Cupich Partners With One of the Largest Abortion Funders in the Country - "9:00 am. - coffee and networking reception begins."

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Many of you know that Chicago is on track to see 700 murders this year. That number is of course horrific.

Except that the 700 figure is incorrect. The true number will be more like 20,700.

I am of course adding in the roughly 20,000 murders via abortion that will take place this year in Chicago and its suburbs.

This Friday, Chicago's Cardinal Blase Cupich will be hosting a "Conversation" with the president of the MacArthur Foundation Julia Stasch on "Chicago, Violence and the Catholic Church."

According to the web page promoting the event, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is

[t]he largest private grant maker in Chicago...MacArthur supports local efforts to prevent violence, reduce incarceration, build trust between police and the communities they serve, and improve the effectiveness of the criminal justice system.

The site doesn't mention that the MacArthur Foundation is also almost certainly the largest private funder of abortions in Chicago, through its major grants to Planned Parenthood (which operates a downtown abortuary) as well as other organizations - such as the Chicago Foundation for Women (CFW), which feeds much of its monies to greater Chicago abortion facilities. Just a few weeks ago, it was announced that the MacArthur Foundation had awarded the CFW a four-year grant of $1 million.

Outside of Chicago, the MacArthur Foundation has funded abortions throughout the world through its support of International Planned Parenthood. The foundation has also been linked to India's notorious "sterilization camps."

In part, this is not surprising. Most of the largest US foundations are liberal in orientation, and one of the most popular liberal causes or activities is abortion services, or as the foundations often put it, "women's reproductive rights."

That the Catholic Church or any representative of it would partner with MacArthur is obviously sick and evil. And that they're doing so, supposedly in an effort to stop violence in the city, is stomach-turning. MacArthur is funding 95% of the violence in the city.

Unless, sucking a person's brains out with a vacuum mechanism or literally pulling their legs, torso and head apart with a metal instrument doesn't count as violence.

Perhaps someone at the event will ask the cardinal about that.

Cupich tweeted about the event. I tweeted back a reply, asking whether the abortion question would come up in the Q&A. When I looked again, attendance at the event was suddenly closed. (I think that it closed in that short time frame though I can't be 100% sure. In any case, it happened four days before the site said that it would be automatically closed.)

Please, don't say that it's just a "conversation" or an innocuous alliance for a good cause that doesn't imply endorsement of other things. Would the Archdiocese host a conversation with a company that was proud of manufacturing crematoria for the Holocaust?

Every faithful Catholic knows what Cupich is. But this sort of thing goes beyond him. No one else in the Archdiocese bureaucracy thought to oppose this. Or if they did, their efforts were never made public, and were of course in vain.

The Archdiocese of Chicago is in sum no longer any sort of moral force to promote Catholic values. At best, it's just another liberal NGO. At worst, it's culpable in collaborating with some of the worst evils of our time - evils which are still strongly and officially condemned by the greater Catholic Church.

Cupich probably won't change. But every other Catholic involved with this should be very ashamed.

New DNC Chair and FrancisChurch Model Tom Perez Hounded Pro-Life Activist in Bizarre Case - Judge Fined his Department $120,000

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According to America magazine, Tom Perez, the new Chair of the Democratic National Committee, has "deep Jesuit connections."

And once again, Antonio "Sock-Puppet" Spadaro, the Jesuit and close confidante of Francis, who many have called the "Vice-Pope," cannot hide his Twitter glee.

Perez is a radical leftist lawyer and fallen away Catholic who nevertheless salts his political activism with the occasional "spiritual" quote:

(My parents told me) In order to get to heaven, you have to have letters of reference from poor people.

Perez mentioned that in a 2016 interview, but the sentiment is a paraphrase from a well-noticed comment made by the non-denominational pastor of Riverside Church in 2004.

I think that was after Perez had left home.

It's no wonder that others have noticed his "glaring inability to tell the truth."

But one of the things that Perez is also known for, as assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, is leading Obama administration efforts to harass pro-life advocates using the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. The extended campaign yielded zero convictions as well as an embarrassing rebuke and fine from a Federal Judge.

LifeSiteNews reported in 2013:

Last September Perez boasted, “We have opened 20 civil investigations under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, and filed eight complaints under the Act – compared to just one civil FACE Act case in the eight years of the previous administration.”

But his dogged pursuit of pro-life activists has earned his department a hefty fine – and a federal judge's suspicion he was colluding with abortion providers. 

In April, the Justice Department paid Mary Susan Pine $120,000 in lawyers’ fees after wrongly accusing her of violating the 1994 FACE law.

Federal Judge Kenneth Ryskamp pointedly questioned whether the prosecution “was the product of a concerted effort between the Government and the [abortion provider], which began well before the date of the incident at issue, to quell Ms. Pine’s activities.” On the merits, he wrote, he was “at a loss” to explain how the case ever came to be prosecuted.

The case ended the way it did in large part due to the courage and commitment of Pine:

The prosecuting attorneys repeatedly offered plea bargains in exchange for Pine to agree to end her witness for the unborn. “For awhile they wanted $10,000,” Pine said. “Then they decided would drop the $10,000 if I didn’t go in front of any [abortion] clinic in the country.”

“There was no question that I would fight it. I didn’t want to make any kind of deals like they had suggested during mediation,” she said.

According to Pine, the pressure made her more resilient than ever. “I didn’t stop,” Pine said. “I continued to do exactly what I had been doing for the past 20 years and didn’t change anything.”

Pine is a Christian heroine and crusader for the lives of innocents. So, naturally, the players and leaders of the mutation that we call FrancisChurch are lauding her persecutors.

The Monty-Pythonesque association of "deep Jesuit connections" would almost be funny if the situation wasn't so grotesque and tragic.

The Pope Misleads on Abortion and Absolution

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This is a revised and updated version of a post I wrote last year at the commencement of the Jubilee Year of Mercy.

One of the headlines yesterday was that in his Apostolic Letter, Misericordia et Misera, Pope Francis had indefinitely extended the temporary authority of every priest to absolve the sin of abortion - the temporary authority that he had granted to them for his Jubilee Year of Mercy. This implies that priests did not have this authority before.

From the Letter:

I henceforth grant to all priests, in virtue of their ministry, the faculty to absolve those who have committed the sin of procured abortion. The provision I had made in this regard, limited to the duration of the Extraordinary Holy Year, is hereby extended, notwithstanding anything to the contrary.

And here is one headline (from the BBC):

Pope Francis allows priests to forgive abortion

But while the original declaration and its extension have been hailed in many quarters as a sort of stunning development - an example of the Pope's new Church of Mercy in action - its actual effect in terms of the practical ability to obtain absolution for abortion was and still is . . . wait for it . . . zero.

As with many things surrounding this Pope, the reality is different from the hype.

Let's first be absolutely clear: before the Pope stepped in, all priests had the authority to pardon any sin, including abortion. This Pope did not grant them that authority. They already had it.*

The confusion is that there are certain sins that incur the canonical penalty of excommunication or excommunication later sentential - the excommunication is automatic or takes place by reason of the offense. Abortion has long been one of these sins, along with apostasy, heresy and five others, including physically attacking the Pope. Thus, while a priest could technically pardon an abortion or any other sin in the process of engaging in the sacrament, the potential penitent might not be able to receive the sacrament, as excommunication implies that the excommunicate cannot receive any sacraments including absolution.

It should be noted, however, that while excommunication is "automatic" it would only actually occur in a subset of cases meeting the requirements of canon law. A Catholic party to abortion - pregnant woman, doctor, husband or boyfriend - only incurs excommunication if, among other things, the party is sixteen or over, was not subject to physical force and knew (or was negligent in not knowing) that excommunication would result. It is arguable that the last clause would exempt many.

How might a penitent get the censure lifted in order to then receive absolution? Technically, he or she would have to go to a bishop, or to a priest who had been given the proper authority by a bishop. Here's the crucial point, however: in the United States, virtually all priests had previously been given such authority by their bishops.

In other words, in the United States, even before Pope Francis issued his two Letters, virtually every priest already had the authority to absolve the sin of abortion.

It is a matter of some debate how far this had been extended to other countries, and it's difficult to come up with a definitive answer on the question, as statistical lists on these sorts of things are not compiled. But I believe that the "tradition" of bishops designating this authority to their priests was widespread in English-speaking countries and may have been common in most of continental Europe as well. One source I spoke to claimed that it was pretty much the norm everywhere.

But even assuming there were places where it was not the norm - places where technically one still had to go to a bishop to get the censure lifted, canon law offered a "way out". According to the 1983 Code of Canon Law, any priest may provisionally remove the censure if he judges that it would be "hard" for the penitent to remain in such a state until the censure was removed. Here, "hard" is usually interpreted as waiting more than 24 hours. In that sort of a case, one of the two - the penitent or priest - would then have thirty days to confirm this with a bishop or someone designated by him. And it should be noted that in the case of a priest contacting a bishop, the full anonymity of the penitent was allowed and expected.

To put it a different way, if you sought absolution on abortion from a priest who did not have the authority to lift the censure (in one of those possible places where he didn't), if the priest could not get you to a bishop or priest who had such authority within 24 hours, you would still be able to receive absolution.

I should say that as a matter of canon law, it still isn't clear whether the pope means to lift the automatic excommunication on abortion or merely grant all priests the ability to lift it. Nor is it clear whether either answer will apply only to abortion or to the other sins automatic excommunication is incurred, such as, say, striking the Pope.

After all this the reader may stop and ask, isn't this all too complicated? Shouldn't the Pope be commended for making it simple and transparent? The answer to this is that while the rules might have been somewhat complicated - it's taken me 1,000+ words to explain them - the practice was not complicated. If one had been a party to abortion, absolution had been readily or "easily" available - at least since 1983 and in many cases earlier.

The truth of the matter of course is that the real impediment to obtaining absolution for abortion has been the state of mind of the potential penitent - not desiring to obtain absolution from a priest, being afraid of it, ignorant as to its importance or whatever.

The Pope's involvement with the issue is in practice nothing more than a PR move.

One might claim that a PR move would itself not be a bad thing if it helped get more people to confession, especially for a grave sin such as abortion. But this Pope has never spent much time stressing the importance of actual confession, even in the context of discussing "mercy." Rather, we get general statements like this:

We will entrust the life of the Church, all humanity, and the entire cosmos to the Lordship of Christ, asking him to pour out his mercy upon us like the morning dew, so that everyone may work together to build a brighter future. Misericordiae Vultus.

Confession has virtually disappeared as a regular or even occasional practice for most Catholics. One suspects that the Pope's quasi-New Age effusions are not helpful in getting anyone to confide their worst secrets to some old man in a priest's collar.

So, it's a PR move, but a PR move to stress the goodness and mercy not of God, but of this Pope, and to implicitly condemn the "old" or "traditional" Church (in other words the eternal Catholic Church).

"The old Church wouldn't forgive abortions. But now, under my leadership, things are different."

That's a lie.



*It was not always this way. Though priests have always had the general ability to pardon even the gravest of sins - i.e. murder - there used to be a subset of grave sins where absolution was remitted exclusively to the Pope or bishops. In other words, to get it you had to go to a higher up. The sin of striking the Pope, for example, was in this category. In the old days, you couldn't just walk into a confession booth and obtain absolution for that, though you could obtain absolution for "common" violence or murder. However, according to current canon law there are no sins in this category. Any priest may technically pardon any sin, including abortion.

Rape and Contraception

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Is rape an exception?

Now that I've got your attention, here's another long essay. (And you thought you would be free of this after you graduated.)

Don't worry. I'll get back to Islam soon enough. But this issue niggles.

By the way, I welcome arguments for the opposite point of view. Just because you disagree with me doesn't mean you're a heretic.

Necessarily . . .

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Catholic moral theory prohibits contraception on the grounds that it is intrinsically evil. Recently, however, there has been talk of possible exceptions or special cases where the use of contraceptives may be licit. Pope Francis himself suggested that married couples might allowably use contraceptives to prevent conceiving a child with birth defects caused by the Zika virus.

I think it's safe to say that Catholic ethicists have generally rejected the Pope's reasoning, with the exception of dissident ethicists who were pro-contraception to begin with. (What this says about the state of the Church and the current papacy, I'll leave for another time.) Among other things, the 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae was quite clear in rejecting the use of contraceptives by married couples for any reason.

However, another sort of exceptional case is currently being discussed--the use of contraceptives to prevent conception in the case of rape. Ironically, the discussion was prompted by the Pope, in support of his Zika claim, citing an alleged historical example that has now almost certainly been debunked as a myth--the story of the Belgian Congo nuns who were "on the pill."

I have written elsewhere that this story is not only false but maliciously false--even obscene. And indeed it was denied by the Vatican when it last publicly surfaced in 1993. This hasn't stopped some Catholic commentators from continuing to use it as a moral thought experiment: True or not (they have argued), it shows that there are some cases--rape being one of them--where use of contraceptives might be licit.

But independent of relying on a bizarre and grotesque moral hypothetical, these commentators appear to have another thing going for them: For at least the last fifteen years the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has apparently endorsed the use of the Morning After Pill for rape victims. This quasi-official instruction is contained in the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (no. 36).

A woman who has been raped may defend herself against a conception resulting from sexual assault. If, after appropriate testing, there is no evidence that conception has occurred already, she may be treated with medication that would prevent ovulation, sperm capacitation, or fertilization. It is not permissible, however, to initiate or to recommend treatments that have as their purpose or direct effect the removal, destruction, or interference with the implantation of a fertilized ovum.

It is important to note that the USCCB prohibits the use of anything that might be or function as an abortifacient. Many Catholic ethicists have claimed that the medical evidence now shows that there are no post-coitius contraceptives that meet this standard, and thus the 2001 USCCB directives implicitly get the science wrong.

This is obviously a very important debate but I want to leave it here for now. Rather, I want to assume with the USCCB that some of the contraceptives in question are merely contraceptive in nature, that is, they merely block or prevent fertilization. In that case, would it be licit to take them in the case of rape? Or to put it negatively, if contraception is intrinsically evil as the Catholic church has always taught, how could it be allowable in this case?

I think the answer is that the USCCB is incorrect--contraception is not allowable, even in cases of rape. But I want to consider the argument for the contrary position. Where does it go wrong?  

In certain recent articles and discussions, one claim has been that we simply know it is licit. Why? Because the USCCB has told us so. This assertion, I suppose, has the added bonus of introducing a new definition of infallibility to the Magisterium. If a bishops conference pronounces on a philosophical claim on page 211 of an instruction manual for doctors, we know it to be true.

In fairness, there is also an actual argument that some Catholic theologians have set out.

Warning: the following discussion may get slightly gross.

The argument makes use of the doctrine of double effect: While blocking conception is an intrinsically bad result, we may intend a good result that merely has the blocking of conception as a foreseen though unintended result. A woman may obviously resist a rape, which of course may have the consequence of blocking conception. Thus, in the same way (so goes the argument), the use of contraception after penetration has occurred--i.e. the next morning--may be properly thought of as resistance to the rape. Blocking the sperm, or preventing it from fertilizing the ovum is no more morally problematic than attempting to physically throw off an attacker. The intention is not to contracept but to defend oneself against a rape.

But this misunderstands the doctrine of double effect. We may not do an intrinsically bad thing if that thing, even if not intended per se, is being used as a necessary means to achieve another albeit possibly good end. Blocking conception after a rape, while the general intention might be good--to avoid having a child (in and of itself a perfectly allowable intention)--includes the blocking of conception as a necessary means. What else would the purpose of taking a contraceptive pill be but that?

Against this it is claimed that what is occurring is self-defense against the rape, not the blocking of conception per se. There is no principled difference (again, so goes the argument) between attempting to block the penetration of the rapist and attempting to block (say) the continued progress of his sperm.

I still find this argument bizarre. Among other things it is an abuse of the English language. It doesn't diminish the horrible crime of rape in the least to say that rape, like most human actions, is implicitly defined as having a beginning point and an end point--that end point being no later then when the attacker leaves the scene. One doesn't go to the police or to a clinic the next day and say, "I am currently being raped even as we speak." And again, this is not to devalue the awful potential consequences of rape--physical or mental--which may unfortunately last a lifetime. But these are consequences, not the ongoing continuance of the rape itself.

The linguistic contortions necessary for the argument can be shown by this passage from a published Catholic theologian (much published, according to his website):

Similarly, after a rape is completed, if a women enters a hospital emergency room and is given a non-abortifacient spermicide, this medical intervention has the moral object of interrupting the rape.

Did you get that? After a rape is completed, one may interrupt the rape. Or at least one may have "the moral object" of interrupting the rape. That makes no sense.  

One could grossly say, I suppose, that the rape ends when the sperm reaches something, or fails to reach something. But this is also not how we use the word. Rape is not defined as a forcible attempt to fertilize an ovum. Among other things, men can rape other men, men can rape woman in ways that cannot possibly lead to conception and so on.

This bizarre stretching of the definition is an attempt to get around the fact that contraception is intrinsically evil. The only way to do that is to somehow redefine contraception as something else.

But answers to moral questions can never be about mere definitions of words. So, for the sake of argument, let's imagine that rape does continue way past the duration normally thought. As that sperm is attempting succeed in fertilization, hours after the initial act, the rape is continuing to occur. When does it end? It is possible, of course, that fertilization will occur and a baby will start to grow. That baby was not intended by the victim, nor is it morally required that she desire to have that baby. If we define a swimming sperm as the continuance of an attack, why not define a growing baby in the same way?

Or to look at it another way, suppose the baby were not a person but merely a tumor, starting to grow malignly. Surely in that case resisting that could justly be looked on as self-defense, made manifest as a result of the rape, whether we wish to say that the victim was still being raped or not.

Of course, I'm not suggesting that resisting that baby would be justified, nor does the USCCB suggest that. Indeed, it explicitly condemns abortion even after rape. The reason it condemns it is the correct one--that killing the baby, even as merely a means to achieving a permissible end (not wanting to have a child that one had no part in consenting to) is intrinsically evil.

So, there it is. Intrinsically evil. We can redefine rape as lasting nine months. We can call abortion after rape "self-defense" (and it perhaps would be self-defense, just not justified self-defense). But because killing the innocent baby would be intrinsically evil we cannot do it.

But for some reason the USCCB refuses to apply this logic to contraception.

Abortion and contraception are both intrinsically evil. If you want to say that one is more evil than the other (as virtually everyone would), that's fine. But they are both on precisely the same grounds when it comes to functioning as absolute side-constraints to our actions. We cannot intend to do them, either as ends themselves or as necessary means to achieve other ends, even if those ends are good ones.

Redefining words or concepts--rape as a two-day process--is one way to cheat this logic, but as I have tried to show, even that fails.

Why is all this important? The question of contraception after rape is not just a remote sort of case. If one adds "date rape" into the mix, this sort of issue is no doubt dealt with virtually every day. Though actual rape is horrific and it may seem unfeeling to ask a rape victim to refrain from doing anything that she believes will help her, it is still wrong to compound things by introducing further evil into the situation.

Equally importantly, the history of ethics in general and Christian and Catholic ethics in particular, show that these sorts of moral "exceptions" have the tendency to eventually undermine the entire moral structure. That's certainly why some defend and advance them. They hate the Church's teachings on sexual morality but they know they cannot, at least at the moment, attack those teachings directly. So they float these sorts of arguments.

Others are perfectly faithful and sincere and have merely been convinced on the not completely unreasonable grounds that important Catholic people or groups such as the USCCB have endorsed them. And of course, some faithful Catholics are convinced by their own sincerely made arguments. Their arguments are nevertheless unsound. That's not a criticism per se. It happens.

But it's still dangerous.

The Belgian Congo nun case was a thought experiment floated by three Catholic theologians sixty-five years ago. They were explicit in claiming that their argument could not and would not be used to justify contraception within marriage. (Whether or not they were sincere in this I have no idea.) Two weeks ago they were proved wrong.

By a pope.

Video Tuesday: Rob Roy Turns Traitor

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Twenty years ago, Liam Neeson played a Catholic hero. Now he is playing an anti-Catholic scourge.

Previous to that he saved the lives of 1100 people from the Nazis. Now he's become a collaborator in a much larger holocaust.

Neeson just did a voice over for an Amnesty International commercial recommending the legalization of abortion in Ireland. See first video below.

The short piece drips anti-Christian and anti-Catholic hate.

Remember when Amnesty International stood for saving people?

The second video below contains one of the most moving scenes from Schindler's List.

You will always be Rob Roy and Oskar Schindler to me, Mr. Neeson.

Not just some dumb actor.

The Pope, Abortion and Forgiveness

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One of the headlines yesterday was that in honor of the upcoming Jubilee Year of Mercy, Pope Francis has granted to every priest the authority to absolve the sin of abortion, at least for the Jubilee year. The implicit subtext is that priests did not have this authority before. The relevant text is reprinted at the end of this post.*

While this declaration has been hailed in many quarters as a sort of stunning development--an example of the Pope's new Church of Mercy in action--its actual effect in terms of the practical ability to obtain absolution for abortion is . . . wait for it . . . almost zero.

Why do I say that?

Because priests could do it anyway.

Or to put it differently, as with many things surrounding this Pope, the reality is different from the hype.

Let me start to explain what I mean by going back a step. Technically, all priests today have the authority to pardon any sin including abortion. It wasn't always this way. Though priests have always had the general ability to pardon even the gravest of sins--i.e. murder--there used to be a subset of grave sins where absolution was remitted exclusively to the Pope or bishops. In other words, to get it you had to go to a higher up. The sin of striking the Pope, for example, was in this category. In the old days, you couldn't just walk into a confession booth and obtain absolution for that, though you could obtain absolution for "common" violence or murder. (Laugh away, non-Catholics, I find it a bit funny too.)

However, according to current Canon Law there are no sins in this category. Any priest may technically pardon any sin, including abortion.

But there is a catch. Currently there are certain sins that incur the canonical penalty of excommunication or excommunication latae sententiae--the excommunication is automatic or takes place by reason of the offense. Abortion is one of these sins, along with apostasy, heresy and five others, including physically attacking the Pope (once again, "common" murder is not included but striking the Pope is--laugh again, non-Catholics). Thus, while a priest could technically pardon an abortion, in practice that would be impossible in the case of the potential penitent being an excommunicate, as excommunication implies that the person cannot receive any sacraments including absolution.

It should be noted, however, that while excommunication is "automatic" it would only actually occur in a subset of cases meeting the requirements of Canon Law. A Catholic party to abortion--pregnant woman, doctor, husband or boyfriend--only incurs excommunication if, among other things, the party is sixteen or over, was not subject to physical force and knew (or was negligent in not knowing) that excommunication would result. It is arguable that the last clause would exempt many.

How would the penitent get the censure lifted in order to then receive absolution? He or she would have to go to a bishop, or to a priest who had been given the proper authority by a bishop. Here's the crucial point, however: in the United States, virtually all priests have been given such authority by their bishops.

In other words, in the United States, virtually every priest already has the authority to absolve the sin of abortion.

It is a matter of some debate how far this has extended to other countries, and it's difficult to come up with a definitive answer on the question, as statistical lists on these sorts of things are presumably not compiled. My tentative conclusion is that the "tradition" of bishops designating this authority to their priests is widespread in English-speaking countries and may be common in most of continental Europe as well. One source has claimed that it is pretty much the norm everywhere.

Let's assume however, that there are places where it's not the norm--places where technically you still have to go to a bishop to get the censure lifted. Even here, however, current Canon Law offers a "way out". According to the 1983 Code of Canon Law, any priest may provisionally remove the censure if he judges that it would be "hard" for the penitent to remain in such a state until the censure was removed. Here, "hard" is usually interpreted as waiting more than 24 hours. In that sort of a case, one of the two--the penitent or priest--would then have thirty days to confirm this with a bishop or someone designated by him. And it should be noted that in the case of a priest contacting a bishop, the full anonymity of the penitent is allowed and expected.

To put it a different way, if you sought absolution on abortion from a priest who did not have the authority to lift the censure (in one of those possible places where he didn't), if the priest could not get you to a bishop or priest who had such authority within 24 hours, you would still be able to receive absolution.

The 24 hours requirement is why towards the top of this post I wrote almost zero instead of zero.

Here the reader may stop and ask, isn't this all too complicated? Shouldn't the Pope be commended for making it simple and transparent? (Though, we should note that the Pope has done this only for the Jubilee Year. After that we go back to the regular rules.) The answer to this is that while the rules might be somewhat complicated--it's taken me 1,000+ words to explain them--the practice is not. If one has been a party to abortion, absolution has always been readily or "easily" available, or, more accurately, has been available at least since 1983 and in many cases earlier.

The truth of the matter of course is that the real impediment is not some 24 hour waiting period that would apply in only a small minority of cases anyway, but the state of mind of the potential penitent--not desiring to obtain absolution from a priest, being afraid of it, ignorant as to its importance or whatever.

The Pope's announcement was, to put it simply, a PR move.

Do not misunderstand. I do not mean to imply that that's necessarily a bad thing. Clearly, it would be a good thing--a hugely good thing--if it succeeded in persuading more people to seek absolution from the sin of abortion than otherwise would have. I admit to being skeptical here, however. Confession--or what is now called "reconciliation"--is regularly practiced by only a small minority of Catholics. That those who do not regularly practice it sort of "hold it out as a last resort" for grave sins such as abortion, is doubtful, I think.

This is not to blame laypeople. Most churches minimize the importance of confession and minimize the time allotted to it--"5:45-5:50 on Saturday evenings or by appointment". And in most cases these days you're not going into a booth and whispering anonymously to a priest behind a screen, you're expected to sit face to face with Father X--the nice fellow who shakes your hand at the end of Mass every week and knows your family--or perhaps walk together with Father X to a booth where you will then go through the motions of anonymity. To put the effect of this sort of thing in perspective, the Church officially defines masturbation as a mortal sin. Technically, you can go to hell for it, even if you do it once. According to the Church, you must obtain absolution for it. But how many people want to sit in an armchair across from Father X and tell him about that at 5:45 on a Saturday evening?

Some have argued that the Pope has been loud and clear in stressing the importance of confession. I do not think that is the case. While he does on occasion mention the importance of the sacrament, the context of it is such that its mention will go right past those who most need to be convinced of its importance.

Even if the Pope's announcement was a PR move in the cause of, say, stressing God's goodness or mercy in general, that too might be good. And there is precedent for it.

But those who are wise as serpents in these matters might look on it in another way: It's a PR move to stress the goodness and mercy not of God, but of this Pope, and to implicitly condemn the "old" or "traditional" Church (in other words the eternal Catholic Church) of being, well, mean.

(I should note that the sub-headline to many stories on the Pope's announcement plays exactly into that--"traditionalists" were "dismayed" at the Pope offering an "easy out" to such a grave sin. Given the stress by traditionalists on confession, that's almost a complete inversion of the truth.)

If the Pope were truly interested in saving those who were prisoners of mortal sin, he would call all non-Catholics to convert (you need to be a Catholic, obviously, to receive the sacrament of absolution) instead of implying that it doesn't matter and condemning those who think it does--"proselytism is solemn nonsense...the most important thing is to journey together towards the good."

If the Pope were truly interested in reminding his flock of the necessity of confession, he would ask all Catholics to go and go regularly, and require that his bishops and priests make it more readily available. Announce it from the pulpit often, allot more time to it, put the confession booths back or stop storing hymnals in them and so on.

If the Pope were truly interested in offering absolution to those who were a party to abortion, he would implore them to see a priest today, not wait until the start of his own Jubilee Year on December 8.

What was that about a waiting period?

And if the Pope truly wants those who were parties to abortion to take their need for absolution seriously, he wouldn't have so obviously bent over backwards to qualify or minimize their culpability as he did in his letter (see below).

Mercy requires first recognizing the sin, not giving excuses for it. That's the point of mercy, after all. If you didn't do anything wrong (or anything really wrong), you don't need it.

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*Here is the relevant passage from the Pope's letter, released yesterday:

One of the serious problems of our time is clearly the changed relationship with respect to life. A widespread and insensitive mentality has led to the loss of the proper personal and social sensitivity to welcome new life. The tragedy of abortion is experienced by some with a superficial awareness, as if not realizing the extreme harm that such an act entails. Many others, on the other hand, although experiencing this moment as a defeat, believe that they have no other option. I think in particular of all the women who have resorted to abortion. I am well aware of the pressure that has led them to this decision. I know that it is an existential and moral ordeal. I have met so many women who bear in their heart the scar of this agonizing and painful decision. What has happened is profoundly unjust; yet only understanding the truth of it can enable one not to lose hope. The forgiveness of God cannot be denied to one who has repented, especially when that person approaches the Sacrament of Confession with a sincere heart in order to obtain reconciliation with the Father. For this reason too, I have decided, notwithstanding anything to the contrary, to concede to all priests for the Jubilee Year the discretion to absolve of the sin of abortion those who have procured it and who, with contrite heart, seek forgiveness for it. May priests fulfil this great task by expressing words of genuine welcome combined with a reflection that explains the gravity of the sin committed, besides indicating a path of authentic conversion by which to obtain the true and generous forgiveness of the Father who renews all with his presence.

List of Shame: Sixteen Journalists Accept Maggie Award From Planned Parenthood

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What to wear now?!!!

A necklace of baby parts, perhaps?

As you probably know, "Maggie" is Margaret Sanger. Here's yesterday's post from Katie Yoder at Newsbusters:

While the media stay away from the recent videos exposing Planned Parenthood’s trafficking of aborted baby parts, they are drawn to Planned Parenthood’s annual media awards ceremony. 

During Planned Parenthood’s Maggie Awards for Media Excellence Tuesday night, the abortion giant recognized 16 journalists for pushing “reproductive rights.” From Buzzfeed and Yahoo! to MSNBC, MRC Culture compiled a list of several prominent media attendees – and found a picture announcing the winners. 

Those include Cosmopolitan.com’s Jill Filipovic, for TV & Online Reporting; left-wing magazine The Nation, for Excellence In Media, and TeenVogue.com’s Phillip Picardi, for Youth Media. Salon’s Valerie Tarico won Outstanding Individual Commentary for a piece undercutting liberal claims that no one is pro-abortion. Her story was titled: “I am pro-abortion, not just pro-choice: 10 reasons why we must support the procedure and the choice.” 

With no official list released yet, MRC Culture also searched Twitter to compile a list of media present and/or awarded at the event: 

Buzzfeed – via Casey Gueren 

Colorlines.com – via Akiba Solomon and Aura Bogado 

Cosmopolitan – via Jill Filipovic 

Ebony – via Jamilah Lemieux 

Elle – via Laurie Abraham and Leah Chernikoff 

Esquire – via John H. Richardson 

Mic – via Elizabeth Plank 

MSNBC – via Irin Carmon 

Pearl of Africa documentary – via Cleo Kambugu and Jonny von Wallström 

Salon – via Valerie Tarico 

Teen Vogue – via Phillip Picardi 

The Nation – via Katha Pollitt 

UpWorthy – via Ariel Azoff, Wagatwe Wanjuki and Lori White 

Vice – via Fazeelat Aslam 

Yahoo! Health – via Jen Gerson Uffalussy 

Tai Beauchamp of InStyle hosted the event.

AVE MARIA, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

Video Tuesday: Brit Hume Slams Abortion

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Say what you like about Fox News--and I should confess that opinions among my Catholic friends are mixed at best--they have a much greater proportion of Christians among their broadcasters and journalists than any other major network. Among other things, this in part leads them to do things no other network would.

Here is Brit Hume, the former long-time anchor of Fox News, and now "Senior Political Analyst" discussing abortion in the wake of the recent and sickening "selling of body parts over salad" revelations:

Whatever comes of the revelations about Planned Parenthood and its participation in the traffic in fetal body parts, those revelations will have achieved one thing--they have parted the veil of antiseptic tidiness behind which the abortion industry has for so long operated. The sight of a senior Planned Parenthood official--and a doctor to boot--discussing the market for fetal body parts, in between bites of salad and sips of wine was stomach turning. That's because it laid bare the essentially brutal nature of abortion. 

Let's be blunt--abortion involves the extraction and killing of a human life, which within a couple weeks of pregnancy has a beating heart. Five weeks in, its hands and legs begin to grow. It is these tiny creatures, and too often ones that are far more developed that are pulled from a mother's womb and crushed with forceps, oh but oh so carefully lest body parts that can later be sold are preserved. 

This gruesome procedure shows the extent to which we as a people have been anesthetized by the estimated fifty-five million--fifty five million!--abortions performed since the Supreme Court discovered a Constitutional right to that procedure, forty-two years ago. 

Will we as a nation not someday come to look upon that decision and what it has done to us, not to mention the fifty-five million, with horror and regret? One can only hope we will.

-Hat tip: Jeremiah Rauwolf

Smoke of Satan: Vatican Official Drops the "H" Word on Pro-Life Journalist

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"Do you DENY digging those mass graves yourself, Mr. Gennarini?"

Hate.

All of us have had that word or its variations used against us or have heard or seen it used against our Catholic brothers and sisters.

Hate speech. Hate group. Hate monger. Hate filled. Hater.

Of course, in the contemporary context, 95% its use is unintentionally self-referential. When they describe you as a "hater" because you refuse  to renounce the teachings of Christ and His Church, you're not a hater. But guess what they are.

Indeed, if you want to find people who hate Christ and His Church, look and see who ascribes "hate" to faithful Catholics.

Now, here's the bad news. And apologies if this sort of stunned me. Perhaps many of you have seen so much recently that nothing surprises anymore.

The phenomenon has reached the Vatican.

The President of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (PASS), appointed by Pope Francis in 2014, just publicly dropped the "H" word on a pro-life writer at First Things.

The full saga involves the First Things writer, Stefano Gennarini, the Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS), Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo and Margaret Archer, the president of PASS. It was in the context of initial criticism by Gennarini of the Vatican working closely with "population control" advocates Ban Ki-moon and Jeffrey Sachs.

Lifesite News sums the whole thing up well here. But I wanted to excerpt (with a few annotations) some of the worst parts of the letter written by Ms. Archer. The letter is extremely nasty--completely out of proportion to Mr. Gennarini's initial calm criticisms--and often bizarrely off-subject, as when she accuses Mr. Gennarini of ignoring mass graves in Malaysia.

Keep in mind that this is a Vatican official appointed by the Pope, not some non-Catholic or squishy Catholic academic. And it was posted on an official Vatican website, not Salon or the Huffington Post:

Is your sole concern with human dignity confined to the period between conception and live-birth?...If so, this is a travesty of Catholic Social Teaching. [Gennarini of course never says anything of the kind, but this is a standard move.] 

Why are you so totally uninterested in vicious practices, such as human trafficking that are an offence to the human dignity and right to life that you purport to defend? [Ditto.] 

In the last two weeks of April in question, mass graves were found in Malaysia and Thailand of those killed by their intended traffickers; tens of thousands were set adrift at sea without food or water by those intending to traffic them before they feared for their own lives through the ‘civilized’ solution of a ‘blockade’. Is this of no concern to you? [Ditto again.] 

Of course, your comments imply that you are a climate change denier... [Burn him!] 

Why do you direct a hate message to Bishop Sánchez Sorondo alone? [There's that H-bomb.] Various Cardinals were present at different meetings. Instead, blame me, blame PAS. [Well, yeah, but Sorondo is the Chancellor.] We are respected academics who take full responsibility for our actions and have, according to our Statutes, the duty and privilege of advising the Church on matters of Social Doctrine and its application. I am appointed by the Pope and responsible directly to him. I’m afraid that leaves you and your cohort out in the cold. Moreover, we work pro bono and are therefore are (sic) self-supporting, which makes me wonder which lobbyists meet your salary bill? [You dare to disagree with us? Who's paying you?]  

Why are we not allowed to speak to Jeffrey Sachs or the Secretary General of the UN? [It's a bit more than that.]...Well, that was not the attitude of Pope Francis who invited him to a private Audience, immediately prior to our joint PAS/PASS meeting on 28 April – to discuss climate change and human trafficking. Do you really have a higher moral standard than the Pope? Or is your own minimalistic version of the Creed, consisting of the single item: ‘’We believe in the ethical depravity of abortion’ considered to be an improvement? [Ditto for the third time.] 

It seems as if abject poverty, malnutrition, no schooling, and the prospect of no employment are of little concern to you after (children) have been born. [Well, personally, I also deeply care about employment opportunities for the unborn. But that's just me.]

Who is Margaret Archer? As well as being the President of PASS, she is the Director of the "Centre for Social Ontology" at the University of Warwick.

More on Archer to follow...