Catholics undermining prolife

[commenter]

Why is there so little opposition to abortion, even among people who would prefer prolife? Here are some things I hear:

1. “Abortion is important, but so is everything else”. I see parishes where every cause gets equal time at the microphone. If the bulletin talks about abortion one week, it will equally promote other issues the other 51 weeks.
2. “Abortion was important in the 1970’s but why are you bringing it up now?”. The media treats abortion as a settled question, urgent in its time like World War II but (they say) now we have to focus on whatever is important in 2013.
3. “Prolifers are all single-issue fanatics”. This label is thrown at people who spent their life responding mostly to other concerns, like Mother Theresa. The implication is we choose either to be prolife (and hard, insensitive to all other concerns); or else we can choose to be compassionate to all people, for all seasons, and silent on abortion.
4. At one parish, they would invite prochoice peace and justice groups to talk about other political topics. They did not promote abortion in the parish, but just the fact they were given a Catholic platform gave them - and prochoice - a new respectability. “Maybe there are 2 sides to the abortion question after all…”
5. People in my diocese demand that the diocesan paper repeat all the social issues that are already in the daily paper, “to keep our credibility”.
6. Local “Catholic” colleges invite prochoice speakers “for diversity” (But why doesn’t diversity ever bring them to invite prolife speakers?)

 

[sedonaman]

…
3. “Prolifers are all single-issue fanatics”.

My response would be, “So?”

1. Local “Catholic” colleges invite prochoice speakers “for diversity” …

What is so sacrosanct about diversity? “I have never known a word to become absolute dogma, without a speck of evidence, the way ‘diversity’ has.” – Dr. Thomas Sowell

 

[otjm]

Why is there so little opposition to abortion, even among people who would prefer prolife?

I will try to answer that last.

Here are some things I hear:

1. “Abortion is important, but so is everything else”. I see parishes where every cause gets equal time at the microphone. If the bulletin talks about abortion one week, it will equally promote other issues the other 51 weeks.

“everything” else is important. that is not to say that it is equally important. However, unless you have actually made notes over the 52 weeks, you may well be overstating the issue. Abortion does not need to be “at the microphone” every week, or every other week, or for that matter, once every four weeks. If there is something happening in Prolife - a rally, a prayer vigil, a Benediction, a fund raiser, it should be mentioned. If not, then what is it you want mentioned? All of the activities which are relevant either to the parish or to pro lifers within it should be mentioned, but there often simply is not something going on in prolife.

1. “Abortion was important in the 1970’s but why are you bringing it up now?”. The media treats abortion as a settled question, urgent in its time like World War II but (they say) now we have to focus on whatever is important in 2013.

There are many people who are against abortion but see little or nothing they can do which they feel is effective. Two states have just put in laws restricting abortion very tightly; and both laws are heading to court. That has a tendency to reinforce the idea that there is little or nothing we can effectively do.

I don’t in any way wish to denigrate those who protest outside abortion facilities; most people do not feel called to do so. And some who do feel called have a tendency to judge others because of that. that judgment is wrong.

1. “Prolifers are all single-issue fanatics”. This label is thrown at people who spent their life responding mostly to other concerns, like Mother Theresa. The implication is we choose either to be prolife (and hard, insensitive to all other concerns); or else we can choose to be compassionate to all people, for all seasons, and silent on abortion.

People who say that are not worth the time of day. Move on.

1. At one parish, they would invite prochoice peace and justice groups to talk about other political topics. They did not promote abortion in the parish, but just the fact they were given a Catholic platform gave them - and prochoice - a new respectability. “Maybe there are 2 sides to the abortion question after all…”

There are 17,644 parishes in the US. What is your point here? That one waffled? And you are surprised or shocked? Don’t be. There are people who call themselves Catholic who do not follow the Magisterium - and that is on both ends of the spectrum. Move on.

1. People in my diocese demand that the diocesan paper repeat all the social issues that are already in the daily paper, “to keep our credibility”.

Not sure where you are going with that. In Oregon, Right to Life has its own “newspaper” format. The diocesan news paper has a duty to tell Catholics what is going on, and that includes more than just abortion issues. I don’t know bout your paper; ours covers abortion issues well, It also covers everything else too.

1. Local “Catholic” colleges invite prochoice speakers “for diversity” (But why doesn’t diversity ever bring them to invite prolife speakers?)

Catholic Colleges started running scared somewhere in the late 1960’s to the 1970’s, largely over issues concerning Federal money. A number of them have drifted away from a close adherence to the Magisterium when they started getting lay boards (part of the Federal money issue). Welcome to what has been going on for the last 40 years. It has been an on-going issue between bishops, who have little or no control over the colleges, and the colleges.

Your first comment: I don’t think there is “so little opposition” to abortion. There is a good deal of opposition to abortion, and gradually it has been growing (albeit slowly). We have an extremely secular society, which, like Europe, is claiming more and more people of faith (that is, not just Catholics). And Catholics are by no means the only people opposed to abortion. The sexual revolution which blew wide open in the 1960’s and 1970’s (significantly due to the Pill) has increased and increased over time, and people who are not committed to a moral understanding of sexual relations are, by and large, going to have a hard time connecting the dots. The root problem is not abortion; it is sexual immorality on a vast scale. We can talk until we are blue in the face about abortion, but the root problem is not abortion; it is sexual immorality. And turning that ship around will take more than just years; it will take decades if not centuries - assuming we survive that long.

 

[commenter]

I will try to answer that last.

“everything” else is important. that is not to say that it is equally important. However, unless you have actually made notes over the 52 weeks, you may well be overstating the issue. Abortion does not need to be “at the microphone” every week, or every other week, or for that matter, once every four weeks. If there is something happening in Prolife - a rally, a prayer vigil, a Benediction, a fund raiser, it should be mentioned. If not, then what is it you want mentioned? All of the activities which are relevant either to the parish or to pro lifers within it should be mentioned, but there often simply is not something going on in prolife.

(Each month the diocesan paper could print the numbers of abortions performed that month in each local city that has them, even better if the data is broken down by race, which should be available from your Health Department. Abortion isn’t a vague general concept like global warning, it’s a torture, one by one. We have to defeat the attitude that abortion in your town is “normal”, even less important than sports scores or real estate transactions which are reported in detail in newspapers).

I don’t in any way wish to denigrate those who protest outside abortion facilities; most people do not feel called to do so. And some who do feel called have a tendency to judge others because of that. that judgment is wrong.

(The prevailing attitude is that it’s permissible, but abnormal, to protest there. Why not challenge the prevailing attitude? Rather than saying 'Most people do not feel called", better to say “Most people have never been asked” to protest outside “clinics”. I respect conscientious objectors during wartime, but that doesn’t make it the norm. We are at war now, a bigger war than WW 2) .

(What you said about sexual morality is true).

.

 

[Holly3278]

Pro-life people and activists are not single issue “fanatics”. Catholics are opposed to more than just the intrinsic evil of abortion. We are also opposed to the death penalty in most cases as well as embryonic stem cell research and human cloning. Those are all pro-life issues.

 

[manualman]

Catholic Colleges started running scared somewhere in the late 1960’s to the 1970’s, largely over issues concerning Federal money. A number of them have drifted away from a close adherence to the Magisterium when they started getting lay boards (part of the Federal money issue). Welcome to what has been going on for the last 40 years. It has been an on-going issue between bishops, who have little or no control over the colleges, and the colleges.

Can you elaborate on this? Is this a personal opinion or do you have substantial evidence that Federal policies required catholic colleges to become secular? I’ve always been of the opinion that most catholic colleges apostasized all by themselves and would be interested in hearing why you think the government had a hand.

On the “single issue” front, I think it’s worth wearing like a badge. Nobody remembers any OTHER issue from the mid-1860’s to compare with the issue of slavery. Yet in their day, those abolitionists too were derided as narrowly focused fanatics. Americans in the early 1930’s alarmed by the rhetoric of Nazi Germany were largely considered to be boys who cried wolf by a public sick and tired of Europe and her issues. White southerners in the USA in the late 60’s probably considered civil rights to be merely one issue among many on their plate, but nobody today considers Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King “single issue fanatics.”

Future generations will look back on the abortion era the same way WE look back on the slavery era. Make sure your great grandchildren will be proud of you. Don’t leave them bewildered wondering what on earth you could have considered far more pressing than 50 million murdered babies.

 

[sedonaman]

…
On the “single issue” front, I think it’s worth wearing like a badge. Nobody remembers any OTHER issue from the mid-1860’s to compare with the issue of slavery. Yet in their day, those abolitionists too were derided as narrowly focused fanatics. Americans in the early 1930’s alarmed by the rhetoric of Nazi Germany were largely considered to be boys who cried wolf by a public sick and tired of Europe and her issues. White southerners in the USA in the late 60’s probably considered civil rights to be merely one issue among many on their plate, but nobody today considers Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King “single issue fanatics.”

Mega

Future generations will look back on the abortion era the same way WE look back on the slavery era. Make sure your great grandchildren will be proud of you. Don’t leave them bewildered wondering what on earth you could have considered far more pressing than 50 million murdered babies.

More mega

 

[Cojuanco]

Can you elaborate on this? Is this a personal opinion or do you have substantial evidence that Federal policies required catholic colleges to become secular? I’ve always been of the opinion that most catholic colleges apostasized all by themselves and would be interested in hearing why you think the government had a hand.

On the “single issue” front, I think it’s worth wearing like a badge. Nobody remembers any OTHER issue from the mid-1860’s to compare with the issue of slavery. Yet in their day, those abolitionists too were derided as narrowly focused fanatics. Americans in the early 1930’s alarmed by the rhetoric of Nazi Germany were largely considered to be boys who cried wolf by a public sick and tired of Europe and her issues. White southerners in the USA in the late 60’s probably considered civil rights to be merely one issue among many on their plate, but nobody today considers Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King “single issue fanatics.”

Future generations will look back on the abortion era the same way WE look back on the slavery era. Make sure your great grandchildren will be proud of you. Don’t leave them bewildered wondering what on earth you could have considered far more pressing than 50 million murdered babies.

It worked thus, if I remember what one of the Franciscans who worked in education on this board told me correctly:

Schools like Fordham, or Georgetown (and to a lesser extent CUA until relatively recently) wanted to attract the best in academia, especially since orders like the Jesuits wanted to be at the cutting edge of research. A lot of that funding, both from secular private foundations and the government, required lay oversight of such funds, and thus, administration. So in order to expand beyond its core strenths of the liberal arts, a lot of Catholic universities in the 60s shifted to increased lay administration at the highest levels, especially in hiring and firing decisions. Perhaps naively, the orders who had heretofore had run these universities supposed that faithful Catholic laypeople would be at those boards. By the time they realized that many of the boardmembers cared little for the Faith, it was too late - which is why, for example, the Jesuits can’t fire an anti-Catholic lecturer from the staff at Boston College - they don’t have full HR control anymore. They merely have legal right to the property where the university meets, and little else. Many clergy are of course faculty, but they are just employees who, to use the Boston College example, happen to be Jesuits.

To say they apostatized is to overstate the case. It was more a case of handing the university to a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

 

[Buck_Crosswhite]

Preaching against abortion will have no effect. The root of the problem is contraception. As long as the Church is silent on contraception abortion will continue because abortion is just another form of contraception.

 

[otjm]

It worked thus, if I remember what one of the Franciscans who worked in education on this board told me correctly:

Schools like Fordham, or Georgetown (and to a lesser extent CUA until relatively recently) wanted to attract the best in academia, especially since orders like the Jesuits wanted to be at the cutting edge of research. A lot of that funding, both from secular private foundations and the government, required lay oversight of such funds, and thus, administration. So in order to expand beyond its core strenths of the liberal arts, a lot of Catholic universities in the 60s shifted to increased lay administration at the highest levels, especially in hiring and firing decisions. Perhaps naively, the orders who had heretofore had run these universities supposed that faithful Catholic laypeople would be at those boards. By the time they realized that many of the boardmembers cared little for the Faith, it was too late - which is why, for example, the Jesuits can’t fire an anti-Catholic lecturer from the staff at Boston College - they don’t have full HR control anymore. They merely have legal right to the property where the university meets, and little else. Many clergy are of course faculty, but they are just employees who, to use the Boston College example, happen to be Jesuits.

To say they apostatized is to overstate the case. It was more a case of handing the university to a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

This is correct: when the colleges and universities moved to lay boards of directors, they subjected themselves to the directions the lay boards wished to go, and the whole issue has been well documented over time.

And there are still faithful Catholics teaching at any number of these universities; but staff has not all been faithful. Unless and until the boards get changed, and/or ownership of the universities changes, things will continue on into the foreseeable future as they are presently.

Part of the problem is that the scandals hit the news; but precious little of the good that goes on in the universities does.

 

[commenter]

This is correct: when the colleges and universities moved to lay boards of directors, they subjected themselves to the directions the lay boards wished to go, and the whole issue has been well documented over time.

And there are still faithful Catholics teaching at any number of these universities; but staff has not all been faithful. Unless and until the boards get changed, and/or ownership of the universities changes, things will continue on into the foreseeable future as they are presently.

Part of the problem is that the scandals hit the news; but precious little of the good that goes on in the universities does.

Ok, there are scattered prolife Catholics teaching at Catholic colleges in my area. They do good work with the relatively few students they teach, but they seem to be always in a minority in their department, have no apparent influence towards a prolife direction of the institution as a whole. None of the local Catholic colleges present anything like a prolife institutional witness. Why couldn’t Jesuits committed to Catholic higher education transfer to make a critical mass in a few colleges, so there might be 3 genuine US Jesuit colleges, rather than so many not-really Jesuit colleges?

Why couldn’t an archdiocese that has many “Catholic” colleges pick out the most Catholic one, identify that one as “the” endorsed Catholic college, encourage it to families, and encourage religious, priests, and laity who can, to work there?