Point of Clarification

Last updated on: January 13, 2015 at 12:43 am by Mark Shea

Point of Clarification 2015-01-11T19:09:02-07:00 Mark Shea

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If somebody says that they believe all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims is revealed by God, obeys the Church on all the Pelvic Issues, accepts the infallibility of the Pope, professes and defends belief in the Church’s teaching on the sacraments (including the Real Presence), accepts Just War doctrine, and supports capitalism (within the moral guidelines of the Church’s social teaching, he or she is not a dangerous fifth columnist morally indistinguishable from somebody who compares prolifers to Muslim terrorists if he or she also insists that prolife people must also uphold all the rest of the Church’s teaching.

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People who compare prolife Catholics to terrorists = Not Prolife or Catholic

People who demand prolife Catholics be fully and completely prolife = Prolife and Catholic

I demand that Catholics be fully prolife and not use the unborn as human shields for various commitments to doctrines directly at odds with the clear teaching of the Church. That places me squarely in the second camp.

Now, some Catholics will complain that this is unfair and that there are not enough hours in the day to oppose abortion and euthanasia *and* run around doing stuff about unjust war, gun violence, torture, poverty, the death penalty, desperate refugees, the environment, and the many other things the Church teaches are part of a fully prolife ethic. I have no problem with that objection. We can’t all be everywhere doing everything. So if your anti-abortion commitments are where you put your limited time, talent, and treasure I have no objection to that at all. Do what you can with what you have and the Lord be with you.

Where I object is when anti-abortion Catholics manage to find lots of time and energy to sink into directly opposing and fighting *against* the obvious and clear teaching of the Church and who insinuate or say that concern about the rest of the Church’s teaching is somehow an act of support for abortion. It is these folks who are anti-abortion-but-not-prolife and who are using the unborn as human shields for dissent from clear Church teaching. I refuse to let such people characterize those who accept the Church’s whole teaching as “liberal” or to buy the lie that accepting the whole of the Church’s teaching is somehow “watering down” opposition to abortion or euthansasia. The Church’s teaching is a whole weave and it is long past time that we treated it as such. If you don’t have the time or energy to address everything in the Church’s teaching, that’s fine. But don’t spend your limited energy opposing things in the Church’s teaching you don’t happen to like. Spend it on that bit of the Church’s teaching you can help advance.

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