Following up on yesterday’s post, may I offer a word of advice to my fellow Consistent Life Ethic advocates?
Like it or not, CLE people are not going to live in a world where the victims of the misogynist, vengeful, spiteful Cult of Death MAGA majority in the so-called “prolife” movement are going to instantly distinguish CLE types from that Freak Show. Responding to their perfectly justifiable outrage at that Freak Show with self-pity when we (as we certainly shall) receive some of that blowback is going to be tempting, but a huge waste of time.
What has to be done instead is the painstaking work of thinking through what is actually just and right and then doing it. What is about to be done to a lot of innocent people by the MAGA “prolife” Cult of Death is going to create a perfectly understandable backlash. That backlash may not always discriminate between the sadistic, misogynist Cult and the CLE advocates who think punishing post-abortive women is unjust, evil, and insane. If you occasionally have to take one on the chin, count it all joy to suffer for the Name. But also, recognize that the real danger to the Faith is not peaceful protestors or the occasional vandal, but the MAGA antichrist cult who cause God’s Name to be blasphemed among the Gentiles.
Case in point, this kind of hysteria from self-pitying Reactionaries:
These sorts of people were babbling about bringing guns to Mass, certain that the Legions of Evil were going to attack “all over the USA”. In fact, virtually nothing happened. A couple of protests at places you would expect like St. Pat’s in NYC (because that’s where the cameras are and that’s the point of protests: to get attention). And there was a little sporadic vandalism:
Not good, but also not the Great Satanic Persecuting Fire that Marshall and his ilk like to fantasize about as they cosplay at martyrdom. Indeed, the three most notable things about the response to the news about Roe are
a) how little violence or vandalism there was in reaction;
b) that Biden, who is supposedly evil mastermind bent on destroying the “prolife” movement immediately and aggressively attacked violence and vandalism against prolifers and the churches:
c) that the self-appointed “defenders” against peaceful protestors outside St. Pat’s in NYC vocally championed rape.
No. Really. Here are the thugs, being praised by eager Nazi supporter Paul Gosar:
What Gosar neglects to tell you is that the “hordes” were peaceful, while blue hat douchebro shouted at them, “Not your body. Not your choice. Your body is mine. You will have my baby.” A stirring defense of rape, not the unborn. But that is what the MAGA cult does, in fact, celebrate–and why I say, “God’s Name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of them.”
The Church will survive vandalism and protest. Heck, it will survive persecution and martyrdom. But it truly is endangered by the Greatest Catholics of All Time bragging that they have the right to commit rape. That is why Jesus says, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Matthew 10:28
Now the thing about being Catholic is, you can pick your friends, but you are stuck with your family. Blue Hat Douchebro, while certainly an enemy of the gospel, remains a member of the Catholic communion. And there is no particular reason I should expect somebody who is not Catholic to know or care about distinguishing him from me. So get ready to bear unjust suffering for things you don’t advocate, spoken and done by Catholics who reject the Church’s teaching, hate the Pope, and think bragging about the right to rape is an awesome “prolife” witness of manly manliness. Opposing such sliminess while bearing blame for it will be the Christlike thing to do. Focus, not on yourself, but on defending the victims the MAGA antichrist “prolife” cult of death is going to create in its spite, stupidity, misogyny, and malice.
The good news is that there are prolife groups opposing the rush by the nuts to punish post-abortive women. Now let’s see if they are the norm or outliers. How about it, Rest of the Prolife Movement? Where are you gonna go? Join the MAGA misogynists and sadists with your silence and vocal support for this lunacy? Or do the right thing and oppose every MAGA effort to crucify women?
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8 Responses
The article you linked to states that a Louisiana Right to Life opposes punishing mothers, but wants to punish abortionists. Is that your position? I’ve always thought you were a Pro-Choice Catholic who understood that you could not impose your personal religious beliefs on others. Everything you’ve written recently made me think that you regarded the end of Roe v. Wade to be a travesty.
I think decapitating the ob/gyn/pedes staff of an already overburdened US health care system is stupid, and that there will be no way the MAGA Cult can avoid jailing and punishing post-abortive women since lots of women perform their own abortions pharmacologically. The Cult has no plan for the chaos they are about to unleash.
I’m glad that you don’t want to decapitate anyone and I’m glad that you oppose the MAGA Cult, but I’m not clear on the rest of your answer. Do you think that there should be any punishments at all (jail, fines) for doctors who perform abortions? Or do you support a woman’s right to choose at any point in her pregnancy, without restriction?
I care about what works, not about foolish and counter-productive performative piety such as jailing and/or executing post-abortive women and OB/GYN. Criminalizing abortion does not lower abortion rates and *does* raise maternal mortality rates. So it’s dumb. What has to be attacked is demand, not supply. See my posts this Monday and Tuesday.
@Mark Shea:
You said:
“I care about what works, not about foolish and counter-productive performative piety such as jailing and/or executing post-abortive women and OB/GYN. Criminalizing abortion does not lower abortion rates and *does* raise maternal mortality rates. So it’s dumb. What has to be attacked is demand, not supply. See my posts this Monday and Tuesday.”
That would make you pro-choice then.
It doesn’t mean that you want abortions to happen, or that you would ever engage with or encourage anybody to get one, or that you think its moral for someone to make that decision on a personal level.
But I’m just saying, this is what it means to be pro-choice: that you believe, for whatever reasons, that abortion should remain legal, even if you don’t agree with it.
Its not that unusual; a quick Google search yielded a Fox News affiliate article citing a survey that placed the majority of Catholics on the pro-choice side, I’m guessing that their reasons for their position are not dissimilar from your own,
However, I am surprised to hear this coming from you. Sure, I think it is the logical conclusion to many of the things you’ve been saying for some time now, but on the other hand, it wasn’t that long ago that you were mocking and deriding groups like Catholics for Choice for taking pretty much the same position as you are now.
Doesn’t this put you at odds with the Church though? It was my understanding that the Catholic Church advocates for the explicit criminalization of abortion, and has supported such efforts in several countries. And If the the stories about Catholic hospitals are anything to go by, their approach on this issue is pretty much one of “follow the rules, consequences be damned”.
Now, it seemed like you were implying in earlier articles, that those on the left needed to come around to the Church’s position on abortion, but that to me seems like a surefire way to inflict a great deal of pain, misery and death to women, and the exact opposite of what you’re advocating here.
So what exactly is it that you want from “leftists” regarding abortion?
two days ago Archbishop Cordileone banned Nancy Pelosi from communion.
“I asked her to repudiate this position, or else refrain from referring to her Catholic faith in public and receiving Holy Communion,” he wrote.
Note the part about ”referring to her Catholic faith”. When, if, Roe gets overturned, every public Catholic who follows the teachings of the DNC instead of those of the Church, will progressively become more and more exposed, because they can no longer hide behind the constitution and will have to advocate for unrestrained abortion in every single legislature.
They could – in theory – even get away with this, but they will surely receive, read and obey the memo that says it’s important for the party to keep stressing their faith. For now, the catholic demographic still matters, ya know …
The so-called ”pastoral” approach is dead, not because it is wrong, but because it never works with obstinate people who spit in the face of their bishop saying ”I do what I want, and it is *me* who says what catholic teaching is”.
I am a faithful Catholic. I am totally opposed to Roe being overturned. Let me explain.
Roe is a decision predicated on a persons right to privacy over their own body. Because of this right to privacy our government can never force me to have an abortion, or take birth control, or force sterilization etc. The government cannot tell me how many children I may have or tell me that I must abort a child that may become a financial hardship to the healthcare system etc.
Overturning Roe does not make abortion illegal. It is a transfer of power from an individual to the government. Overturning Roe takes that private decision away from the individual. It then becomes the government’s choice. There is absolutely no guarantee that the government will make abortion illegal. Perhaps they will for a time but make no mistake, the choice will be theirs. If you think this is a stretch the scotus has already issued a “clarifying “ statement that they will not use this power to ban interracial marriage for example, and it will apply to only abortion. The fact that this clarification was necessary demonstrates that they will in fact now have the power to do so but are giving their word that this is not their intent. If I take them at their word (I do not) how long before our government uses this power for other purposes? Why would we ever think this was a good idea??
If you think eugenics and forced sterilization in the U. S. Is a stretch I encourage you to look at
Buck v. Bell
@ Tech2010
The Catholic Church isn’t all that invested in upholding the power of the individual, and it’s doesn’t hold a libertarian view on government either. This should be clear from any primer on Catholic Social Teaching.
On the matter of abortion’s legality, the Church has spoken repeatedly: in a just society, there *is* no individual ”right” to abortion. The right that *does* exist is the right to life of every human being, including the unborn, and this right should be safeguarded by civil society and the political authorities.