06 April, 2010

Powerful, Simple one minute prolife video

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10 comments:

  1. The inference is that it is possible to have a birth negative age. That is false.

    I'm pro choice.

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  2. Dear Lady Janus:

    I have been aware of your pro-choice beliefs since seeing your commentary elsewhere.

    No surprise here, I am pro-life. I have always been pro-life, but my pro-life belief took a turn 2 years ago, that was profound.

    My then 23 year old daughter found herself pregnant, unmarried, and abandoned by the father of the unborn baby. My wife and I would have done anything to help her through her pregnancy. However, she chose to abort her child, our grandchild. As sad as I was that she made the choice that led to the choice of pro-choice, I was deeply saddened that she took the life of her child/our grandchild.

    For 2 weeks I wept often, and was somewhat inconsolable because I knew in my heart that she had killed her own son.

    Finally, I was able to baptize my grandson in the Spirit, and give my grief to God. With that I could accept his death.

    I have subsequently been involved with the pro-life movement in Tucson AZ where we spend much of our winters, and write periodically about life.

    My love for my daughter has never diminished. As a father, I cannot turn my back on her, nor would I choose to.

    I have met enough women who have suffered from having made the Choice to kill their unborn child to be aware of some of the sorrow they will feel, for the choice they have made.

    Our definitions of when a child is a child are woefully inadequate, and our sexual morality, and desire to take control of our own bodies is selfish. This selfish assertion is based on my own personal experience, and is a judgment of my own personal behaviour at times in my life.

    It is what I feel in my heart. However, I cannot hate someone who thinks differently.

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  3. The Catholic Church is now drawing the line at abortion without admitting a whole series of humiliating defeats on sexual and family issues. Parents now seek to raise "responsible", not chaste children. Divorces are the same rate for Catholics as the rest of the population, as are contraceptive use and abortion. Catholics do not seek to hide their practices in these areas from anyone. I'm sure you have nieces and nephews living openly together with sexual partners and controlling their fertility, Tim. I do. Even among Catholic groups that still value large families, like Filipinos and Hispanics, chastity before marriage is rare and birth control is carefully practiced especially among educated and upwardly mobile youth.

    The Catholic Church sees these issues as pro family and pro life. I don't think most do, anymore. Most men see these as issues of personal autonomy. Women may also but additionally are concerned that the Churches rigid codes of morality lead to the subjugation of women.

    Do you honestly think you are going to roll the clock back on any of these issues? We live in democracies. If people wanted things different, they would be. There is nothing stopping anyone from following the Catholic dictates on marriage and morality and yet almost none do. Sure, there are juiceless old fogies that claim to have but that wasn't the case if you had caught their act thirty years ago.

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  4. reddog:

    You raise interesting points.

    The Catholic Church went the way of the sexual revolution, and chose to ignore Humanae Vitae. Net result, statistics that mirror the rest of the world. No differentiation there. Why be Catholic?

    I count myself in that sorry lot(from a Catholic faith perspective). But, today, I don't think I am a juiceless old fogey, though I am bordering on an old fogey at age 60.

    What is happening in the Catholic Church today is a resurgence of the faith, including personal relationships with Our Lord and Saviour, and submission to Church authority, rather than faking it. The priests rather than being observers of the faith, rather than partakers have been growing in their faith, and are providing spiritual leadership at this point in time.

    Priests like Father Tim are becoming the norm. It does not matter that they and we, the faithful, are a remnant. As we are drawn to lives more worthy of the faith we profess, we will become a better witness to the Truth we seek.

    Your skepticism and criticism, though painful is largely warranted, though it did not have to be this way.

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  5. Michael, as you say, what you feel is what is in your heart. It in not what everyone feels.

    One of the problems I have with such black-and-white political positions like the one in the ad is that there is a universe full of shades of grey that are being being completely ignored. Not to mention that the terminology is half wrong. Being pro choice does not mean one is anti life; but being "pro life" is definitely anti choice, especially for someone else!

    Now, I've tried over the years to find ways of saying this next bit with some diplomacy, but the fact is, there ain't no way to do that. I'm not taking personal shots at you, okay? You need to understand that...

    "For 2 weeks I wept often, and was somewhat inconsolable because I knew in my heart that she had killed her own son."

    "Inconsolable" over a situation and choice over which you have no authority and no control -- that does not involve you and in which you have no voice and no vote? How can you be "inconsolable" over that which is not yours? It's not a very reasonable response to somebody else's reality. I'll bet you used to tell your daughter that she can't always have what she wants just because she wants it. It's time you listened to your own lessons in that regard, don't you think?

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  6. How diplomatic you were, Lady J.

    Actually, though as my daughter's father, I had a vote for many years, and felt that I had failed to teach my daughter the things she needed to know to grow up. (You don't need to jump on that last line, BTW). So, to a large extent I was dealing with my own feelings of failure to her in the past. I was well aware that I had no authority or control over her decision. But, I lost a grandchild by her choice, and I have 2 already and one just created, and I delight in them, as I delighted in my own children.

    God, whom I also carry on conversations like this with, already taught me what you have just reminded me of. But, thanks for the reminder.

    When I talk with God, and he answers me, it is typically not involving a keyboard.

    As to your comment about shades of gray vs. black and white, that is a Lazy cop out (See your comment to STG on the other posting.) Human beings are not shades of gray, just because they have not made their own way out of the womb yet. It is very black and white. Either it is a baby or it is not. If it is a baby then abortion is not a choice, it is a murder.

    If you believe it is not a human being baby that a woman carries in her womb, and I have read your arguments before, then of course, it is only about a choice.

    But that too is about black and white.

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  7. "Either it is a baby or it is not."

    Not.

    And that's what I meant about shades of grey -- the opinions, not the thing itself. You see it as a baby before it is born, and while that may be valid for you, it is not necessarily valid for someone else. That's where grey comes in...for different people, that developing fetus takes on different values at different times.

    But give yourself a break, wouldja? You raised your daughter the best way you knew how, but you didn't -- couldn't -- raise her in an isolation chamber, so naturally she's going to absorb some values from others besides yourself. And then she's going to make up her own mind, based on all of that. None of that is your "fault."

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  8. I'm not seeing any resurgence of faith among young Catholics. Most of those active in the pro life movement seem to be past child bearing years, often divorced, did not have many children when they were child bearing and were no more chaste before marriage than anyone else. Maybe it only seems so to me because these individuals are the closest ones to my age and I am aware of them. Maybe there are a whole raft of devout young Catholics that I am unaware of. I'm not trying to be nasty about this, I just don't see it.

    I see very little Catholic or for that matter, Protestant youth ministry participation among the young online and there should be, if there was any resurgence of religious participation among young people.

    I have no irons in this fire. I'm old, long married, scrupulously faithful, raised no children and could care less whether future generations are observant of organized religion. I'm past the age when anybody is likely to try and scold me for bad behavior and quickly approaching an age where bad behavior is only an old sailor's treasured dream of youth.

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  9. Lady Janus:

    I concur with what you are calling gray, that area between what we each believe about life. I was calling it black and white or white and black, because there is a clear line of demarcation between our two beliefs, in that I believe as a Catholic Christian, and as one who is thinking for myself, and choosing my belief, that it is a person from the moment of conception. It is or it isn't. I do understand your reason for calling it grey though.

    You are right that ultimately it is not my "fault" that my daughter and my other daughters make choices that are contrary to what I believe and tried to teach them. Like me, they have a free will to choose what they wish for their lives. It is painful for me as a father to watch my now adult children make choices that I made which had disastrous consequences for me in my own life. But, that is part of being a parent, loving unconditionally, not because the love is earned, but because to love is the right thing to do.

    Just an aside, I have the "joy" of having been raised in an Irish Catholic household. Though my parents were both generations away from "the olde sod", Irish Catholic guilt is a culturally conditioned parenting technique. My mother used it liberally on both my sister and me. She taught us to do "my fault" very well, so it is a cultural challenge for me to accept responsibility for only the things that I should.

    In the future, we shall see is I was able to teach my children something different, or whether I passed it on to them.

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  10. reddog:

    My Dear Wife and I participate in a Catholic Parish, Our Lady of Fatima in Tucson AZ, and also at St. George Parish here in London, ON. Though that is not a statistically significant number of parishes, we have witnessed the resurgence of the faith in both places in the young and the old alike.

    In Tucson, this past winter, I saw a lot of evidence of young people getting interested in the Church, and participating in the Pro-Life movement. But, unlike those of us who are no longer in the work force, they have commitments during the day, and we are not as likely to see them in front of abortion clinics praying the Rosary. So, the sample you are likely to see most of the time in those efforts is likely to be older.

    But, we observed a part of a youth retreat in preparation for Confirmation at the Diocese of Tucson retreat center, and there was reason for those of us who care about our Church to be encouraged.

    While there, we also had a lengthy encounter with a young woman who was helping out and who had entered into a nun's monastery for formation. I wrote about her for Catholic Online. Needless to say, meeting a young woman entering into a novitiate is not your every day occurrence, though I discovered that she is not alone.

    Here in London, the Church is becoming more vibrant daily, though we face challenges in education here, as our schools are funded with provincial tax dollars. As a result, the schools look a lot like public schools, and the religious formation component is more likely to be found back in the parish youth groups.

    Having been a rascal for a lot of my life, much of my bad behavior is in the past, though I personally do not look back on those days as fun any more.

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A Roman Catholic Evangelical Priest of the Diocese of Pembroke, Canada. Shown in my profile photo with my canine companion, Mateo.

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