Conversation with Somebody Claiming Their Focus is Only on Abortion

Last updated on: September 21, 2017 at 12:10 pm by Mark Shea

Conversation with Somebody Claiming Their Focus is Only on Abortion 2017-09-21T12:10:55-07:00 Mark Shea

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Commenting on Liesite News’ recent ugly hatchet piece on Rebecca Bratten Weiss, claiming that she seeks to destroy the prolife movement by advocating a consistent life ethic, a reader sez:

I don’t like smear campaigns or demonizing. I also agree with the headline of the LSN article. I do think “seamless garment” is a poison pill, “consistent life ethic” is ethically inconsistent, and the blending of SJW culture with prolife is harming the movement.

What part of Pope St. John Paul II’s statement in Evangelium Vitae, “The Church declares that unconditional respect for the right to life of every innocent person-from conception to natural death-is one of the pillars on which every civil society stands” do you regard as problematic?

I disagree with Pope St. John Paul on this as I disagree with Pope Francis on many things he has said in his statements.

The problem with the consistent life ethic is it pollutes the issue of abortion. Most egregiously, it equates it with the death penalty and there should be no equivocation there. These issues should not be approached in tandem because they are completely different. One is an innocent child with no voice, rights, or recourse, one is a grown human with an attorney and a trial who in most cases committed a violent crime. Incomparable.

If you want to be anti-death penalty, great. There are some excellent arguments you can make. But you can CERTAINLY be anti-abortion and pro-death penalty. There is nothing remotely inconsistent about that. It is linking the death penalty to abortion that is ethically inconsistent. They are incomparable.

Except that JPII is not giving his opinion here. He is giving the teaching of Holy Church. And it is rubbish to say he is equating abortion with the death penalty. What he is doing, and what the bulk of the prolife movement is stone blind to, is relating abortion to the death penalty and all other life issues.

And because they are are stone blind to that, they keep making the same blunder over and over. They claim that they are focusing on abortion. They are not.

What they are really doing is focusing on every right wing culture of death priority and devoting huge amounts of time and energy to actively fighting the Church instead of fighting for the unborn. Would to God prolifers did focus their energy on abortion. Instead they waste their time and energy fighting JPII (as you are doing here) or fighting Pope Francis (as LSN constantly does) or attacking Bishop Barron (LSN again) or battling the Church on the death penalty or battling her on refugees, a living wage, gun violence or (currently) wasting time destroying the livelihood and reputation of a woman for saying what JPII and Holy Church says in Evangelium Vitae.

That is where the “prolife” movement’s time and energy goes. And it winds up using the unborn as human shields while it makes the case for defying two popes and all the bishops of the world to cheer for an unjust war in Iraq (because Republicans must be supported in all things).

It fritters away its credibility giving fawning interviews to torture defenders like Marc Thiessen on “The World Over”.

It destroys that credibility defending every word and deed of a pornocrat and sex predator who mocks the disabled, POW’s, and Gold Star families and goes to the mat defending, not the unborn, but the destruction of maternity benefits in GOP “health care reform”.

The “prolife” movement has looooong ago ceased being about defending the unborn as the central goal. It is about defending the Party of Trump’s every word and deed and about defending whatever right wing culture of death priority FOX and the Right Wing Noise Machine command it to defend today. That’s reality. And that is why LSN spends so much time attacking the pope and why so many people all over St. Blog’s are wasting their time, not defending the unborn, but destroying the livelihood and good name of Rebecca Bratten Weiss for agreeing with Pope St. John Paul II and the clear teaching of Holy Church in Evangelium Vitae. When a priest of God, supposedly “defending the dignity of human life”, commits what his own bishop calls and act of desecration by putting the dead body of a baby on an altar (a dead body he has evidently refused Christian burial for years) so that he can use it as a prop to give a 45 minute online stump speech for Donald Trump, you could not have a clearer sign that the “prolife” movement has gone badly astray. It must return the Church’s whole teaching or it will kill itself.

And the thing is, people outside the “prolife” bubble can see all that very clearly. And the result is that the “prolife” movement, while guarding its turf with tactics like its vicious attack on Weiss, is poisoning people of good will against it in droves. I want the mission of the Church with respect to the unborn to succeed very badly. You guys are harming it terribly with your ugly tactics and poisonous smears and destructive attacks on the Church’s teaching.

Repent.

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