’s ninety first birthday my mother fell and this one single incident changed mother’s life.
She was in hospital for months and then moved to a Nursing facility. We knew she would never go home again and then came the day when she too knew it.
She was in hospital for months and then moved to a Nursing facility. We knew she would never go home again and then came the day when she too knew it.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Lost and Found by Phil Callaway
Lost and Found by Phil Callaway
One dear old duffer on our course has given up on golf altogether. Oh, he doesn't mind hitting a ball now and then, but if you're standing near the tee box when he swings, you'll notice that he purposely aims for the creek. And when the ball goes where he intended, he feigns disappointment.
"You go on ahead," he smiles, "I'll catch up later."
As he says this, he slides his ball retriever from his bag and slips over the edge of the bank where the shanked balls hide. Every other club in his bag has failed him, but not this one.
It is a sad thing to watch the hunter become a gatherer.
One dear old duffer on our course has given up on golf altogether. Oh, he doesn't mind hitting a ball now and then, but if you're standing near the tee box when he swings, you'll notice that he purposely aims for the creek. And when the ball goes where he intended, he feigns disappointment.
"You go on ahead," he smiles, "I'll catch up later."
As he says this, he slides his ball retriever from his bag and slips over the edge of the bank where the shanked balls hide. Every other club in his bag has failed him, but not this one.
It is a sad thing to watch the hunter become a gatherer.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Catholicism and Galileo
The following article is transcribed from the January 7, 2001 edition of Our Sunday Visitor.
On Galileo, “conventional wisdom” is bunk
Church authorities erred in judging the 16th-century astronomer’s views. Now, if only today’ Catholic-bashers would deal with the facts of the case
It was one of the most dramatic moments in the history of science. It was 1633. And there was Galileo, bent and broken by the tortures of the Inquisition, retracting that which he knew to be true – that the earth orbits the sun and moves on its own axis. Blind religion had conquered science.
Yet, as he leaves the court for life imprisonment in the dungeons of the Inquisition, he musters on last moment of courage. The he promised never to teach again that the earth is anything but a motionless orb in space, he defiantly mutters aloud, “Eppur si muove!” (“And yet it does move!”) It would take 360 years – not until the 1990s – for the Church to apologize and admit that the astronomer had a point.
That’s the conventional wisdom on the trial of Galileo. And it is all bunk.
Galileo was never tortured and never spent a day locked in a prison cell. The famous quote attributed to him was invented by a writer 125 years later. And within 100 years of Galileo’s death on Jan. 8, 1642, well before science was capable of proving his theories, his published works received an imprimatur from the Church.
On Galileo, “conventional wisdom” is bunk
Church authorities erred in judging the 16th-century astronomer’s views. Now, if only today’ Catholic-bashers would deal with the facts of the case
**********
By Robert P. Lockwood
**********
It was one of the most dramatic moments in the history of science. It was 1633. And there was Galileo, bent and broken by the tortures of the Inquisition, retracting that which he knew to be true – that the earth orbits the sun and moves on its own axis. Blind religion had conquered science.
Yet, as he leaves the court for life imprisonment in the dungeons of the Inquisition, he musters on last moment of courage. The he promised never to teach again that the earth is anything but a motionless orb in space, he defiantly mutters aloud, “Eppur si muove!” (“And yet it does move!”) It would take 360 years – not until the 1990s – for the Church to apologize and admit that the astronomer had a point.
That’s the conventional wisdom on the trial of Galileo. And it is all bunk.
Galileo was never tortured and never spent a day locked in a prison cell. The famous quote attributed to him was invented by a writer 125 years later. And within 100 years of Galileo’s death on Jan. 8, 1642, well before science was capable of proving his theories, his published works received an imprimatur from the Church.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Cookies
A Bag of Cookies
by Valerie Cox
A woman was waiting at an airport one night,
with several long hours before her flight.
She hunted for a book in the airport shops,
bought a bag of cookies and found a place to drop.
She was engrossed in her book but happened to see,
that the man sitting beside her, as bold as could be,
grabbed a cookie or two from the bag in between,
which she tried to ignore to avoid a scene.
So she munched the cookies and watched the clock,
as the gutsy cookie thief diminished her stock.
She was getting more irritated as the minutes ticked by,
thinking, "If I wasn't so nice, I would blacken his eye."
With each cookie she took, he took one too;
when only one was left, she wondered what he would do.
With a smile on his face, and a nervous laugh,
he took the last cookie and broke it in half.
He offered her half, as he ate the other;
she snatched it from him and thought... oooh, brother.
This guy has some nerve and he's also rude;
why didn't he even show any gratitude!
She had never known when she had been so galled,
and sighed with relief when her flight was called.
She gathered her belongings and headed to the gate,
refusing to look back at the thieving ingrate.
She boarded the plane, and sank in her seat;
then she sought her book, which was almost complete.
As she reached in her baggage, she gasped with surprise;
there was her bag of cookies, in front of her eyes.
If mine are here, she moaned in despair,
the others were his, and he tried to share.
Too late to apologize, she realized with grief,
that she was the rude one, the ingrate, the thief.
(From Glen Leverentz's "Glen's Story Corner" on Relevant Radio - www.relevantradio.com).
by Valerie Cox
A woman was waiting at an airport one night,
with several long hours before her flight.
She hunted for a book in the airport shops,
bought a bag of cookies and found a place to drop.
She was engrossed in her book but happened to see,
that the man sitting beside her, as bold as could be,
grabbed a cookie or two from the bag in between,
which she tried to ignore to avoid a scene.
So she munched the cookies and watched the clock,
as the gutsy cookie thief diminished her stock.
She was getting more irritated as the minutes ticked by,
thinking, "If I wasn't so nice, I would blacken his eye."
With each cookie she took, he took one too;
when only one was left, she wondered what he would do.
With a smile on his face, and a nervous laugh,
he took the last cookie and broke it in half.
He offered her half, as he ate the other;
she snatched it from him and thought... oooh, brother.
This guy has some nerve and he's also rude;
why didn't he even show any gratitude!
She had never known when she had been so galled,
and sighed with relief when her flight was called.
She gathered her belongings and headed to the gate,
refusing to look back at the thieving ingrate.
She boarded the plane, and sank in her seat;
then she sought her book, which was almost complete.
As she reached in her baggage, she gasped with surprise;
there was her bag of cookies, in front of her eyes.
If mine are here, she moaned in despair,
the others were his, and he tried to share.
Too late to apologize, she realized with grief,
that she was the rude one, the ingrate, the thief.
(From Glen Leverentz's "Glen's Story Corner" on Relevant Radio - www.relevantradio.com).
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
"I Used to be Pretty" by Rob Chaffart
It is amazing how your brain can bring back to mind long forgotten memories, even insignificant ones. My youngest son, who is nearly twelve years old, was responsible for triggering a long forgotten memory this morning, an event in my life that happened when I was about his age.
It was late July, and it was breakfast time. I was sitting outside on the veranda of a hotel in Italy with my parents, enjoying the outstanding view of the city. Firenze, or Florence for us English-speaking people, lay nestled in the valley below, surrounded by the foothills of the Apennine Mountains. The Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore stood out in the distance in all of its splendor, complete with pigeons on every possible ledge.
Oh, the pigeons!
It was late July, and it was breakfast time. I was sitting outside on the veranda of a hotel in Italy with my parents, enjoying the outstanding view of the city. Firenze, or Florence for us English-speaking people, lay nestled in the valley below, surrounded by the foothills of the Apennine Mountains. The Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore stood out in the distance in all of its splendor, complete with pigeons on every possible ledge.
Oh, the pigeons!
Last Day by Bob Perks
"This is to inform you that today will be your last day. Please make every effort to get your affairs in order and take care of all last minute contacts."
He knew it was coming, but still he was shocked.
"Time seemed to fly by," he thought to himself. "I had so many great things going. I don't understand why this should happen now."
But often this happens with no particular explanation, rhyme or reason.
He was angry, confused and saddened by it all. But after some reflection and a few tears he began gathering his belongings.
Then pulling out his address book he started with the "A's" and made his final phone calls.
He knew it was coming, but still he was shocked.
"Time seemed to fly by," he thought to himself. "I had so many great things going. I don't understand why this should happen now."
But often this happens with no particular explanation, rhyme or reason.
He was angry, confused and saddened by it all. But after some reflection and a few tears he began gathering his belongings.
Then pulling out his address book he started with the "A's" and made his final phone calls.
She Was an "8 Cow" Woman
Perhaps you've heard the story of Johnny Lingo, a man who lived in the South Pacific. The islanders all spoke highly of him. He was strong, good-looking, and very intelligent. But when it came time for him to find a wife, people shook their heads in disbelief. The woman Johnny chose was plain, skinny, and walked with her shoulders hunched and her head down. She was very hesitant and shy. She was also a bit older than the other married women in the village, which did nothing for her value.
But this man loved her. What surprised everyone most was Johnny's offer. In order to obtain a wife, you paid for her by giving her father cows. Four to six cows was considered a high price. The other villagers thought he might pay two or even three cows at the most. But he gave eight cows for her!!
Everyone chuckled about it, since they believed his father-in-law put one over on him. Some thought it was a mistake.
Several months after the wedding, a visitor from the United States came to the Islands to trade, and heard the story of Johnny Lingo and his eight-cow wife. Upon meeting Johnny and his wife the visitor was totally taken aback, since this wasn't a shy, plain, and hesitant woman, but one who was beautiful, poised, and confident.
The visitor asked about this transformation, and Johnny Lingo's response was very simple. "I wanted an eight-cow woman, and when I paid that for her and treated her in that fashion, she began to believe that she was an eight-cow woman. She discovered she was worth more than any other woman in the islands. And what matters most is what a woman thinks of herself."
(From Glen Leverentz's "Glen's Story Corner" on Relevant Radio - www.relevantradio.com).
But this man loved her. What surprised everyone most was Johnny's offer. In order to obtain a wife, you paid for her by giving her father cows. Four to six cows was considered a high price. The other villagers thought he might pay two or even three cows at the most. But he gave eight cows for her!!
Everyone chuckled about it, since they believed his father-in-law put one over on him. Some thought it was a mistake.
Several months after the wedding, a visitor from the United States came to the Islands to trade, and heard the story of Johnny Lingo and his eight-cow wife. Upon meeting Johnny and his wife the visitor was totally taken aback, since this wasn't a shy, plain, and hesitant woman, but one who was beautiful, poised, and confident.
The visitor asked about this transformation, and Johnny Lingo's response was very simple. "I wanted an eight-cow woman, and when I paid that for her and treated her in that fashion, she began to believe that she was an eight-cow woman. She discovered she was worth more than any other woman in the islands. And what matters most is what a woman thinks of herself."
(From Glen Leverentz's "Glen's Story Corner" on Relevant Radio - www.relevantradio.com).
The Quiet Man
Carl was a quiet man.
He didn't talk much. He would always greet you with a big smile and a firm handshake. Even after living in our neighborhood for over 50 years, no one could really say they knew him very well.
Before his retirement, he took the bus to work each morning. The sight of him walking down the street often worried us. He had a slight limp from a bullet wound received in WWII.
Watching him, we worried that although he had survived WWII, he may not make it through our changing uptown neighborhood with its ever-increasing random violence, gangs, and drug activity.
When he saw the flyer at our local church asking for volunteers for caring for the gardens behind the minister's residence, he responded in his characteristically un-assuming manner.
Without fanfare, he just signed up. He was well into his 87th year when the very thing we had always feared finally happened.
He was just finishing his watering for the day when three gang members approached him. Ignoring their attempt to intimidate him, he simply asked, "Would you like a drink from the hose?
The tallest and toughest-looking of the three said, "Yeah, sure", with a malevolent little smile.
He didn't talk much. He would always greet you with a big smile and a firm handshake. Even after living in our neighborhood for over 50 years, no one could really say they knew him very well.
Before his retirement, he took the bus to work each morning. The sight of him walking down the street often worried us. He had a slight limp from a bullet wound received in WWII.
Watching him, we worried that although he had survived WWII, he may not make it through our changing uptown neighborhood with its ever-increasing random violence, gangs, and drug activity.
When he saw the flyer at our local church asking for volunteers for caring for the gardens behind the minister's residence, he responded in his characteristically un-assuming manner.
Without fanfare, he just signed up. He was well into his 87th year when the very thing we had always feared finally happened.
He was just finishing his watering for the day when three gang members approached him. Ignoring their attempt to intimidate him, he simply asked, "Would you like a drink from the hose?
The tallest and toughest-looking of the three said, "Yeah, sure", with a malevolent little smile.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Price of Children
The Price of Children
The government recently calculated the cost of raising a child from birth to 18 and came up with $160,140.00 for a middle income family. Talk about price shock! That doesn't even touch college tuition.
But $160,140.00 isn't so bad if you break it down. It translates into:
* $8,896.66 a year,
* $741.38 a month,
* $171.08 a week.
* A mere $24.24 a day!
* Just over a dollar an hour.
Still, you might think the best financial advice is, 'don't have children if you want to be 'rich'. Actually, it is just the opposite.
What do you get for your $160,140.00?
* Naming rights . First, middle, and last!
* Glimpses of God every day.
* Giggles under the covers every night.
* More love than your heart can hold.
* Butterfly kisses and Velcro hugs.
* Endless wonder over rocks, ants, clouds, and warm cookies.
* A hand to hold usually covered with jelly or chocolate.
* A partner for blowing bubbles and flying kites.
* Someone to laugh yourself silly with, no matter what the boss said or how your stocks performed that day.
The government recently calculated the cost of raising a child from birth to 18 and came up with $160,140.00 for a middle income family. Talk about price shock! That doesn't even touch college tuition.
But $160,140.00 isn't so bad if you break it down. It translates into:
* $8,896.66 a year,
* $741.38 a month,
* $171.08 a week.
* A mere $24.24 a day!
* Just over a dollar an hour.
Still, you might think the best financial advice is, 'don't have children if you want to be 'rich'. Actually, it is just the opposite.
What do you get for your $160,140.00?
* Naming rights . First, middle, and last!
* Glimpses of God every day.
* Giggles under the covers every night.
* More love than your heart can hold.
* Butterfly kisses and Velcro hugs.
* Endless wonder over rocks, ants, clouds, and warm cookies.
* A hand to hold usually covered with jelly or chocolate.
* A partner for blowing bubbles and flying kites.
* Someone to laugh yourself silly with, no matter what the boss said or how your stocks performed that day.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
It's What's On The Inside ...
As heard on Relevant Radio’s “Glen’s Story Corner” and retrieved from http://fhfnela.org/images/OND%2009.pdf on 3/17/10
On the Inside
I look like a monster. During a routine root canal last week, the dentist accidentally tore a blood vessel in my face, and the result is that the left side of my face is black and purple and swollen from eyebrow to throat.
While painful, the worst part of this mishap is the deep embarrassment at having my face look so monstrous. I hadn't realized the shock of my bruises until my neighbor dropped by and literally jumped off my porch at the sight of my face, clutching her heart and shrieking involuntarily.
"It's not even a good story," I told her, and explained about the dentist and the torn blood vessel. After a brief visit, I said good-bye to her, knowing she had never paid attention to our conversation because my face was so distracting. I was disheartened and embarrassed.
The embarrassment grew more deeply rooted when I took my son to kindergarten the next day. Upon seeing my face (which I thought was cleverly concealed by my hair swept over my face and the sunglasses I wore indoors), Noah's teacher gasped. Expletives spewed forth, causing me to laugh, and she to slap her hand over her mouth. "I'm sorry," she apologized for her involuntary cursing. "You look like someone beat the life out of you!" I explained what had happened and literally ran to my car, heading home to hide from all human contact.
For several days, I avoided contact with people other than my family. My first foray into public in search of a video lead to new humiliation and had me determined not to leave home again.
On the Inside
I look like a monster. During a routine root canal last week, the dentist accidentally tore a blood vessel in my face, and the result is that the left side of my face is black and purple and swollen from eyebrow to throat.
While painful, the worst part of this mishap is the deep embarrassment at having my face look so monstrous. I hadn't realized the shock of my bruises until my neighbor dropped by and literally jumped off my porch at the sight of my face, clutching her heart and shrieking involuntarily.
"It's not even a good story," I told her, and explained about the dentist and the torn blood vessel. After a brief visit, I said good-bye to her, knowing she had never paid attention to our conversation because my face was so distracting. I was disheartened and embarrassed.
The embarrassment grew more deeply rooted when I took my son to kindergarten the next day. Upon seeing my face (which I thought was cleverly concealed by my hair swept over my face and the sunglasses I wore indoors), Noah's teacher gasped. Expletives spewed forth, causing me to laugh, and she to slap her hand over her mouth. "I'm sorry," she apologized for her involuntary cursing. "You look like someone beat the life out of you!" I explained what had happened and literally ran to my car, heading home to hide from all human contact.
For several days, I avoided contact with people other than my family. My first foray into public in search of a video lead to new humiliation and had me determined not to leave home again.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Palin on Leno Transcript w/Stand Up Comedy Routine from 3/2/10
Retrieved from http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/03/03/palin-discusses-press-leno-mainstream-media-quite-broken on 3/9/10.
Transcript of 3/2/10 appearance -
JAY LENO, HOST: Now, the media has been critical of you. Now you are a member, you have joined the other side.
SARAH PALIN: It's kind of full circle for me. I studied journalism. My college degree there in communications. And now I am back there wanting to build some trust back in our media. I think that the mainstream media is quite broken. And I think that there needs to be the fairness, the balance in there. That's why I joined Fox.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Transcript of 3/2/10 appearance -
JAY LENO, HOST: Now, the media has been critical of you. Now you are a member, you have joined the other side.
SARAH PALIN: It's kind of full circle for me. I studied journalism. My college degree there in communications. And now I am back there wanting to build some trust back in our media. I think that the mainstream media is quite broken. And I think that there needs to be the fairness, the balance in there. That's why I joined Fox.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Liberalism - Definition
Pertinent definition of oft-bandied word ...
"Until the eighteenth century the term generally meant whatever was worthy of a free man, e.g., as applied to the liberal arts or a liberal education. This meaning is still current, but at least since the French Revolution liberalism has become more or less identified with a philosophy that stresses human freedom to the neglect and even denial of the rights of God in religion, the rights of society in civil law, and the rights of the Church in her relations to the State. It was in this sense that liberalism was condemned by Pope Pius IX in 1864 in the Syllabus of Errors (Denzinger, 2977-80)".1
1 Hardon, John, S.J. 1999 (2nd Printing, 2001). "Modern Catholic Dictionary", p. 317. Eternal Life. Brownsville, Kentucky.
"Denzinger" refers to Enchiridion Symbolorum (Handbook of Creeds) originally edited by Henry Denzinger and first published in 1854.
"Until the eighteenth century the term generally meant whatever was worthy of a free man, e.g., as applied to the liberal arts or a liberal education. This meaning is still current, but at least since the French Revolution liberalism has become more or less identified with a philosophy that stresses human freedom to the neglect and even denial of the rights of God in religion, the rights of society in civil law, and the rights of the Church in her relations to the State. It was in this sense that liberalism was condemned by Pope Pius IX in 1864 in the Syllabus of Errors (Denzinger, 2977-80)".1
1 Hardon, John, S.J. 1999 (2nd Printing, 2001). "Modern Catholic Dictionary", p. 317. Eternal Life. Brownsville, Kentucky.
"Denzinger" refers to Enchiridion Symbolorum (Handbook of Creeds) originally edited by Henry Denzinger and first published in 1854.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
A Spider's Web
A soldier found himself in a terrible battle. The enemy was soundly defeating the soldier's army. He and his comrades found themselves hastily retreating from the battlefield in defeat, running away in fear for their lives. The enemy gave chase. The young man ran hard and fast, full of fear and desperation, and soon found himself cut off from his comrades in arms.
He eventually came upon a rocky ledge containing a cave. Knowing the enemy was close behind, and that he was exhausted from the chase, he chose to hide there. After he crawled in, he fell to his face in the darkness, desperately crying to God to save him and protect him from his enemies.
When he looked up from his desperate plea for help, he saw a spider beginning to weave its web at the entrance to the cave. As he watched the delicate threads being slowly drawn across the mouth of the cave, the soldier pondered its irony. He thought, "I asked God for protection and deliverance, and he sent me a spider instead. How can a spider save me?
His heart was hardened, knowing the enemy would soon discover his hiding place and kill him. And soon he did hear the sound of his enemies, who were now scouring the area looking for those in hiding. One soldier with a gun slowly walked up to the cave's entrance. As the soldier crouched in the darkness, hoping to surprise the enemy in a last-minute attempt to save his own life, he felt his heart pounding wildly out of control.
As the enemy cautiously moved forward to enter the cave, he came upon the spider's web, which by now was completely strung across the opening. He backed away and called out to a comrade, "There can't be anyone in here. They would have had to break this spider's web to enter the cave. Let's move on."
Years later, a young man wrote about that ordeal: "Where God is, a spider's web is as a stone wall. Where God is not, a stone wall is as a spider's web."
Heard on "Glen's Story Corner" on Relevant Radio. For more about Relevant Radio visit www.RelevantRadio.com
He eventually came upon a rocky ledge containing a cave. Knowing the enemy was close behind, and that he was exhausted from the chase, he chose to hide there. After he crawled in, he fell to his face in the darkness, desperately crying to God to save him and protect him from his enemies.
When he looked up from his desperate plea for help, he saw a spider beginning to weave its web at the entrance to the cave. As he watched the delicate threads being slowly drawn across the mouth of the cave, the soldier pondered its irony. He thought, "I asked God for protection and deliverance, and he sent me a spider instead. How can a spider save me?
His heart was hardened, knowing the enemy would soon discover his hiding place and kill him. And soon he did hear the sound of his enemies, who were now scouring the area looking for those in hiding. One soldier with a gun slowly walked up to the cave's entrance. As the soldier crouched in the darkness, hoping to surprise the enemy in a last-minute attempt to save his own life, he felt his heart pounding wildly out of control.
As the enemy cautiously moved forward to enter the cave, he came upon the spider's web, which by now was completely strung across the opening. He backed away and called out to a comrade, "There can't be anyone in here. They would have had to break this spider's web to enter the cave. Let's move on."
Years later, a young man wrote about that ordeal: "Where God is, a spider's web is as a stone wall. Where God is not, a stone wall is as a spider's web."
Heard on "Glen's Story Corner" on Relevant Radio. For more about Relevant Radio visit www.RelevantRadio.com
Thursday, February 18, 2010
What is Ash Wednesday? A Concise Explanation by Jimmy Akin
Few write with the precision and clarity of Jimmy (James) Akin regarding Catholic matters. Mr. Akin's work in Catholic apologetics is thorough and through his writings he presents and articulates ideas and concepts with an understandable expertise. He is a Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers and is heard frequently on the Catholic Answers radio program. More of his writings may be found at Catholic.com, as well as his own blog, http://jimmyakin.org/.
The Day of Ashes
By James Akin
Ash Wednesday, the day Lent begins, occurs forty days before Good Friday. Some Fundamentalists claim Ash Wednesday is based on a pagan festival, but it originated in the A.D. 900s, long after Europe had been Christianized and the pagan cults stamped out.
Ash Wednesday is actually a colloquial name. The official name is the Day of Ashes, because on that day the faithful have their foreheads marked with ashes in the shape of a cross.
In the Bible, a mark on the forehead is a symbol of ownership. By having his forehead marked with the sign of a cross, a person symbolizes that he belongs to Jesus Christ, who died on a cross. This is in imitation of the spiritual mark or seal that is put on a Christian in baptism, when he is delivered from slavery to sin and the devil and made a slave of righteousness and Christ (Rom. 6:3-18). It also imitates the way the righteous are described in the book of Revelation: "Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees till we have sealed the servants of our God upon their foreheads" (Rev.7:3). Or again, "Then I looked, and, lo, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb and with him a hundred and forty-four thousand who had his name and his Father's name written on their foreheads" (Rev. 14:1). This is in contrast to the followers of the beast, who have the number 666 on their foreheads or hands.
The Day of Ashes
By James Akin
Ash Wednesday, the day Lent begins, occurs forty days before Good Friday. Some Fundamentalists claim Ash Wednesday is based on a pagan festival, but it originated in the A.D. 900s, long after Europe had been Christianized and the pagan cults stamped out.
Ash Wednesday is actually a colloquial name. The official name is the Day of Ashes, because on that day the faithful have their foreheads marked with ashes in the shape of a cross.
In the Bible, a mark on the forehead is a symbol of ownership. By having his forehead marked with the sign of a cross, a person symbolizes that he belongs to Jesus Christ, who died on a cross. This is in imitation of the spiritual mark or seal that is put on a Christian in baptism, when he is delivered from slavery to sin and the devil and made a slave of righteousness and Christ (Rom. 6:3-18). It also imitates the way the righteous are described in the book of Revelation: "Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees till we have sealed the servants of our God upon their foreheads" (Rev.7:3). Or again, "Then I looked, and, lo, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb and with him a hundred and forty-four thousand who had his name and his Father's name written on their foreheads" (Rev. 14:1). This is in contrast to the followers of the beast, who have the number 666 on their foreheads or hands.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
St. Valentine's Day
This article is pulled from the 1912 edition of The Catholic Encyclopedia. No doubt, since the original publication a notable amount of secularization has occurred to the holiday.
At least three different Saint Valentines, all of them martyrs, are mentioned in the early martyrologies under date of 14 February. One is described as a priest at Rome, another as bishop of Interamna (modern Terni), and these two seem both to have suffered in the second half of the third century and to have been buried on the Flaminian Way, but at different distances from the city. In William of Malmesbury's time what was known to the ancients as the Flaminian Gate of Rome and is now the Porta del Popolo, was called the Gate of St. Valentine. The name seems to have been taken from a small church dedicated to the saint which was in the immediate neighborhood. Of both these St. Valentines some sort of Acta are preserved but they are of relatively late date and of no historical value. Of the third Saint Valentine, who suffered in Africa with a number of companions, nothing further is known.
Saint Valentine's Day
The popular customs associated with Saint Valentine's Day undoubtedly had their origin in a conventional belief generally received in England and France during the Middle Ages, that on 14 February, i.e. half way through the second month of the year, the birds began to pair. Thus in Chaucer's Parliament of Foules we read:
For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne's day
Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.
For this reason the day was looked upon as specially consecrated to lovers and as a proper occasion for writing love letters and sending lovers' tokens. Both the French and English literatures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries contain allusions to the practice. Perhaps the earliest to be found is in the 34th and 35th Ballades of the bilingual poet, John Gower, written in French; but Lydgate and Clauvowe supply other examples. Those who chose each other under these circumstances seem to have been called by each other their Valentines. In the Paston Letters, Dame Elizabeth Brews writes thus about a match she hopes to make for her daughter (we modernize the spelling), addressing the favoured suitor:
And, cousin mine, upon Monday is Saint Valentine's Day and every bird chooses himself a mate, and if it like you to come on Thursday night, and make provision that you may abide till then, I trust to God that ye shall speak to my husband and I shall pray that we may bring the matter to a conclusion.
Shortly after the young lady herself wrote a letter to the same man addressing it "Unto my rightwell beloved Valentine, John Paston Esquire". The custom of choosing and sending valentines has of late years fallen into comparative desuetude.1
1MLA citation. Thurston, Herbert. "St. Valentine." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 15. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912. 14 Feb. 2010.
APA citation. Thurston, H. (1912). St. Valentine. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved February 14, 2010 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15254a.htm
Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by Paul Knutsen.
Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. October 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.
At least three different Saint Valentines, all of them martyrs, are mentioned in the early martyrologies under date of 14 February. One is described as a priest at Rome, another as bishop of Interamna (modern Terni), and these two seem both to have suffered in the second half of the third century and to have been buried on the Flaminian Way, but at different distances from the city. In William of Malmesbury's time what was known to the ancients as the Flaminian Gate of Rome and is now the Porta del Popolo, was called the Gate of St. Valentine. The name seems to have been taken from a small church dedicated to the saint which was in the immediate neighborhood. Of both these St. Valentines some sort of Acta are preserved but they are of relatively late date and of no historical value. Of the third Saint Valentine, who suffered in Africa with a number of companions, nothing further is known.
Saint Valentine's Day
The popular customs associated with Saint Valentine's Day undoubtedly had their origin in a conventional belief generally received in England and France during the Middle Ages, that on 14 February, i.e. half way through the second month of the year, the birds began to pair. Thus in Chaucer's Parliament of Foules we read:
For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne's day
Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.
For this reason the day was looked upon as specially consecrated to lovers and as a proper occasion for writing love letters and sending lovers' tokens. Both the French and English literatures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries contain allusions to the practice. Perhaps the earliest to be found is in the 34th and 35th Ballades of the bilingual poet, John Gower, written in French; but Lydgate and Clauvowe supply other examples. Those who chose each other under these circumstances seem to have been called by each other their Valentines. In the Paston Letters, Dame Elizabeth Brews writes thus about a match she hopes to make for her daughter (we modernize the spelling), addressing the favoured suitor:
And, cousin mine, upon Monday is Saint Valentine's Day and every bird chooses himself a mate, and if it like you to come on Thursday night, and make provision that you may abide till then, I trust to God that ye shall speak to my husband and I shall pray that we may bring the matter to a conclusion.
Shortly after the young lady herself wrote a letter to the same man addressing it "Unto my rightwell beloved Valentine, John Paston Esquire". The custom of choosing and sending valentines has of late years fallen into comparative desuetude.1
1MLA citation. Thurston, Herbert. "St. Valentine." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 15. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912. 14 Feb. 2010
APA citation. Thurston, H. (1912). St. Valentine. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved February 14, 2010 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15254a.htm
Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by Paul Knutsen.
Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. October 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Pithy Lyric on Lost Love
Cryin' in the night,
Night goes into
Morning, just another day
Happy people pass my way
Looking in their eyes I see a memory
I never realized how happy you made me
Night goes into
Morning, just another day
Happy people pass my way
Looking in their eyes I see a memory
I never realized how happy you made me
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Lost Generation Palindrome
A palindrome is a word that reads the same forwards and backwards, for example "level". When applied to a long form composition it is a writing whose lines are read in one sequence one time, then the lines are read in reverse sequence the next. Notice how the meaning changes, though the lines are the same.
Lost Generation
I am part of the lost generation
and I refuse to believe
that I can change the world
I realize this may be a shock but
Happiness comes from within
is a lie, and
Money will make me happy.
So in 30 years I will tell my children
They are not the most important thing in my life
My employer will know that
I have my priorities straight because
work
is more important than
family
I tell you this
Once upon a time
Families stayed together
but this will not be true in my era
This is a quick fix society;
Experts tell me
30 years from now I will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of my divorce
I do not concede that
I will live in the country of my own making
In the future
Environmental destruction will be the norm
No longer can it be said that
My peers and I care about this earth
It will be evident that
My generation is apathetic and lethargic
It is foolish to presume that
There is hope
And all of this will come true unless we choose to reverse it.
There is hope
It is foolish to presume that
My generation is apathetic and lethargic
It will be evident that
My peers and I care about this earth
No longer can it be said that
Experts tell me
Environmental destruction will be the norm
In the future
I will live in the country of my own making
I do not concede that
30 years from now I will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of my divorce
Experts tell me
This is a quick fix society;
but this will not be true in my era
Families stayed together
Once upon a time
I tell you this
family
is more important than
work
I have my priorities straight because
My employer will know that
They are not the most important thing in my life
So in 30 years I will tell my children
Money will make me happy
is a lie, and
Happiness comes from within
I realize this may be a shock but
I can change the world
and I refuse to believe
I am part of the lost generation
Script to video that was submitted by a 20 year old man to a contest entitled "u @ 50" sponsored by AARP.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA
Lost Generation
I am part of the lost generation
and I refuse to believe
that I can change the world
I realize this may be a shock but
Happiness comes from within
is a lie, and
Money will make me happy.
So in 30 years I will tell my children
They are not the most important thing in my life
My employer will know that
I have my priorities straight because
work
is more important than
family
I tell you this
Once upon a time
Families stayed together
but this will not be true in my era
This is a quick fix society;
Experts tell me
30 years from now I will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of my divorce
I do not concede that
I will live in the country of my own making
In the future
Environmental destruction will be the norm
No longer can it be said that
My peers and I care about this earth
It will be evident that
My generation is apathetic and lethargic
It is foolish to presume that
There is hope
And all of this will come true unless we choose to reverse it.
There is hope
It is foolish to presume that
My generation is apathetic and lethargic
It will be evident that
My peers and I care about this earth
No longer can it be said that
Experts tell me
Environmental destruction will be the norm
In the future
I will live in the country of my own making
I do not concede that
30 years from now I will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of my divorce
Experts tell me
This is a quick fix society;
but this will not be true in my era
Families stayed together
Once upon a time
I tell you this
family
is more important than
work
I have my priorities straight because
My employer will know that
They are not the most important thing in my life
So in 30 years I will tell my children
Money will make me happy
is a lie, and
Happiness comes from within
I realize this may be a shock but
I can change the world
and I refuse to believe
I am part of the lost generation
Script to video that was submitted by a 20 year old man to a contest entitled "u @ 50" sponsored by AARP.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA
ProLife Mark Crutcher responds to "If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament"
Few write with clarity and precision as well as Mark Crutcher, Founder and President of Life Dynamics. Here, from his book, "On Message" (2005, Life Dynamics Incorporated, p. 34) Mr. Crutcher addresses the oft-heard wisecrack directed at Pro-Life males – “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament”. To grasp the insidious intention of this insinuation one must appreciate what a “sacrament” is. According to the Baltimore Catechism a “Sacrament is an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace” (http://www.baltimore-catechism.com/lesson13.htm, retrieved 1/19/10). A further definition is useful, that of “grace”; meaning “a supernatural gift of God bestowed on us, through the merits of Jesus Christ, for our salvation” (http://www.baltimore-catechism.com/lesson10.htm retrieved 1/19/10). That preliminary basic definitions on terms for which entire volumes have been written are required reveals the underlying nature, whether intentional or inadvertent, of ineptitude and contempt toward theological concepts pervading this comment. Mr. Crutcher exposes the absurdity of the pro-abortion remark and does so with his characteristic sense of disarming reason. (Visit Life Dynamics at www.LifeDynamics.com and Mr. Crutcher's blog at www.markcrutcherblog.com.)
Since the beginning of this debate, radical pro-aborts have been regurgitating this nonsense and it is time to set the record straight. If you look at polls taken on the public’s attitude about abortion, one thing jumps out. Regardless of whether the poll is paid for by the pro-abortion side or the pro-life side, and regardless of how the questions were slanted to favor one position or the other, one finding almost never changes. With virtually no exceptions, the results show that men are consistently more pro-abortion than women. It seems that men, especially single men, are aware that they are the ones best served and protected by legal abortion.
So while these abortion advocates continue to espouse this “sacrament” garbage, they do so with the full knowledge that it’s a bald-faced lie. They are fully aware that the data shows that the ability to become pregnant actually makes a person less supportive of abortion. Of course, the abortion lobby finds that fact to be counter productive, so they just ignore it.
Let’s not forget, with almost no exceptions, pioneers of the women’s movement like Susan B. Anthony, Mattie Brinkerhoff, Sarah Norton, Emma Goldman, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were quite outspoken in their opposition to legal abortion. In fact, Alice Paul, who helped write the original Equal Rights Amendment and worked 50 years for its passage, called abortion, “the ultimate exploitation of women.” Even suffragist newspapers like Woodhull’s and Claflin’s Weekly, had editorial policies which openly attacked abortion and abortionists. (For more information on pro-life feminism see: Victoria-Woodhull.com)
These early women’s rights advocates correctly saw abortion as patronizing and paternalistic. What they recognized back then remains true today. Abortion doesn’t free women, it devalues them. Abortion says they are second-class people whose problems are so trivial they can be handled with a “quick-fix” solution. These women knew that abortion favors sexually predatory and sexually irresponsible males. It allows them to sexually exploit women in a relatively risk-free environment. These guys can have their fun, and if a pregnancy occurs the woman involved can just be “vacuumed out” and used again.
True feminists also know that abortion lets men buy their way out of responsibility. The fact is, no other single factor has freed more sexually predatory and sexually irresponsible men than women's willingness to submit to abortion. It is, has always been, and will always be, a safety net which makes it easier for women to provide responsibility-free sex to men.
The reality that abortion is a protector of men is now so well known that some abortion advocates no longer even bother to deny it. In fact, some even say it should be celebrated. On May 11, 1990, on the nationally syndicated radio commentary program Spectrum, one very vocal proponent of abortion-on-demand, Ann Taylor-Flemming, was expounding on the need for their side to bring more men into the cause. She said this should be done because of the service abortion renders them. This is what she had to say about men, women, and abortion:
“I came of age with the women’s movement. It has given license to my ambitions and dreams, and filled me with the fervor for equality that permeates all that I do. But this time, I want to turn the tables a bit. Take an issue that always seems like a women’s issue and pitch it directly towards the men out there. And that issue is abortion … it’s time now to invite the men of America back in, to ask them to raise their voices for choice … I dare say that many of them have impregnated women along the way, and then let off the hook in a big, big way – emotionally, economically and every other way – when the women went ahead and had abortions … the sense of relief for themselves was mixed with sympathy for and gratitude towards those women whose ultimate responsibility was to relieve them of responsibility by having abortions … it would sure be nice to hear from all those men out there whose lives have been changed, bettered, and substantially eased because they were not forced into unwanted fatherhood.”
Even the most bigoted male chauvinist would never suggest that women have a “responsibility” to let the men who impregnate them “off the hook” by submitting to abortion. And yet, here is that very philosophy being espoused by someone who claims to be an advocate for women.
Statements like these prove that even outspoken advocates of abortion know that by its nature abortion will always be something which allows men to sexually exploit women. The really deplorable part of this is that they have this patronizing attitude toward women while claiming the only motive they have for being in this battle is to protect women. Maybe that’s an example of that old warning to be suspicious of anyone who says they only have your best interests at heart. (A recording of the Taylor-Flemming quote is on file at Life Dynamics.)
Another point is, not only does abortion protect men, it does so without demanding that they face any personal risk. After all, while the baby that’s sentenced to death is just as much his as hers, it’s only her body which will be invaded to carry out the execution. You can bet that if these guys were the ones who might end up on the abortionist’s table, facing unknown emotional and physical risks, they’d suddenly have a different attitude about sex and abortion.
Then there is the argument that a woman sometimes “needs” an abortion because a baby might interfere with her career. However, true feminists do not ask women to change to meet society’s needs, but instead work toward a society in which pregnant women, and women with children, are allowed to fully participate just as they are. If the failures of society clash with the biology of women, a feminist would not say that women are the ones who have to change. Simply put, real feminism does not ask women to solve society’s problems by killing their children. In fact, powerful women do not kill their children for anyone or for any reason, nor do they believe that women need surgery to be equal to men.
It is interesting to note that anytime a state has tried to enact legislation prohibiting abortions for sex selection, these “protectors of women” are the first ones to fight against it. They do this despite the fact that it’s been proven time and again – by people on both sides of this issue – that when a sex selection abortion occurs the overwhelming majority of the time it’s a female baby which ends up dead. These people think so little of women that they won’t even stop killing those babies whose only sin is that they would one day be women. The pro-choice mob has apparently decided that if our society wants to view being female as a fetal deformity punishable by death, that’s okay by them.
The abortion industry wraps feminism around abortion hoping to hide what it really is. Better than anyone else in our society, these people know that abortionists are nothing more than cowardly, cold-blooded, hired serial killers and moral hyenas who prey on women in troubled circumstances. They also know that abortion has the same relationship to women’s rights that pornography has. It cheapens, degrades and victimizes them for the benefit of men. For the abortion industry to suggest that having a clean place to kill their babies is the cornerstone of women’s equality is a self-serving and vile perversion of the basic values of true feminism. As pro-life feminist Melissa Simmons-Tulin once said:
“… women will never climb to equality over the dead bodies of their children.”
Since the beginning of this debate, radical pro-aborts have been regurgitating this nonsense and it is time to set the record straight. If you look at polls taken on the public’s attitude about abortion, one thing jumps out. Regardless of whether the poll is paid for by the pro-abortion side or the pro-life side, and regardless of how the questions were slanted to favor one position or the other, one finding almost never changes. With virtually no exceptions, the results show that men are consistently more pro-abortion than women. It seems that men, especially single men, are aware that they are the ones best served and protected by legal abortion.
So while these abortion advocates continue to espouse this “sacrament” garbage, they do so with the full knowledge that it’s a bald-faced lie. They are fully aware that the data shows that the ability to become pregnant actually makes a person less supportive of abortion. Of course, the abortion lobby finds that fact to be counter productive, so they just ignore it.
***
The only people who ever tried to sell the idea that women will never be equal to men unless they can legally butcher their children, are those who have either a financial or political interest in abortion. The average woman, regardless of her views on abortion, is simply not gullible enough to be convinced that protecting the unborn would mean relegating women to the status of nothing more than the property of their husbands.Let’s not forget, with almost no exceptions, pioneers of the women’s movement like Susan B. Anthony, Mattie Brinkerhoff, Sarah Norton, Emma Goldman, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were quite outspoken in their opposition to legal abortion. In fact, Alice Paul, who helped write the original Equal Rights Amendment and worked 50 years for its passage, called abortion, “the ultimate exploitation of women.” Even suffragist newspapers like Woodhull’s and Claflin’s Weekly, had editorial policies which openly attacked abortion and abortionists. (For more information on pro-life feminism see: Victoria-Woodhull.com)
These early women’s rights advocates correctly saw abortion as patronizing and paternalistic. What they recognized back then remains true today. Abortion doesn’t free women, it devalues them. Abortion says they are second-class people whose problems are so trivial they can be handled with a “quick-fix” solution. These women knew that abortion favors sexually predatory and sexually irresponsible males. It allows them to sexually exploit women in a relatively risk-free environment. These guys can have their fun, and if a pregnancy occurs the woman involved can just be “vacuumed out” and used again.
True feminists also know that abortion lets men buy their way out of responsibility. The fact is, no other single factor has freed more sexually predatory and sexually irresponsible men than women's willingness to submit to abortion. It is, has always been, and will always be, a safety net which makes it easier for women to provide responsibility-free sex to men.
The reality that abortion is a protector of men is now so well known that some abortion advocates no longer even bother to deny it. In fact, some even say it should be celebrated. On May 11, 1990, on the nationally syndicated radio commentary program Spectrum, one very vocal proponent of abortion-on-demand, Ann Taylor-Flemming, was expounding on the need for their side to bring more men into the cause. She said this should be done because of the service abortion renders them. This is what she had to say about men, women, and abortion:
“I came of age with the women’s movement. It has given license to my ambitions and dreams, and filled me with the fervor for equality that permeates all that I do. But this time, I want to turn the tables a bit. Take an issue that always seems like a women’s issue and pitch it directly towards the men out there. And that issue is abortion … it’s time now to invite the men of America back in, to ask them to raise their voices for choice … I dare say that many of them have impregnated women along the way, and then let off the hook in a big, big way – emotionally, economically and every other way – when the women went ahead and had abortions … the sense of relief for themselves was mixed with sympathy for and gratitude towards those women whose ultimate responsibility was to relieve them of responsibility by having abortions … it would sure be nice to hear from all those men out there whose lives have been changed, bettered, and substantially eased because they were not forced into unwanted fatherhood.”
Even the most bigoted male chauvinist would never suggest that women have a “responsibility” to let the men who impregnate them “off the hook” by submitting to abortion. And yet, here is that very philosophy being espoused by someone who claims to be an advocate for women.
Statements like these prove that even outspoken advocates of abortion know that by its nature abortion will always be something which allows men to sexually exploit women. The really deplorable part of this is that they have this patronizing attitude toward women while claiming the only motive they have for being in this battle is to protect women. Maybe that’s an example of that old warning to be suspicious of anyone who says they only have your best interests at heart. (A recording of the Taylor-Flemming quote is on file at Life Dynamics.)
Another point is, not only does abortion protect men, it does so without demanding that they face any personal risk. After all, while the baby that’s sentenced to death is just as much his as hers, it’s only her body which will be invaded to carry out the execution. You can bet that if these guys were the ones who might end up on the abortionist’s table, facing unknown emotional and physical risks, they’d suddenly have a different attitude about sex and abortion.
Then there is the argument that a woman sometimes “needs” an abortion because a baby might interfere with her career. However, true feminists do not ask women to change to meet society’s needs, but instead work toward a society in which pregnant women, and women with children, are allowed to fully participate just as they are. If the failures of society clash with the biology of women, a feminist would not say that women are the ones who have to change. Simply put, real feminism does not ask women to solve society’s problems by killing their children. In fact, powerful women do not kill their children for anyone or for any reason, nor do they believe that women need surgery to be equal to men.
It is interesting to note that anytime a state has tried to enact legislation prohibiting abortions for sex selection, these “protectors of women” are the first ones to fight against it. They do this despite the fact that it’s been proven time and again – by people on both sides of this issue – that when a sex selection abortion occurs the overwhelming majority of the time it’s a female baby which ends up dead. These people think so little of women that they won’t even stop killing those babies whose only sin is that they would one day be women. The pro-choice mob has apparently decided that if our society wants to view being female as a fetal deformity punishable by death, that’s okay by them.
The abortion industry wraps feminism around abortion hoping to hide what it really is. Better than anyone else in our society, these people know that abortionists are nothing more than cowardly, cold-blooded, hired serial killers and moral hyenas who prey on women in troubled circumstances. They also know that abortion has the same relationship to women’s rights that pornography has. It cheapens, degrades and victimizes them for the benefit of men. For the abortion industry to suggest that having a clean place to kill their babies is the cornerstone of women’s equality is a self-serving and vile perversion of the basic values of true feminism. As pro-life feminist Melissa Simmons-Tulin once said:
“… women will never climb to equality over the dead bodies of their children.”
A Conspiracy of Kindness on the Court
Kevin is a boy who might be described as "slow." He didn't learn his ABCs as fast as other kids. He couldn't compete in schoolyard races, but Kevin had a way with people. His bright smile and big heart won him plenty of friends.
Randy, the pastor at Kevin's church, decided they needed a basketball team for boys. Kevin signed on and soon basketball became a center of his life. He practiced hard. While the other boys worked at dribbling the basketball and shooting lay-ups, skills Kevin would never master, he simply shot baskets. Or more correctly, he threw the ball AT the basket. He had a special spot near the free throw line. He threw and threw, and it occasionally went in. On the rare times that he succeeded, Kevin raised his arms and shouted, "Look at me, Coach! Look at me!" Randy looked at him. And smiled.
The day before their first game, Coach Randy gave each player a bright red jersey. Kevin was number 12. He scrambled himself into the sleeves and wore that jersey almost every day. Everywhere. One Sunday morning the church worship service was interrupted by Kevin's excited voice. "Look, Coach!" He lifted his gray wool sweater to reveal the red jersey underneath with number 12 on the front. Nobody there minded the interruption; the congregation knew Kevin and loved him.
I'd like to be able to tell you that the team did well. But the truth is they never won a game that season - except for the night it snowed and the opposing team never showed up.
At the end of the season, the boys played in the church league's tournament. As the last-place team, they drew the unfortunate spot of playing against the best team - boys who had never lost a game all year.
Game day arrived. Both teams played their best, but the game went as expected. Near the end of the last quarter, Kevin's team stood nearly 30 points behind. It was then that one of the boys called timeout. "Coach Randy," he said, "this is our last game and Kevin has never made a basket. I think we should let him make a basket."
The team agreed. Kevin was instructed to stand at his special place near the free throw line and wait. He was told that when he was given the ball, he should shoot.
Kevin was ecstatic. He ran to the floor and waited. When the ball was passed to him he shot - and missed. Number 17 from the other team snatched the rebound, dribbled down the court for an easy basket but a moment later Kevin got the ball again. He shot - and missed again. Number 17 repeated his performance scoring two more points. Kevin shot a third and fourth time with the same result.
But slowly the other team seemed to figure out what was going on and the next time they snatched the rebound, a boy threw it to Kevin! He shot - and missed. Now every rebound came to him and he threw and threw toward the basket. Time was running down and Kevin still had not scored.
BOTH teams circled the boy by this time and all of the players were shouting, "Kevin! Kevin!" The crowd took up the chant. Soon everyone in the gym was shouting Kevin's name.
Coach Randy was sure that time must have run out; the game HAD to be over. He glanced at the official clock. It was stopped at 4.3 seconds. Even the timekeepers joined in the mania and stood by their table shouting with the crowd, "Kevin! Kevin!"
Kevin shot and shot. Everyone was screaming. He attempted again and again and again and ... miraculously, one of his shots took a crazy bounce on the rim. Everyone held their breath.
The ball dropped in.
Chaos reigned. Nobody remained seated. Everyone stood and cheered as if one boy had single-handedly won a world championship. Kevin's arms sprang up in the air and he shouted, "I won! I won!" He had scored. His team escorted him off the court, the clock ticked down and the game was over.
That day an undefeated team retained their perfect record. But everybody won. Everybody. Because everybody had participated in a crazy conspiracy of kindness that was so compelling, so powerful, the earth itself might have stopped for a moment to rejoice with one young boy.
How beautiful it is when we all conspire together in kindness ... everybody wins.
Story attributed to Steve Goodier.
As heard on "Glenn's Story Corner" on Relevant Radio, www.relevantradio.com.
Randy, the pastor at Kevin's church, decided they needed a basketball team for boys. Kevin signed on and soon basketball became a center of his life. He practiced hard. While the other boys worked at dribbling the basketball and shooting lay-ups, skills Kevin would never master, he simply shot baskets. Or more correctly, he threw the ball AT the basket. He had a special spot near the free throw line. He threw and threw, and it occasionally went in. On the rare times that he succeeded, Kevin raised his arms and shouted, "Look at me, Coach! Look at me!" Randy looked at him. And smiled.
The day before their first game, Coach Randy gave each player a bright red jersey. Kevin was number 12. He scrambled himself into the sleeves and wore that jersey almost every day. Everywhere. One Sunday morning the church worship service was interrupted by Kevin's excited voice. "Look, Coach!" He lifted his gray wool sweater to reveal the red jersey underneath with number 12 on the front. Nobody there minded the interruption; the congregation knew Kevin and loved him.
I'd like to be able to tell you that the team did well. But the truth is they never won a game that season - except for the night it snowed and the opposing team never showed up.
At the end of the season, the boys played in the church league's tournament. As the last-place team, they drew the unfortunate spot of playing against the best team - boys who had never lost a game all year.
Game day arrived. Both teams played their best, but the game went as expected. Near the end of the last quarter, Kevin's team stood nearly 30 points behind. It was then that one of the boys called timeout. "Coach Randy," he said, "this is our last game and Kevin has never made a basket. I think we should let him make a basket."
The team agreed. Kevin was instructed to stand at his special place near the free throw line and wait. He was told that when he was given the ball, he should shoot.
Kevin was ecstatic. He ran to the floor and waited. When the ball was passed to him he shot - and missed. Number 17 from the other team snatched the rebound, dribbled down the court for an easy basket but a moment later Kevin got the ball again. He shot - and missed again. Number 17 repeated his performance scoring two more points. Kevin shot a third and fourth time with the same result.
But slowly the other team seemed to figure out what was going on and the next time they snatched the rebound, a boy threw it to Kevin! He shot - and missed. Now every rebound came to him and he threw and threw toward the basket. Time was running down and Kevin still had not scored.
BOTH teams circled the boy by this time and all of the players were shouting, "Kevin! Kevin!" The crowd took up the chant. Soon everyone in the gym was shouting Kevin's name.
Coach Randy was sure that time must have run out; the game HAD to be over. He glanced at the official clock. It was stopped at 4.3 seconds. Even the timekeepers joined in the mania and stood by their table shouting with the crowd, "Kevin! Kevin!"
Kevin shot and shot. Everyone was screaming. He attempted again and again and again and ... miraculously, one of his shots took a crazy bounce on the rim. Everyone held their breath.
The ball dropped in.
Chaos reigned. Nobody remained seated. Everyone stood and cheered as if one boy had single-handedly won a world championship. Kevin's arms sprang up in the air and he shouted, "I won! I won!" He had scored. His team escorted him off the court, the clock ticked down and the game was over.
That day an undefeated team retained their perfect record. But everybody won. Everybody. Because everybody had participated in a crazy conspiracy of kindness that was so compelling, so powerful, the earth itself might have stopped for a moment to rejoice with one young boy.
How beautiful it is when we all conspire together in kindness ... everybody wins.
Story attributed to Steve Goodier.
As heard on "Glenn's Story Corner" on Relevant Radio, www.relevantradio.com.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Oprah Shows Her True Colors with Words of Discouragement for Teens
On January 22, 2010 Oprah Winfrey criticized 19 year-old Bristol Palin, daughter of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, for pledging abstinence until marriage during an interview with In Touch Weekly. Bristol, who has admitted to previous poor choices, is a mother of one.
Oprah commented at the start of the interview with Bristol, “I kind of bristled when I saw this—where you said, ‘I’m not going to have sex until I’m married. I can guarantee it’ ... I’m just wondering if that is a realistic goal. I think teaching responsibility, teaching, ya know, a sense of judgment about it, but is that a realistic position?”
Oprah commented at the start of the interview with Bristol, “I kind of bristled when I saw this—where you said, ‘I’m not going to have sex until I’m married. I can guarantee it’ ... I’m just wondering if that is a realistic goal. I think teaching responsibility, teaching, ya know, a sense of judgment about it, but is that a realistic position?”
Monday, January 25, 2010
Pithy Lyric on Irony
Sometimes I think its a shame
When I get feeling better when I'm feeling no pain ...
***"Sundown" by Gordon Lightfoot
Peaked at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1974
When I get feeling better when I'm feeling no pain ...
***
Peaked at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1974
A Story of Life - "A Mass of Fetal Tissue" - A Heisman Trophy
I heard about this story on 1/25/10. The story is being told in an advertisement placed during the NFL's Superbowl on the CBS Broadcasting Network. The ad was produced by and paid for by the Christian group Focus on the Family. The cost to place the ad is reportedly about $2 million dollars, all of which has been paid for by donors to Focus on the Family who donated specifically for this project. Almost immediately after hearing this story, a twist was filtered through and given center stage in mainstream media - certain groups that claim to advocate on behalf of women, and groups that call themselves "pro-choice" were raising a ruckus about the ad. Though, representatives from such groups admit they had not seen the ad ... they were opposed to it. In fact, the only ones that had seen the ad were those involved in its production and some Focus on the Family staff. CBS had reviewed a script and determined the ad met whatever guidelines CBS imposes. What is interesting is that the groups that oppose the ad oppose it - without having seen it or having reviewed scripts or poster boards, mind you - because it comes from a Christian group and is NOT supportive of abortion. These groups call themselves "pro-choice" but seem to really struggle with individuals who choose life instead of, well, another "choice". Rather than make a fuss over ads that undoubtedly will air during the game which reduce women to nothing but play things for men and exploit them as objects useful to sell product - these groups choose to fuss over (the personal and private decisions they say they defend) of the family told in this story. Rather than fuss over domestic abuse against women, these "pro-women, pro-choice" groups want to vilify one woman, one family, and one man for making a choice. Very telling indeed.
In the mid-1980s, Pam and her husband Bob, were Christian missionaries in the Philippines and raising four young children. While abroad, she contracted amoebic dysentery, which is typically transmitted through contaminated food or water. During this time she became pregnant with her fifth child. The treatment for the dysentery would require strong medications that doctors told Pam would cause irreversible damage to the little baby she and her husband had already named “Timmy”; they advised her to have an abortion.
Pam refused the abortion and cited her Christian faith as the reason for her hope that her son would be born without the devastating disabilities physicians predicted. She and her husband prayed to God and promised that they would raise the boy to be a Christian and a preacher.
Doctors continued to counsel the mother and family to abort the baby, describing the child as “a mass of fetal tissue and not a baby". She spent the last two months of her pregnancy in bed and, eventually, gave birth to a health baby boy in August 1987.
Little Timmy, now a man, did grow into a preacher with a ministry to prison inmates and orphans. Veteran sports commentators gush, not only about Timmy’s fearlessness on the football field, but also about his off-the-field endeavors. Little Timmy is Tim Tebow the University of Florida quarterback, who became the first sophomore to ever receive the prized college football honor, the Heisman trophy.
In Florida he has become a role model garnering so much affection that the local fans like to joke that "Superman wears Tim Tebow pajamas." In Alabama, there is even a Tim Tebow bill in the legislature which would afford home scholars (Tebow and his siblings were all home-schooled) equal access to public-school sports programs and extracurricular activities.
As prominent researcher Joel Brind writes in a LifeNews.com editorial, doctors are frequently telling women they should consider abortions when confronted with various medical situations affecting their health. Yet, as he notes, physicians can successfully treat both mother and child without suggesting that the baby be killed to spare a mother's life.
Read more about the work of Dr. Brind at http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/
REVISION - AFTER AIRING OF THE AD
Seriously, so what was the fuss about? Now, the same groups that opposed the ad prior to its airing are complaining it was too violent, because through a sight gag the appearance is given that Tim Tebow tackles his mother in a football blocking style. Are the same groups complaining about the ad that aired just before this one, in which, a facsimile of actress Betty White was tackled? The ad was well done with a tag to visit the Focus on the Family website for more of the Tebow family story. The ad can be viewed at numerous sites found through a quick search through many familiar search engines.
***
In the mid-1980s, Pam and her husband Bob, were Christian missionaries in the Philippines and raising four young children. While abroad, she contracted amoebic dysentery, which is typically transmitted through contaminated food or water. During this time she became pregnant with her fifth child. The treatment for the dysentery would require strong medications that doctors told Pam would cause irreversible damage to the little baby she and her husband had already named “Timmy”; they advised her to have an abortion.
Pam refused the abortion and cited her Christian faith as the reason for her hope that her son would be born without the devastating disabilities physicians predicted. She and her husband prayed to God and promised that they would raise the boy to be a Christian and a preacher.
Doctors continued to counsel the mother and family to abort the baby, describing the child as “a mass of fetal tissue and not a baby". She spent the last two months of her pregnancy in bed and, eventually, gave birth to a health baby boy in August 1987.
Little Timmy, now a man, did grow into a preacher with a ministry to prison inmates and orphans. Veteran sports commentators gush, not only about Timmy’s fearlessness on the football field, but also about his off-the-field endeavors. Little Timmy is Tim Tebow the University of Florida quarterback, who became the first sophomore to ever receive the prized college football honor, the Heisman trophy.
In Florida he has become a role model garnering so much affection that the local fans like to joke that "Superman wears Tim Tebow pajamas." In Alabama, there is even a Tim Tebow bill in the legislature which would afford home scholars (Tebow and his siblings were all home-schooled) equal access to public-school sports programs and extracurricular activities.
As prominent researcher Joel Brind writes in a LifeNews.com editorial, doctors are frequently telling women they should consider abortions when confronted with various medical situations affecting their health. Yet, as he notes, physicians can successfully treat both mother and child without suggesting that the baby be killed to spare a mother's life.
Read more about the work of Dr. Brind at http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/
REVISION - AFTER AIRING OF THE AD
Seriously, so what was the fuss about? Now, the same groups that opposed the ad prior to its airing are complaining it was too violent, because through a sight gag the appearance is given that Tim Tebow tackles his mother in a football blocking style. Are the same groups complaining about the ad that aired just before this one, in which, a facsimile of actress Betty White was tackled? The ad was well done with a tag to visit the Focus on the Family website for more of the Tebow family story. The ad can be viewed at numerous sites found through a quick search through many familiar search engines.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
HealthCare Bill - Online, Readable, Searchable
Have you wondered what's in the Health Care bills? Where you could read them and search them?
www.marpx.com
Heard about this on RelevantRadio.com.
Fascinating stuff.
Not the bills themselves (I don't know, I haven't read them), the website and the technology!
From the website - "January 8, 2010: Over 14,000 classic English books and documents are available free at this site for download onto your Windows computer... Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and thousands of other authors" (www.marpx.com).
www.marpx.com
Heard about this on RelevantRadio.com.
Fascinating stuff.
Not the bills themselves (I don't know, I haven't read them), the website and the technology!
From the website - "January 8, 2010: Over 14,000 classic English books and documents are available free at this site for download onto your Windows computer... Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and thousands of other authors" (www.marpx.com).
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Pithy Lyric - Games People Play by Joe South
Neither one will ever give in
So we gaze at our eight by ten
Thinking 'bout the things that might have been …
Performed by Joe South
Peaked at #12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1969
Prolific songwriter Joe South peaked at #12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1969 with this song. Include among his writing credits "Down in the Boondocks" (Billy Joe Royal), "Hush" (Deep Purple), "Rose Garden" (Lynn Anderson), and "Yo-Yo" (The Osmonds).1
1Whitburn, Joel. Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Singles Billboard - 1955-2006, 11th Edition. Record Research, Inc. 2007
So we gaze at our eight by ten
Thinking 'bout the things that might have been …
Performed by Joe South
Peaked at #12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1969
Prolific songwriter Joe South peaked at #12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1969 with this song. Include among his writing credits "Down in the Boondocks" (Billy Joe Royal), "Hush" (Deep Purple), "Rose Garden" (Lynn Anderson), and "Yo-Yo" (The Osmonds).1
1Whitburn, Joel. Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Singles Billboard - 1955-2006, 11th Edition. Record Research, Inc. 2007
On Abortion – "The Opinions of Men Do Not Count - Or Do They?" comments of Mark Crutcher
Few write with clarity and precision as well as Mark Crutcher, Founder and President of Life Dynamics. Here, from his book, "On Message", Mr. Crutcher addresses the oft-heard comment leveled against Pro-Life males - “This is a women’s issue. Men have no say in whether women have the right to get an abortion”. Mr. Crutcher exposes the false logic of the remark and does so with his characteristic reason and logic.
We are supposed to be beyond the point where people are excluded from decision making based on gender. Also, to say that because of their gender men have no right to be involved is not only sexist, but hypocritical. The pro-choice crowd never tells men who are pro-abortion to stay out. For example, they don’t tell the [Barack Obamas,] Bill Clintons or John Kerrys of the world to mind their own business. In fact, they invite them to be speakers at their conventions. They have never said that the 1973 Supreme Court had no right to be involved in the Roe v. Wade decision in spite of the fact that every single member of that court was male.
They don’t appear to have a problem with the fact that the overwhelming majority of abortionists in America are men. They never say anything about the male “escorts” outside the abortion mills. They never even say anything about sexually irresponsible men who coerce, threaten, or force women into abortions. Of course, it is somewhat understandable that they wouldn’t have a problem with this last group since that’s the backbone of the American abortion industry.
It is pretty clear that the pro-choice movement’s message is that there are three groups of acceptable men: those who put women in crisis pregnancy situations, those who build political careers off women in crisis pregnancy situations, and those who make money off women in crisis pregnancy situations. The “bad men” are the ones who think women deserve better than abortion.
It is obnoxious to say that men have no right to speak out against the killing of children. In the first place, men don’t need to be given the right to speak out against the killing of children, they already have a responsibility to do so. Real men don’t just stand around with their hands in their pockets while helpless babies are slaughtered for money. In fact, any man who is frightened into silence and inaction because of his gender wasn’t really much of a man to begin with.
Also, to say that men have no stake in abortion is to ignore the biological reality that every time a woman kills her own child she is also killing a father’s child.1
(Visit Life Dynamics at www.LifeDynamics.com and Mr. Crutcher's blog at www.markcrutcherblog.com.)
1Crutcher, Mark. On Message. Life Dynamics Incorporated, 2005, p. 32
We are supposed to be beyond the point where people are excluded from decision making based on gender. Also, to say that because of their gender men have no right to be involved is not only sexist, but hypocritical. The pro-choice crowd never tells men who are pro-abortion to stay out. For example, they don’t tell the [Barack Obamas,] Bill Clintons or John Kerrys of the world to mind their own business. In fact, they invite them to be speakers at their conventions. They have never said that the 1973 Supreme Court had no right to be involved in the Roe v. Wade decision in spite of the fact that every single member of that court was male.
They don’t appear to have a problem with the fact that the overwhelming majority of abortionists in America are men. They never say anything about the male “escorts” outside the abortion mills. They never even say anything about sexually irresponsible men who coerce, threaten, or force women into abortions. Of course, it is somewhat understandable that they wouldn’t have a problem with this last group since that’s the backbone of the American abortion industry.
It is pretty clear that the pro-choice movement’s message is that there are three groups of acceptable men: those who put women in crisis pregnancy situations, those who build political careers off women in crisis pregnancy situations, and those who make money off women in crisis pregnancy situations. The “bad men” are the ones who think women deserve better than abortion.
***
People who think men have no right to be involved in the abortion issue should be careful what they ask for. After all, polls consistently find that women oppose abortion at a higher rate than men. Women are also more opposed to government funding of abortion, more active in the pro-life movement, and more likely to favor banning abortion outright. Obviously, if the pro-aborts were to exclude men from the issue, their support would plummet.***
If the argument is that men shouldn’t be allowed to participate simply because they can’t get pregnant, what about women who can’t get pregnant? Should only fertile women of childbearing age … be allowed to have an opinion about abortion? What about all these older post-menopausal women we see on television shrieking about the right to abortion? Since they can’t get pregnant should they be excluded? Or how about lesbians who have no intention of ever getting pregnant, are they told to sit down and keep their mouths shut? Or let’s say some pro-abortion activist develops ovarian cancer and requires a hysterectomy. Once she can no longer get pregnant, does she get thrown out of the movement?***
If we establish a principle that men have no right to be involved in the abortion issue, what issues are we going to say women have no right to be involved in? The reality is, this whole argument is a fraud. We don’t shut people out of issues just because they are not directly affected by them. We don’t say white people can’t participate in efforts to rid our country of racism, simply because they aren’t its victims. We don’t say only Jews can speak out about the Nazi holocaust. We don’t say that since only men play professional football, women sports reporters are not allowed to cover the NFL. We don’t tell young people they have no business trying to stop the abuse of the elderly in nursing homes. We don’t say that only children can speak out against child abuse.It is obnoxious to say that men have no right to speak out against the killing of children. In the first place, men don’t need to be given the right to speak out against the killing of children, they already have a responsibility to do so. Real men don’t just stand around with their hands in their pockets while helpless babies are slaughtered for money. In fact, any man who is frightened into silence and inaction because of his gender wasn’t really much of a man to begin with.
Also, to say that men have no stake in abortion is to ignore the biological reality that every time a woman kills her own child she is also killing a father’s child.1
(Visit Life Dynamics at www.LifeDynamics.com and Mr. Crutcher's blog at www.markcrutcherblog.com.)
1Crutcher, Mark. On Message. Life Dynamics Incorporated, 2005, p. 32
The Stonecutter
There was once a stone cutter who was dissatisfied with himself and with his position in life.
One day he passed a wealthy merchant's house. Through the open gateway, he saw many fine possessions and important visitors. "How powerful that merchant must be!" thought the stone cutter. He became very envious and wished that he could be like the merchant.
To his great surprise, he suddenly became the merchant, enjoying more luxuries and power than he had ever imagined, but envied and detested by those less wealthy than himself. Soon a high official passed by, carried in a sedan chair, accompanied by attendants and escorted by soldiers beating gongs. Everyone, no matter how wealthy, had to bow low before the procession. "How powerful that official is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be a high official!"
Then he became the high official, carried everywhere in his embroidered sedan chair, feared and hated by the people all around. It was a hot summer day, so the official felt very uncomfortable in the sticky sedan chair. He looked up at the sun. It shone proudly in the sky, unaffected by his presence. "How powerful the sun is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be the sun!"
Then he became the sun, shining fiercely down on everyone, scorching the fields, cursed by the farmers and laborers. But a huge black cloud moved between him and the earth, so that his light could no longer shine on everything below. "How powerful that storm cloud is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be a cloud!"
Then he became the cloud, flooding the fields and villages, shouted at by everyone. But soon he found that he was being pushed away by some great force, and realized that it was the wind. "How powerful it is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be the wind!"
Then he became the wind, blowing tiles off the roofs of houses, uprooting trees, feared and hated by all below him. But after a while, he ran up against something that would not move, no matter how forcefully he blew against it - a huge, towering rock. "How powerful that rock is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be a rock!"
Then he became the rock, more powerful than anything else on earth. But as he stood there, he heard the sound of a hammer pounding a chisel into the hard surface, and felt himself being changed. "What could be more powerful than I, the rock?" he thought.
He looked down and saw far below him the figure of a stone cutter.
(As heard told by Glen Leverentz on "Glen's Story Corner" on Relevant Radio - www.relevantradio.com).
One day he passed a wealthy merchant's house. Through the open gateway, he saw many fine possessions and important visitors. "How powerful that merchant must be!" thought the stone cutter. He became very envious and wished that he could be like the merchant.
To his great surprise, he suddenly became the merchant, enjoying more luxuries and power than he had ever imagined, but envied and detested by those less wealthy than himself. Soon a high official passed by, carried in a sedan chair, accompanied by attendants and escorted by soldiers beating gongs. Everyone, no matter how wealthy, had to bow low before the procession. "How powerful that official is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be a high official!"
Then he became the high official, carried everywhere in his embroidered sedan chair, feared and hated by the people all around. It was a hot summer day, so the official felt very uncomfortable in the sticky sedan chair. He looked up at the sun. It shone proudly in the sky, unaffected by his presence. "How powerful the sun is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be the sun!"
Then he became the sun, shining fiercely down on everyone, scorching the fields, cursed by the farmers and laborers. But a huge black cloud moved between him and the earth, so that his light could no longer shine on everything below. "How powerful that storm cloud is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be a cloud!"
Then he became the cloud, flooding the fields and villages, shouted at by everyone. But soon he found that he was being pushed away by some great force, and realized that it was the wind. "How powerful it is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be the wind!"
Then he became the wind, blowing tiles off the roofs of houses, uprooting trees, feared and hated by all below him. But after a while, he ran up against something that would not move, no matter how forcefully he blew against it - a huge, towering rock. "How powerful that rock is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be a rock!"
Then he became the rock, more powerful than anything else on earth. But as he stood there, he heard the sound of a hammer pounding a chisel into the hard surface, and felt himself being changed. "What could be more powerful than I, the rock?" he thought.
He looked down and saw far below him the figure of a stone cutter.
(As heard told by Glen Leverentz on "Glen's Story Corner" on Relevant Radio - www.relevantradio.com).
Monday, January 18, 2010
Pithy Lyric - Respectable by Don McLean
From his debut album "Tapestry" released in 1970. In this fast-paced tale of poetry set to music Don McLean gets quite a bit done in just about two and a half minutes. The album also included his original version of "And I Love You So" (recorded famously by Perry Como, peaking at #29 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1973) and the up tempo version of "Castles in the Air" (which would be the B-side of "Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)" in 1972, and would chart again in 1981 re-worked as a ballad, peaking at #36 on the Billboard Hot 100). In 1971 Don McLean's "American Pie" was released. The song topped the Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks. - J.L.
And perhaps you're wondering how you're going to cope with your disgrace.
Well your wealth is well established and your friends were never few,
And all the things they told you of you're finding to be true.
Well if truth can free the guilty while the innocent must die,
Then I respect, respect, respect the coldest lie.
And you talk of human justice while you drive on fancy wheels.
And you push them to their limit just to see how nice it feels.
Well it doesn't really matter if she's living or she's dead,
You just drive away forgetting that your bumper's dipped in red.
Well if that's the kind of justice that our hall of justice claims,
Then I respect, respect, respect old Jesse James.
And most cordially they caught you and they asked you to obey.
And they threw you into prison, just in case you could not pay.
Well King Arthur jousted Lancelot, who stole away his wife;
And your lawyers jousted with the court to save your precious life.
Well if living is what matters though you lie with every breath,
Then I respect, respect, the ones we put to death.
And you won your case most easily and soon you will be free.
But there will be a million more who lose their liberty.
Not because of what they did, but what they did not do:
They did not pay a lawyer or a judge to see them through.
Why, they had no friends to call on and they could not raise their bail.
Well if winning is what matters, I respect the ones who fail.
---
Ah, it ain't so easy is it? you almost lost your place.And perhaps you're wondering how you're going to cope with your disgrace.
Well your wealth is well established and your friends were never few,
And all the things they told you of you're finding to be true.
Well if truth can free the guilty while the innocent must die,
Then I respect, respect, respect the coldest lie.
And you talk of human justice while you drive on fancy wheels.
And you push them to their limit just to see how nice it feels.
Well it doesn't really matter if she's living or she's dead,
You just drive away forgetting that your bumper's dipped in red.
Well if that's the kind of justice that our hall of justice claims,
Then I respect, respect, respect old Jesse James.
And most cordially they caught you and they asked you to obey.
And they threw you into prison, just in case you could not pay.
Well King Arthur jousted Lancelot, who stole away his wife;
And your lawyers jousted with the court to save your precious life.
Well if living is what matters though you lie with every breath,
Then I respect, respect, the ones we put to death.
And you won your case most easily and soon you will be free.
But there will be a million more who lose their liberty.
Not because of what they did, but what they did not do:
They did not pay a lawyer or a judge to see them through.
Why, they had no friends to call on and they could not raise their bail.
Well if winning is what matters, I respect the ones who fail.
Pithy Lyric on the Nature of Humans
The Boxer written by Paul Simon
All lies in jest
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest ...
All lies in jest
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest ...
A Girl and Her Dog
Our 14 year old dog, Abbey, died last month. The day after she died, my 4 year old daughter Meredith was crying and talking about how much she missed Abbey. She asked if we could write a letter to God so that when Abbey got to heaven, God would recognize her. I told her that I thought we could so she dictated these words:
We put the letter in an envelope with a picture of Abbey and Meredith and addressed it to God/Heaven. We put our return address on it. Then Meredith pasted several stamps on the front of the envelope because she said it would take lots of stamps to get the letter all the way to heaven. That afternoon she dropped it into the letter box at the post office. A few days later, she asked if God had gotten the letter yet. I told her that I thought He had.
Yesterday, there was a package wrapped in gold paper on our front porch addressed, ‘To Meredith’ in an unfamiliar hand. Meredith opened it. Inside was a book by Mr. Rogers called, ‘When a Pet Dies’. Taped to the inside front cover was the letter we had written to God in its opened envelope. On the opposite page was the picture of Abbey & Meredith and this note:
Dear God,
Will you please take care of my dog? She died yesterday and is with you in heaven. I miss her very much. I am happy that you let me have her as my dog even though she got sick.
I hope you will play with her. She likes to play with balls and to swim. I am sending a picture of her so when you see her You will know that she is my dog. I really miss her.
Love, Meredith
We put the letter in an envelope with a picture of Abbey and Meredith and addressed it to God/Heaven. We put our return address on it. Then Meredith pasted several stamps on the front of the envelope because she said it would take lots of stamps to get the letter all the way to heaven. That afternoon she dropped it into the letter box at the post office. A few days later, she asked if God had gotten the letter yet. I told her that I thought He had.
Yesterday, there was a package wrapped in gold paper on our front porch addressed, ‘To Meredith’ in an unfamiliar hand. Meredith opened it. Inside was a book by Mr. Rogers called, ‘When a Pet Dies’. Taped to the inside front cover was the letter we had written to God in its opened envelope. On the opposite page was the picture of Abbey & Meredith and this note:
Dear Meredith,
Abbey arrived safely in heaven. Having the picture was a big help. I recognized Abbey right away. Abbey isn’t sick anymore. Her spirit is here with me just like it stays in your heart. Abbey loved being your dog.
Since we don’t need our bodies in heaven, I don’t have any pockets to keep your picture in, so I am sending it back to you in this little book for you to keep and have something to remember Abbey by.
Thank you for the beautiful letter and thank your mother for helping you write it and sending it to me. What a wonderful mother you have. I picked her especially for you.
I send my blessings every day and remember that I love you very much. By the way, I’m easy to find, I am wherever there is love.
...
Heard on RelevantRadio.com, read by Glen LeverentzSunday, January 17, 2010
Have you ever been MADLY in love?
Sunday, January 17, 2010
For as many times as I may have heard the readings read at Mass today, today I heard something differently. The Gospel reading was about the wedding at Cana –
Jn 2:1-11
There was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.
Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the wedding. When the wine ran short, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.”
His mother said to the servers, “Do whatever he tells you.”
Now there were six stone water jars there for Jewish ceremonial washings, each holding twenty to thirty gallons. Jesus told them, “Fill the jars with water.”
So they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, “Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter.”
So they took it. And when the headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine, without knowing where it came from — although the servers who had drawn the water knew —, the headwaiter called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves good wine first, and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one; buy you have kept the good wine until now.”
Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs at Cana in Galilee and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him. (NAB)
What really struck me … what I heard more clearly this time is that what God offers, what Jesus (God in the form of a man) offers, is better than anything man can offer on his own, even better than what nature can offer on its own (even though nature may often more effortlessly and more truly reflect and cooperate with God’s will). What God offers is better, notably so.
It is not difficult imagining those there present, those whose taste buds had not yet numbed, wondering “Where did THIS wine come from? This wine is the BEST wine.” Yet it had come from water, dirty water.
Have you ever been madly in love with someone? Madly in love with your spouse; madly in love with a boyfriend; madly in love with a girlfriend; madly in love with a newborn son or newborn daughter; madly in love with YOUR child.
When you are madly in love you want to share with the object of that affection what’s best … your best … THE best!
God is madly in love with you …
For as many times as I may have heard the readings read at Mass today, today I heard something differently. The Gospel reading was about the wedding at Cana –
+++
GospelJn 2:1-11
There was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.
Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the wedding. When the wine ran short, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.”
His mother said to the servers, “Do whatever he tells you.”
Now there were six stone water jars there for Jewish ceremonial washings, each holding twenty to thirty gallons. Jesus told them, “Fill the jars with water.”
So they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, “Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter.”
So they took it. And when the headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine, without knowing where it came from — although the servers who had drawn the water knew —, the headwaiter called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves good wine first, and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one; buy you have kept the good wine until now.”
Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs at Cana in Galilee and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him. (NAB)
+++
What really struck me … what I heard more clearly this time is that what God offers, what Jesus (God in the form of a man) offers, is better than anything man can offer on his own, even better than what nature can offer on its own (even though nature may often more effortlessly and more truly reflect and cooperate with God’s will). What God offers is better, notably so.
It is not difficult imagining those there present, those whose taste buds had not yet numbed, wondering “Where did THIS wine come from? This wine is the BEST wine.” Yet it had come from water, dirty water.
Have you ever been madly in love with someone? Madly in love with your spouse; madly in love with a boyfriend; madly in love with a girlfriend; madly in love with a newborn son or newborn daughter; madly in love with YOUR child.
When you are madly in love you want to share with the object of that affection what’s best … your best … THE best!
God is madly in love with you …
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Giving and Receiving
Paul received an automobile from his brother as a Christmas present. On Christmas Eve when Paul came out of his office, a young boy was walking around the shiny new car, admiring it.
"Is this your car, Mister?" he asked.
Paul nodded. "My brother gave it to me for Christmas."
The boy was astounded. "You mean your brother gave it to you and it didn't cost you nothing? Boy, I wish ... " he hesitated.
Of course Paul knew what he was going to wish for. He was going to wish he had a brother like that, but what the lad said jarred Paul all the way down to his heels.
"I wish," the boy went on, "that I could be a brother like that."
Paul looked at the boy in astonishment, then impulsively he added, "Would you like to take a ride in my automobile?"
"Oh yes, I'd love that."
After a short ride, the boy turned and with his eyes aglow said, "Mister, would you mind driving in front of my house?"
Paul smiled a little. He thought he knew what the lad wanted. He wanted to show his neighbors that he could ride home in a big automobile. Paul was wrong again.
"Will you stop where those two steps are?" the boy asked.
He ran up the steps. Then in a little while Paul heard him coming back, but he was not coming fast. He was carrying his little crippled brother. He sat him down on the bottom step, then sort of squeezed up against him, pointed to the car and said, "There she is, buddy, just like I told you upstairs. His brother gave it to him for Christmas and it didn't cost him a cent, and some day I'm gonna give you one just like it. Then you can see for yourself all the pretty things in the Christmas windows that I've been trying to tell you about."
Paul got out and lifted the lad to the front seat of his car. The shining-eyed older brother climbed in beside him and the three of them began a memorable holiday ride.
That Christmas Eve, Paul learned what Jesus meant when he had said - "It is more blessed to give than to receive".
"Is this your car, Mister?" he asked.
Paul nodded. "My brother gave it to me for Christmas."
The boy was astounded. "You mean your brother gave it to you and it didn't cost you nothing? Boy, I wish ... " he hesitated.
Of course Paul knew what he was going to wish for. He was going to wish he had a brother like that, but what the lad said jarred Paul all the way down to his heels.
"I wish," the boy went on, "that I could be a brother like that."
Paul looked at the boy in astonishment, then impulsively he added, "Would you like to take a ride in my automobile?"
"Oh yes, I'd love that."
After a short ride, the boy turned and with his eyes aglow said, "Mister, would you mind driving in front of my house?"
Paul smiled a little. He thought he knew what the lad wanted. He wanted to show his neighbors that he could ride home in a big automobile. Paul was wrong again.
"Will you stop where those two steps are?" the boy asked.
He ran up the steps. Then in a little while Paul heard him coming back, but he was not coming fast. He was carrying his little crippled brother. He sat him down on the bottom step, then sort of squeezed up against him, pointed to the car and said, "There she is, buddy, just like I told you upstairs. His brother gave it to him for Christmas and it didn't cost him a cent, and some day I'm gonna give you one just like it. Then you can see for yourself all the pretty things in the Christmas windows that I've been trying to tell you about."
Paul got out and lifted the lad to the front seat of his car. The shining-eyed older brother climbed in beside him and the three of them began a memorable holiday ride.
That Christmas Eve, Paul learned what Jesus meant when he had said - "It is more blessed to give than to receive".
Friday, January 15, 2010
On abortion - Back-alley-abortions and "Rape clinics", comments by Mark Crutcher
Few write with clarity and precision as well as Mark Crutcher, Founder and President of Life Dynamics. Here, from his blog (http://www.markcrutcherblog.com), Mr. Crutcher exposes a false logic used to justify abortion in cases rape, and he does so with his customary reason and logic.
If Saving Women is Really the Goal . . .
October 23, 2007
Now that the political season is back at our throats, we are again hearing the abortion lobby trot out its usual collection of distortions, half-truths and outright lies. Of course, one of their favorites is the old line that since women are going to have abortions regardless of what the law says, we have to protect them against dangerous back-alley abortions.
This assumes that the legal abortions women are getting right now are safe, but we'll let that fairy tail slide for the moment. We'll also ignore the fact that, if abortion were outlawed today and illegal abortionists started springing up next week, every one of them would be someone who is pro-choice. In fact, every woman who was ever killed or maimed during an abortion was killed or maimed by someone who was pro-choice. That means the obvious solution to the back-alley abortion problem is for the pro-choice mob not to do them. But like I said, we'll ignore that for now.
What I'm wondering about is this. If the motivation for legalized abortion really is to save the lives of women, why aren't the people who make that argument also calling for the repeal of laws against rape? After all, it is not uncommon for a woman to be killed by a rapist so she can't identify him to the authorities. Legalizing rape would save those women by taking away the rapists' motivation for killing them.
Legalization could also result in the establishment of rape clinics where rapists could take their victims instead of dragging them into dangerous back-allies. These facilities could offer clean rooms, condom machines, emergency contraception and perhaps even doctors on staff in case the rapist injures his victim. We could also issue licenses to rapists requiring them to undergo monthly testing for AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Remember, the pro-choice argument is that women are going to have abortions regardless of what the law says, and that keeping abortion legal will make sure they occur in a clean and safe environment. Well, those dynamics also apply to rape. We know that keeping rape illegal has not stopped women from being raped, so why not try to create a more “enlightened” nation where rape is safe, legal and rare?
And by the way, as ridiculous as this suggestion is, if our goal is saving women's lives, it makes as much sense as legalized abortion.
http://www.markcrutcherblog.com/index.cfm/rape
If Saving Women is Really the Goal . . .
October 23, 2007
Now that the political season is back at our throats, we are again hearing the abortion lobby trot out its usual collection of distortions, half-truths and outright lies. Of course, one of their favorites is the old line that since women are going to have abortions regardless of what the law says, we have to protect them against dangerous back-alley abortions.
This assumes that the legal abortions women are getting right now are safe, but we'll let that fairy tail slide for the moment. We'll also ignore the fact that, if abortion were outlawed today and illegal abortionists started springing up next week, every one of them would be someone who is pro-choice. In fact, every woman who was ever killed or maimed during an abortion was killed or maimed by someone who was pro-choice. That means the obvious solution to the back-alley abortion problem is for the pro-choice mob not to do them. But like I said, we'll ignore that for now.
What I'm wondering about is this. If the motivation for legalized abortion really is to save the lives of women, why aren't the people who make that argument also calling for the repeal of laws against rape? After all, it is not uncommon for a woman to be killed by a rapist so she can't identify him to the authorities. Legalizing rape would save those women by taking away the rapists' motivation for killing them.
Legalization could also result in the establishment of rape clinics where rapists could take their victims instead of dragging them into dangerous back-allies. These facilities could offer clean rooms, condom machines, emergency contraception and perhaps even doctors on staff in case the rapist injures his victim. We could also issue licenses to rapists requiring them to undergo monthly testing for AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Remember, the pro-choice argument is that women are going to have abortions regardless of what the law says, and that keeping abortion legal will make sure they occur in a clean and safe environment. Well, those dynamics also apply to rape. We know that keeping rape illegal has not stopped women from being raped, so why not try to create a more “enlightened” nation where rape is safe, legal and rare?
And by the way, as ridiculous as this suggestion is, if our goal is saving women's lives, it makes as much sense as legalized abortion.
http://www.markcrutcherblog.com/index.cfm/rape
“Personally Opposed, But…” Five Pro-Abortion Dodges by Todd M. Aglialoro
“Personally Opposed, But…” Five Pro-Abortion Dodges
By Todd M. Aglialoro
In that passage from Orthodoxy so familiar that it is almost now cliché, G. K. Chesterton wrote that there are a thousand angles at which a man may fall but only one at which he stands. By this he argued for the unique, enduring character of orthodox Church doctrine, of the one, true, upstanding strand of Right Teaching. Though the same tired heresies may reappear to contest it—mutated, renamed, warmed-over—the old, wild truth remains standing, “reeling but erect.”
This well-worn lesson takes on a new freshness, I think, when applied to the culture war. The wild truths that inform Christian ethics—our insistence on a moral universe, on a real human nature with its own teleology, on the transcendent significance of human acts and human relationships—also reel but remain erect in the face of perennial challenges. We are not gods. Moral truth is something we discover, not invent. From the Garden of Eden to the Supreme Court of the United States, we have fought the same battle under different banners.
In what is probably the modern culture battle par excellence, the fight against abortion, we see displayed with perfect clarity the principle of a single upright truth (that directly killing an unborn child is an evil and a crime) being contested by a rotation of errors; taking turns or working in tandem, passing in and out of fashion, each seizing upon the vocabulary, events, and moods of the cultural moment until the next comes along to supplant it.
In some cases cultural developments render one of them obsolete. In the years shortly after Roe v. Wade, abortion debates inevitably featured three words the pro-abortion side considered a trump card: “blob of tissue.” This factually empty but sound-bite–perfect catchphrase made a great impact with its implication that the fetus was roughly equivalent to a ball of snot. Which put abortion about on par with picking your nose: bad form, a messy affair that ought to be kept private, but nothing to get overly excited about.
Of course, advances in the study of human embryology, most notably the window to the womb afforded by the sonogram, all but pulled the teeth from the “blob of tissue” canard. The 1980 film The Silent Scream, an ultrasound depiction of an abortion at eleven weeks, provided a chilling, graphic look at abortion’s inner workings. And today, expectant mothers keep pictures of their “blobs of tissue” on the refrigerator. They make copies and stuff them into Christmas cards.
So that particular line was no longer viable. But it wouldn’t be the last. More would follow, and we who are engaged in the culture have surely heard most of them. However, even for those who have heard them all, I think it can be valuable to gather them up and define them; to identify their originators, exemplars, and champions; to understand their appeal; and to consider how to counter them. Let us now look, then, at five (a nice number, though by no means exhaustive) of history’s most insidious pro-abortion arguments.
1. ‘Don’t Say the “A” word’: NARAL
Names are important to propagandists. One could hardly imagine, for example, Planned Parenthood enjoying the status it does had it not in 1942 dropped “American Birth Control League” in favor of its current benevolent-sounding moniker. What if Greenpeace had instead called itself “Vegan Freaks Against Ambergris”? Would society still look on that organization in the indulgently tolerant way it does today? Would Bono still play its benefit concerts? There are some things we are just never meant to know.
Early last year, in a calculated PR move, the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) changed its name to NARAL Pro-Choice America. Amazingly, the new name is even more cumbersome than the old. “NARAL” juts out at the front like “Nokia” before “Sugar Bowl.” But this name change was not about streamlining signage and business cards. It was an attempt to deflect notice from the singular object of NARAL’s 30-plus years of existence—unlimited access to abortion-on-demand—and toward broader, more high-minded, and less gruesome concepts of gender equality and personal self-determination. The change was timed to coincide with a multimillion-dollar ad campaign depicting the new-and-improved NARAL not so much as an advocate of “abortion rights” as a defender of women’s suffrage, satellite TV, and 31 Flavors.
Semantic games have always been part of the battle, of course. No one—no one, mind you—is “pro-abortion.” Folks are “pro-choice,” “pro–reproductive rights,” or, slightly more courageously, “pro–abortion rights.” In each case, even the last, the emphasis is steered away from the repugnant reality of abortion itself—a sure loser in focus groups time and time again. Whenever we debate abortion or write a letter to the editor, we engage in a struggle for the linguistic high ground.
But NARAL’s gambit takes things to a new level. By all accounts, abortion’s popularity is waning steadily. Recent polls show high school and college students reporting pro-life leanings in growing numbers. The pro-life side’s rare propaganda advantage in the partial-birth abortion debate has riveted public attention with clinically graphic descriptions of the violence abortion inflicts on the unborn.
Clearly, the long-term survival strategy, from NARAL’s perspective, is to make the abortion debate about anything but abortion.
It can be wearying sometimes, but the counter-strategy is continually to return the debate to where it belongs: the humanity of the unborn child and his right to life. It may also be effective to ask just why abortion is so repugnant to so many.
2. ‘Personally Opposed, But...’: Mario Cuomo
It is these days thoroughly engrained in abortion discourse; its premises taken for granted and its logic never questioned. It is all too common for a politician, clergyman, or fellow parishioner to claim that he is “personally opposed” to abortion but wouldn’t dream of “imposing” that opinion on a public with diverse religious and ethical beliefs—and then sit back, secure in the feeling that his is an ironclad position.
Yet this line about being “personally opposed, but…” has only the appearance of reasonableness, acquired through sheer repetition. It also fits perfectly in a society valuing tolerance above all other virtues, conflict-avoidance over tackling unpleasant truths.
Some might trace this attitude back to John F. Kennedy, who as the price of the presidency swore that he would not let his Romish religious convictions dictate his politics. And if you want to point to JFK as a kind of spiritual grandfather to the “personally opposed, but…” position, you’ll get no argument from me. But in its full form it must be credited not to Kennedy but to the former governor of New York, Mario Cuomo.
In a 1984 speech at the University of Notre Dame (at the invitation of the notorious Rev. Richard McBrien) titled “Religious Belief and Public Morality,” Cuomo laid out the basic premises of the “personally opposed, but…” line, by way of reconciling his soi-disant devout Catholicism with his political support for abortion-on-demand. Skillfully equivocating Catholic teaching on abortion with Catholic teaching on contraception and divorce, as well as a presumed Catholic perspective toward nuclear weapons, he asks, would it be right for a Catholic to make (or sign) laws forbidding divorce? Withholding state funds for contraception? Instituting a unilateral nuclear freeze?
“Should I argue,” he asks, “to make my religious value your morality? My rule of conduct your limitation?” Clearly not, is his conclusion. Not, absent a democratic consensus, in a society of varied and sometimes flatly contradictory moral values, a society in which even the collective voice of Christianity is not monolithic on issues but fractured and sectarian. Not, he notes, when “there is no Church teaching that mandates the best political course for making our belief everyone’s rule, for spreading this part of our Catholicism.”
The forceful case made by Cuomo in his speech (he quotes for support, in places, Michael Novak and even Pope John Paul II; the whole thing makes for fascinating reading) touches only on the context of politics, and mostly from the politician’s perspective. But its spirit has crept out of the corridors of power into general society. It is the spirit that makes the saying “If you don’t like abortion, don’t have one” sound to some ears like a devastating rejoinder. The spirit that gives rise to slogans like “You can’t legislate morality,” when in fact the morality that protects human rights and thus the common good is the first and best thing worth legislating.
It is also the spirit that animates our next argument.
3. ‘Safe, Legal, and Rare’: Bill Clinton
Among politicians only Bill Clinton could devise a line like this, during his 1996 campaign, brilliantly triangulating liberal abortion-on-demand orthodoxy with Middle America’s broad-based distaste for the practice. Ultimately nonsensical yet somehow familiar and reassuring, like a couplet from Dr. Seuss, this buzz phrase became an instant and enduring success, for two reasons.
First, it validated the internal conflict that the majority of Americans were (and still are) experiencing over the abortion question. They were conscious of a natural sense of revulsion toward abortion itself, yet unwilling for whatever reason to sign on whole-hog with the pro-lifers. Clinton let them know that he felt their pain and that his administration’s policy would include a subtle nod toward the general feeling that abortion is a Bad Thing (which ought to be “rare”) but would not place restrictions on its availability (“legal”) that might send women to back alleys (“safe”). Thus he accomplished an unprecedented political feat: co-opting the vaguely antiabortion sentiments of the masses and mollifying the blood lust of the radical pro-abort left with one simple statement.
“Safe, legal, and rare” also subtly but definitely realigned the terms of the abortion debate. No longer would the question center on whether the aborted fetus was a blob or a baby; no longer would it be necessary to make tortured distinctions between public and private morality. In the first place, safety and legality are conservative concepts, not radical ones. Now the pro-choicer could consider himself a guardian of the status quo—an American tradition, even. In the second place, with the word “rare,” the focus shifted away from abortion itself (which we now presumed to be beyond debate) and toward abortion’s presumptive root causes. The abortion issue was now really a health-care or poverty or education issue—right in the liberal Democrats’ wheelhouse.
To be truly pro-life, they could argue, meant to “get over this love affair with the fetus” (as former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders put it, with typical elegance) and instead pay attention to alleviating the conditions that led women to get abortions in the first place. Implied here, of course, is a kind of false dichotomy: The qualities of justice and mercy are not strained, nor must the interests of the mother and unborn child be necessarily set at odds. But the argument worked by playing into multiple stereotypes: pro-lifers as single-issue fanatics, misogynists, icy-hearted grinches. And it allowed politicians to spin abortion questions into Great Society sermonettes.
Pro-abortionists’ next major tack would ratchet to a new level the lip-biting empathy invoked by “safe, legal, and rare” and that slogan’s tacit admission of abortion’s unpleasantness. But at the same time, it would rebuke the Clintonian strategy of ignoring or spinning away from the question of abortion itself.
4. ‘Embrace the Guilt’: Naomi Wolf
Feminist-at-large Naomi Wolf is perhaps best known for her work as a consultant to Al Gore’s presidential campaign in 1999-2000. Charged with creating, ex nihilo, a personality for the vice president that would play better with women voters, Wolf devised the “alpha male” strategy, which began with Gore donning earth tones and lumberjack duds and ended (mercifully) with his PG-13 smooch of Mrs. Gore on convention night. In years previous, Wolf had been credited with identifying the “soccer mom” constituency while advising Clinton’s reelection bid and caused numerous stirs with her books and publications on gender conflict and female sexual “liberation.”
But in an earlier writing—an article for The New Republic in 1995—she caused quite a different kind of stir. In it she claimed that her recent firsthand experience of pregnancy and childbirth had given her a new perspective on the abortion debate, a perspective she believed her fellow feminist pro-choicers needed to hear and act on.
In “Our Bodies, Our Souls,” Wolf called for “a radical shift in the pro-choice movement’s rhetoric and consciousness about abortion.” Self-deluded by their long practice of dehumanizing the unborn (what she termed “the fetus-is-nothing paradigm of the pro-choice movement”), pro-choicers, she argued, were falling dangerously out of touch with the reality of abortion and women’s experiences with it. In order to avert the loss of credibility and thus political influence the abortion movement would suffer thereby (although to her credit, Wolf also cited the need simply “to be faithful to the truth”), she asserted the “need to contextualize the fight to defend abortion rights within a moral framework that admits that the death of a fetus is a real death.”
This remarkable essay is liable to engender, in the pro-life observer, the same kind of cognitive dissonance that “safe, legal, and rare” does. In it Wolf admits bluntly that the fetus is a live human being with a certain value and that abortion undoubtedly kills that human being. She laments the prevalence of casual, “‘I don’t know what came over me; it was such good Chardonnay’ abortions.” She insists that abortion calls for a period of “mourning” and recommends spiritual “mending” ceremonies for women who abort, for vigils outside abortion clinics “commemorating and saying goodbye to the dead.”
Yet her practical aim all along is to help other pro-abortionists develop a better strategy for keeping abortion legal.
Wolf avoids adopting conventional pro-life convictions by assigning the significance of the guilt and blood and killing to interior categories only. “If I found myself in circumstances in which I had to make the terrible decision to end this life,” she writes, “then that would be between myself and God.” For the unhappily pregnant woman, oppressed by patriarchal society and burdened by this fellow-victim inside her womb, abortion is not a social injustice but a personal “failure”; an evil to be borne and acknowledged and slowly atoned for.
For its frank admission (and thus diffusion) of the evidence that abortion kills a living human being, and its conclusion that this evidence doesn’t logically require prohibition of abortion—and in fact may even lend its perpetrators a certain tragic nobility—Wolf’s argument is a powerful one. Its effects live on in every pro-choice apologist who tries to imbue his position with moral gravity—or, as with our next case, in those who invoke the name of God.
5. ‘Pro-Faith, Pro-Family, Pro-Choice’: The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice
Some abortion advocates pick up Wolf’s ball and run even farther with it. For some, God might be not merely patiently tolerant, even sympathetic, toward this business of feticide; He may in fact positively endorse it, as the exercise of a mature and devout conscience. For sure, the landscape is dotted with liberal churches and associations of them, each self-defined as “pro-choice.” But the biggest and best organizational representation of the religious pro-abortion folk can be found within the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), Planned Parenthood’s collar-and-chasuble lackey.
Beginning with the assertion that “most people of faith are pro-choice because of their religious beliefs, not in spite of them,” the RCRC attempts to build a case for abortion on both sectarian and interreligious principles. First, compassion: “People who follow Jesus…should bring healing and wholeness to those in distress,” claims one of the canned sermons the group offers as a resource. This means not forcing them into back alleys for their “healing” abortions and not forbidding them to opt out of the life-threatening ordeal of childbirth. Of course, there’s good ol’ freedom of conscience, too. Didn’t Jesus “emphasize the moral agency of each person”? By this He compels us to believe that a woman’s “life, health, and freedom…are more important than the potential life in her womb.”
Not convinced? Then there’s the cleanup issue: religious freedom. Church and state are separated in this country; without this separation we would be in danger of losing the freedom to believe and worship freely. “And at the center of religious freedom is keeping the government out of personal moral decisions such as terminating a pregnancy.”
This rather bald assertion is a kissing cousin to the “libertarian” pro-abortion argument one is beginning to hear more frequently (which I do not treat fully here due to space limitations): According to this argument, the whole question hinges on whether “the government” has the right to interfere with personal medical decisions. Here the RCRC simply substitutes “moral” or “religious” for “medical.” The antiabortionist’s affront is not to the presumed sacrosanctity of medicine but to the cherished American ideal of religious liberty, of which the right to an abortion has apparently become iconic.
One could spend a great deal of time deconstructing the RCRC—its sophistic mastery of religious vocabulary and concepts; its historical place in the disintegration of American mainline Protestantism; its clever self-positioning as an “equal but opposite” voice in the abortion debate and thus its successful bid to neutralize the natural advantage the pro-life side enjoys in religious contexts.
But I will make just one other observation: It’s the pro-abortion side that always wants to turn this into a religious issue. Sure, there’s no shortage of biblical positivist pro-lifers, but by and large, the pro-life side would like to frame the debate in social-justice terms. One needn’t be a Christian to oppose murder or to look at a sonogram. Conversely the pro-abortionists need desperately to paint the issue as a struggle against religious zealotry.
To these folks it is always an effective—and unexpected—rejoinder to ask that they stop talking about God so much.
Wesley Clark and the Eclipse of Reason
There may be a thousand angles at which a man can fall and an equal number of ways to justify killing the unborn, yet all pro-abortion arguments really boil down to one root fallacy. General Wesley Clark, once a pretender to the Democratic presidential nomination, expressed it quite well to a New Hampshire newspaper earlier this year. Keen to display his abortion credentials (having entered the race too late to attend the NARAL fund-raiser at which the other major candidates had already pledged their obeisance), Clark claimed to oppose all restrictions to abortion, up to the point of complete delivery. After fumbling for a moment with a follow-up question about where life begins, he replied, “Life begins with a mother’s decision.”
Here we have a philosophical phenomenon aptly summarized by the title of Bernard Nathanson’s second film, The Eclipse of Reason. Here we have nothing less than a fundamental crisis of being at the heart of our culture: a legal and societal status quo wherein a person is defined (and thus has rights apportioned to him) not by what he is but by how another person feels about him. This has been underscored in the debate over the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. If “life begins with a mother’s decision,” kill a pregnant woman on the way to an abortion clinic and you’ve committed one murder; kill a pregnant woman on the way to buy baby clothes and you’ve committed two.
The human mind can barely contain such a violent conflict of premises, forced together against the laws of nature and reason like identical poles of powerful magnets. How much more can the national soul contain it?
Todd M. Aglialoro is editor for Sophia Institute Press.
By Todd M. Aglialoro
In that passage from Orthodoxy so familiar that it is almost now cliché, G. K. Chesterton wrote that there are a thousand angles at which a man may fall but only one at which he stands. By this he argued for the unique, enduring character of orthodox Church doctrine, of the one, true, upstanding strand of Right Teaching. Though the same tired heresies may reappear to contest it—mutated, renamed, warmed-over—the old, wild truth remains standing, “reeling but erect.”
This well-worn lesson takes on a new freshness, I think, when applied to the culture war. The wild truths that inform Christian ethics—our insistence on a moral universe, on a real human nature with its own teleology, on the transcendent significance of human acts and human relationships—also reel but remain erect in the face of perennial challenges. We are not gods. Moral truth is something we discover, not invent. From the Garden of Eden to the Supreme Court of the United States, we have fought the same battle under different banners.
In what is probably the modern culture battle par excellence, the fight against abortion, we see displayed with perfect clarity the principle of a single upright truth (that directly killing an unborn child is an evil and a crime) being contested by a rotation of errors; taking turns or working in tandem, passing in and out of fashion, each seizing upon the vocabulary, events, and moods of the cultural moment until the next comes along to supplant it.
In some cases cultural developments render one of them obsolete. In the years shortly after Roe v. Wade, abortion debates inevitably featured three words the pro-abortion side considered a trump card: “blob of tissue.” This factually empty but sound-bite–perfect catchphrase made a great impact with its implication that the fetus was roughly equivalent to a ball of snot. Which put abortion about on par with picking your nose: bad form, a messy affair that ought to be kept private, but nothing to get overly excited about.
Of course, advances in the study of human embryology, most notably the window to the womb afforded by the sonogram, all but pulled the teeth from the “blob of tissue” canard. The 1980 film The Silent Scream, an ultrasound depiction of an abortion at eleven weeks, provided a chilling, graphic look at abortion’s inner workings. And today, expectant mothers keep pictures of their “blobs of tissue” on the refrigerator. They make copies and stuff them into Christmas cards.
So that particular line was no longer viable. But it wouldn’t be the last. More would follow, and we who are engaged in the culture have surely heard most of them. However, even for those who have heard them all, I think it can be valuable to gather them up and define them; to identify their originators, exemplars, and champions; to understand their appeal; and to consider how to counter them. Let us now look, then, at five (a nice number, though by no means exhaustive) of history’s most insidious pro-abortion arguments.
1. ‘Don’t Say the “A” word’: NARAL
Names are important to propagandists. One could hardly imagine, for example, Planned Parenthood enjoying the status it does had it not in 1942 dropped “American Birth Control League” in favor of its current benevolent-sounding moniker. What if Greenpeace had instead called itself “Vegan Freaks Against Ambergris”? Would society still look on that organization in the indulgently tolerant way it does today? Would Bono still play its benefit concerts? There are some things we are just never meant to know.
Early last year, in a calculated PR move, the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) changed its name to NARAL Pro-Choice America. Amazingly, the new name is even more cumbersome than the old. “NARAL” juts out at the front like “Nokia” before “Sugar Bowl.” But this name change was not about streamlining signage and business cards. It was an attempt to deflect notice from the singular object of NARAL’s 30-plus years of existence—unlimited access to abortion-on-demand—and toward broader, more high-minded, and less gruesome concepts of gender equality and personal self-determination. The change was timed to coincide with a multimillion-dollar ad campaign depicting the new-and-improved NARAL not so much as an advocate of “abortion rights” as a defender of women’s suffrage, satellite TV, and 31 Flavors.
Semantic games have always been part of the battle, of course. No one—no one, mind you—is “pro-abortion.” Folks are “pro-choice,” “pro–reproductive rights,” or, slightly more courageously, “pro–abortion rights.” In each case, even the last, the emphasis is steered away from the repugnant reality of abortion itself—a sure loser in focus groups time and time again. Whenever we debate abortion or write a letter to the editor, we engage in a struggle for the linguistic high ground.
But NARAL’s gambit takes things to a new level. By all accounts, abortion’s popularity is waning steadily. Recent polls show high school and college students reporting pro-life leanings in growing numbers. The pro-life side’s rare propaganda advantage in the partial-birth abortion debate has riveted public attention with clinically graphic descriptions of the violence abortion inflicts on the unborn.
Clearly, the long-term survival strategy, from NARAL’s perspective, is to make the abortion debate about anything but abortion.
It can be wearying sometimes, but the counter-strategy is continually to return the debate to where it belongs: the humanity of the unborn child and his right to life. It may also be effective to ask just why abortion is so repugnant to so many.
2. ‘Personally Opposed, But...’: Mario Cuomo
It is these days thoroughly engrained in abortion discourse; its premises taken for granted and its logic never questioned. It is all too common for a politician, clergyman, or fellow parishioner to claim that he is “personally opposed” to abortion but wouldn’t dream of “imposing” that opinion on a public with diverse religious and ethical beliefs—and then sit back, secure in the feeling that his is an ironclad position.
Yet this line about being “personally opposed, but…” has only the appearance of reasonableness, acquired through sheer repetition. It also fits perfectly in a society valuing tolerance above all other virtues, conflict-avoidance over tackling unpleasant truths.
Some might trace this attitude back to John F. Kennedy, who as the price of the presidency swore that he would not let his Romish religious convictions dictate his politics. And if you want to point to JFK as a kind of spiritual grandfather to the “personally opposed, but…” position, you’ll get no argument from me. But in its full form it must be credited not to Kennedy but to the former governor of New York, Mario Cuomo.
In a 1984 speech at the University of Notre Dame (at the invitation of the notorious Rev. Richard McBrien) titled “Religious Belief and Public Morality,” Cuomo laid out the basic premises of the “personally opposed, but…” line, by way of reconciling his soi-disant devout Catholicism with his political support for abortion-on-demand. Skillfully equivocating Catholic teaching on abortion with Catholic teaching on contraception and divorce, as well as a presumed Catholic perspective toward nuclear weapons, he asks, would it be right for a Catholic to make (or sign) laws forbidding divorce? Withholding state funds for contraception? Instituting a unilateral nuclear freeze?
“Should I argue,” he asks, “to make my religious value your morality? My rule of conduct your limitation?” Clearly not, is his conclusion. Not, absent a democratic consensus, in a society of varied and sometimes flatly contradictory moral values, a society in which even the collective voice of Christianity is not monolithic on issues but fractured and sectarian. Not, he notes, when “there is no Church teaching that mandates the best political course for making our belief everyone’s rule, for spreading this part of our Catholicism.”
The forceful case made by Cuomo in his speech (he quotes for support, in places, Michael Novak and even Pope John Paul II; the whole thing makes for fascinating reading) touches only on the context of politics, and mostly from the politician’s perspective. But its spirit has crept out of the corridors of power into general society. It is the spirit that makes the saying “If you don’t like abortion, don’t have one” sound to some ears like a devastating rejoinder. The spirit that gives rise to slogans like “You can’t legislate morality,” when in fact the morality that protects human rights and thus the common good is the first and best thing worth legislating.
It is also the spirit that animates our next argument.
3. ‘Safe, Legal, and Rare’: Bill Clinton
Among politicians only Bill Clinton could devise a line like this, during his 1996 campaign, brilliantly triangulating liberal abortion-on-demand orthodoxy with Middle America’s broad-based distaste for the practice. Ultimately nonsensical yet somehow familiar and reassuring, like a couplet from Dr. Seuss, this buzz phrase became an instant and enduring success, for two reasons.
First, it validated the internal conflict that the majority of Americans were (and still are) experiencing over the abortion question. They were conscious of a natural sense of revulsion toward abortion itself, yet unwilling for whatever reason to sign on whole-hog with the pro-lifers. Clinton let them know that he felt their pain and that his administration’s policy would include a subtle nod toward the general feeling that abortion is a Bad Thing (which ought to be “rare”) but would not place restrictions on its availability (“legal”) that might send women to back alleys (“safe”). Thus he accomplished an unprecedented political feat: co-opting the vaguely antiabortion sentiments of the masses and mollifying the blood lust of the radical pro-abort left with one simple statement.
“Safe, legal, and rare” also subtly but definitely realigned the terms of the abortion debate. No longer would the question center on whether the aborted fetus was a blob or a baby; no longer would it be necessary to make tortured distinctions between public and private morality. In the first place, safety and legality are conservative concepts, not radical ones. Now the pro-choicer could consider himself a guardian of the status quo—an American tradition, even. In the second place, with the word “rare,” the focus shifted away from abortion itself (which we now presumed to be beyond debate) and toward abortion’s presumptive root causes. The abortion issue was now really a health-care or poverty or education issue—right in the liberal Democrats’ wheelhouse.
To be truly pro-life, they could argue, meant to “get over this love affair with the fetus” (as former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders put it, with typical elegance) and instead pay attention to alleviating the conditions that led women to get abortions in the first place. Implied here, of course, is a kind of false dichotomy: The qualities of justice and mercy are not strained, nor must the interests of the mother and unborn child be necessarily set at odds. But the argument worked by playing into multiple stereotypes: pro-lifers as single-issue fanatics, misogynists, icy-hearted grinches. And it allowed politicians to spin abortion questions into Great Society sermonettes.
Pro-abortionists’ next major tack would ratchet to a new level the lip-biting empathy invoked by “safe, legal, and rare” and that slogan’s tacit admission of abortion’s unpleasantness. But at the same time, it would rebuke the Clintonian strategy of ignoring or spinning away from the question of abortion itself.
4. ‘Embrace the Guilt’: Naomi Wolf
Feminist-at-large Naomi Wolf is perhaps best known for her work as a consultant to Al Gore’s presidential campaign in 1999-2000. Charged with creating, ex nihilo, a personality for the vice president that would play better with women voters, Wolf devised the “alpha male” strategy, which began with Gore donning earth tones and lumberjack duds and ended (mercifully) with his PG-13 smooch of Mrs. Gore on convention night. In years previous, Wolf had been credited with identifying the “soccer mom” constituency while advising Clinton’s reelection bid and caused numerous stirs with her books and publications on gender conflict and female sexual “liberation.”
But in an earlier writing—an article for The New Republic in 1995—she caused quite a different kind of stir. In it she claimed that her recent firsthand experience of pregnancy and childbirth had given her a new perspective on the abortion debate, a perspective she believed her fellow feminist pro-choicers needed to hear and act on.
In “Our Bodies, Our Souls,” Wolf called for “a radical shift in the pro-choice movement’s rhetoric and consciousness about abortion.” Self-deluded by their long practice of dehumanizing the unborn (what she termed “the fetus-is-nothing paradigm of the pro-choice movement”), pro-choicers, she argued, were falling dangerously out of touch with the reality of abortion and women’s experiences with it. In order to avert the loss of credibility and thus political influence the abortion movement would suffer thereby (although to her credit, Wolf also cited the need simply “to be faithful to the truth”), she asserted the “need to contextualize the fight to defend abortion rights within a moral framework that admits that the death of a fetus is a real death.”
This remarkable essay is liable to engender, in the pro-life observer, the same kind of cognitive dissonance that “safe, legal, and rare” does. In it Wolf admits bluntly that the fetus is a live human being with a certain value and that abortion undoubtedly kills that human being. She laments the prevalence of casual, “‘I don’t know what came over me; it was such good Chardonnay’ abortions.” She insists that abortion calls for a period of “mourning” and recommends spiritual “mending” ceremonies for women who abort, for vigils outside abortion clinics “commemorating and saying goodbye to the dead.”
Yet her practical aim all along is to help other pro-abortionists develop a better strategy for keeping abortion legal.
Wolf avoids adopting conventional pro-life convictions by assigning the significance of the guilt and blood and killing to interior categories only. “If I found myself in circumstances in which I had to make the terrible decision to end this life,” she writes, “then that would be between myself and God.” For the unhappily pregnant woman, oppressed by patriarchal society and burdened by this fellow-victim inside her womb, abortion is not a social injustice but a personal “failure”; an evil to be borne and acknowledged and slowly atoned for.
For its frank admission (and thus diffusion) of the evidence that abortion kills a living human being, and its conclusion that this evidence doesn’t logically require prohibition of abortion—and in fact may even lend its perpetrators a certain tragic nobility—Wolf’s argument is a powerful one. Its effects live on in every pro-choice apologist who tries to imbue his position with moral gravity—or, as with our next case, in those who invoke the name of God.
5. ‘Pro-Faith, Pro-Family, Pro-Choice’: The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice
Some abortion advocates pick up Wolf’s ball and run even farther with it. For some, God might be not merely patiently tolerant, even sympathetic, toward this business of feticide; He may in fact positively endorse it, as the exercise of a mature and devout conscience. For sure, the landscape is dotted with liberal churches and associations of them, each self-defined as “pro-choice.” But the biggest and best organizational representation of the religious pro-abortion folk can be found within the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), Planned Parenthood’s collar-and-chasuble lackey.
Beginning with the assertion that “most people of faith are pro-choice because of their religious beliefs, not in spite of them,” the RCRC attempts to build a case for abortion on both sectarian and interreligious principles. First, compassion: “People who follow Jesus…should bring healing and wholeness to those in distress,” claims one of the canned sermons the group offers as a resource. This means not forcing them into back alleys for their “healing” abortions and not forbidding them to opt out of the life-threatening ordeal of childbirth. Of course, there’s good ol’ freedom of conscience, too. Didn’t Jesus “emphasize the moral agency of each person”? By this He compels us to believe that a woman’s “life, health, and freedom…are more important than the potential life in her womb.”
Not convinced? Then there’s the cleanup issue: religious freedom. Church and state are separated in this country; without this separation we would be in danger of losing the freedom to believe and worship freely. “And at the center of religious freedom is keeping the government out of personal moral decisions such as terminating a pregnancy.”
This rather bald assertion is a kissing cousin to the “libertarian” pro-abortion argument one is beginning to hear more frequently (which I do not treat fully here due to space limitations): According to this argument, the whole question hinges on whether “the government” has the right to interfere with personal medical decisions. Here the RCRC simply substitutes “moral” or “religious” for “medical.” The antiabortionist’s affront is not to the presumed sacrosanctity of medicine but to the cherished American ideal of religious liberty, of which the right to an abortion has apparently become iconic.
One could spend a great deal of time deconstructing the RCRC—its sophistic mastery of religious vocabulary and concepts; its historical place in the disintegration of American mainline Protestantism; its clever self-positioning as an “equal but opposite” voice in the abortion debate and thus its successful bid to neutralize the natural advantage the pro-life side enjoys in religious contexts.
But I will make just one other observation: It’s the pro-abortion side that always wants to turn this into a religious issue. Sure, there’s no shortage of biblical positivist pro-lifers, but by and large, the pro-life side would like to frame the debate in social-justice terms. One needn’t be a Christian to oppose murder or to look at a sonogram. Conversely the pro-abortionists need desperately to paint the issue as a struggle against religious zealotry.
To these folks it is always an effective—and unexpected—rejoinder to ask that they stop talking about God so much.
Wesley Clark and the Eclipse of Reason
There may be a thousand angles at which a man can fall and an equal number of ways to justify killing the unborn, yet all pro-abortion arguments really boil down to one root fallacy. General Wesley Clark, once a pretender to the Democratic presidential nomination, expressed it quite well to a New Hampshire newspaper earlier this year. Keen to display his abortion credentials (having entered the race too late to attend the NARAL fund-raiser at which the other major candidates had already pledged their obeisance), Clark claimed to oppose all restrictions to abortion, up to the point of complete delivery. After fumbling for a moment with a follow-up question about where life begins, he replied, “Life begins with a mother’s decision.”
Here we have a philosophical phenomenon aptly summarized by the title of Bernard Nathanson’s second film, The Eclipse of Reason. Here we have nothing less than a fundamental crisis of being at the heart of our culture: a legal and societal status quo wherein a person is defined (and thus has rights apportioned to him) not by what he is but by how another person feels about him. This has been underscored in the debate over the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. If “life begins with a mother’s decision,” kill a pregnant woman on the way to an abortion clinic and you’ve committed one murder; kill a pregnant woman on the way to buy baby clothes and you’ve committed two.
The human mind can barely contain such a violent conflict of premises, forced together against the laws of nature and reason like identical poles of powerful magnets. How much more can the national soul contain it?
Todd M. Aglialoro is editor for Sophia Institute Press.
On abortion - Cases of Rape or Incest comments by Mark Crutcher
Few write with clarity and precision as well as Mark Crutcher, Founder and President of Life Dynamics. Here, from his book, "On Message", Mr. Crutcher confronts the matter of abortion in cases of rape or incest directly.
Why should a woman who was the victim of rape or incest have to bear a child?
Abortion for rape and incest victims is a very cynical way to address this issue, and it trivializes the harm that the victim suffered. It is as if someone pats her on the head and says, "Now everything's better. You've had an abortion."
When pregnancy occurs as a result of rape or incest, the baby is indeed the child of the perpetrator. What is often overlooked is that this baby is also the child of the woman. To suggest that inflicting violence on her baby will somehow benefit the mother is cruel to each of them. As a society, we have an obligation to see that every rape or incest victim is offered whatever assistance is needed to put her life back together again.
In recent years, there have been many books, reports, studies, etc., written about this very subject. Some were written by sociologists, some by professional researchers, and others by rape and incest victims. Naturally, this wide range of backgrounds and experiences leads at an equally wide range of suggestions for how to help rape victims cope with the problems they face. However, they almost universally agree what the problems are. They will tell you that these victims feel dirty. They feel helpless, no longer secure in their own homes. Some even experience shame or guilt, as if they were responsible. Often their sense of having been violated fills them with anger and rage toward all men. Many suffer low self-esteem. These are the most common hurdles which experts say rape victims have to overcome. Interestingly, pregnancy is seldom listed.
The reality is, having an abortion at a time when she's not yet over the shock of what's happened to her may actually make it harder to put this episode behind her. There are many examples of women saying that while they will never forget the rape or incest, they have learned to accept and live with it. But among those who had abortions, many say they will never be able to accept the fact that they killed their own baby. Through abortion, these women became not only victims of someone else's violence, but of their own as well. For many, it will be this second act of violence that "re-victimizes" them for the rest of their lives.
On the other hand, you never hear a woman who decided not to have an abortion later say she wised she had. Once she is able to deal with the feelings of shame and guilt, of feeling dirty, the anger, the rage, the feeling of helplessness or low self-esteem, she seldom views the child as another bad thing that happened from the situation, but maybe the only good thing that came out of it. If she keeps the child, that will certainly be the case for her, and if she decides to place the baby for adoption, it will be the case for another family.
Although it is understandable that some rape and incest victims will not see these children as a blessing but a curse, placing the babies for adoption will mean this "curse" will last for a few months. Killing these children could haunt them forever. Regardless of the circumstances, abortion never results in fewer victims but more. So, while the contention that abortion should be allowed for rape and incest victims may be driven by compassion, the reasoning behind it is severely flawed.
Unfortunately, when a sexual predator deprives someone of her right to decide for herself whether to have sex, he takes from her something neither the law, nor society, nor any individual has the power to give back. There is simply no logical basis for believing that allowing a woman to inflict violence upon her own child will lessen the effects of the violence that was done to her or benefit her in any other way.
The bottom line is, children do not find their right to life in the circumstances of their conception, and it is disgusting that someone would painfully execute a completely innocent baby for a crime that was committed by his or her father.
1Crutcher, Mark. On Message. Life Dynamics Incorporated, 2005, p 54.
Visit Life Dynamics at www.LifeDynamics.com
Why should a woman who was the victim of rape or incest have to bear a child?
Abortion for rape and incest victims is a very cynical way to address this issue, and it trivializes the harm that the victim suffered. It is as if someone pats her on the head and says, "Now everything's better. You've had an abortion."
When pregnancy occurs as a result of rape or incest, the baby is indeed the child of the perpetrator. What is often overlooked is that this baby is also the child of the woman. To suggest that inflicting violence on her baby will somehow benefit the mother is cruel to each of them. As a society, we have an obligation to see that every rape or incest victim is offered whatever assistance is needed to put her life back together again.
In recent years, there have been many books, reports, studies, etc., written about this very subject. Some were written by sociologists, some by professional researchers, and others by rape and incest victims. Naturally, this wide range of backgrounds and experiences leads at an equally wide range of suggestions for how to help rape victims cope with the problems they face. However, they almost universally agree what the problems are. They will tell you that these victims feel dirty. They feel helpless, no longer secure in their own homes. Some even experience shame or guilt, as if they were responsible. Often their sense of having been violated fills them with anger and rage toward all men. Many suffer low self-esteem. These are the most common hurdles which experts say rape victims have to overcome. Interestingly, pregnancy is seldom listed.
The reality is, having an abortion at a time when she's not yet over the shock of what's happened to her may actually make it harder to put this episode behind her. There are many examples of women saying that while they will never forget the rape or incest, they have learned to accept and live with it. But among those who had abortions, many say they will never be able to accept the fact that they killed their own baby. Through abortion, these women became not only victims of someone else's violence, but of their own as well. For many, it will be this second act of violence that "re-victimizes" them for the rest of their lives.
On the other hand, you never hear a woman who decided not to have an abortion later say she wised she had. Once she is able to deal with the feelings of shame and guilt, of feeling dirty, the anger, the rage, the feeling of helplessness or low self-esteem, she seldom views the child as another bad thing that happened from the situation, but maybe the only good thing that came out of it. If she keeps the child, that will certainly be the case for her, and if she decides to place the baby for adoption, it will be the case for another family.
Although it is understandable that some rape and incest victims will not see these children as a blessing but a curse, placing the babies for adoption will mean this "curse" will last for a few months. Killing these children could haunt them forever. Regardless of the circumstances, abortion never results in fewer victims but more. So, while the contention that abortion should be allowed for rape and incest victims may be driven by compassion, the reasoning behind it is severely flawed.
Unfortunately, when a sexual predator deprives someone of her right to decide for herself whether to have sex, he takes from her something neither the law, nor society, nor any individual has the power to give back. There is simply no logical basis for believing that allowing a woman to inflict violence upon her own child will lessen the effects of the violence that was done to her or benefit her in any other way.
***
Every unborn child is a living human being, and that remains true even when a baby is conceived through the most deplorable of circumstances. Further, if the legal protection afforded unborn children can differ based on the circumstances of their conception, there is absolutely nothing which says this discrimination has to end at birth. If an unborn human being conceived through rape or incest is less valuable than one conceived through a loving act of its parents, that same thing is true about a five-year-old. If a drunk driver runs over and kills a child, are we going to give him a lesser sentence if we find out the child was conceived through rape? If a parent kills their two-year-old and their defense is that the child was conceived through rape or incest, are we going to let them off?The bottom line is, children do not find their right to life in the circumstances of their conception, and it is disgusting that someone would painfully execute a completely innocent baby for a crime that was committed by his or her father.
***
If the guiding principle for abortion in rape an incest cases is that the woman shouldn't have to have a child that was fathered by a rapist, consider the following scenarios. A married woman discovers that she is pregnant after being raped by a man of anther race. She wants the baby if it is her husband's but not if it was fathered by the rapist. Should she be allowed to wait until the baby is born so she can see what race it is, and then have it killed if it is not here husband's child? Or what if a woman had an ultrasound, was told her baby was a boy, but learned at birth that it was a girl. Should she be allowed to kill the child because she would have aborted it had she known it was a girl?***
If the argument for abortion in rape or incest cases is that the cause of the pregnancy was beyond the woman's control, imagine that woman who was impregnated through rape has an abortion scheduled but she gives birth in the care on the way to the abortion clinic. The pregnancy is far enough along that the baby might survive. Should she be allowed to legally kill the baby there in the car? After all, the circumstances of its birth were no more within her control than were the circumstances of its conception. If we were willing to let her kill her child on the basis that the pregnancy was beyond her control, why would we take that right away because of a second event which was also beyond her control?11Crutcher, Mark. On Message. Life Dynamics Incorporated, 2005, p 54.
Visit Life Dynamics at www.LifeDynamics.com
Integrity
"I do the very best I know how; the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing it to the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me will not amount to anything. If the end brings me out all wrong, then a legion of angels swearing I was right will make no difference."
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
How Might Homosexuality Develop by Jeffrey Satinover, M.D.
How Might Homosexuality Develop?
Putting the Pieces Together
Excerpted from "The Complex Interaction of Genes and Environment: A Model for Homosexuality" by Jeffrey Satinover, M.D.
NARTH Collected Papers, 1995
It may be difficult to grasp how genes, environment, and other influences interrelate to one another, how a certain factor may "influence" an outcome but not cause it, and how faith enters in. The scenario below is condensed and hypothetical, but is drawn from the lives of actual people, illustrating how many different factors influence behavior.
Note that the following is just one of the many developmental pathways that can lead to homosexuality, but a common one. In reality, every person's "road" to sexual expression is individual, however many common lengths it may share with those of others.
(1) Our scenario starts with birth. The boy (for example) who one day may go on to struggle with homosexuality is born with certain features that are somewhat more common among homosexuals than in the population at large. Some of these traits might be inherited (genetic), while others might have been caused by the "intrauterine environment" (hormones). What this means is that a youngster without these traits will be somewhat less likely to become homosexual later than someone with them.
What are these traits? If we could identify them precisely, many of them would turn out to be gifts rather than "problems," for example a "sensitive" disposition, a strong creative drive, a keen aesthetic sense. Some of these, such as greater sensitivity, could be related to - or even the same as - physiological traits that also cause trouble, such as a greater-than-average anxiety response to any given stimulus.
No one knows with certainty just what these heritable characteristics are; at present we only have hints. Were we free to study homosexuality properly (uninfluenced by political agendas) we would certainly soon clarify these factors - just as we are doing in less contentious areas. In any case, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the behavior "homosexuality" is itself directly inherited.
(2) From a very early age potentially heritable characteristics mark the boy as "different." He finds himself somewhat shy and uncomfortable with the typical "rough and tumble" of his peers. Perhaps he is more interested in art or in reading - simply because he's smart. But when he later thinks about his early life, he will find it difficult to separate out what in these early behavioral differences came from an inherited temperament and what from the next factor, namely:
(3) That for whatever reason, he recalls a painful "mismatch" between what he needed and longed for and what his father offered him. Perhaps most people would agree that his father was distinctly distant and ineffective; maybe it was just that his own needs were unique enough that his father, a decent man, could never quite find the right way to relate to him. Or perhaps his father really disliked and rejected his son's sensitivity. In any event, the absence of a happy, warm, and intimate closeness with his father led to the boy's pulling away in disappointment, "defensively detaching" in order to protect himself.
But sadly, this pulling away from his father, and from the "masculine" role model he needed, also left him even less able to relate to his male peers. We may contrast this to the boy whose loving father dies, for instance, but who is less vulnerable to later homosexuality. This is because the commonplace dynamic in the pre-homosexual boy is not merely the absence of a father - literally or psychologically - but the psychological defense of the boy against his repeatedly disappointing father. In fact, a youngster who does not form this defense (perhaps because of early-enough therapy, or because there is another important male figure in his life, or due to temperament) is much less likely to become homosexual.
Complementary dynamics involving the boy's mother are also likely to have played an important role. Because people tend to marry partners with "interlocking neuroses," the boy probably found himself in a problematic relationship with both parents.
For all these reasons, when as an adult he looked back on his childhood, the now-homosexual man recalls, "From the beginning I was always different. I never got along well with the boys my age and felt more comfortable around girls." This accurate memory makes his later homosexuality feel convincingly to him as though it was "preprogrammed" from the start.
(4) Although he has "defensively detached" from his father, the young boy still carries silently within him a terrible longing for the warmth, love, and encircling arms of the father he never did nor could have. Early on, he develops intense, nonsexual attachments to older boys he admires - but at a distance, repeating with them the same experience of longing and unavailability. When puberty sets in, sexual urges - which can attach themselves to any object, especially in males - rise to the surface and combine with his already intense need for masculine intimacy and warmth. He begins to develop homosexual crushes. Later he recalls, "My first sexual longings were directed not at girls but at boys. I was never interested in girls."
Psychotherapeutic intervention at this point and earlier can be successful in preventing the development of later homosexuality. Such intervention is aimed in part at helping the boy change his developing effeminate patterns (which derive from a "refusal" to identify with the rejected father), but more critically, it is aimed at teaching his father - if only he will learn - how to become appropriately involved with and related to his son.
(5) As he matures (especially in our culture where early, extramarital sexual experiences are sanctioned and even encouraged), the youngster, now a teen, begins to experiment with homosexual activity. Or alternatively his needs for same-sex closeness may already have been taken advantage of by an older boy or man, who preyed upon him sexually when he was still a child. (Recall the studies that demonstrate the high incidence of sexual abuse in the childhood histories of homosexual men.) Or oppositely, he may avoid such activities out of fear and shame in spite of his attraction to them. In any event, his now-sexualized longings cannot merely be denied, however much he may struggle against them. It would be cruel for us at this point to imply that these longings are a simple matter of "choice."
Indeed, he remembers having spent agonizing months and years trying to deny their existence altogether or pushing them away, to no avail. One can easily imagine how justifiably angry he will later be when someone casually and thoughtlessly accuses him of "choosing" to be homosexual. When he seeks help, he hears one of two messages, and both terrify him; either, "Homosexuals are bad people and you are a bad person for choosing to be homosexual. There is no place for you here and God is going to see to it that you suffer for being so bad;" or "Homosexuality is inborn and unchangeable. You were born that way. Forget about your fairytale picture of getting married and having children and living in a little house with a white picket fence. God made you who you are and he/she destined you for the gay life. Learn to enjoy it."
(6) At some point, he gives in to his deep longings for love and begins to have voluntary homosexual experiences. He finds - possibly to his horror - that these old, deep, painful longings are at least temporarily, and for the first time ever, assuaged.
Although he may also therefore feel intense conflict, he cannot help admit that the relief is immense. This temporary feeling of comfort is so profound - going well beyond the simple sexual pleasure that anyone feels in a less fraught situation - that the experience is powerfully reinforced. However much he may struggle, he finds himself powerfully driven to repeat the experience. And the more he does, the more it is reinforced and the more likely it is he will repeat it yet again, though often with a sense of diminishing returns.
(7) He also discovers that, as for anyone, sexual orgasm is a powerful reliever of distress of all sorts. By engaging in homosexual activities he has already crossed one of the most critical and strongly enforced boundaries of sexual taboo. It is now easy for him to cross other taboo boundaries as well, especially the significantly less severe taboo pertaining to promiscuity. Soon homosexual activity becomes the central organizing factor in his life as he slowly acquires the habit of turning to it regularly - not just because of his original need for fatherly warmth of love, but to relieve anxiety of any sort.
(8) In time, his life becomes even more distressing than for most. Some of this is in fact, as activists claim, because all-too-often he experiences from others a cold lack of sympathy or even open hostility. The only people who seem really to accept him are other gays, and so he forms an even stronger bond with them as a "community." But it is not true, as activists claim, that these are the only or even the major stresses. Much distress is caused simply by his way of life - for example, the medical consequences, AIDS being just one of many (if also the worst). He also lives with the guilt and shame that he inevitably feels over his compulsive, promiscuous behavior; and too over the knowledge that he cannot relate effectively to the opposite sex and is less likely to have a family (a psychological loss for which political campaigns for homosexual marriage, adoption, and inheritance rights can never adequately compensate).
However much activists try to normalize for him these patterns of behavior and the losses they cause, and however expedient it may be for political purposes to hide them from the public-at-large, unless he shuts down huge areas of his emotional life he simply cannot honestly look at himself in this situation and feel content.
And no one - not even a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool, sexually insecure "homophobe" - is nearly so hard on him as he is on himself. Furthermore, the self-condemning messages that he struggles with on a daily basis are in fact only reinforced by the bitter self-derogating wit of the very gay culture he has embraced. The activists around him keep saying that it is all caused by the "internalized homophobia" of the surrounding culture, but he knows that it is not.
The stresses of "being gay" lead to more, not less, homosexual behavior. This principle, perhaps surprising to the layman (at least to the layman who has not himself gotten caught up in some pattern, of whatever type) is typical of the compulsive or addictive cycle of self-destructive behavior; wracking guilt, shame, and self-condemnation only causes it to increase. It is not surprising that people therefore turn to denial to rid themselves of these feelings, and he does too. He tells himself, "It is not a problem, therefore there is no reason for me to feel so bad about it."
(9) After wrestling with such guilt and shame for so many years, the boy, now an adult, comes to believe, quite understandably - and because of his denial, needs to believe - "I can't change anyway because the condition is unchangeable." If even for a moment he considers otherwise, immediately arises the painful query, "Then why haven't I...?" and with it returns all the shame and guilt.
Thus, by the time the boy becomes a man, he has pieced together this point of view: "I was always different, always an outsider. I developed crushes on boys from as long as I can remember and the first time I fell in love it was with a boy, not a girl. I had no real interest in members of the opposite sex. Oh, I tried all right - desperately. But my sexual experiences with girls were nothing special. But the first time I had homosexual sex it just 'felt right.' So it makes perfect sense to me that homosexuality is genetic. I've tried to change - God knows how long I struggled - and I just can't. That's because it's not changeable. Finally, I stopped struggling and just accepted myself the way I am."
(10) Social attitudes toward homosexuality will play a role in making it more or less likely that the man will adopt an "inborn and unchangeable" perspective, and at what point in his development. It is obvious that a widely shared and propagated worldview that normalizes homosexuality will increase the likelihood of his adopting such beliefs, and at an earlier age. But it is perhaps less obvious - it follows from what we have discussed above - that ridicule, rejection, and harshly punitive condemnation of him as a person will be just as likely (if not more likely) to drive him into the same position.
(11) If he maintains his desire for a traditional family life, the man may continue to struggle against his "second nature." Depending on whom he meets, he may remain trapped between straight condemnation and gay activism, both in secular institutions and in religious ones. The most important message he needs to hear is that "healing is possible."
(12) If he enters the path to healing, he will find that the road is long and difficult - but extraordinarily fulfilling. The course to full restoration of heterosexuality typically lasts longer than the average American marriage - which should be understood as an index of how broken all relationships are today.
From the secular therapies he will come to understand what the true nature of his longings are, that they are not really about sex, and that he is not defined by his sexual appetites. In such a setting, he will very possibly learn how to turn aright to other men to gain from them a genuine, nonsexualized masculine comradeship and intimacy; and how to relate aright to woman, as friend, lover, life's companion, and, God willing, mother of his children.
Of course the old wounds will not simply disappear, and later in times of great distress the old paths of escape will beckon. But the claim that this means he is therefore "really" a homosexual and unchanged is a lie. For as he lives a new life of ever-growing honesty, and cultivates genuine intimacy with the woman of his heart, the new patterns will grow ever stronger and the old ones engraved in the synapses of his brain ever weaker.
In time, knowing that they really have little to do with sex, he will even come to respect and put to good use what faint stirrings remain of the old urges. They will be for him a kind of storm-warning, a signal that something is out of order in his house, that some old pattern of longing and rejection and defense is being activated. And he will find that no sooner does he set his house in order that indeed the old urges once again abate. In his relations to others - as friend, husband, professional - he will now have a special gift. What was once a curse will have become a blessing, to himself and to others.
Copyright © NARTH. All Rights Reserved.
Updated: 4 May 2002
Putting the Pieces Together
Excerpted from "The Complex Interaction of Genes and Environment: A Model for Homosexuality" by Jeffrey Satinover, M.D.
NARTH Collected Papers, 1995
It may be difficult to grasp how genes, environment, and other influences interrelate to one another, how a certain factor may "influence" an outcome but not cause it, and how faith enters in. The scenario below is condensed and hypothetical, but is drawn from the lives of actual people, illustrating how many different factors influence behavior.
Note that the following is just one of the many developmental pathways that can lead to homosexuality, but a common one. In reality, every person's "road" to sexual expression is individual, however many common lengths it may share with those of others.
(1) Our scenario starts with birth. The boy (for example) who one day may go on to struggle with homosexuality is born with certain features that are somewhat more common among homosexuals than in the population at large. Some of these traits might be inherited (genetic), while others might have been caused by the "intrauterine environment" (hormones). What this means is that a youngster without these traits will be somewhat less likely to become homosexual later than someone with them.
What are these traits? If we could identify them precisely, many of them would turn out to be gifts rather than "problems," for example a "sensitive" disposition, a strong creative drive, a keen aesthetic sense. Some of these, such as greater sensitivity, could be related to - or even the same as - physiological traits that also cause trouble, such as a greater-than-average anxiety response to any given stimulus.
No one knows with certainty just what these heritable characteristics are; at present we only have hints. Were we free to study homosexuality properly (uninfluenced by political agendas) we would certainly soon clarify these factors - just as we are doing in less contentious areas. In any case, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the behavior "homosexuality" is itself directly inherited.
(2) From a very early age potentially heritable characteristics mark the boy as "different." He finds himself somewhat shy and uncomfortable with the typical "rough and tumble" of his peers. Perhaps he is more interested in art or in reading - simply because he's smart. But when he later thinks about his early life, he will find it difficult to separate out what in these early behavioral differences came from an inherited temperament and what from the next factor, namely:
(3) That for whatever reason, he recalls a painful "mismatch" between what he needed and longed for and what his father offered him. Perhaps most people would agree that his father was distinctly distant and ineffective; maybe it was just that his own needs were unique enough that his father, a decent man, could never quite find the right way to relate to him. Or perhaps his father really disliked and rejected his son's sensitivity. In any event, the absence of a happy, warm, and intimate closeness with his father led to the boy's pulling away in disappointment, "defensively detaching" in order to protect himself.
But sadly, this pulling away from his father, and from the "masculine" role model he needed, also left him even less able to relate to his male peers. We may contrast this to the boy whose loving father dies, for instance, but who is less vulnerable to later homosexuality. This is because the commonplace dynamic in the pre-homosexual boy is not merely the absence of a father - literally or psychologically - but the psychological defense of the boy against his repeatedly disappointing father. In fact, a youngster who does not form this defense (perhaps because of early-enough therapy, or because there is another important male figure in his life, or due to temperament) is much less likely to become homosexual.
Complementary dynamics involving the boy's mother are also likely to have played an important role. Because people tend to marry partners with "interlocking neuroses," the boy probably found himself in a problematic relationship with both parents.
For all these reasons, when as an adult he looked back on his childhood, the now-homosexual man recalls, "From the beginning I was always different. I never got along well with the boys my age and felt more comfortable around girls." This accurate memory makes his later homosexuality feel convincingly to him as though it was "preprogrammed" from the start.
(4) Although he has "defensively detached" from his father, the young boy still carries silently within him a terrible longing for the warmth, love, and encircling arms of the father he never did nor could have. Early on, he develops intense, nonsexual attachments to older boys he admires - but at a distance, repeating with them the same experience of longing and unavailability. When puberty sets in, sexual urges - which can attach themselves to any object, especially in males - rise to the surface and combine with his already intense need for masculine intimacy and warmth. He begins to develop homosexual crushes. Later he recalls, "My first sexual longings were directed not at girls but at boys. I was never interested in girls."
Psychotherapeutic intervention at this point and earlier can be successful in preventing the development of later homosexuality. Such intervention is aimed in part at helping the boy change his developing effeminate patterns (which derive from a "refusal" to identify with the rejected father), but more critically, it is aimed at teaching his father - if only he will learn - how to become appropriately involved with and related to his son.
(5) As he matures (especially in our culture where early, extramarital sexual experiences are sanctioned and even encouraged), the youngster, now a teen, begins to experiment with homosexual activity. Or alternatively his needs for same-sex closeness may already have been taken advantage of by an older boy or man, who preyed upon him sexually when he was still a child. (Recall the studies that demonstrate the high incidence of sexual abuse in the childhood histories of homosexual men.) Or oppositely, he may avoid such activities out of fear and shame in spite of his attraction to them. In any event, his now-sexualized longings cannot merely be denied, however much he may struggle against them. It would be cruel for us at this point to imply that these longings are a simple matter of "choice."
Indeed, he remembers having spent agonizing months and years trying to deny their existence altogether or pushing them away, to no avail. One can easily imagine how justifiably angry he will later be when someone casually and thoughtlessly accuses him of "choosing" to be homosexual. When he seeks help, he hears one of two messages, and both terrify him; either, "Homosexuals are bad people and you are a bad person for choosing to be homosexual. There is no place for you here and God is going to see to it that you suffer for being so bad;" or "Homosexuality is inborn and unchangeable. You were born that way. Forget about your fairytale picture of getting married and having children and living in a little house with a white picket fence. God made you who you are and he/she destined you for the gay life. Learn to enjoy it."
(6) At some point, he gives in to his deep longings for love and begins to have voluntary homosexual experiences. He finds - possibly to his horror - that these old, deep, painful longings are at least temporarily, and for the first time ever, assuaged.
Although he may also therefore feel intense conflict, he cannot help admit that the relief is immense. This temporary feeling of comfort is so profound - going well beyond the simple sexual pleasure that anyone feels in a less fraught situation - that the experience is powerfully reinforced. However much he may struggle, he finds himself powerfully driven to repeat the experience. And the more he does, the more it is reinforced and the more likely it is he will repeat it yet again, though often with a sense of diminishing returns.
(7) He also discovers that, as for anyone, sexual orgasm is a powerful reliever of distress of all sorts. By engaging in homosexual activities he has already crossed one of the most critical and strongly enforced boundaries of sexual taboo. It is now easy for him to cross other taboo boundaries as well, especially the significantly less severe taboo pertaining to promiscuity. Soon homosexual activity becomes the central organizing factor in his life as he slowly acquires the habit of turning to it regularly - not just because of his original need for fatherly warmth of love, but to relieve anxiety of any sort.
(8) In time, his life becomes even more distressing than for most. Some of this is in fact, as activists claim, because all-too-often he experiences from others a cold lack of sympathy or even open hostility. The only people who seem really to accept him are other gays, and so he forms an even stronger bond with them as a "community." But it is not true, as activists claim, that these are the only or even the major stresses. Much distress is caused simply by his way of life - for example, the medical consequences, AIDS being just one of many (if also the worst). He also lives with the guilt and shame that he inevitably feels over his compulsive, promiscuous behavior; and too over the knowledge that he cannot relate effectively to the opposite sex and is less likely to have a family (a psychological loss for which political campaigns for homosexual marriage, adoption, and inheritance rights can never adequately compensate).
However much activists try to normalize for him these patterns of behavior and the losses they cause, and however expedient it may be for political purposes to hide them from the public-at-large, unless he shuts down huge areas of his emotional life he simply cannot honestly look at himself in this situation and feel content.
And no one - not even a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool, sexually insecure "homophobe" - is nearly so hard on him as he is on himself. Furthermore, the self-condemning messages that he struggles with on a daily basis are in fact only reinforced by the bitter self-derogating wit of the very gay culture he has embraced. The activists around him keep saying that it is all caused by the "internalized homophobia" of the surrounding culture, but he knows that it is not.
The stresses of "being gay" lead to more, not less, homosexual behavior. This principle, perhaps surprising to the layman (at least to the layman who has not himself gotten caught up in some pattern, of whatever type) is typical of the compulsive or addictive cycle of self-destructive behavior; wracking guilt, shame, and self-condemnation only causes it to increase. It is not surprising that people therefore turn to denial to rid themselves of these feelings, and he does too. He tells himself, "It is not a problem, therefore there is no reason for me to feel so bad about it."
(9) After wrestling with such guilt and shame for so many years, the boy, now an adult, comes to believe, quite understandably - and because of his denial, needs to believe - "I can't change anyway because the condition is unchangeable." If even for a moment he considers otherwise, immediately arises the painful query, "Then why haven't I...?" and with it returns all the shame and guilt.
Thus, by the time the boy becomes a man, he has pieced together this point of view: "I was always different, always an outsider. I developed crushes on boys from as long as I can remember and the first time I fell in love it was with a boy, not a girl. I had no real interest in members of the opposite sex. Oh, I tried all right - desperately. But my sexual experiences with girls were nothing special. But the first time I had homosexual sex it just 'felt right.' So it makes perfect sense to me that homosexuality is genetic. I've tried to change - God knows how long I struggled - and I just can't. That's because it's not changeable. Finally, I stopped struggling and just accepted myself the way I am."
(10) Social attitudes toward homosexuality will play a role in making it more or less likely that the man will adopt an "inborn and unchangeable" perspective, and at what point in his development. It is obvious that a widely shared and propagated worldview that normalizes homosexuality will increase the likelihood of his adopting such beliefs, and at an earlier age. But it is perhaps less obvious - it follows from what we have discussed above - that ridicule, rejection, and harshly punitive condemnation of him as a person will be just as likely (if not more likely) to drive him into the same position.
(11) If he maintains his desire for a traditional family life, the man may continue to struggle against his "second nature." Depending on whom he meets, he may remain trapped between straight condemnation and gay activism, both in secular institutions and in religious ones. The most important message he needs to hear is that "healing is possible."
(12) If he enters the path to healing, he will find that the road is long and difficult - but extraordinarily fulfilling. The course to full restoration of heterosexuality typically lasts longer than the average American marriage - which should be understood as an index of how broken all relationships are today.
From the secular therapies he will come to understand what the true nature of his longings are, that they are not really about sex, and that he is not defined by his sexual appetites. In such a setting, he will very possibly learn how to turn aright to other men to gain from them a genuine, nonsexualized masculine comradeship and intimacy; and how to relate aright to woman, as friend, lover, life's companion, and, God willing, mother of his children.
Of course the old wounds will not simply disappear, and later in times of great distress the old paths of escape will beckon. But the claim that this means he is therefore "really" a homosexual and unchanged is a lie. For as he lives a new life of ever-growing honesty, and cultivates genuine intimacy with the woman of his heart, the new patterns will grow ever stronger and the old ones engraved in the synapses of his brain ever weaker.
In time, knowing that they really have little to do with sex, he will even come to respect and put to good use what faint stirrings remain of the old urges. They will be for him a kind of storm-warning, a signal that something is out of order in his house, that some old pattern of longing and rejection and defense is being activated. And he will find that no sooner does he set his house in order that indeed the old urges once again abate. In his relations to others - as friend, husband, professional - he will now have a special gift. What was once a curse will have become a blessing, to himself and to others.
Copyright © NARTH. All Rights Reserved.
Updated: 4 May 2002
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