Littlest Victim - Heresy of 'Choice'

Dan Gilgof asks an interesting question: Why did Obama use "children" over "fetus" to describe the unborn?

One line in particular in President Obama's Notre Dame speech really jumped out at me: "Let's provide care and support for women who do carry their children to term."

Obama used the word children as opposed to fetus, employing the nomenclature of antiabortion activists as opposed to that of the pro-abortion-rights movement. If the fetus is a child, antiabortion advocates say, how can you justify abortion?

... Is the president subtly invoking the antiabortion lexicon in addressing conservative religious audiences? Or am I reading too much into this? (US News)

I agree with the American Papist who says, 'You see, abortion advocates are happy to use the term "child" to describe a "wanted" child. In other words, for them, a child is not a "child" until the mother has made a choice to keep it. Otherwise a "child" remains a "fetus" until he or she takes their first breath of air.'

In other words, 'fetus' is another word for disposable person. It is a sacrificial term.

'America has a new pope'

Father Z pretty much spells out the battle plan.

Neither President, Jenkins nor Obama, needed to say much of substance. And they didn’t. All they had to do to vindicate the inevitable rightness of their agendas was to sound reasonable.

Fr. Jenkins, throbbing with emotion after these weeks of persecution, cuddled the students and their adorers, inviting them into his sufferings.

President Obama, wise realist, offered astonishing insight. For example, you surely noted his stunning admission that the two sides in the abortion debate – wait for it – have irreconcilable differences!

In the final analysis we heard various expressions of "can’t we all just get along" even as we were being told to "shut up".

[ ... ]

In an era when emotion trumps reason, facts are just plain mean.

The progressivist side knows they will not win by arguments. They win by projecting the image of deep-caring, of brow-furrowed nuance, of struggling with those hard decisions.

Remember: If you will have first "struggled" you are thereafter justified in anything you chose.

So, Sunday was pretty black for Catholics who are waking up to a clearer Catholic identity in continuity with our Tradition. It was a great day for adherents of Catholic-lite, especially in the many long-subverted institutions of higher learning. They are sure to be revitalized.

[ ... ]

Among the reactions I gathered from the smart people I talk with about pivotal events – and we witnessed something pivotal on Sunday – I heard grim assessments and forecasts.

One person said, "America has a new pope".

Therefore, after pondering this for a day, my response is finally to return to a basic premise of this blog.

More than ever, we must have what the Church really says, what Holy Church really has to offer.

Read all here.

Archbishop Chaput

Most graduation speeches are a mix of piety and optimism designed to ease students smoothly into real life. The best have humor. Some genuinely inspire. But only a rare few manage to be pious, optimistic, evasive, sad and damaging all at the same time. Father John Jenkins, C.S.C., Notre Dame’s president, is a man of substantial intellect and ability. This makes his introductory comments to President Obama’s Notre Dame commencement speech on May 17 all the more embarrassing.

Let’s remember that the debate over President Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame was never about whether he is a good or bad man. The president is clearly a sincere and able man. By his own words, religion has had a major influence in his life. We owe him the respect Scripture calls us to show all public officials. We have a duty to pray for his wisdom and for the success of his service to the common good -- insofar as it is guided by right moral reasoning.

We also have the duty to oppose him when he’s wrong on foundational issues like abortion, embryonic stem cell research and similar matters. And we also have the duty to avoid prostituting our Catholic identity by appeals to phony dialogue that mask an abdication of our moral witness. Notre Dame did not merely invite the president to speak at its commencement. It also conferred an unnecessary and unearned honorary law degree on a man committed to upholding one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in our nation’s history: Roe v. Wade.

In doing so, Notre Dame ignored the U.S. bishops’ guidance in their 2004 statement, Catholics in Political Life. It ignored the concerns of Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon, Notre Dame’s 2009 Laetare Medal honoree – who, unlike the president, certainly did deserve her award, but finally declined it in frustration with the university’s action. It ignored appeals from the university’s local bishop, the president of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference, more than 70 other bishops, many thousands of Notre Dame alumni and hundreds of thousands of other American Catholics. Even here in Colorado, I’ve heard from too many to count.

There was no excuse – none, except intellectual vanity – for the university to persist in its course. And Father Jenkins compounded a bad original decision with evasive and disingenuous explanations to subsequently justify it.

These are hard words, but they’re deserved precisely because of Father Jenkins’ own remarks on May 17: Until now, American Catholics have indeed had “a special expectation, a special hope for what Notre Dame can accomplish in the world.” For many faithful Catholics – and not just a “small but vocal group” described with such inexcusable disdain and ignorance in journals like Time magazine -- that changed Sunday.

The May 17 events do have some fitting irony, though. Almost exactly 25 years ago, Notre Dame provided the forum for Gov. Mario Cuomo to outline the “Catholic” case for “pro-choice” public service. At the time, Cuomo’s speech was hailed in the media as a masterpiece of American Catholic legal and moral reasoning. In retrospect, it’s clearly adroit. It’s also, just as clearly, an illogical and intellectually shabby exercise in the manufacture of excuses. Father Jenkins’ explanations, and President Obama’s honorary degree, are a fitting national bookend to a quarter century of softening Catholic witness in Catholic higher education. Together, they’ve given the next generation of Catholic leadership all the excuses they need to baptize their personal conveniences and ignore what it really demands to be “Catholic” in the public square ...

Read all here.

Piper - No, Mr. President

Banality of Evil

Karen Hall brings you Demonic Inversion.

And doing a darn good job of it

Pro-Obama ‘political operators’ trying to divide Catholics, George Weigel claims.

Of course, we were doing it well before I Won came on the scene. And Fr Ralph McInerny comments in A House Divided.

Mimetic theory in a nutshell

Interview With Father John Wauck

By Jesús Colina

ROME, MAY 17, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Despite the large number of errors regarding Catholicism that can be found in the movie "Angels and Demons," the interest in the movie demonstrates an even greater interest in the Church, says Opus Dei priest Father John Wauck.

Father Wauck, who is a professor at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, and the author of the blog "The Da Vinci Code and Opus Dei." His course "A Mirror on the Soul" was aired on EWTN as a 13-part television series.

In this interview with ZENIT, Father Wauck discusses the movie "Angels and Demons," the film adaptation of Dan Brown's novel of the same name. The film opened this weekend and is the sequel to the "The Da Vinci Code."

Q: Do you think Dan Brown has a certain fixation with the Catholic Church?

Father Wauck: Sometimes I wonder: Where would Dan Brown be without the Catholic Church? Almost all the interesting things in his novels come from their Catholic setting ... (Emphasis added)

Read more …

Isaiah 40

Who has directed the spirit of the LORD, or has instructed him as his counselor?

Whom did he consult to gain knowledge? Who taught him the path of judgment, or showed him the way of understanding?

Behold, the nations count as a drop in the bucket, as dust on the scales; the coastlands weigh no more than powder ...

Before him all the nations are as nought, as nothing and void he accounts them.

To whom can you liken God? With what equal can you confront him?

Do you not know? Have you not heard? Was it not foretold you from the beginning? Have you not understood?

He sits enthroned above the vault of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; He stretches out the heavens like a veil, spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.

To whom can you liken me as an equal? says the Holy One.

Why, O Jacob, do you say, and declare, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God"?

Do you not know or have you not heard? The LORD is the eternal God, creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint nor grow weary, and his knowledge is beyond scrutiny.

He gives strength to the fainting; for the weak he makes vigor abound.

Though young men faint and grow weary, and youths stagger and fall,

They that hope in the LORD will renew their strength, they will soar as with eagles' wings; They will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint.

Prayers for Uneventful Visit - ND

Today, remember to pray for the president especially while he is at Notre Dame. The only thing worse than having him there would be for something untoward to happen during his visit.

The last thing the Catholic Church in America needs is another Gunpowder Plot, although it would please I Won sooo much, I fear.

Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

There is a growing multitude of attacks on the Holy Father and Catholic truth. As such, they attempt to draw us away from faith and hope and charity. Note them; but do not let them tempt you either to despair or frenetic distraction.

Damien Thompson notes the full frontal attack by such progressivist (read: let's continue the social meltdown) news organs as Time. Why not? Today is Let's Celebrate I Won's Trip to Notre Dame Sunday.

Meanwhile, the WaPo mounts the scaffolds to shout that Gay-Marriage Issue Awaits Court Pick Same-Sex Unions Supplant Abortion As Social Priority for Conservatives ... just as a poll is released that more Americans are pro-life than pro-choice for the first time.

Ah, what a glorious day to go to Mass and celebrate Our Lord's victory over the world and it satanic prince.

Seiyo - Mugged by Reality

Almost no one can scare by stating the facts of the downward spiral of the West as well as Takuan Seiyo. Here is the latest in his From Meccania to Atlantis series (#11) - Mugged by Reality.

BXVI and the Scimitar II

Michael Cook sheds light on perhaps the most important feature of Benedict XVI's trip to the Holy Land, yet one overlooked by the MSM in The Pope’s détente with the Muslim world.

A Trustworthy Companion

Jordan Davis at The Nation writes on what continues to make going to Narnia with C. S. Lewis so appealing to readers of all ages:

His is a sane and playful presence, not tame and never thoughtless. Though great danger is always imminent in Narnia, there is a profound sense of excitement, of mystery, of being loved. This sense is difficult to accomplish but also impossible to counterfeit. Lewis manages it partly through frequent second-person digressions keyed to the experience of any bright but otherwise ordinary 9-year-old, the age at which he lost his mother. Most of all, he forms a bond with young readers by pledging again and again to believe them by proxy: in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lucy persists in believing that she has gone to another world, and despite the betrayal of her brother Edmund, the other children go there with her. (To my knowledge, no one has followed up on the aside that Edmund's perverse, hateful behavior began when he was sent away to boarding school.) What continues to draw children to Lewis is not only the pleasure of traveling to a world that sounds better than this one but the promise of his company, so entertaining and learned, and so light about it.

Read all of Into the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis's Narnia.

He is Our Peace

"He is our peace, who reconciled us to God in one body through the Cross, bringing an end to hostility. Into his hands, then, let us entrust all our hope for the future, just as in the hour of darkness he entrusted his spirit into the Father's hands."

Weigel - Catholic Higher Education

For the record, George Weigel asks, What ‘Church’ does Notre Dame belong to?