Hiding Behind a Pro-Life Label

Too often, politicians and talking heads play-up to the pro-life constituents to gain their socially conservative credentials, only to find them cave-in on a crucial life issue. Or, they may flip, and support an agenda or candidate that is counter to the pro-life cause, as Santorum did by supporting Spector.

How can this be? How can we be on guard against opportunistic politicians who have little if any allegiance to pro-life causes?

The answer came to me as a friend and I were producing a Pro-Life Unity radio program on Blog Talk Radio. My friend is a self professed atheist. He has been a regular on our radio program, over the past three years whenever we produced shows. As an atheist, he often disagrees with other pro-lifers on ancillary issues.

To avoid possible conflicts, he is constantly in favor of keeping abortion, as a stand alone issue. He believes that the other positions "bundled" with a pro-life position, only weaken the pro-life block. That may work well, if you could believe a simple statement of being pro-life. Because we cannot trust someone to stay the course, it behooves us to look at associated issues which may add credibility to, or provide a contradiction to, the logic of the person in question.

Those who would stand for the protection of innocent human life in the womb, might also be expected to stand in defense of all innocent human life outside of the womb. Should there be an expectation of pro-life candidates, to be appalled by unconstitutional, unjust, and undeclared wars that kill innocent people? The common response is to acknowledge the legitimate place for war, and recognize that there is collateral damage in war. The problem of course, is that our recent “wars”, have not been declared, not been constitutional, and not been just. This is especially true when our CIA has been doing the killing.

Is the innocent human life in the womb more valuable than an innocent person gunned down by government sanctioned thugs? So one might find a contradiction in a reported pro-lifer, who looks dispassionately as our military or its agents, kill innocent people.

I contend, that if we require a blind eye to other issues, to be bundled with our pro-life position as we evaluate leaders, our pro-life stance is doomed. Consistent Life Ethic!

Racial Profiling For Heaven!

Having been isolated at times, by my family, due to my criticism of the deviations and creativity that is often found in our current Novus Ordo Mass, I have learned to suck it up. Realizing that some of my remarks could be overly critical, I have attempted to not comment, unless there are four infractions or obvious deviations on what I might expect as Catholic theology during a Mass. Four disputable points is kind of like a liturgical tetris: it just drops.

This Sunday, my wife, and I attended Holy Mass at the 8:00 am, at a Roman rite Catholic Church in Maryland. It was the celebration of Ascension Thursday, but they don’t do that any more in this diocese. It used to be a “Holy Day of Obligation”, but now some dioceses celebrate it on Thursday, and some on the following Sunday. My wife and I had done the readings for Ascension Thursday, on Thursday, so we were prepared. So much for the universal, "catholic", Catholic church? That’s one!

At the homily, the priest started with a joke. Don’t you love it, when the celebrant has a need to just tell a joke. It had nothing to do with his message. It was just his attempt to try out for Comedy Central. That’s two!

During his homily, he announced that anyone who came to church this morning was assured to go to Heaven. He dug up a scriptural quote to build his case based on an assurance that anyone at Mass, loved God. Not a word about our free will to sin, much less discussing that presumption, presumption that we are assured heaven, is one of the two unforgivable sins against the Holy Spirit. That’s three.

Finally, as the celebrant was preparing to conclude the Liturgy, he hesitated before giving the final blessing. The Pastor came forward to address those in attendance. He instructed the ushers to give out papers and pencils, and requested that we write down how many people in our group attended the service, and what our racial classification would be. Luckily my wife grabbed the paper, before I could get a hold of it. That’s four, and that’s Liturgical Tetris

It certainly was not the Catholic Mass I was raised on, but at least they are getting an idea on the racial make-up of heaven.