The Best Explanation of the Immaculate Conception.

Yes. Exactly.

That is the best explanation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception I've ever read. Why?

Because that's the point on which Protestant friends and interlocutors always get hung up--how could Mary need the salvation offered by Jesus if she never sinned?

And the answer, of course, is that she was conceived immaculate and never sinned by the grace which came through her Son and Savior.

We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.

The order of events is unusual, yes, and yet Jesus, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, is eternal, and so all events in his personal experience are similarly eternal--standing outside of time.

All grace comes through Jesus Christ. No grace enters time and history except through Jesus Christ, including all grace in the lives of the Old Testament folk, all grace in the lives of people who've never heard the Gospel, and all grace which enters the lives of Christians--even though Jesus comes later in time than the folk of the Old Testament.

All grace comes to Mary through Jesus, just as much and more than the grace which comes into the lives of anyone else.

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord;
my spirit rejoices in God my savior.
For he has looked upon his handmaid’s lowliness;
behold, from now on will all ages call me blessed.
The Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
His mercy is from age to age
to those who fear him.
He has shown might with his arm,
dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart.
He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones
but lifted up the lowly.
The hungry he has filled with good things;
the rich he has sent away empty.
He has helped Israel his servant,
remembering his mercy,
according to his promise to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever.

It's all in Doctor Who, all in Doctor Who--goodness me, what do they teach in schools these days?

Shopkeeper Refuses Service Over Gay Marriage

Huh.  Elizabeth Scalia has the story (from over a year ago). Excerpts:

So, you know all this brouhaha, all these hysterics about how bakers, and photographers, and other service-providers who routinely work for gay clientele (but draw a line at serving gay weddings because they feel it imperils their souls) are horrible people?

And you know the whole “if you think that way, then you’re a bigot,” thing, because governments and pundits have taken it into their heads that it is their job to define “sin” to another person?

And you know that whole, “refusing to serve someone because they think differently than you is all Jim Crow-y and immoral?”

Yeah, well…so much for that.

A gay stylist in Santa Fe refused to cut New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez’s hair due to her stance on same-sex marriage. KOB-TV’s Stuart Dyson reports.

A Santa Fe hairdresser is waging his own boycott of sorts: He is denying service to the governor of New Mexico because she opposes gay marriage.

Antonio Darden, who has been with his partner for 15 years, said he made his views clear the last time Gov. Susana Martinez’s office called to make an appointment.

“The governor’s aides called not too long ago wanting another appointment to come in,” Darden told KOB.com. “Because of her stances and her views on this, I told her aides, ‘no.’ They called the next day asking if I’d changed my mind about taking the governor in, and I said ‘no’ again.”

Martinez has said marriage should be between a man and a woman. Darden, who said he has cut the governor’s hair three times, said he won’t serve her unless she changes her mind about gay marriage.

Darden apparently feels that it would go against his own personal moral code — his individual conscience — to cut the governor’s hair. He does not see this decision as an act of “intolerance.” In his mind, he believes that to cut her hair would be to co-operate with evil — a kind of sin, if not against God, then against his own reason and beliefs. He may fear that serving to the governor could be misconstrued as an affirmation of her views.

And no one in the press is arguing differently on the governor’s behalf...

Links in the original.

Pope Francis in Corriere Della Serra

Pope Francis speaks once again. And once again, if you want to know what he said, read the transcript.  Excerpts:

...The relations with your predecessor. Have you ever asked for the counsel of Benedict XVI?

Yes. The Pope emeritus is not a statue in a museum. It is an institution. We weren’t used to it. 60 or 70 years ago, ‘bishop emeritus’ didn’t exist. It came after the (Second Vatican) Council. Today, it is an institution. The same thing must happen for the Pope emeritus. Benedict is the first and perhaps there will be others. We don’t know. He is discreet, humble, and he doesn’t want to disturb. We have spoken about it and we decided together that it would be better that he sees people, gets out and participates in the life of the Church. He once came here for the blessing of the statue of St. Michael the Archangel, then to lunch at Santa Marta and, after Christmas, I sent him an invitation to participate in the consistory and he accepted. His wisdom is a gift of God. Some would have wished that he retire to a Benedictine abbey far from the Vatican. I thought of grandparents and their wisdom. Their counsels give strength to the family and they do not deserve to be in an elderly home...

You have indicated that in globalization, especially financially, there are some evils that accost humanity. But, globalization has ripped millions of people out of indigence. It has given hope, a rare feeling not to be confused with optimism.

It is true, globalization has saved many persons from poverty, but it has condemned many others to die of hunger, because with this economic system it becomes selective. The globalization which the Church supports is similar not to a sphere in which every point is equidistant from the center and in which then one loses the particularity of a people, but a polyhedron, with its diverse faces, in which every people conserves its own culture, language, religion, identity. The current ‘spherical’ economic, and especially financial, globalization produces a single thought, a weak thought. At the center is no longer the human person, just money.

The theme of the family is central in the activity of the Council of eight cardinals. Since the exhortation ‘Familiaris Consortio’ of John Paul II many things have changed. Two Synods are on the schedule. Great newness is expected. You have said of the divorced: they are not to be condemned but helped.

It is a long path that the Church must complete. A process wanted by the Lord. Three months after my election the themes for the Synod were placed before me. It was proposed that we discuss what is the contribution of Jesus to contemporary man. But in the end with gradual steps - which for me are signs of the will of God - it was chosen to discuss the family, which is going through a very serious crisis. It is difficult to form it. Few young people marry. There are many separated families in which the project of common life has failed. The children suffer greatly. We must give a response. But for this we must reflect very deeply. It is that which the Consistory and the Synod are doing. We need to avoid remaining on the surface. The temptation to resolve every problem with casuistry is an error, a simplification of profound things, as the Pharisees did, a very superficial theology. It is in light of the deep reflection that we will be able to seriously confront particular situations, also those of the divorced, with a pastoral depth...

There's a lot more where that came from. Go read the whole thing.

Gay Marriage and Queer Activists Who Oppose It

This person isn't alone, either.  Excerpts:

Today is a hard day to rain on people’s marriage parades. I’m doing it anyway because my stomach is turning to lead and my heart wants to throw up and silence will make it worse. This issue is far from over and my silence, I feel, is the problem to begin with.

I’ll start with an introduction: I am — first and foremost — a queer activist for economic justice. I support a radical redistribution of wealth, and I stand against capitalism and what it does to people’s bodies. As for marriage equality, I am not just unenthusiastic or reserved about this as a goal for the LGBT rights movement — I actively boycott it, and would like to see it abolished as soon as possible...

When you read his arguments, they have a certain familiar ring.  Excerpts:

...The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation...

Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.

The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.

Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.

But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.

And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.

The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.

But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the bourgeoisie in chorus.

The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.

He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.

For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.

Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.

Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private...--The Communist Manifesto, Chapters 1 & 2

Texas Abortion Law, Bro-Choice, and I Must Be a Feminist!

Ahem. So does this mean that by being pro-life, I'm a feminist? Language warning. Excerpts:

...'This link has just turned me into feminist hulk. Feminist hulk types REALLY HARD, and likes to use CAPS LOCK. You’ve been warned.

This is the part, in particular, that hulkafied me…”For those of us guys who like girls — you know, like them like them — and want to have relationships with them that may last anywhere from a few minutes to many years”…”Your sex life is at stake. Can you think of anything that kills the vibe faster than a woman fearing a back-alley abortion? Making abortion essentially inaccessible in Texas will add an anxiety to sex that will drastically undercut its joys. And don’t be surprised if casual sex outside of relationships becomes far more difficult to come by.”

Oh, you poor, poor little douchebag. GAWD FORBID we tie ANY LEVEL OF RESPONSIBILITY to that 2-MINUTE HOOK-UP in which you might accidentally CREATE ANOTHER HUMAN BEING, because, like, radical fauxminism, and labiaration, and stuff. IF YOU HAVE EVER WONDERED HOW ABORTION MAKES WOMEN MORE EXPLOITABLE THAN ANY OTHER THING UNDER THE SUN, read this garbage… I’m off to go smash $#!%… like the REAL PATRIARCHY. Ya know, the one where men expect you to kill your child so they can get a carefree piece of ass…

Yet further takedown proceeds here. Excerpts:

The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Texas law that everyone is freaking the f*** out about basically moves the last possible date at which a pregnant woman can obtain an abortion from 24 weeks, where babies can be born alive and survive, to 20 weeks, before the generally-accepted point of viability.

Let’s just hang on to that for a second.

If that seems straightforward, even pro-science to you, you’re not alone: if a kid can survive outside the womb, than it’s kind of hard to make the argument that they are an inhuman parasite. But, whatever. This is abortion legislation, so the rules are made up and the points don’t matter. What matters is, we’re all like, ten Texas legislators away from starring in our own post-apocalyptic Margaret Atwood novel, where us poor folk are chained to beds and forced to have children against our will. Never mind that by the time the Texas deadline rolls around you’re more than four months pregnant, you’re an idiot who simply can’t make up her puny female mind about being a parent, and need to have available a procedure that most of the world (except Canada!) views as barbaric. And Canada doesn’t count. As a country. And just generally. Because f*** Canada.

Oh, and then there’s the part about HB2 shutting down abortion clinics that can’t adhere to the same cleanliness and operation standards as a veterinary office, which, let’s just say, if they aren’t already, women aren’t getting good care. Because they aren’t getting the same standard of care as your dog. And if that shuts a couple of them down, I’m sure no one is going to miss them...

More on this here.

The Secret of Notre Dame, Patroness of the United States of America

George Weigel on how Catholic thought offers authentic intellectual underpinnings for the best of America. Excerpts:

...The nineteenth-century U.S. bishops and intellectuals whose enthusiasm for American democracy Russell Shaw now views skeptically (and, yes, they did go over the top on occasion) did get one crucial point right: the American founders “built better than they knew,” i.e., the founders designed a democratic republic for which they couldn’t provide a durable moral and philosophical defense. But the long-despised (and now despised-again) Catholics could: Catholics could (and can) give a robust, compelling account of American democracy and its commitments to ordered liberty.

Mid–twentieth-century Catholic scholars like historian Theodore Maynard and theologian John Courtney Murray picked up this theme and made it central to their reading of U.S. Catholic history. Murray presciently warned that, if Catholicism didn’t fill the cultural vacuum being created by a dying mainline Protestantism, the “noble, many-storied mansion of democracy [may] be dismantled, leveled to the dimensions of a flat majoritarianism, which is no mansion but a barn, perhaps even a tool shed in which the weapons of tyranny may be forged.”

That is the argument the U.S. bishops have mounted in their challenge to the Obama administration’s demolition of civil society through the HHS mandate on contraceptives and abortifacients: What is the nature of American democracy and the fundamental freedoms government is created to protect? Who are the true patriots: the men and women who can give an account of freedom’s moral character, an account capable of sustaining a genuine democracy against a rising dictatorship of relativism, “in which the weapons of tyranny may be forged”?

The argument today isn’t about assimilation. The argument today is about who “gets” America.

This seems much like C. S. Lewis's differentiation in That Hideous Strength. Excerpts:

"It all began," he said, "when we discovered that that the Arthurian story is mostly true history. There was a moment in the Sixth Century when something that is always trying to break through into this country nearly succeeded. Logres was our name for it – it will do as well as another. And then...gradually we began to see all English history in a new way. We discovered the haunting."

"What haunting?" asked Camilla.

"How something we may call Britain is always haunted by something we may call Logres. Haven't you noticed that we are two countries? After every Arthur, a Mordred; behind every Milton, a Cromwell; a nation of poets, a nation of shopkeepers; the home of Sidney – and of Cecil Rhodes. Is it any wonder they call us hypocrites. But what they call hypocrisy is really the struggle between Logres and Britain."

...This haunting is no peculiarity of ours. Every people has its own haunter. There's no special privilege for England – no nonsense about a chosen nation. We speak about Logres because it is our haunting, the one we know about.

The whole work of healing Tellus depends on nursing that little spark, on incarnating that ghost, which is still alive in every real people, and different in each. When Logres really dominates Britain, when the goddess Reason, the divine clearness, is really enthroned in France, when the order of Heaven is really followed in China – why, then it will be spring.

Americanism versus patriotism; assimilation versus new evangelization; the slavers and occupiers versus the United States of America.  Our sins and our potential, a potential which will be actualized when we say to the Truth at the heart of reality, "Thy will be done."  Here's one of the Catholic patriots of the modern day calling us to remember under whose patronage the United States of America (and the rest of the Americas) has been placed:

The Great Gatsby, "Terrible...But Great," and True Greatness

Emily Stimpson has written an interesting  review of Baz Luhrman's The Great Gatsby.  I thought this bit was particularly telling, re: the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.  Excerpts:

..."Pretentions to divinity always end in death.”

You see, we are called to greatness, each and every one of us. We are called to be sons and daughters of God. That instinct—in Gatsby, in Millennials, in anyone—isn’t wrong. But power, wealth, and fame don’t make a person great. Love does that—love for God and love for one another. Likewise, we’re not born sons and daughters of God. We’re made that way by baptism. It’s a gift, not a given.

If we assume the gift without realizing how gracious it is, and then pursue greatness by trying to blaze through the sky on an ever-upward trajectory, we will crash and burn. There will be no life. There will be only death.

If it’s life we want, then it’s love we need to pursue—not the type of self-seeking, self-satisfied love the world glorifies, not the type of love which looks to another human person for meaning and fulfillment—but love which denies itself for the sake of the other and which knows true fulfillment and meaning can be found in only one Person, Jesus Christ...

Or, to put it another way, it's the difference between the Dark Lord of the Horcruxes and the Master of the Deathly Hallows:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless-it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside heaven you can be perfectly safe from all dangers and perturbations of love is hell. (C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves)

For more on the dynamic unleashed in creation's history by those who grasped for divinity and the antidote by the one who did not see divinity as something to be grasped but rather emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave (Philipians 2:5-11), see A Father Who Keeps His Promises: God's Covenant Love in Scripture, Bible Basics for Catholics: A New Picture of Salvation History, The Real Story: Understanding the Big Picture of the Bible, and/or Kinship by Covenant: A Canonical Approach to the Fulfillment of God's Saving Promises (The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library).

Judah, The Redeemer, and the Blood of the Grapes/the Blood of the Lamb

Then Judah urged his father Israel: “Let the boy go with me, that we may be off and on our way if you and we and our children are to keep from starving to death.  I myself will serve as a guarantee for him. You can hold me responsible for him. If I fail to bring him back and set him before you, I will bear the blame before you forever.  Had we not delayed, we could have been there and back twice by now!”--Genesis 43:8-10

“So now, if the boy is not with us when I go back to your servant my father, whose very life is bound up with his, he will die as soon as he sees that the boy is missing; and your servants will thus send the white head of your servant our father down to Sheol in grief.  Besides, I, your servant, have guaranteed the boy’s safety for my father by saying, ‘If I fail to bring him back to you, father, I will bear the blame before you forever.’  So now let me, your servant, remain in place of the boy as the slave of my lord, and let the boy go back with his brothers.  How could I go back to my father if the boy were not with me? I could not bear to see the anguish that would overcome my father.”--Genesis 44:30-34

“You, Judah, shall your brothers praise—your hand on the neck of your enemies; the sons of your father shall bow down to you. Judah is a lion’s cub, you have grown up on prey, my son. He crouches, lies down like a lion, like a lioness—who would dare rouse him? The scepter shall never depart from Judah, or the mace from between his feet, Until tribute comes to him, and he receives the people’s obedience. He tethers his donkey to the vine, his donkey’s foal to the choicest stem. In wine he washes his garments, his robe in the blood of grapes. His eyes are darker than wine, and his teeth are whiter than milk."--Genesis 49:8-12

Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”--John 6:53-58

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.

Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are ill and infirm, and a considerable number are dying. If we discerned ourselves, we would not be under judgment; but since we are judged by [the] Lord, we are being disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.--1 Corinthians 11:23-32

I shed many tears because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to examine it. One of the elders said to me, “Do not weep. The lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has triumphed, enabling him to open the scroll with its seven seals.” Then I saw standing in the midst of the throne and the four living creatures and the elders, a Lamb that seemed to have been slain. He had seven horns and seven eyes; these are the [seven] spirits of God sent out into the whole world. He came and received the scroll from the right hand of the one who sat on the throne. When he took it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each of the elders held a harp and gold bowls filled with incense, which are the prayers of the holy ones. They sang a new hymn: “Worthy are you to receive the scroll and to break open its seals, for you were slain and with your blood you purchased for God those from every tribe and tongue, people and nation. You made them a kingdom and priests for our God, and they will reign on earth.”--Revelation 5:4-10

Then one of the elders spoke up and said to me, “Who are these wearing white robes, and where did they come from?” I said to him, “My lord, you are the one who knows.” He said to me, “These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress;* they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. “For this reason they stand before God’s throne and worship him day and night in his temple. The one who sits on the throne will shelter them. They will not hunger or thirst anymore, nor will the sun or any heat strike them. For the Lamb who is in the center of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to springs of life-giving water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”--Revelation 7:13-17

Blessed are they who wash their robes so as to have the right to the tree of life and enter the city through its gates.--Revelation 22:14

Judah stands ready, the elder brother, to ransom the younger brother because of the love and grief of the father.  Joseph is the type later fulfilled by St. Joseph, who served as an icon of God the Father to God the Son.  Jesus Christ is the Son of David, of the lineage of Judah, the son of Jacob called Israel, who stood ready to ransom the captive brethren, those fallen into shadow by the temptations and malice of the great dragon, the serpent, the liar and murderer from the beginning who is also the accuser of all the brethren. Jesus, the Son of David, the Son of Judah, comes to give us his flesh to eat and his blood to drink--that is, the wine of the cup of the Lord's Passover, which becomes his Blood at the word of God. We who are sons in the Son of God, the son of David, the son of Judah, are those who wash their garments in the blood of grapes and the blood of the Lamb.

Blessed be God forever!

Gosnell Coverage, Clinic Regulation, and the Pro-Life Movement

"The picture above, for what it’s worth, is of the reserved media seats at the Gosnell trial. It was taken by JD Mullane, a news writer and columnist for the Bucks County Courier Times, The Intel and the Burlington County (NJ) Times. He says:
Sat through a full day of testimony at the Kermitt Gosnell trial today. It is beyond the most morbid Hollywood horror. It will change you.
I was surprised by the picture and asked 'really?' He responded 'Local press was there, Inky, PhillyMag, NBC10 blogger. Court staff told me nobody else has shown up.'"--GetReligion

Well, coverage is finally picking up, compared to the early days of the trial (see picture of an empty press section above).  A friend recently raised the following concern:

One week ago, clinic regulation represented a political compromise, a half-measure of a defeated movement. Today, discussing regulation would be surrendering on the verge of a route. Admit it, both "sides" used regulation tactically--it is no one's goal, nor should it be. But the value of the tactic has now increased exponentially for one side, and could accomplish its critical need to weather this unprecedented storm.

I think this piece answers that concern quite well. Excerpts:

...Normally, like a game, the media will only admit to this kind of oversight long after it is too late to do anything about it. Worse still, the admission of the mistake is generally just a convenient excuse for the media to talk about their favorite subject -- themselves.

That doesn’t appear to be the case this time. Last night on CNN, Jake Tapper (one of the few who had already covered Gosnell), Erin Burnett, and Anderson Cooper devoted extensive time to the story. And as you can see above, the media are promising to do more next week than just navel gaze.

And I for one am very grateful for that, because even marginally bad coverage, like what we saw from CNN's Erin Burnett last night, is a win. (Anderson Cooper's segment was flat-out outstanding and a must-watch.)

Regardless, let the left-wing media spin the Gosnell horrors into a pro-choice argument for safer abortion clinics. As someone who considers abortion a moral abomination, as long as it is legal, I don't want to see that abomination made worse with unsafe clinics and the horrific exploitation of desperate women.

But that is the worse-case scenario (which is still a plus). What is also likely to happen is an increased  public knowledge of the act of outright infanticide known as partial-birth abortion. For over a decade now, the media has tried to turn that horror into a "right-wing myth." But now we not only have an example of a doctor eagerly engaged and made wealthy by the practice, but other doctors referring patients to him.

New Media has a responsibility now, as well. We need to use this opportunity to do our own reporting on Gosnell, not just to peck away at the mainstream media for not covering the story in the way we would like...

More shame-faced acknowledgements that the story deserves coverage from Bloomberg and Politico.  My main post on the case.  And we need to keep asking:

If these conditions are persisting, even after abortion is legalized, we need to start asking whether illegal abortions were awful because desperate women were being taken advantage of by people willing to do the illegal for money, or whether they were awful because women were being taken advantage of by people willing to do the unthinkable for money.

See, This is Why Catholic Sexual Teaching is Mocked

Because this is probably not an uncommon attitude towards marriage.  Excerpts:

...A fundamental reality of human relationships is that two people are not meant to be in a single monogamous partnership for all eternity (or even until the end of their lives). Humans crave sexual novelty. We get bored. We lose interest after just two years. We find our intimacy crushed by the weight of daily routines. Marriage is a voluntary commitment that flies in the face of all scientific research and human evolution.

We enter this voluntary (some say insane, and they’re not entirely wrong) pact because we do a cost-benefit analysis and decide that the benefits of getting married (or otherwise partnering for life) outweigh the potential costs -- breakups, emotional pain, financial disarray, the list goes on. We make just about the biggest emotional leap of faith a person can make, because we think, feel, and hope that the rewards will be great...

Compare that to a sexual ethic designed around this:

Some Pharisees approached him, and tested him, saying, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause whatever?”  He said in reply, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?  So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”  They said to him, “Then why did Moses command that the man give the woman a bill of divorce and dismiss [her]?”  He said to them, “Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.  I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) and marries another commits adultery.”  [His] disciples said to him, “If that is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.”  He answered, “Not all can accept [this] word, but only those to whom that is granted.  Some are incapable of marriage because they were born so; some, because they were made so by others; some, because they have renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Whoever can accept this ought to accept it.”--Matthew 19:3-12

Let it be noted that the author declares herself to be married and that all the work is worth it. However, her dismissal of the notion that marriage is the ordinary state for human beings doesn't take into account a ton of information. See, for example:

• The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially
• Family and Civilization
• What Is Marriage?: Man and Woman: A Defense
• Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution
• Love and Economics:It Takes a Family to Raise a Village, Collegiate Edition
• Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem 
• Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce
  

The God Who Is Hungry

"Were I hungry, I would not tell you, for mine is the world and all that fills it. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of he-goats? Offer praise as your sacrifice to God fulfill your vows to the Most High. Then call on me on the day of distress; I will rescue you, and you shall honor me.”--Psalm 50:12-15

And yet, God became man.  No, more shocking still--God became conception, became fetus, became baby.  God became helpless.

Any agnostic or atheist whose childhood has known a real Christmas has ever afterwards, whether be likes it or not, an association in his mind between two ideas that most of mankind must regard as remote from each other; the idea of a baby and the idea of unknown strength that sustains the stars. His instincts and imagination can still connect them, when his reason can no longer see the need of the connection; for him there will always be some savor of religion about the mere picture of a mother and a baby; some hint of mercy and softening about the mere mention of the dreadful name of God...

Omnipotence and impotence, or divinity and infancy, do definitely make a sort of epigram which a million repetitions cannot turn into a platitude. It is not unreasonable to call it unique. --G. K. Chesterton, "The God in the Cave," The Everlasting Man, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press)

When God becomes baby, then we can no longer say, "He has never told us when he was hungry, or when he was thirsty."

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.”  Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.

After this, aware that everything was now finished, in order that the scripture might be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I thirst.”  There was a vessel filled with common wine.  So they put a sponge soaked in wine on a sprig of hyssop and put it up to his mouth.  When Jesus had taken the wine, he said, “It is finished.” And bowing his head, he handed over the spirit.--John 19:26-30

We cannot say, "He has never asked for something to eat or drink."

While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed, he asked them, “Have you anything here to eat?”  They gave him a piece of baked fish; he took it and ate it in front of them.--Luke 24:41-44

We cannot say anymore, "God is never hungry. God is never in need."

Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.  For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’  Then the righteous will answer him and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?  When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?  When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’  And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.'--Matthew 25:34-40

And the first people to be given the privilege of feeding God, of tending to the needs of God, are Mary and Joseph. God, who would not have said to the priests and leaders of the nations in the times of the Old Testament that he was hungry, thirsty, or needed a house, now calls two human beings "Mother" and "Father."

But that same night the word of God came to Nathan:  Go and tell David my servant, Thus says the LORD: It is not you who are to build the house for me to dwell in.  For I have never dwelt in a house, from the day I brought Israel up, even to this day, but I have been lodging in tent or tabernacle.  As long as I have wandered about with all Israel, did I ever say a word to any of the judges of Israel whom I commanded to shepherd my people, Why have you not built me a house of cedar?--1 Chronicles 17:3-6

The Son of the Father, the Son of God, looks at two human beings and sees in them a true reflection of the parental love and care which he'd had from all eternity from God the Father.  He obeys them and, in so obeying, grows in grace, wisdom and favor.

He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart.  And Jesus advanced [in] wisdom and age and favor before God and man.--Luke 2:51-52

God honored his earthly Father and Mother. How can we avoid doing the same?

When I was a boy a more Puritan generation objected to a statue upon my parish church representing the Virgin and Child. After much controversy, they compromised by taking away the Child. One would think that this was even more corrupted with Mariolatry, unless the mother was counted less dangerous when deprived of a sort of weapon. But the practical difficulty is also a parable. You cannot chip away the statue of a mother from all round that of a newborn child. You cannot suspend the new-born child in mid-air; indeed you cannot really have a statue of a newborn child at all. Similarly, you cannot suspend the idea of a newborn child in the void or think of him without thinking of his mother. You cannot visit the child without visiting the mother, you cannot in common human life approach the child except through the mother. If we are to think of Christ in this aspect at all, the other idea follows I as it is followed in history. We must either leave Christ out of Christmas, or Christmas out of Christ, or we must admit, if only as we admit it in an old picture, that those holy heads are too near together for the haloes not to mingle and cross.--G. K. Chesterton, "The God in the Cave," The Everlasting Man, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press)

Mater et Magistra & Pacem in Terris: Peace on Earth and Good Will Towards Men

From the invaluable Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. Excerpts:

...Blessed Pope John XXIII, in his Encyclical Mater et Magistra[164], “aims at up-dating the already known documents, and at taking a further step forward in the process of involving the whole Christian community”[165]. The key words in the Encyclical are community and socialization[166]: the Church is called in truth, justice and love to cooperate in building with all men and women an authentic communion. In this way economic growth will not be limited to satisfying men's needs, but it will also promote their dignity.

With the Encyclical Pacem in Terris[167], Blessed Pope John XXIII brings to the forefront the problem of peace in an era marked by nuclear proliferation. Moreover, Pacem in Terris contains one of the first in-depth reflections on rights on the part of the Church; it is the Encyclical of peace and human dignity. It continues and completes the discussion presented in Mater et Magistra, and, continuing in the direction indicated by Pope Leo XIII, it emphasizes the importance of the cooperation of all men and women. It is the first time that a Church document is addressed also to “all men of good will”[168], who are called to a great task: “to establish with truth, justice, love and freedom new methods of relationships in human society”[169]. Pacem in Terris dwells on the public authority of the world community, called to “tackle and solve problems of an economic, social, political or cultural character which are posed by the universal common good”[170]. On the tenth anniversary of Pacem in Terris, Cardinal Maurice Roy, the President of the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace, sent Pope Paul VI a letter together with a document with a series of reflections on the different possibilities afforded by the teaching contained in Pope John XXIII's Encyclical for shedding light on the new problems connected with the promotion of peace[171]...(articles 94-95)

To Love Another Person Is To See The Face of God

Yes, love; love changes everything. From the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church:

...The transformation of the world is a fundamental requirement of our time also. To this need the Church's social Magisterium intends to offer the responses called for by the signs of the times, pointing above all to the mutual love between human beings, in the sight of God, as the most powerful instrument of change, on the personal and social levels. Mutual love, in fact, sharing in the infinite love of God, is humanity's authentic purpose, both historical and transcendent. Therefore, “earthly progress must be carefully distinguished from the growth of Christ's kingdom. Nevertheless, to the extent that the former can contribute to the better ordering of human society, it is of vital concern to the kingdom of God”[67]...(article 55)

The Essence of Social Justice

Dang, the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church is well done.  Get a copy and read it in this Year of Faith.  They begin with the roots of human dignity in the beginning and the Trinity, then descend from there to the issues of social justice today and forever.  Really, really good stuff.  This is probably the first of a bunch of excerpts:

...The inner transformation of the human person, in his being progressively conformed to Christ, is the necessary prerequisite for a real transformation of his relationships with others. “It is necessary, then, to appeal to the spiritual and moral capacities of the human person and to the permanent need for his inner conversion, so as to obtain social changes that will really serve him. The acknowledged priority of the conversion of heart in no way eliminates but on the contrary imposes the obligation of bringing the appropriate remedies to institutions and living conditions when they are an inducement to sin, so that they conform to the norms of justice and advance the good rather than hinder it”[43].

It is not possible to love one's neighbour as oneself and to persevere in this conduct without the firm and constant determination to work for the good of all people and of each person, because we are all really responsible for everyone[44]. According to the Council's teaching, “they also have a claim on our respect and charity that think and act differently from us in social, political and religious matters. In fact the more deeply we come to understand their ways of thinking through kindness and love, the more easily will we be able to enter into dialogue with them”[45]. This path requires grace, which God offers to man in order to help him to overcome failings, to snatch him from the spiral of lies and violence, to sustain him and prompt him to restore with an ever new and ready spirit the network of authentic and honest relationships with his fellow men[46]...(articles 42-43)

Children, Working Moms, and Learning to Love

Finally, whereas before I had been convinced that having children would prevent me from using the years of learning and experience I had amassed at school and at work (where would I find the time?), I have come to see that I have good things to share in large part because of the ability to love that children have provoked in me.  St. Thomas Aquinas was right:  "Lord, in my zeal for the love of truth, never let me forget the truth about love."  How does this work?  In practical terms, of course, one discovers that she can get off the couch at 11 p.m. to pick up a child somewhere, simply because that child needs a ride.  One learns that she has the fortitude to pick up an extra job in order to pay for braces or a school trip.  Maybe most importantly, however, one learns how to communicate with other people, to decide in advance to give them "that look of love they crave" once you begin to see them as other people's children.--Helen Alvare, "Fear of Children," in Helen Alvare, ed., Breaking Through: Catholic Women Speak for Themselves, (Our Sunday Visitor, 2012), pg. 31.

The Meaning of Life is Love

As proven by the fact that no one is born alone, no one dies alone (thanks to the communion of saints, the omnipresence of God, and your guardian angel), and the path to deepest satisfaction, joy, and peace is through agape love.

Fidelity, Fido, and Faith

Coolness.  St. Francis would approve.  Excerpts:

...Tommy, a 7-year-old German shepherd, used to accompany his owner, Maria Margherita Lochi, to services at Santa Maria Assunta church in San Donaci, Italy, according to the Daily Mail, and was allowed to sit at her feet.

After Lochi died, the dog "joined mourners at her funeral service" according to locals and "followed after Maria's coffin" as it was carried into the church.

Tommy, a stray who was adopted by Lochi, has been showing up "when the bell rings out to mark the beginning of services" ever since.

"He's there every time I celebrate mass and is very well behaved," Father Donato Panna told the paper. "He doesn't make a sound."

None of the other parishioners has complained, Panna said, and villagers give the dog food and water and allow him to sleep nearby.

"I've not heard one bark from him in all the time he has been coming in," Panna added. "He waits patiently by the side of the altar and just sits there quietly. I didn't have the heart to throw him out—I've just recently lost my own dog, so I leave him there until Mass finishes and then I let him out.

Examples of this type of extreme canine loyalty are incredibly common..."

Reminds me of this:

...First came bright Spirits, not the Spirits of men, who danced and scattered flowers. Then, on the left and right, at each side of the forest avenue, came youthful shapes, boys upon one hand, and girls upon the other. If I could remember their singing and write down the notes, no man who read that score would ever grow sick or old. Between them went musicians: and after these a lady in whose honour all this was being done.

I cannot now remember whether she was naked or clothed. If she were naked, then it must have been the almost visible penumbra of her courtesy and joy which produces in my memory the illusion of a great and shining train that followed her across the happy grass. If she were clothed, then the illusion of nakedness is doubtless due to the clarity with which her inmost spirit shone through the clothes. For clothes in that country are not a disguise: the spiritual body lives along each thread and turns them into living organs. A robe or a crown is there as much one of the wearer's features as a lip or an eye.

But I have forgotten. And only partly do I remember the unbearable beauty of her face.

“Is it?...is it?” I whispered to my guide.

“Not at all,” said he. “It's someone ye'll never have heard of. Her name on earth was Sarah Smith and she lived at Golders Green.”

“She seems to be...well, a person of particular importance?”

“Aye. She is one of the great ones. Ye have heard that fame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things.”

“And who are these gigantic people...look! They're like emeralds...who are dancing and throwing flowers before here?”

“Haven't ye read your Milton? A thousand liveried angels lackey her.”

“And who are all these young men and women on each side?”

“They are her sons and daughters.”

“She must have had a very large family, Sir.”

“Every young man or boy that met her became her son – even if it was only the boy that brought the meat to her back door. Every girl that met her was her daughter.”

“Isn't that a bit hard on their own parents?”

“No. There are those that steal other people's children. But her motherhood was of a different kind. Those on whom it fell went back to their natural parents loving them more. Few men looked on her without becoming, in a certain fashion, her lovers. But it was the kind of love that made them not less true, but truer, to their own wives.”

“And how...but hullo! What are all these animals? A cat-two cats-dozens of cats. And all those dogs...why, I can't count them. And the birds. And the horses.”

“They are her beasts.”

“Did she keep a sort of zoo? I mean, this is a bit too much.”

“Every beast and bird that came near her had its place in her love. In her they became themselves. And now the abundance of life she has in Christ from the Father flows over into them.”

I looked at my Teacher in amazement.

“Yes,” he said. “It is like when you throw a stone into a pool, and the concentric waves spread out further and further. Who knows where it will end? Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is joy enough int the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life.”― C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

Gay Paris Joins the Protest Against Gay Marriage

This is very, very interesting.  Excerpts:

Perhaps as many as a million people marched in Paris last Sunday and at French embassies around the world against proposed legislation that would legalize same-sex marriage in France. One of the surprises in the French campaign for traditional marriage is that homosexuals have joined pro-family leaders and activists in the effort.

“The rights of children trump the right to children,” was the catchphrase of protesters like Jean Marc, a French mayor who is also homosexual.

Even though France is known for its laissez faire attitude toward sex, pro-family leaders were quick to organize huge numbers. When President Hollande announced his intentions to legalize homosexual marriage last November, a demonstration against the proposal gathered 100,000 protesters. And then what started as a debate about homosexual rights changed to one about a child’s right to a mother and a father, and the numbers in opposition exploded and has come to include unlikely allies.

Xavier Bongibault, an atheist homosexual, is a prominent spokesman against the bill. “In France, marriage is not designed to protect the love between two people. French marriage is specifically designed to provide children with families,” he said in an interview. “[T]he most serious study done so far . . . demonstrates quite clearly that a child has trouble being raised by gay parents.”

Jean Marc, who has lived with a man for 20 years, insists, “The LGBT movement that speaks out in the media . . . They don’t speak for me. As a society we should not be encouraging this. It’s not biologically natural.”

Outraged by the bill, 66-year old Jean-Dominique Bunel, a specialist in humanitarian law who has done relief work in war-torn areas, told Le Figaro he “was raised by two women” and that he “suffered from the lack of a father, a daily presence, a character and a properly masculine example, some counterweight to the relationship of my mother to her lover. I was aware of it at a very early age. I lived that absence of a father, experienced it, as an amputation."

"As soon as I learned that the government was going to officialize marriage between two people of the same sex, I was thrown into disarray,” he explained. It would be “institutionalizing a situation that had scarred me considerably. In that there is an injustice that I can in no way allow." If the women who raised him had been married, “I would have jumped into the fray and would have brought a complaint before the French state and before the European Court of Human Rights, for the violation of my right to a mom and a dad."

A pro-family coalition that includes homosexuals is certainly different than in the United States and likely most places around the world. It is unclear why at least some French homosexuals would not only favor man-woman marriage only, but would campaign against homosexual marriage. It could be that France has allowed for civil unions, for all couples, for more than a decade. Whatever the reason, this potent coalition may stop homosexual marriage in France...

There's more here on the European situation and the debates on gay marriage. Excerpts:

...Every time Benedict XVI speaks out against marriage between homosexuals, he is immediately besieged with criticism. But the last time he did so, in the annual pre-Christmas address to the curia, this did not happen. Everybody silent.

Acting as shield for the pope was the chief rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, whom he cited in support of his own ideas. And none of the opinionists on the other side felt like taking aim against a luminary of European Judaism, in addition to the head of the Catholic Church.

In effect, the French case is teaching a lesson beyond its borders, in the battle for and against what the Church calls “nonnegotiable principles,” central among which is marriage between man and woman.

The intention of the Hollande presidency to extend legal legitimacy to marriages between homosexuals has seen the lively reactions not only of the Catholic Church, led by the archbishop of Paris, but also of authoritative representatives of other religions and of the secular world, including the feminist philosopher Sylviane Agacinski, wife of the socialist (and Protestant) former prime minister Lionel Jospin, and, of course, chief rabbi Bernheim, with a 25-page document in which he overturns one by one the arguments in support of homosexual marriage and of adoption by same-sex couples.

In citing the manifesto by Bernheim, Benedict XVI called it "carefully documented and profoundly touching.” And with this he extracted it from its French context and offered it to the attention of the whole world.

In Italy, the pope's invitation was promptly accepted by the nonbelieving intellectual Ernesto Galli della Loggia, who in "Corriere della Sera" of December 30 not only reiterated with abundant citations the arguments of the chief rabbi, demonstrating their consistency with those of Benedict XVI, but wrote that he fully shared them and hoped that they could finally be discussed without having to bow to the reigning conformism in favor of gay marriage.

Galli della Loggia is an intellectual who has always been read with attention in the Vatican. His wife, the historian Lucetta Scaraffia, writes regularly for “L'Osservatore Romano,” and is a close friend of its director, Giovanni Maria Vian. And in fact, the newspaper of the Holy See gave great emphasis to this shift in "Corriere," as if it were the symbolic falling of a wall.

Galli della Loggia is not the first nor the only one, among secular Italian intellectuals, to have distanced himself from the chorus of accusations against the “obscurantist” Church.

After him, on January 2, also in “Corriere Della Sera,” a famous psychoanalyst, Silvia Vegetti Finzi, took a stance against the adoption of children by same-sex couples.

And before him there was the declaration of the “Ratzingerian Marxists”: the philosopher Pietro Barcellona, the theorist of operaismo Mario Tronti, the political scientist Giuseppe Vacca, the sociologist Paolo Sorbi, all of them members of the Partito democratico and previously of the Partito comunista, and all of them now converts to the “anthropological vision” of pope Joseph Ratzinger, in defense of life “from conception to natural death” and of marriage between man and woman. They held their last meeting in December in the quarters of “La Civiltà Cattolica,” the magazine of the Rome Jesuits printed with the imprimatur of the secretariat of state...

Something's going on in Europe. This is really unexpected. How will this affect the gay marriage discussion in the US? Will it affect the gay marriage debate in the US?

Some further interesting datapoints to add to the discussion. Excerpts:

...John D’Emilio, noted professor of history and pioneer in the field of gay and lesbian studies has, as a gay man and leading LGBT theorist, been vocally opposed (shown here and more recently here) to the idea of working for the legalization of same-sex marriage. He contends it is contrary to queer ideals and unjust to gays in other types of relationships. D’Emilio and our French friends are not odd outliers. Here is another and another and another and a few more and one more leading gay voices that assert the passage of same-sex marriage can actually be discriminatory and limiting. Uhm...

And more. Excerpts:

...France—the country in which a former head of state could be buried from a Catholic cathedral, with his wife and his mistress in the front pews, and no one showing the slightest discomfort with the arrangements--seems to epitomize the moral fatigue of the West. So why is the French opposition to same-sex marriage so much stronger than anything we have seen elsewhere in Europe or North America? Why has the public opposition come not only from Catholic prelates and defenders of traditional morality, but even from avowed homosexuals, who make the compelling point that they are not the same as heterosexual people?

Could it be because the French—while they are as exhausted as we all are by debates about sexuality—are always ready for an energetic debate about language and the meaning of words?

Unlike Americans, who revel in the use of slang and in the changing patterns of words’ connotations, the French expect a level of precision in their language. For nearly four centuries the Academie Francaise has been issuing authoritative rulings on the meaning of words. The French understand that a change in the meaning of a word can mean a change in the way people think and act; it is a step that should not be taken lightly. The word “marriage” has a meaning, and the French instinctively realize that if that meaning is altered, the institution itself is changed.

French proponents of same sex marriage insist that they are simply opening up the institution to homosexual couples. “Marriage for all” is their slogan. But marriage has always been open to all. A homosexual man has the same legal right as a heterosexual man to enter into a marriage—which, over the centuries, has always been understood to mean a union between a man and a woman. The government does not ask prospective spouses to demonstrate that they are sexually attracted to each other before issuing a marriage license. The state only observes what is obvious—the gender of the two partners—before determining that a legal marriage is possible.

The real debate, in France and elsewhere, has never been about whether everyone should have the right to marry. The important debate has always been about what marriage is. Words have meanings. The French, of all peoples, understand that...