While AgingCatholic is debating whether or not to take 5 minutes to print and sign the NRLC petition against the Freedom of Choice Act, I should also provide a reminder that AC promised us statistical analysis of abortion trends for the data I linked to earlier.
Actually no, that is one of several debates you are having. You have never addressed my point. Namely, that in declaring your own involvement with evil inarguably righteous and prudential judgements different from your own inarguably evil, you are placing yourself above the Church in terms of moral authority and are seemingly dismissing Christ’s direct warning against such messages.
I have quoted the Church extensively on the matter, and you keep citing political sources and poor statistics of your own devising. The question ultimately becomes are you, or are you not, a true believer in an apostolic Church?
I point to Rome, you point to politics, the seeming answer would be no, but I could not presume that against someone else because I am instructed to view your words in deeds in the most favorable light. But it is a question every Catholic should repeatedly ask himself (or at least so Pope Leo said).
Being in agreement on a specific issue is not the same as accepting the Catholic reasoning behind a specific Church position. Take your reasoning on abortion related voting on the basis of ‘math’.
When you say the issues is a simple numerical comparison (1.2 million is huge!) you have already somewhat abandoned the Catholic foundation for our position. Imagine the following (and with no disrespect to Senator McCain, who is a fellow Vietnam Vet and someone I met several times through my work at Walter Reed):
Let’s say that voters learned that Senator McCain kept you, and only you, a prisoner in one of his basements. You were forced to wear leather bondage attire and kept chained with a dog collar to the wall. Though forced to live in your own filth, you were well fed with scraps from the table and anything that the pets did not finish. However, to help with his well known anger issues, he would periodically come down and beat you, with special attention to your genitalia, with a ceremonial golf club I once saw him receive (for physical reasons, I sincerely doubt he golfs). On rare occasions he would hose off the filth and sodomize you.
Using your math based reasoning, Senator McCain would still be the inarguable choice for President, since the 1.2 million murders would trump 1 imprisonment.
But I do not know many (any?) practicing Catholics who would vote for a candidate who kept a house slave to beat and sodomize. That is because they know, instinctively, that it is a horrific attack against the inalienable rights of the human person. Intrinsic evil is, as Pope John Paul II explained, simply a line which Christians do not pass.
Now here is the thing, the Church teaching that makes chaining your and beating your genitalia evil is the same teaching upon which I belief in the right to life is based. Look at Christifideles Laici (#38). Abortion is not some separate issue, it it tied, by name, to these other forbidden affronts to human life. And, not just by John Paul. The Pope quotes the Pastoral Constitution of the Church. Formed by ecumenical council, this is presumed to represent the highest form of the infallibility of the Church.
If the evils are the same, why are reactions different? If forced to vote for a violent slave keeping sexual offender, most Catholics would feel a huge amount of nagging self doubt. But I hear you profess to know self doubt about supporting the rendering of children limb from limb. The answer is something you will have to answer to God, but the appearance is that, while you claim to object to abortion, your underlying motives are not the same as the Church’s.
As far as the personal challenge, that is another form of moral relativism. You are, seemingly, arguing, ‘look at all I do, I’m not a bystander like you’. If you must know, I spent most of my working life reconstructing the bodies of people ravaged by war. At the risk of losing my anonymity, I also co-founded one of the largest private half way house programs for pregnant teens in the country. My attitude was, and is, if you want to stop abortions you have to give people other options. Now that I am retired, I do hospice care and provide respite care for families with severely disabled members.
This is not a matter of tooting my horn. As I am coming to the end of life, I spend a lot of time thinking about how little I have down in the service of others. I will be crawling before St. Peter and admission, if it occurs, will only be because of great forgiveness on the part of the Lord.
On that note, I will leave this discussion to you and others. Frankly, this site is not what I expected. I had expected that there would be a lot of people like myself, who are looking to learn more about their faith. It seems like most of the discussion is on who is the most righteous and who is the most evil. Frankly, that is not my thing.
Peace
