Last week, Eduardo wrote:
In any event, and this is really my principal point in writing this post, given the differential treatment of abortion, I think it is highly inappropriate for advocates of prohibition … [to use] the rhetoric of "murder" … arguments that almost always rely on the language and imagery of murder (e.g., Cardinal George's blood-drenched language, frequent references to the killing of millions of defenseless "children," comparisons to the holocaust, etc.). I don't think that proponents of this particular mode of argument can have their rhetorical cake and eat it to.
Eduardo wrote this in the context of this year’s election, but if this “rhetoric” is inappropriate in the context of an election, maybe it is inappropriate elsewhere as well. My questions for Eduardo and others is this: Is using “blood-drenched language, frequent references to the killing of millions of defenseless ‘children,’” merely “rhetoric”? Or, is it language designed to express the truth of the matter asserted?
Is abortion the taking of a life? Is the form of the taking an act of intentional killing of a life? Is the life taken innocent of any wrongdoing? Is the life taken human? Is the method of taking the innocent human life brutal? If the answers to these questions are “yes,” then Cardinal George’s “blood-drenched language” is a form of truth telling, not merely rhetoric, political or otherwise.
And, it seems to that it is beyond dispute that the answers to these questions are “yes.” Don’t misunderstand. By saying that it is beyond dispute, I am not attempting to shut down the conversation. Quite the opposite, I am inviting the conversation. I would like someone who is opposed to this truth telling rhetoric to explain to me how abortion is not the brutal and intentional taking of innocent human life. In other words, what is untrue about the rhetoric?
Thursday, October 23, 2008
In response to my post on this subject, St. Thomas' Valerie Munson writes:
Like Michael S., I pray these days for our Episcopal brothers and sisters. I pray for the many who suffer a crisis of faith because of their church leaders’ own crisis of faith. I pray that those leaders will somehow hear and heed the call of the two commandments upon which are based all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 23:34-40). I also pray that forgiveness will come one day for all. (Matthew 18:21-22, Luke 6:27-28) I have prayed these prayers for a very long time.
My work with traditional Anglican parishes and clergy in the Episcopal Church began twenty years ago in Philadelphia. I witnessed no greater personal cruelty in my twenty-five years of private practice than that visited for many of those years by then-Bishop Charles Bennison and his advisors on faithful traditional Anglicans in the Diocese of Pennsylvania. Bennison wished to make it clear to those parishioners and clergy alike that they were not welcome in his Diocese. He did. He saw to it that traditional parishes lived for years under constant threat that their clergy would be defrocked and their parish property seized. He broke his word on countless occasions and in countless ways. He misrepresented their words and intentions to others. He made a mockery of truth and trust at every turn. He wanted traditional parishes to leave and they did. As far as I know, their properties still sit empty – vibrant urban ministries gone.
Bennison has spent this week in a Pennsylvania state courtroom, the defendant in a jury trial that may well change First Amendment law on church autonomy. After four pretrial hearings on jurisdiction, the court allowed the claim of a traditional Anglican priest that Bennison defrocked him by means of fraud and deceit to go forward. This civil trial comes on the heels of a historic ecclesial trial in which Bennison was deposed based on a cover up of his brother’s sexual abuse of a girl in his parish 35 years ago. (You can read a little about both here.)
My prayers for Episcopalians have changed somewhat over the past twenty years. Now, I pray for myself as well. I pray for the continued strength to bear a witness in the world that may help in some small measure to bind the wounds I have seen.
Professor Joseph Capizzi's column on Conscience Protections and Medicine will be of interest to some of our readers. Here is one paragraph:
Conscience protections exist to allow people to heal the sick without having to kill the vulnerable. The vocal representatives of the entrenched pro-abortion, pro-contraception view propose legislation to overturn or amend “conscience protection” laws designed to permit Catholics (and others) to express in our wider society the commitments of their communities to the sanctity of life. Any attempts to advance conscience protections are presented as affronts to others’ potential freedoms, with little or no mention of the actual restrictions on the freedom of those interested in healing without killing. There is much discussion in our society about the content and limits of freedom. But freedom by any name should permit men or women of character to do what they know is right. In like manner, freedom is meaningless when a person is coerced to do what he knows is wrong.
HT: Jonathan Watson
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
In response to my MacIntyre post, Chuck Roth writes:
Here's my question. I have no doubt that Obama's support of legalized abortion, etc., would require something very grave, indeed, to justify the remote material cooperation which voting for him would entail. But why does it follow that one should vote for McCain? McCain is far from perfect; he supports some embryonic stem cell research, some economic policies that I find morally objectionable, and (I think) a misapplication of just war principles.
One could say that abortion is such a grave thing that it would always (or almost always) constitute a "proportionate reason" to remotely cooperate with the candidate most opposed to it, no matter what other evils one would thereby remotely assist. But why is a binary choice between Democrat and Republican the only terms of the discussion? I am not nuts, I know that no third party candidate is a realistic possibility this year (or most years); but here in Chicago, there's also no realistic possibility that my vote will be determinative of the election.
Why must one endorse the lesser evil, if one's endorsement has basically no chance of swinging things one way or another, and if one can avoid endorsing either evil? Wouldn't a person in a dark blue or dark red state be morally advised to vote for neither Obama nor McCain?
Admitted, it seems Quixotic and silly. Go ahead, waste your vote, as they say. But in another sense, registering one's disapprobation with both parties seems, if multiplied by many thousands, to send a clear message of available votes to the parties, if they alter their positions, or to a potential third party or independent candidate. Why is that option not discussed in MoJ? It seems to me a logical slip of great magnitude.
This November, I will cast a vote for one of the two major presidential candidates (and most regular readers of this blog can probably correctly guess how I will vote). But, there is, as my daughter Anamaria reminds me, another possibility. She points to Alasdair MacIntyre's 2004 paper "The Only Vote Worth Casting in November" as still relevant today.
This November, I will cast a vote for one of the two major presidential candidates (and most regular bloggers can probably correctly guess how I will vote). But, there is, as my daughter Anamaria reminds me, another possibility. She points to Alasdair MacIntyre's 2004 paper "The Only Vote Worth Casting in November" as still relevant today.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Episcopalian friends of mine pointed out George Will's column last Sunday addressing the growing crisis in the U.S. Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican communion. The crisis runs much deeper, they assure me, than the ordination of Gene Robinson as as bishop in 2003. Paraphrasing Pittsburgh's bishop, Will states that "[t]he Episcopal Church's leadership is latitudinarian - tolerant to the point of incoherence --- about clergy who deviate from traditional church teachings concerning such core doctrines as the divinity of Christ, the authority of scripture and the path to salvation." This is also the perspective of my Episcopalian friends. One friend told me that the type of views espoused by former bishop Shelby Spong are now the norm among the church leadership.
From what I can see, this crisis has generated a real crisis of faith among some ordinary Episcopalians attempting to live out their lives as followers of Christ. As I sit in my office with a portrait of Thomas More watching over me as I type these words, it is hard for me - I confess - to feel too bad about the implosion of the Anglican/Episcopalian Church. And, that is why it is so important for me to see and remember the true suffering that occurs in these times.
As I pray with Jesus (John 17: 20-21) for the unity of all believers, I pray especially this day for all who suffer a crisis of faith because of their church leaders' own crisis of faith.
