The columns of Michael Moriarty (yes, that Michael Moriarty) are notoriously intense — his manic, in-your-face, free-associating style can be maddening — but his latest one, eviscerating "religious" arguments for abortion, is dead on:
... The Golden Rule, as we all learned in Kindergarten, does not mean, "Let's do unto gestating infants … what we would not want done unto our own gestating infancy."
Now I think that's pretty self-evident, or, as we have all come to understand that now antiquated adjective of self-evident, this is a no-brainer.
However, we have been inundated by the revisionism, the re-interpretation of Christ in light of the on-going scientific discoveries, having been apprised of this very revolutionary New Christ, one that according to Rev. Don Jones of Chicago, the late Rev. W. O. Vaught of Arkansas, Rev. Billy Graham, the virtual Pope of American Protestantism, and, finally, that most colourful of the New Evangelists, Rev. Jesse Jackson of Chicago – with two of these Revisionists from Chicago, Illinois, one might think that "toddlin' town" a New Jerusalem – as I say, we have been told repeatedly that the Catholic Church and her stand on abortion is beyond the Dark Ages, that it is Cro-Magnon, Counter-Revolutionary, comprised of antediluvian reactionaries who, as we all know, will be placed on the "ash heap of history" before even the United States of America is. ...
[snip]
... Odd isn't it, or rather selfish, I think, that so many Baby Boomers are determined to see that there will never be another Baby Boom again!
It's a little ungrateful, I think, but … oh, well …
So, "Let's do unto gestating infants what we would not want to have done unto our own gestating infancy. We can forget about the warning Christ gave us that as we do unto the "least" of these children, so we are doing unto Him! Let us not forget, that Christ came - "Hallelujah!" - but he is gone now and there is no fear of ever really seeing Him again, unless, of course, he re-appears as the New Christ of the New Christianity, the one so alive and well in the New Jerusalem of Chicago!" ...
[snip]
... Were there any gestating infants around to testify to the legalization of abortion, so effectively institutionalized by lawyers and scientists? Physicians, doctors, lawyers, the medical and legal community showed up at the Supreme Court hearings over Roe v. Wade, entered the well of the court as witnesses and ended up being the Judge.
Apparently they must have all been geniuses, they'd have to be, in order to get away withalienating the entire American Public from their inalienable right to life under the Declaration of Independence, and the right to life when created - not gestated. ... [Read the whole thing]
Moriarty hits upon the reason why I became pro-life — reluctantly, at first — upon receiving my faith.
A fundamental part of being Christian is belief in a personal God — a God who is intimately involved in all creative actions on Earth — including, first and foremost, the creation of life. (Note that I wrote "creative" actions, not all actions. As St. Maximilian Kolbe said, "Hate is not creative. Only love is creative.") Any belief in a God who is not personal is not Christianity; it's Deism, or Islam, or the Reform Judaism in which I was raised, or another faith.
A personal God would not, could not, permit life to be created in order for it to be willfully destroyed.
Because of the Fall, our bodies are imperfect, and God permits miscarriages, in the same way that He permits other kinds of physical suffering. However, the Bible is unequivocal in stating that children are always a blessing, as with Psalm 127:3: "Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, The fruit of the womb is a reward." God does not create human life (or any life) by accident — nor does he create it as a punishment.
Ecclesiastes 3 says that God appoints "a time to give birth." One may think that one's unborn child is an "accident," but it could not exist had God not chosen to bring it into existence at His appointed time.
If we intentionally halt His creative process after it has started, we are deliberately asserting our will above God's. That is the sin of the one who fell from Heaven. It is a long way down.
Some live Hollies for your Sunday, doing a song co-written by Chip Taylor ("Angel of the Morning," "Wild Thing") — listen for Graham Nash on the high harmony:
'I have memories of her that can never be taken from me'
The Web site of South Dakota's Vote Yes for Life campaign features several video interviews with women who support an abortion ban because of their own experiences with abortion or with unintended or difficult pregnancies. Here is one of them, which you can also read on voteyesforlife.com.
"I know of a large HMO in Seattle that allows people to self-identify as whatever gender they choose. I wonder, will they also let a person self-identify as having perfect cholesterol, normal blood pressure and lack/presence of HIV infection? How about blood type? Perhaps one can self-identify a particlar weight and height one desires. If one can deny what the genes in every one of one's cells says, where's the harm in fudging on details like weight or clinical tests? After all, I may have "felt all my life" that I was blond haired, blue eyed, 6'2" and 180 pounds. Who is society to say I'm not? I'm just trapped in the body of a paunchy middleaged balding male.."
A house of horrors, filled with blood and screams, where a maniacal child-killer armed with knives wreaks havoc as he targets teenagers who have sex — and it's run by Planned Parenthood and friends.
Andrew Krucoff of the 92nd St. Y writes with a generous promotional offer of free concert tickets for the entire family:
We're reaching out to bloggers to give away some tickets to a Family Music concert this Sunday. Blogs, kids, classical music — you know, the stuff that makes the world go round. Want to offer them to NYC-area Dawn Patrol readers? Here's the event: "Mr. Cello Takes a Bow."
First five readers to respond through this e-mail form with "dawn" in the message box will get free tix, up to 2 parents and 4 children for each winner.
Charles G. Hill plays Robin Ward's 1963 hit "Wonderful Summer" at 33 rpm and makes a startling discovery. For Brian Wilson fans, it must be heard to be believed.
The article is headlined with the quote, "It was not having an abortion that changed my position. It was being beaten for it."
Strangely, while the newspaper appears to take the woman's account at face value, it reads not like an argument against parental notification, but instead like a powerful argument against Planned Parenthood's providing abortions for teenage girls. It shows, better than the best pro-life apologist could, how Planned Parenthood's find-'em-flush-'em-forget-'em approach — evacuating the baby, patching up the young woman, and sending her home — causes untold damage.
The anonymous woman says that she walked into the Planned Parenthood clinic as a victim of a lifetime of abuse:
The first time I remember [my father] abusing my mom, I was 5. I started telling teachers when I was in eighth grade, the year after my mom left. My father punched us, choked us, physically intimidated us.
What, if anything, did the teachers do? The woman doesn't say, but it was obviously not enough, as she remained with her father. The fact that her mother left but did not get custody also suggests that there was something seriously amiss with the woman's family — something that, given the father's abusiveness, should have brought the woman under the protection of a child-welfare agency.
The woman goes on to say that her father was vehemently against abortion. Then she skips to what happened when she got pregnant:
I went to Planned Parenthood in Houston. I trusted that they would not tell anyone. At this point, I'd turned 18. I was somewhere between six and eight weeks. Pretty early.
If you pushed me, I might have said I was personally pro-life, maybe publicly pro-choice. . . . But I had no doubt that my father would abuse my child. I had nowhere to seek help. I could not imagine putting another person, especially one I loved, through the hell I was going through.
The teen's being, by her own admission, "personally pro-life [and] maybe" — not even certainly — "publicly pro-choice" clearly suggests that, were she not facing outside pressure, she would wish to keep her baby. So, was her decision a "choice" — or was it coercion? Did the Planned Parenthood employees care?
They asked me four separate times if was I sure. They asked me if I knew what my options were. . . . I will never forget the woman who held my hand, because she was so kind and supportive.
It's no wonder that the teen was touched by the seeming maternal tenderness she received at Planned Parenthood — her mother had left, and she obviously was not receiving such affection at home.
So, Planned Parenthood's workers asked her "four separate times" if she was sure, and it asked her if she knew what her "options" were. In the end, it gave her the option of having her fetus, unborn child, baby, or whatever you choose to call it killed. (It was alive. It died by a person's intentional actions. It was killed.) And they gave her the option of returning home to the very same father who "punched," "choked," and "physically intimidated" her.
What is wrong with this picture?
The nice hand-holding that she got from the Planned Parenthood aide wasn't enough to prevent the teen from feeling pain over her "choice":
I struggled with the decision that I had made. I had done some sort of process writing. It was buried in a drawer under school papers in my room.
Her father found the papers and behaved in the way that Planned Parenthood's employees might have predicted — if the teen had told them what she had already told her teachers:
I ran from him. I could see him getting angrier and angrier. I locked myself in the bathroom with a knife. He kicked in the door and pinned me down on the floor and twisted my arm behind my back and he punched me in the head.
I was abused, and I was pro-life. It was not having an abortion that changed my position. It was being beaten for it. Having an abortion is a hard decision. It is a difficult decision -- maybe the most difficult decision. No woman deserves to be beaten for that.
No woman — no human being — deserves to be beaten for anything. Ever.
What does it say about Planned Parenthood's employees, that they could spend time with this woman, query her four times about her "choice," and yet not have any qualms about returning her to her abusive father? I realize that she was 18, which means the workers perhaps were not legally required to report abuse — but this story gives me no suggestion that their behaviour would have been any different were she a few weeks younger.
In any case, the teen was, by her own admission, not making a free decision. She was intimidated and fearful. Every parent who cares about teenagers' safety should question why clinics are allowed to abort the babies of teens who fear violence without bringing them to the attention of social-service agencies, as a pregnancy resource center would do.
Would a parental-notification law have changed the outcome of the Oregonian interviewee's tragic story — that is, if the teen had been underage? I believe it would have. If the teen were required to inform her father of her option to abort, she might instead have looked in the "Abortion Alternatives" section of the yellow pages. Any organization she would find there would be more likely than Planned Parenthood to see the abuse she received for what it was, and give her a real option to escape it. Then she wouldn't have been left on her own, in her room, to grieve her loss through "process writing," and to be at the mercy of a monster.
A thoughtful YouTube user posted this clip of Glen Campbell and Jackie DeShannon singing Campbell's "Less of Me," from the "Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour" (1969). I'd never heard it before. Nice tune!
They failed the test. The "visions" are still being announced despite the bishop's call for the seers to refrain from publicizing them. I don't want to glorify them by linking to them, but they're easy enough to find on "official" Medjugorje Web sites — if one sifts through the sites' ads for officially licensed Medjugorje products.
Somehow, I think St. Bernadette would have refrained from publicizing her visions had her bishop urged her not to speak of them.
It was announced at Mass this a.m. that our pastor, Msgr. Ed Karl, was in the hospital with what doctors tentatively believe is pneumonia.
Msgr. Karl is 75. He submitted his retirement to the bishop in June, but asked for another year of service, having just pulled our parish (St. Mary's in Bethel, CT) out of debt ten years after the completion of a new church. He has been pastor for 14 years and is a much beloved figure. Somewhat shy, but a kind and gentle shepherd to his flock.
The family has been called and Msgr. is presently in the Intensive Care Unit at Danbury Hospital. Your prayers are appreciated for this lovely man.
The northern New Jersey church I attended for Vigil Mass last night was outwardly stunning — a beautiful, towering stone structure dating from the 1830s.
Upon entering the large, incongruously modern glass doors (probably necessary to keep out the Jersey winter blasts), I saw that all the pews had been ripped out and the altar had been moved to the center of the church. The sanctuary had effectively become a theater-in-the-round. Rows of chairs faced each side of the altar, and each chair had a built-in shelf for a missal and hymnal. There were no kneelers.
Also, the entire floor of the massive structure was covered with blinding purple carpet. Well, it wasn't entirely purple; it had bright red flecks. Even the candlestick platforms on the altar were covered with the thick wooly fabric. It contrasted with the dull green cloth on the marble altar.
There were no places to kneel in the entire church, as far as I could see. While the stained glass windows remained, the walls seemed oddly bare, save for the small, tasteful Stations of the Cross and a tall, old crucifix leaning against a wall.
The tabernacle was nowhere in sight. I had the feeling I would need a metal detector to find it.
About 150 people were there, largely grandparents and grandkids — the parents presumably having a night out. No one kneeled during the entire service. I actually had trouble remembering when to kneel, because I couldn't recognize the different parts of the Eucharist service; they sounded different from what I was used to. Finally I figured out that when they were singing "Prince of Peace, you take away the sins of the world," they meant, "Lamb of God," so I kneeled when the song ended. I was in the front row, so it felt pretty weird.
That's "goodbye" in the original sense, as in "God be with you," as our Raving friend sends the atheistic denizens of his forums off to a new Web site, separate from his own. He deserves blessings too.
"Being hostile to virginity is the ultimate misogyny. It means sneering at the innocence of children, and laughing at women who want sex to mean something more than just a hookup."
— Wendy Shalit, quoted in Rachel Kramer Bussel's Village Voice column, "Like a Virgin: The Case Against Having Sex." Bussel, who is a senior editor for one of Penthouse's publications as well as the Voice's "Lusty Lady," has lately been displaying an interest in chastity that is unusual (if not unheard of) for a sex columnist.
Many thanks to everyone who prayed after I requested prayers the other day in hope of giving someone a Miraculous Medal. Your and my prayers were answered. Here's what happened:
I went last night to a charity benefit where the keynote speaker was a celebrity. I was invited to the benefit because, the charity's publicist told me, I was responsible for the celebrity's agreeing to speak at the event. The star had read an article I had assigned that detailed the good works the charity does, and it apparently made a great impression upon her — so much so that she was willing to lend her talents to help the organization.
The celebrity in question is not someone whom I would ordinarily go out of my way to meet. I used to admire her both for her talent and her views; now only her talent draws my admiration. Although she attracts anger from some quarters, and she gives her time and money to causes I abhor, I don't hate her — I just don't like her, or what she stands for. So it was a shock to me that she chose to aid an international-aid charity that I support wholeheartedly, one which would benefit greatly from her high-profile help.
The charity's publicist told me in advance of the benefit that he would be introducing me to the star, so I had some time to think about what I would say to her. What came to me, almost instantly, was that I wanted to give her a Miraculous Medal. I'd recently bought 50 of them and had them blessed by a priest, so that I could give them away as did my patron saint Maximilian Kolbe.
There were other things I could have done, like trying to tell the star what I believed to be the error of her ways. But she was used to receiving a hostile reaction from people, and I didn't think I could say anything to change her. On the other hand, receiving a Miraculous Medal might, God willing, help her open herself up to divine grace, which was the only way that I could imagine her heart might ever change. The star had already let in some of that grace in recent years, saying publicly that she had become a Christian. But she also said she resisted certain aspects of the faith's doctrine — being put off by what she called its "patriarchy."
I entered the gorgeous Cipriani 42nd St. last night and immediately saw the celebrity being photographed in a press area off to the side. Although the area was brightly illuminated, she had that classic quality of a star who seems to exude her own light. She was more beautiful in person than in the photos I had seen, which is saying quite a bit.
The publicist for the charity spotted me. As I quickly fished the medal out of my purse and clasped it in my left hand, he brought me up to the star, introducing me as the editor who had assigned the story she had read about the organization. She graciously thanked me for the story and shook my hand.
I had thought and prayed beforehand about what I would say. The message I received in prayer was that I could give the star the medal only if I could present it as a sign of God's love for her. Left to my own devices, I would not want to exhibit a loving spirit to the star. However, it seemed that if I wanted anything good to come of the interaction, I didn't have a choice.
The first thought that came out of my mouth was not anything I had practiced. I was feeling an overwhelming sense of awe at the fact that this woman, with whom I disagree on so much, could be doing such good by appearing at an event as a result of something I had done. The idea that she and I could be connected by charitable motivations was amazing to me.
So, I said, "As a Catholic, I believe in the Communion of Saints, which means that people on heaven and earth are connected to one another. I believe that you are a member of the Communion of Saints, so I would like you to have this Miraculous Medal."
She put out her right palm. That sentence should be in capital letters, lit up like a neon sign. SHE PUT OUT HER RIGHT PALM to receive the medal! Glory Be!
As I put it in her hand, I added something that I had thought beforehand of saying: "It represents God's love that transcends gender — something you've talked about."
She put the medal in her purse. I think she also nodded and said a soft "thanks," but I can't quite recall. I only remember that I smiled and said, "Thank you," and turned around to exit her presence. Mission accomplished!
Now it's up to Jesus, through Mary, to grant the graces that will determine whether the medal's recipient becomes another Ratisbonne. You can help with your prayers. Please pray for Jane Fonda.
As you may know, I recently purchased a number of Miraculous Medals from Marytown's online gift shop and had them blessed so that I could give them away. (In fact, I'm afraid I still owe some medals to readers who requested them — I got caught up in other things and forgot to send them out.)
Tomorrow, I am going to see someone who is not a Catholic, yet I believe that this person in some way needs a Miraculous Medal. That is, this person needs to experience the love and graces that God allows Mary to bestow — and that this person may be more willing to open his or her heart to such love and graces if this person has a Miraculous Medal.
Please pray for the person to whom I intend to give the medal, and please pray for me — that I will know the right way to approach this person. Also, please pray that I will approach this person only if the moment is right — that I won't come across as pushy, but only kind.
" . . . but the universe is not intelligently designed, then you're saying the universe just naturally came into existence, continues existence, through natural laws of nature, through physics, thermodynamics, the laws of gravity and energy, produced you, eventually, and then through you produced this book that proves that it has no natural intelligent design.
— Stephen Colbert — or, as the Raving Atheist notes, "'Devout Catholic' Stephen Colbert," to Richard Dawkins, on "The Colbert Report." For the rest of the interview, read the Raving Atheist's transcript, appropriately headlined Atheist vs. Atheist."
Contest Marks 80th Anniversary of Planned Parenthood Founder's Speech at Klan Rally
The Truth About Margaret Sanger is holding its second annual contest marking an important event in the life of Planned Parenthood's founder:
It is time again for the Margaret Sanger at the Ku Klux Klan Rally Art Contest. This year's contest will highlight the 80th Anniversary of Margaret Sanger's speech to the the women's branch of the Silver Lake Ku Klux Klan. In her own 1938 autobiography, Margaret Sanger An Autobiography (1971 reprint by Dover Publications, Inc. of the 1938 original published by W.W. Norton & Company) Sanger indicates at pages 366-367 that the she got along quite well with members of a New Jersey branch of the Ku Klux Klan at her 1926 speech, eventually getting a "dozen invitations to speak to similar groups."
Participants in this year's contest are encouraged to commemorate Sanger at the Klan rally in unique artistic ways. Drawings, cartoons, historical novels, haiku, dance, plays, videos, paintings, quilts, rap, actual photos of Silver Lake, modern interpretations of Sanger speaking to the Klan, reenactments of the actual speech on YouTube, audio recordings of actual Sanger quotes she may have reused when speaking to the Klan - - there is no limit to the artistic ways this historic event can be commemorated.
The Big Abortion Industry still holds Margret Sanger out as an icon. Artwork is one more important ways to promote the truth about Margaret Sanger.
"... Humans are indeed sexual beings, but our sex lives cannot define us. Embrace that notion, and its eventual, inescapable conclusion is that humans are nothing more than highly civilized animals.
"Sex is no longer sacred. Tragically, many of us are stunned to hear anyone claim it ever was.
"Thankfully an alternate view exists, one which holds that our sexual nature speaks staggering truths about who we are, about the human capacity for relationship, intimacy and participation in the creation of new life. ..."
Many thanks to Andrew Krucoff for posting a Q&A with me on the 92nd St. Y's blog in advance of my taking part in a panel discussion tomorrow at the Y's Makor nightclub. I'll be one of three panelists in "Cutting to the Chaste" along with sex columnist Grant Stoddard and best-selling author Ian Kerner (whose observations on oxytocin were helpful to me when I was writing my book).
My upcoming book, The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On, is available for preorder on Amazon.com.
Sorry, I just liked that headline. But there is indeed a story in today's Telegraph about a member of the Church of England's Synod asserting that the church has given up on its Biblical mandate to convert non-Christians, particularly Muslims. According to the article, he has some support from other Synod members. From the story:
Paul Eddy, a member of the General Synod, the Church's ruling body, said that the active recruitment of non-believers had always been a Biblical injunction on Christians.
But he claimed that the bishops were deliberately down-playing evangelisation among other faiths for fear of upsetting minority groups and their role in inter-faith talks.
Mr Eddy, from the Winchester diocese, has now tabled a private member's motion aimed at forcing the Church to clarify its position on what is potentially a highly sensitive issue. ...
... He said the Church's official statements tended to gloss over the issue of converting Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs or followers of other religions. His motion calls on the bishops to report back on "their understanding of the uniqueness of Christ in Britain's multi-faith society, and offer examples and commendations of good practice in sharing the gospel of salvation through Christ alone with people of other faiths and of none".
"My Muslim friends say they can't understand why we Christians don't evangelise more, especially as they have a strategy to convert Britain," said Mr Eddy.
"The Church needs to regain confidence in the God it professes to believe in, and a new confidence in the Gospel it should be proclaiming. And that starts with a clear steer from the bishops."
His motion follows growing concerns that the Government's efforts to turn Britain into a multi-faith society has eroded the influence of the majority Christian Church. [Full story]
RELATED: British Airways has suspended a flight attendant who refused to remove her small crucifix. Rules set by the airline's "diversity team" allow Sikh employees to wear their traditional iron bangle.
The following is a statement released yesterday by Marie Roberts, widow of Charles Roberts, the gunman who committed the Amish school shooting that left five girls dead and five more wounded:
From the Roberts family:
To our Amish friends, neighbors, and local community:
Our family wants each of you to know that we are overwhelmed by the forgiveness, grace, and mercy that you’ve extended to us. Your love for our family has helped to provide the healing we so desperately need. The prayers, flowers, cards, and gifts you’ve given have touched our hearts in a way no words can describe. Your compassion has reached beyond our family, beyond our community, and is changing our world, and for this we sincerely thank you.
Please know that our hearts have been broken by all that has happened. We are filled with sorrow for all of our Amish neighbors whom we have loved and continue to love. We know that there are many hard days ahead for all the families who lost loved ones, and so we will continue to put our hope and trust in God of all comfort, as we all seek to rebuild our lives.
What struck me about G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday when I first read it, as an agnostic Jewish rock journalist who thought Christians were boring and conformist, was that it presented faith as a rebellion against the world. Until then, I had assumed that Christians ran the world, and that the only way to be a rebel was to oppose them — even as I might ostensibly agree with them on things like that "do unto others" stuff.
I later discovered that the feeling I had received from Chesterton's fictional work was fully articulated by him in Orthodoxy:
"Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king."
Profound enough, but Chesterton immediately gets even deeper:
"Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point and does not break. In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologise in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in that terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt. It is written, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." No; but the Lord thy God may tempt Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane. In a garden Satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay, (the matter grows too difficult for human speech,) but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist."
I am going to remember that as I pray tonight — that Jesus loves me so much that He even peered into the depths of hopelessness for my sake, so that he would be "touched with the feeling of [my] infirmities." I will also ask Him for the grace of being able to look beyond my own infirmities and show others that same empathetic love that He shows me.
"Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. Mercy does not mean not being cruel, or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or not seen.
"Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc."
Praise the Lord and Flash My Erudition Incomplete Impressions of a Joy-Filled Junket, Part Two
[Continued from Part One. Been very busy playing catch-up upon returning, so further impressions will be (even more) scattered and out of order.]
Before each day's keynote speech, Jaime Jamgochian played and sang her self-penned worship tunes, in a beautiful voice and with genuine feeling, for about 20 minutes while I and the rest of us in the auditorium stood up and and sang along, following lyrics projected upon screens. My blood pressure didn't boil like it normally might at the sound of the contemporary music; I was just so glad we weren't singing "Awesome God."
On each of the two days I was there, Jaime's songs included lyrics about "bending the knee" to Jesus. That fascinated me because, well, to the best of my knowledge, Southern Baptists don't bend their knees in prayer. It was as though they, by singing Jaime's lyrics, were in some way acknowledging a deep-seated desire to adore Jesus, acknowledging His Lordship in a physical way that goes beyond what their religion prescribes.
It seemed as strange to me as if they had sung fondly about making the sign of the cross or drinking sacramental wine.
* * *
In the ladies' room after Dr. Longinow's keynote speech, I saw there was a line — but no one was using the wheelchair-accessible stall. Such courtesy I have never seen in New York City.
* * *
After the faculty dinner on Friday, a group of photographers who were taking part in the conference, all male, asked if I wanted to ride with them to the Borders bookstore. Being a night owl and feeling a bit lonely in a strange city, I was glad for the invitation.
They were a raucous and fun bunch. I won them over when — after telling them about my upcoming book — I told them the latest thing I had done to protect my chastity: I intentionally left my extra hotel key card in my room — just so I wouldn't be tempted.
They loved that.
* * *
Sunday morning, my Catholic seminarian friend Dennis Schenkel was passing through town, and he took me to the airport.
As we had breakfast, I commented that I was trying to remove the term "Father What-a-Waste" from my vocabulary, because it's terrible to call a priest a waste.
Dennis observed drily that he had yet to meet a nun who could conceivably be called "Sister Mary Hottie."
[The following is cross-posted from Dennis Schenkel's Vita Mea blog. Dennis is a Catholic seminarian. The prayerful, nonconfrontational approach to witnessing outside abortion clinics that he describes is practiced in many cities by Helpers of God's Precious Infants. — Dawn]
I'm interested in thoughtful opinions on something.
This past Friday, 34 seminarians fasted from lunch for women who were considering abortion so that the money that would have been spent on lunch could be sent to the Pregnancy Resource Center in Louisville, KY. Then on Saturday morning, 9 of us went to Louisville to pray the rosary at the abortion facility and be prayerful witnesses to the truth of the goodness of life.
(In case anyone is interested, here is the website for the Louisville abortuary. Reading their descriptions of the surgical "procedures" is enlightening.)
This past Saturday morning, 18 separate women entered the abortuary with the intention of ending a pregnancy, perhaps not realizing that they were ending a life, perhaps even inflicting a mortal wound upon their hearts as well.
In Louisville, there are no buffer zone ordinances, so people who oppose abortion can stand on the sidewalk right up to the door of the facility. Also, the facility fronts right onto the sidewalk, unlike many Planned Parenthood facilities with large fenced in parking lots.
On a typical Saturday morning, some 20 or so Catholics and a few other Christians will stand on either side of the sidewalk in front of the abortion facility and pray the rosary. When a woman shows up for an abortion, she parks in the lot across the street where she is surrounded by helpful abortuary escorts who help her speed quickly across the street, past the people praying, past the sidewalk counselors offering alternatives and other information, into the abortuary. The escorts make sure that the woman moves as fast as she can, because any delay could mean that a sidewalk counselor might actually get to have a conversation with the woman.
As they are rushing the woman to the front door, they pass through the midst of the pray-ers on the sidewalk, who do not hinder them. They continue praying their rosaries, taking what is in their mind a brave stance against the injustice of killing innocents.
The woman, from her perspective, sees simply a large crowd gathered near the door of the abortuary, and, already in turmoil with her own fears, and wishing this was already over with and behind her, doesn't mind being hurried in. The crowd near the door might even appear hostile, because while the Catholics are all praying the rosary, there is always a stray Protestant or two shouting things like "Don't be a Murderer! You're killing your Baby!" From the woman's perspective, there is no way to distinguish the people praying from the one or two shouting.
So we seminarians pray across the street. We think it's less scary for a woman, and so she won't feel as rushed to hurry into the "safety" of the lobby of the abortion facility. We think the escorts currently have the fantasy that they are protecting women from fanatics, but that if the people praying were on the other side of the street, in a non-threatening posture rather than "in your face," the escorts might begin to think they aren't really necessary, and they might stop showing up to volunteer on Saturday mornings. And we think if the escorts disappeared, then there would be more opportunity for the sidewalk counselor to do what she is there to do, which is help women who are scared and fearful have more knowledge about their options.
Some of the Catholics who stand to pray near the entrance of the abortuary have questioned whether we seminarians are truly willing to confront the evil. They wonder if we are actually dedicated to the cause of life, or if we have been compromised by some other agenda.
Joseph Pepper Bryars writes: "Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, announced last week that it has joined the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), sharing membership with such organizations as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Junior League, the Teamsters, YMCA and the National Bar Association, among others."
when I first read it, as an agnostic Jewish rock journalist who thought Christians were boring and conformist, was that it presented faith as a rebellion against the world. Until then, I had assumed that Christians ran the world, and that the only way to be a rebel was to oppose them — even as I might ostensibly agree with them on things like that "do unto others" stuff.